Help! Trouble getting back into the groove

NorahCait

TL;DR: I was consistent, life got busy and I fell off the wagon, life is more settled now, but I can't get back on for any significant period of time. Please share any suggestions/advice/words of wisdom/tricks/encouragement you have!

Now for the full thing, starting with a bit of background:
Around mid-April last year, I was coming out of the worst depression of my life and I finally had some chronic pain issues under control. I finally had energy and spoons to actually put some effort into living a healthier life. I started walking home from work, eventually got on MFP to log all my food, made healthier food choices, started going to the gym, etc. I lost almost 70 lbs between April and December. Since then, I've stalled, hard.

Stalled is maybe the wrong word. I stopped putting in the effort. Every few weeks or so, I "rededicate" myself, and I do awesomely for anywhere from one day to a couple of weeks. Since probably November, though, I have not consistently done all three of the following things for any significant period of time: logged food, stayed within calorie limits, exercised regularly.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what is different. Why it was, not necessarily easy, but certainly easier, to do this last year. I thought maybe it was just winter, and I'd do better once I had more sun, but now the days are already getting shorter again and I definitely have not felt any kind of boost from the spring/summer sun. Maybe it's pointless to try to figure out a reason.

I know that:

• every time I do a certain thing, it is the result of a decision I have made (i.e., I am in control; these are things that I must choose to do; choosing NOT to do a thing is still making a choice)
• missing one workout/making one unhealthy food choice/not hitting my step goal one day is NOT the end of the world and each day/meal/whatever is a chance to make the choice that I will feel best about
• future me will be SO MUCH HAPPIER AND HEALTHIER if I eat well and exercise
• present me will have more energy and generally feel better if I eat well and exercise

I've, at the very least, been logging into MFP every day... but I haven't been logging all of my food or anything. I started a couple of challenges and just dropped off. I feel like having more accountability would help me, but being accountable just to myself on these things doesn't seem to be working.

I'm desperately seeking any sort of advice or anything you think might help me get over this hurdle. I know it all comes down to making better choices. I just need something in my brain to flip the way it did last April!

Sorry for the long sort of ranty post. I just felt like I needed to write all of this out somewhere. Part of me is hoping that this is maybe just the kick in the pants I need, but most of me doubts that.

maoribadger

Norah I could have written this myself. I was in the groove from May last year til Jan this year then last six months I have fluctuated between being very on point and horrendously off. I am trying to work some stuff through in my head and get back on track but I agree once you are off its really easy to lose momentum. I wish I knew what to suggest but I dont. What about trying Karens challenge group as a kickstart? The ten day challenges are very doable

KarenZen

Hi Norah, so good to hear from you!

Last year you had a goal and a time table--your wedding--and you ROCKED that dress. SO beautiful.

Maybe you need a new goal and time table. Are you thinking about having babies? How healthy do you want to be for that? Or maybe it's time to switch from "hitting it hard" to a slower, gentler weight loss, a lifestyle you can sustain. I'm using our ten day challenges to try to build lifetime healthy habits, like logging food so I am accountable.

Hope that helps, honey!

K.

carimiller7391

Hey Norah, glad to see you back. I know for me, although right now is very hard for me as vacation is literally right around the corner and I am trying a new way of eating, I have decided just to concentrate on carbs. Keeping my net carbs to 75g a day or less. Until 07.20.2015, this will work for me. I tried jumping in head first into low carb, high fat, mod protein and calculating carbs. Yeah- that didn't go so well. So while I started this new way of eating last Wednesday, this past week was a lot harder then expected, so I am staying on the same path.

Maybe for you, pick one thing to control and work on that until it becomes habit. We're here for you.

Cari

KnitOrMiss

Oh, Norah! Reading that whole "spoons" article literally just brought me to tears. As did all of your post, really. Personally, I think you pushed yourself really hard to get ready for your wedding, and you did things that weren't sustainable long term because you had a very finite goal. Sorry this is so long, but apparently I needed to share as much as you asked to hear.

I found myself doing something similar but different when I did a challenge for work last year. It started out innocently enough, but I had to have someone watch me weigh in, so I couldn't do it at work. I started gearing everything in my life around those weekly weigh ins (without even realizing it). The clothes I wore, the workouts I would or would not do, the food I would or would not eat, all of my life activities revolved around that damned scale and the challenge. It went from February to May. In June, I hit the lowest weight, and then my brain imploded. (As point of reference, I started at 319 in 2010. This was June of 2014, and I think I was at 248.)

I gave up on challenges. Realized that I was "learning to the test" not "learning for life." I could teach myself to a finite goal. I had to look at this all as my life. I utterly stopped thinking in terms of losing weight and challenges and goals and plans and all that crap. Because it was all finite and based on things in isolation. In real life, losing weight is not a simple math equation. Our bodies are doing calculus and physics while we are trying to do arithmetic.

When I started thinking about gaining health and stopped thinking about losing weight, the whole gravity of my universe shifted. I spent 6 months (roughly mid-to-end-June to mid-January, so I guess that's closer to 7 months altogether) logging in here every day, not logging my food, gaining back 5-10 pounds loosely, and maintaining in a range for that time. I didn't log my food. I stopped working out. I didn't care. Luckily, I'd learned enough that I was loosely maintaining, but I was getting lumpier and gaining back fat and losing muscle and NOT CARING.

So, after a few months of wallowing in my misery, I started thinking. I realized that if I ever wanted to come back swinging, I had to get the goofy crap in my head to make sense. I had to stop making excuses. I had to remember how to care again. All of it. I had to find some spoons, any spoons to at least have something to "spend" on "me" again, if that makes sense. I was completely and utterly lost.

I started blogging here, mostly. I started with the most raw and painful memories. I started with that first spark that got me deciding I deserved health. I wrote about EVERYTHING. The good, the bad, the ugly, the painful, the boring. I read. A lot. I found people who inspired me and read and reread everything they wrote. And I let it make me think. And I wrote. And read and wrote ad infinitum.

I think my turning point came in October. I wrote this: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/KnitOrMiss/view/motivation-versus-determination-699445 in response to something a friend had posted. And I kept writing. My blog is full of crap I wrote for me, to dump it onto a page, to explain it to someone who could understand and care (I love my fiance, but having never suffered through what I have - he is the master of willpower -- and of justification - he truly is from the position of the friend in the spoons story - he tries to understand, but he just can't get it. I haven't found that example that clicks for him...and his demons are almost as foreign to me as mine are to him...). I just needed to know that someone spoke my language.

So, I kept writing. And making plans I didn't implement. And researching. I'm the master at planning. And even at getting started in things, but executing? HA! I could be the ultimate start-up person if I didn't have to keep things going. So I kept writing and thinking and planning and learning and studying...but I wasn't doing.

I finally found a plan that made sense with my own health issues. I was dancing around the idea of it. And then I bought some chocolates after the holidays on 80% off clearance or something. I ate a 17 oz box of chocolates in three days all by myself in hoarding it (I bought my fiance his own box because I didn't want to share!) and gorging on it. While this isn't a classic binge, I ate enough by the second day, I had to stop eating because I felt sick to my stomach. Yet, the third day for breakfast, I was still dying to eat some more. With the first piece, I promised myself that I was going to be good and make it last all week. And the habit of thinking about things kicked it. I thought why prolong it? Why gorge? What did I want? What did I feel the compulsion of? Etc.

And so, I finally thought, "That's it. This crap is for the birds." So, I decided I was going to finish that box, eat what I wanted the rest of the day, and tomorrow I was going to tippy-toe into getting healthy on a new plan that my endocrinologist and PCP had been harping on my to be on for months and months and months now.

And instead, something just clicked. On 1/15/15, I just leaped into the deep end of the pool on my new way of eating and way of life. It wasn't hard. I had some days I didn't feel well while I adjust, but I'd studied. I knew how to minimize most of the adjustments. And goodness, my body SANG to me. Something finally fit and worked and made me feel good. I thought surely that was a myth, a fantasy, and fluke!

But it wasn't.

Here it is, 7/1/15, and I'm still going strong. My overall progress has slowed because I got to a good mental place. I'm not as aggressive now as I was at the beginning. I realized that this way of life was sustainable for me. I will get to that mysterious goal land that I don't really think of as finite eventually. I know that in the depth of my soul, so why should I kill myself getting there? I'm not falling backwards. I'm just progressing slowly, because I know where I'm going.

For the first time in my life, I'm on a real path, and I swear I know where I'm going.

It is downright surreal, to be honest.

But, if I hadn't spent all that time figuring out what was wrong in my head, where I wanted to be, how I wanted to live, and all of that, I could NEVER be where I am today. I did this backwards and wrong and differently from what we are told. I didn't set a goal weight. I didn't make a plan. I don't have a dream board. I don't have anything set and fixed. For me, all of those things undermined my determination, my progress.

I am gaining health. I feel better. I have improved ALL of my health markers. I'm living.

I am losing weight, but I see that as a bi-product of getting healthier. I am restoring my metabolism, my body's inner voice. I didn't know my body had a voice. I am ME in a way I didn't know was possible. I'm encountering the shocking truths that there are things about me than can be "normal." Like mainstream normal. I always had 8.5" or larger wrists. I had to wear anklets for bracelets and necklaces as anklets. I'd never been skinny - not even as a kid. So I figured, I'm Polish, I'm just big-boned. I will never be normal. I had just accepted it, because accepting it was one of the only things that kept me sane.

Today, my wrist is 6.75". I'm still not sure how the heck that happened. It just did. I'm not anywhere close to the level of health that I dream of in that nebulous fuzzy dream. I don't know what it is I'm going for, just to be better. And now, all the sudden, my wrist is NORMAL.

Strangely enough, realizing that fact shifted things for me yet again. I realized that I believed in the theory, "Lose your weight as you will maintain it, or you will never succeed." So I'm taking it slowly. I'm loosely tracking, and I'm slowly shrinking... I can't be a strict food diary person, because I've no intention of keeping a food journal for the rest of my life. I can't exercise like a crazy person, because I'm focusing on some physical therapy right now. I want to get back to enjoying my exercise or rather activity. I don't want to be a person who "works out." I want to be an active person who lives. I can't restrict foods permanently, but if I don't want them, that's fine with me. But I'm a stubborn PITA, so if I tell myself I CANNOT have something, I'll obsess until I binge on it. So loosely, that's my plan.

Losing as I'll maintain.

If I slide and stop losing, I'll touch base with tracking more closely and such to get back on track. But for now, I'm living, and I'm living healthier, and if I ask myself the truth about that, my answer is, "It's about damned time!"

KnitOrMiss

Also, as another read, someone asked me a week or so ago how they keep going when they're reached some goals, feel okay with things, then lose their will to fight. This was my thoughts on that: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/KnitOrMiss/view/how-do-i-keep-going-752453

NorahCait

Thank you all SO MUCH! I'm going to read through everything super carefully and respond in more detail soon.

I really didn't think I did anything for my wedding, and I kinda gave up well before the wedding (~4 months). I certainly didn't see the wedding as an end goal (getting into "healthy" BMI range was my first long term goal, which I haven't yet hit). Maybe I was kidding myself thinking that wasn't part of it? I don't know. It's not like I was eating nothing but salad and cottage cheese and working out until exhaustion or anything. And I found the whole dress refitting thing so stressful and frustrating because I purchased the dress super early with zero intention of losing weight (I actually laughed at the woman I purchased the dress from when she asked if I was planning to lose weight since I was right on the edge of two sizes and she wanted to know whether to order up or down). It probably did, even if it was totally subconscious. I just really didn't want to be that girl, you know? Uck. The whole "lose weight for your wedding!" thing annoys the bejeezus out of me. I guess you can't help but absorb some of that crap. Blargh.

KnitOrMiss

NorahCait wrote: »

Thank you all SO MUCH! I'm going to read through everything super carefully and respond in more detail soon.

I really didn't think I did anything for my wedding, and I kinda gave up well before the wedding (~4 months). I certainly didn't see the wedding as an end goal (getting into "healthy" BMI range was my first long term goal, which I haven't yet hit). Maybe I was kidding myself thinking that wasn't part of it? I don't know. It's not like I was eating nothing but salad and cottage cheese and working out until exhaustion or anything. And I found the whole dress refitting thing so stressful and frustrating because I purchased the dress super early with zero intention of losing weight (I actually laughed at the woman I purchased the dress from when she asked if I was planning to lose weight since I was right on the edge of two sizes and she wanted to know whether to order up or down). It probably did, even if it was totally subconscious. I just really didn't want to be that girl, you know? Uck. The whole "lose weight for your wedding!" thing annoys the bejeezus out of me. I guess you can't help but absorb some of that crap. Blargh.

I never got to that point of eating nothing but salad and cottage cheese nonsense, but I made myself literally INSANE from weighing and measuring and calculating and recipe figuring and all of that crap. Seriously. Calories are an estimate anyway. Your calorie goal based on height, weight, and age is arbitrary. So I was making myself mental due to numbers that were only loosely fit to me (like those auto insurance commercials - well, I'm kind of him, we're the same age and have one thing in common). How smart is that??? Remembering to log in here, and log my food here, and juggling fitting in working out and having a life and cooking and shopping and ARGH!

It all just got to be too much and stuff. I wasn't even planning a big event. And the way I had looked at losing weight back then just wasn't sustainable. I was putting in 2000% when I had maybe 75% in reserves. I was maxing out my mental credit cards of determination. SOOOO not worth it. It set me back almost a year...

angelic843

This is a nutshell is my struggle as well. I know what to do, I know that I have and can lose weight...I just always hit a wall and go off the rails....and then the guilt...and then the gain...and then another start date.

I know that it isn't about perfection, that it needs to be sustainable.

But knowing isn't the same as doing....and that continues to be my struggle.

I want to focus on overall health, not weight...and in my head today...that is the focus.

But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about my ability to stay in that head-space.

KnitOrMiss

I say plant that determination while your motivation is strong. Decide what you're fighting for, why you're important. During that 6-7 months, that's what I had to do. I still have days I struggle, and I know I need to get more active, but for 95% of the time, I'm locked down and committed to my lifestyle.

I always tell folks I'm not losing weight, I'm gaining health. I'm quite fond of saying that if I never lose another single ounce, but I continue gaining health markers, I'll be perfectly happy. Also, I'm NEVER giving up on my health, and as long as I keep to a healthy path, that scale will catch up with me eventually.

My goal is not some arbitrary number on a scale. My goal is to be healthy enough to do the things I want to do, the way I want to do them, and when I want to do them. I want to stop thinking in terms of "Someday" and start thinking in terms of "TODAY."

I maintain that for those of us struggling this way that guilt is worse than any calorie I can jam in my mouth. Guilt leads to this endless cycle. If I can banish this guilt and just accept my choices, for better or worse, acknowledging that I know this risks and consequences as I perform an action, then it's about acceptance and making the better choice anywhere I can. Guilt doesn't hold sway over me...

It was a long time coming, and I still struggle with it, but I'm better than I was yesterday, and that's good enough for me.

KarenZen

This is a good read for me too, so thanks again, Carly.

I have also been struggling to get and stay in the right head space lately.

K.

KnitOrMiss

To me getting straight in my head is the first step, or everything else will unravel!

maoribadger

KnitOrMiss wrote: »

To me getting straight in my head is the first step, or everything else will unravel!

Same here

PatrickB_87

Hi Norah,

How easy it is for things to change. We all started out on this near the same time so it's amazing to look back at the energy and motivation and see how easily things can change in such a short amount of time, both for the better and the worse.

I certainly know where your coming from. I've been experiencing a lot of the same this year. Seeing a lot of progress and then things drastically slow down, life gets in the way like it never did before and you suddenly see how easy it is to slip back into everything that you were doing before. At least thats how I have been seeing it, which such given all that you have put in... to realize how easily it can all change.

How to get back in is a difficult question. I am still figuring it out. I try to remember why I started this hourly and to realize that none of those motivations have changed. Letting all the little things slip back in wont make things better, I have to keep telling myself that. The little habits I loosen up for aren't worth what it could mean in the long run.

The only thing that worked for me was getting back to logging every meal, and logging it before I ate (well at least I try to do this) when i can. Then getting back into a regular exercise routine. I think that has helped a lot, especially in helping me get back to the better eating habits (or more consistent).