For years I convinced myself that food made me feel good. I really thought it was true. After a long, hard day at work, thinking about relaxing at home with Mexican food and ice cream seemed to calm me. It provided a release. It gave me something to look forward to in stressful or emotional moments. Planning my “comfort food” let me escape for just a few minutes.
What I’ve come to realize is that I used food as a numbing agent. I thought it made me feel good – I thought I loved to eat and really enjoyed food. I was wrong. It didn’t make me feel good and I didn’t love to eat. Food was my drug and I was addicted. Junk food actually made me feel awful. I don’t know how I had myself fooled for so long.
I wasn’t addicted to the food itself but rather to the way it numbed my mind. I preferred to eat alone, and when I did my problems, stresses and worries were suspended. They weren’t resolved, they weren’t eliminated, they were just temporarily out of my head for just a few minutes while the only thing that existed was food.
Unfortunately, there was ugly aftermath. Not only did I return to reality with the last bite and all my stresses, worries and problems were once again top of mind, but they were compounded by frustration and self-loathing. I would be angry with myself for once again not making a healthy choice and indulging my cravings. I didn’t understand why I’d continue to make a choice that I always ended up regretting? I didn’t understand why I’d tell myself that food felt so good when clearly it didn’t.
I started to pay close attention to the types of situations and emotions that preceded less than ideal decision-making. I found that I craved “junk food” when I was stressed, sad, tired or lonely.
I started paying attention to what I felt as I prepared the food and as I ate it. There was a very strong sense of excitement and anticipation beforehand and almost no thoughts, feelings or sensations as I consumed it. In fact, oftentimes, after eating, I could hardly even remember eating or what it tasted like.
It was an escape. It numbed me. It allowed me to hide from the world but I was hiding deep in a hole that just got deeper and darker each day. What I thought was helping me – what I thought was providing me relief and happiness – it was actually making me miserable.
So how do you get out of the hole? How do you finally realize it isn’t worth it – it isn’t serving you and that what you think feels good really doesn’t feel good at all?
Pay attention. As tedious as it sounds, keep a journal of your hunger, cravings and associated feelings. It can be as simple as jotting down “Pissed off. Want ice cream” or “feeling lonely and frustrated. Want to pick up Mexican on the way home from work” or “Great day at work, eating clean seems easy today!” It’s also important to make note of how you feel during and after you eat. It won’t take as long as you think – you can do this in less than 30 seconds. Don’t feel pressured to censor your feelings or behavior as you do this, it is just about awareness right now.
Look for patterns. After a few weeks of journaling your thoughts and feelings associated with your hunger, cravings and food choices you should start to identify some patterns. Maybe towards the end of the week when you’re tired and stressed you tend to make more unhealthy choices than early in the week. Maybe when you have a disagreement with your boss or your spouse your discipline and drive seems to evaporate and you seek escape in food. Again, there is no pressure to change the behavior right now, you just want to become aware of the patterns.
Try something new. I completely understand that it’s easier to do what feels familiar than it is to try something new. But you know what? You can’t change your life without changing, ya know what I mean? Pick one scenario that seems to encourage unhealthy choices and decide you’re going to approach it differently. Let’s say its seeking comfort from food after fighting with your spouse. The next time you fight with your spouse, choose to engage in something that truly relaxes you. Take a hot bath, go for a walk or watch a funny movie. Start small and start to retrain your brain to find comfort in something other than food.
Practice. Once is not enough and its only failure if you give up on yourself. The first few times you might take a bath and still go for the ice cream afterwards. That’s ok. Be kind to yourself. Make note of the feelings and keep trying. As with anything, you improve with practice. We’re not after perfection here, we’re after progress.
The first step is awareness. If you are unhappy with your body, if you want to get healthy but you still find yourself making choices that keep you from reaching your goals, its time to seriously evaluate whether or not those choices are actually serving you. You might find out that what you think feels good actually doesn’t.
The downward spiral. Anyone who has ever been on a “diet” has probably experienced it. You have a taste of something that you have defined as “off limits” and before you know it, you’ve blindly devoured a sleeve of cookies or a pint of ice cream and even though you’re full, you keep reaching your hand into a bag of stale Doritos. You feel gross. You vow to do better. Three days later, you’re in the same spot, surrounded by the same empty bags, making the same vow, once again sick to your stomach and regretting your all out binge.
For me, binges can happen for a number of reasons. Sometimes I’m frustrated with my lack of progress and I’m tempted to self-sabotage because I’m feeling deflated or hopeless. In those cases, binges are deliberate and planned. Other times, I grant myself permission for a small treat and just lose control, blocking out what matters most to me (my health) and getting lost in the moment. Usually, this latter type of binge happens when I’m too deprived. If my diet is so restrictive and my exercise extremely intense, I’m setting myself up to lose control. Willpower is finite and like a rubber band, if I stretch it too far, it’s bound to break.
No matter where you are in your fat loss journey I think most of us can relate to losing control and binging to some degree. Binges look different to different people and can be triggered by hundreds of different factors, but identifying and implementing strategies to avoid this junk-food vortex is critical to your success. The sooner we identify our binge triggers and adopt strategies to overcome them, the sooner we’ll find our unique fat loss formula and reach our goals.
Here are my top 5 go-to strategies for the times when I feel ready to dive head first into a hundred gallon vat of ice cream.
Use “Just for today”
When I first committed to reaching my fat loss and health goals it was incredibly hard to imagine ever getting there. I had such a long way to go and attaining my goals seemed almost unfathomable. It was hard to imagine being lean and that made it easy to give myself “permission” to indulge. On a journey measured in years, what’s a day, right? That’s when I started implementing my “just for today” strategy. Instead of saying “screw it! I’ll start tomorrow; one day doesn’t really matter”, I re-commit to eating clean just for today. When tempted to binge I’d remind myself that nothing was off limits tomorrow, but just for today I’m going to choose discipline. That strategy allowed me to build momentum, start to see progress and made my goals more believable.
Remind yourself of your goals
As I built momentum, I can’t tell you how many times I literally ask myself “What do you want more? This ice cream or to feel good about your body?” Nine times out of ten, the answer is the latter. The feeling I’d get at the end of a great day of eating clean and working out was far superior to the moment of pleasure I’d get from indulging (not to mention the subsequent guilt). I’d rather feel good about my body. I’d rather feel proud of myself and excited for my future. Over-indulging leaves me feeling frustrated, bloated and defeated….that is NOT worth the few minutes of pleasure that giving in would provide.
Sometimes I go so far as to open up my goals that I have listed on my phone and read through each of them. It’s a great gut-check and brings me back to a place of being focused and motivated. Re-read your goals and ask yourself what you want most.
Consider your alternatives
Dying for something sweet? I get that! It doesn’t have to be your co-worker’s grocery store birthday cake that isn’t really that delicious anyway. How about some trail mix with almonds and cranberries? A square of rich, creamy dark chocolate. Or turn some chocolate protein powder into a creamy chocolate pudding or a mug cake with some coconut cream. Need a salty fix or feeling tempted to dive head-first into a bag of Lays? How about you make some homemade sweet potato chips and enjoy them with pico and guacamole? There’s always a way to make a better choice.
Walk it off
This is something I do all the time. These days, when I get a craving, one of my first instincts is to go workout and see how I feel about the craving afterwards. Sometimes I’ll get a good, hard weight workout in. Other times I’ll jog or do backyard sprints. If I’m tired I might just jump on the treadmill and take a long, slow walk. The release of endorphins provided by exercise improves your mood and decreases your stress level – that’s often more than enough to eliminate your craving completely or at least take the edge off.
Go to sleep
I love this one for many reasons. My cravings usually come at night. I’m slowing down, I tend to get a little bored and the accumulated pressures of the day have my stress level at its peak. Plus, I’m tired. My decision making is never the greatest when I’m tired so this is a high risk time. By choosing to sleep instead of indulge in something I’ll likely regret immediately afterwards, not only am I avoiding the temptation to eat but I’m also giving my body a chance to recover so that when I wake up, I’m rested, relaxed and in a much better position to make healthy choices.
Avoiding a binge isn’t always easy but don’t ignore what you want most for what you want now. Cravings are a fantastic tool you can use to understand what drives you to eat and what types of situations put you at risk. Are you more likely to binge after a stressful day at work or when you’re really tired? Identify the patterns and practice these strategies. The more aware you are the more control you have. There are countless options you can try in the process of identifying what works for you. Try a hot bath or a board game with your kids. Read a book or call a friend. The most important thing is to be present and aware, to not bury your head in the sand and “start fresh tomorrow”. Own it, understand it, find a strategy that works for you and practice.
I spent years focusing on the wrong indicators of success. Whether it was the number on the scale or how many consecutive days of deprivation and “white-knuckling it” I could endure, the wrong focus was getting me nowhere…fast. Looking back, I can say that my biggest fat loss wins have had nothing to do with the number on the scale. I’m so glad I’m finally at a point where I not only recognize but celebrate non-scale victories. If I could go back, I would have paid more attention along the way and stopped to acknowledge major milestones like fitting into a new pair of jeans, doing 100 burpees without resting or going on a business trip without stress-eating. I think if I had paid more attention to those achievements, the scale wouldn’t have had such a strong grip on me and I probably would have progressed faster than I did.
These days, I’m focusing more on non-scale victories. I have a pair of pants I really want to fit into by September 1st and once a week I squeeeeze into them and snap a picture to measure my progress. It will be an awesome day when I can pull them over my hips, nevermind button them up! It’s gonna happen and its gonna happen soon! (You’ll hear about it, I’m sure!)
Recently, I observed one of my most significant non-scale victories and it really blew me away. The story it tells about the healing power of quality food and regular exercise is pretty astounding. A couple weeks ago I had some routine lab work done. I quickly got my results back; they were fine and I didn’t think much more about it. A few days later it ocurred to me that it might be fun to compare the results to lab work I had done when I was at my heaviest weight. Wow. I’m so glad I did. The numbers really surprised me.
Yes, I had lost over 100 lbs. My periods had become regular for the first time in my life. I was happier, more energetic and more confident. In all that, however, I didn’t realize just how much my overall health had improved. Like most of us, the things I can’t see didn’t really even cross my mind. I didn’t realize that I had re-written my future, decreased my risk of disease and set myself up for a long, healthy life. Afterall, it was just changes in my diet and exercise, right? Well clearly, for me, that was more than enough!
I didn’t take any medications. I didn’t follow any extreme diet. I didn’t cut out food groups or spend hours a day in the gym. And yet, the results are remarkable.
At My Heaviest Weight
Present
Recommended Range
Total Cholesterol
236 mg/dL
160 mg/dL
100-199
Triglycerides
193 mg/dL
76 mg/dL
0-149
HDL (good cholesterol)
33 mg/dL
66 mg/dL
>39
LDL (bad cholesterol)
141 mg/dL
84 mg/dL
0-99
VLDL (very bad cholesterol)
39 mg/dL
15 mg/dL
5-40
Serum Vitamin D
14.6 ng/dL
33.7 ng/dL
30-100
Hemoglobin A1c (measure of blood sugar control over time)
5.4
4.9
4.8-5.6
This goes to show that along your fat loss journey there is MUCH to celebrate. What is happening behind the scenes? What is happening to your health and happiness that the scale simply can’t measure?Are you able to run around the yard and keep up with your kids for the first time in years? Do you walk up the stairs at work without getting breathless? Did you effortlessly say “no thank you” to the donuts in the break room or feel comfortable wearing a tank top to the gym for the first time? You’ll be surrounded with things worth celebrating. Pay attention as your life changes and give yourself credit for your hard work. There are victories right in front of you that the scale just can’t measure!
Finding the courage to start and maintaining motivation for the few couple weeks is the hardest part. Click here to read the strategy I used to get that initial momentum!
I let myself go. In a big, big way (pun intended). When I look at this picture on the left it breaks my heart. The girl in this picture was desperate. She was severely depressed. There was no joy in her life and she had to force herself to get through every day.
It’s a weird dichotomy – the way I relate to this girl. I can look at her and see that she is me. I can get back into that dark place and feel every ounce of pain, rejection, loneliness, fear, panic and hopelessness that she felt.
I can remember the way she isolated herself – walking away from friendships, letting relationships fall apart – all because she didn’t want to be seen. I can still feel the rawness of all of that and I’m crying right now remembering those awful, overwhelming feelings.
On the other hand, I can feel like I hardly know her, like I never met her. Who is that girl? How the hell did she get so out of control and where the f*ck was I when that happened? Please tell me that I fell asleep and like a fatted calf I was massaged and tube fed twinkies and beer for a year!
Why did I let myself go? It wasn’t like I stopped caring about my body and resigned myself to be fat but happy. I was miserable. I hated the way I looked and I was embarrassed. I stressed over food every day. So how in the world did that happen? Why did I let myself go?
Instead of controlling my emotions, I let my emotions control me. It sounds benign enough but it’s deadly. It’s letting go of the reigns and being a passive observer of your life.
My emotions were real so it was easy to initially justify letting them take over – I was legitimately sad. I was legitimately overwhelmed. I was legitimately frustrated. It felt good, at first, to give myself a pass because life was hard. My job was stressful so I deserved to treat myself. I was making financial sacrifices to pay off debt so a reward was justified. I was lonely so it was ok to embrace the one thing that made life feel a little less desperate.
Cloaked in the disguise of “letting myself feel”, I became a victim. There was no joy in my life. My mom would ask me what makes me happy and the honest answer was “I can’t think of anything”. Anything.
I had completely isolated myself from everyone in my life and the only thing that brought me solace or comfort was food. I could be alone, turn everything off, not think about my problems or my future and be totally in the moment with my pint of salted caramel ice cream. In those moments, it was just me and my mind-numbing substance of choice – food. For those few moments, nothing else existed.
The thing is though, food didn’t provide solace. In hindsight, it was a numbing agent. A distraction.
I wrote here in detail about the turning point that made me take back control and start to transform my life. It was not easy. Of course I knew I needed to change and I desperately wanted to change but it was hard to admit to myself that I was the problem.
It wasn’t anyone or anything in my life, it was just me and the choices I was making. I despised the idea of characterizing myself as “lazy” but the cold, hard truth was that I was lazy. I wasn’t in control.
I had no self-discipline, no self-control, no motivation. But how do you just choose to love yourself enough to take care of yourself? When you’re deeply depressed how to you motivate yourself to pull up out of the hole and work towards a better tomorrow that you don’t yet believe in?
You get selfish.
Hear me out! Selfish is not a dirty word! You start getting focused on what YOU need first. And before you jump in with arguments about being a wife or a career woman or a mom and those things coming first, let me just say that you’re not your best at ANY of those things if you aren’t bringing your very best self to the table. You’re not. Yes, I still worked a full-time, very demanding job throughout this journey. Yes, I was still a wife. Yes I was still a sister, daughter and friend. But I decided that getting my life back on track required 100% dedication to myself. Building that initial momentum in my fat loss journey required time, attention, laser-focus and lots of practice.
Where I’m at in my journey today, I am motivated by the changes in my body and how far I’ve come. But when I first got started, I didn’t have any of that. I built my confidence and momentum one meal, one workout, one day at a time. I would pass by the donuts at work and think “Good job, E. Right this moment, you’re building a healthier body”. I’d push through a tough workout and think “In this moment, you’re becoming the woman you know you can be.” I viewed every small choice as a building block – a step closer to the life I knew I deserved.
I wrote out a personal mission statement. It was a description of the type of woman I wanted to be. I wasn’t that woman, gosh I was so far from that woman, I didn’t even always believe it was possible to be that woman, but I claimed her. I asked myself what choices that woman would make. I asked myself if I wanted to take a step closer to my old self or towards the new woman I was creating. It was a practice. It was a singular focus. But it got easier every day. And it wasn’t long before I started to see results. The results became my new substance of choice. The pride I felt. The excitement I felt. The eagerness to see what would come next.
Yeah, I let myself go. Thank God, I got myself back.
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It’s a slippery slope, that gear up mindset of “I’ll start tomorrow”. Our intentions are good – harnessing our energy to give it all we’ve got and fully commit with a clean slate. However, that mindset gives us permission to go hog wild until tomorrow – indulging to our heart’s content so that we’ve satisfied our urges before deprivation and restriction begin.
If only we understood that the “I’ll start tomorrow” mindset sets up us for failure in more ways than one. I can’t tell you how many times “tomorrow” has come for me and the day starts out fantastic – I workout, eat a healthy, clean breakfast and usually lunch too. And then afternoon comes – I’m a little tired, bored, hungry and craving something sweet. “Ok”, I concede, “one more day of crap. For real, I’ll start tomorrow”. I eat crap for dinner and the next “tomorrow” is weeks away and ends up looking the same as the last.
I lived in that routine for years. Sometimes I’d be “on” for weeks or even months at a time but then one “slip up” would turn into consecutive days or weeks of “I’ll start tomorrow” and having the damndest time regaining my momentum to stay on track.
It’s frustrating. I would work hard and then erase all my progress and often end up doing more damage – not just to my waistline but to my mindset and my metabolism. Not fun.
Fortunately, one day I had a paradigm shift. I was driving home from work desperately wanting ice cream (my weakness). Those “it’s just one day, you can be hardcore tomorrow” thoughts started to creep in and I started to wonder how it would be to look at this “I’ll start tomorrow” thing in the opposite way. What if I committed to eating clean just for today. Tomorrow, if I still wanted the ice cream then I could have it but just for today I am eating clean. Just for today I’m going to get my workout in. Just for today I’m going to say no to food indulgences.
I found that this one-day-at-a-time approach made it really easy to say no to those annoying cravings when it was merely a delay and not indefinite deprivation. So what happened the next day? I would start the day by reading my goals. Reminding myself what I was working towards and what was so important to me. My goals remind me of who I want to be and what I want to stand for. I made a commitment to myself to read them every morning, regardless of what choices I make after that. More often than not, reading my goals each morning would put me in a great head-space and I’d be able to say “Ok Elizabeth. One more day. Just for today, I’m going to eat clean. Just for today I’m going to get my workout in. Let’s deal with tomorrow tomorrow.” As those cravings would sneak up throughout the day I would take a mental note of what I wanted and remind myself that I could have it tomorrow. I can do anything for one day and just for today, I’m on point.
Over time, the momentum started to build. I felt stronger, I felt leaner. I was happier. I was less stressed. I was losing fat! I wanted that feeling to continue and that made it easier to have good, clean days. My cravings for sweets started to decrease and in fact, I started to crave more workouts. I started to crave my brussels sprouts and salmon. No joke! Sure, there are days when I indulge. There are days when I decide I need a mental break and I just want to enjoy some of my favorite treats. But when the next meal rolls around, it’s back to my mantra: “Just for today, I’m eating clean. If I want this tomorrow, we’ll revisit it then. Focus on today, today”.
When you’ve spent years playing the “I’ll start tomorrow” game, it can be tougher than it seems to transition to a “just for today” mindset but here are a few tips based on what worked best for me:
Start right now. Get rid of that all or nothing thinking. If you think “Oh! This sounds great! I’ll start thinking that way tomorrow”, you’re only perpetuating the cycle. Today. TODAY. Just for today you’re going to make healthy choices.
Write down your goals. It’s ok to start small here if you aren’t quite sure where to begin. What type of person do you want to be? What do you want your life to look like a year from now? How do you want your kids to see you? Write it out.
Read your goals every.single.morning. No excuses here. Read them. Keep them front of mind and don’t miss a day of reading them. Revise them as needed. Add to them. Your goals can be fluid, its ok. Who you are and who you want to be will change throughout this process.
Be honest with yourself. Don’t pretend that spoonful of ice cream you took from your child’s bowl didn’t happen. It happened. It’s ok. But make your next choice a good one.
Lose the guilt. You are only one choice away from being on the right track. We can’t go backwards, but we are only a second away from a good, healthy choice.
It works. I’ve lost 130 lbs and I’m physically and mentally stronger than ever. I always have room for progress and improvements, but with this simple flip, I am mastering fat loss naturally by focusing on one day at a time. Just for today, I’ve got this.
