Living The Lifestyle Thursday 11/10/22

imastar2

This is a thread for everyone. If you're new to GoaD, or to weight loss, your questions and comments are always welcome. If you're maintaining, or a long-term loser, your thoughts on the topic may be just what someone else needs to hear. If you're reading this, join in the discussion!

Each weekday, a new topic is offered up for discussion.

Monday - crewahl (Charlie)
Tuesday – Flintwinch (Tim)
Wednesday - misterhub (Greg)
Thursday -imastar2 (Derrick)
Friday - Wildcard

Today's Topic: Sticking to your plan, routine, avoiding meals, or days that derail your success. Do you have any tips for STICK-TO-IT-IVENESS?

crewahl

Interesting question, Derrick. Made me think a bit, and below is sort of my thought process.

I consider myself successful at this game. What do I think that? Because I think my results over time say that I can do this. So what of the “stick to it” stuff is the magic for me?

Sticking to the plan? Nope; can’t say I do that. There a plenty of days when I am well off plan. I followed a good weigh-in two weeks ago with two days when I consumed five days worth of my daily points allowance.

Routine? I think a routine helps, but conversely, I can’t do this if I do stick to the routine. When I don’t have a wild hair every now and then, I get all “deprive-ity “, and that leads to bad things.

Avoiding meals or days that derail my success? Nope. My daily weight loss chart (which is becoming a more and more valuable tool) looks more like a journey through a mountain range. It’s pretty much a succession of peaks and valleys of varying heights and depths. I’ve got plenty of meals and days in there that throw me off track.

So why do I feel I’ve been successful? For me, it comes down to this very simple definition - “Success is smaller disasters, happening less often, and recovering quicker.”

I know I’m not gonna be perfect, and a lot of times, I’m not even gonna be good (however you define good). But what I can be is “better”. I still have disasters, but I'm better at limiting their scale. Over time, I seem to have fewer of them. When they do occur, it’s not next month or next week to recover - it’s tomorrow, and in a perfect world, next meal or next decision. My weight chart bears this out - it’s all peaks and valleys, but over t8me, the peaks aren’t as high and the valleys get a bit deeper.

So I give myself license to not be perfect, but I do expect to be better.

Al_Howard

crewahl wrote: »

Interesting question, Derrick. Made me think a bit, and below is sort of my thought process.

I consider myself successful at this game. What do I think that? Because I think my results over time say that I can do this. So what of the “stick to it” stuff is the magic for me?

Sticking to the plan? Nope; can’t say I do that. There a plenty of days when I am well off plan. I followed a good weigh-in two weeks ago with two days when I consumed five days worth of my daily points allowance.

Routine? I think a routine helps, but conversely, I can’t do this if I do stick to the routine. When I don’t have a wild hair every now and then, I get all “deprive-ity “, and that leads to bad things.

Avoiding meals or days that derail my success? Nope. My daily weight loss chart (which is becoming a more and more valuable tool) looks more like a journey through a mountain range. It’s pretty much a succession of peaks and valleys of varying heights and depths. I’ve got plenty of meals and days in there that throw me off track.

So why do I feel I’ve been successful? For me, it comes down to this very simple definition - “Success is smaller disasters, happening less often, and recovering quicker.”

I know I’m not gonna be perfect, and a lot of times, I’m not even gonna be good (however you define good). But what I can be is “better”. I still have disasters, but I'm better at limiting their scale. Over time, I seem to have fewer of them. When they do occur, it’s not next month or next week to recover - it’s tomorrow, and in a perfect world, next meal or next decision. My weight chart bears this out - it’s all peaks and valleys, but over t8me, the peaks aren’t as high and the valleys get a bit deeper.

So I give myself license to not be perfect, but I do expect to be better.

Well said Charlie. LOVE the last line: I give myself license to not be perfect, but I do expect to be better.
That's right up there with: Make the BETTER choice.

steve0mania

I think the concept comes down to how you view yourself. Are you on the path, or are you off the path.

I view myself as always on the path. As stated above, I'm pretty imperfect with sticking to my plan, but my plan is the baseline path that I'm on, and any imperfection is simply a deviation (or maybe a bump in the road). As I've said elsewhere, each meal is a new opportunity. So, I guess that's my stick-to-it-ivness: I view myself as always on the path.

This stand in contrast to simply giving up, and falling off the path. We've all heard of folks who have given up for a while. That is a totally different mindset.

88olds

About the time I started WW I was listening to W Churchill’s memoirs. Don’t recall the specifics but in reference to something they were doing during WWII he remarked that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” That really stuck with me.

I think it helps to stay busy. I think it helps to have a plan. As I’ve said on here a number of times I’m not so good at saying no, but I’m fairly good at delay. One of the tools for living was a storyboard. On Sunday evenings I used to storyboard my week. Some meals and snacks I filled in specifically. Sometimes it was just find something for lunch for 7 points.

Another thing about the storyboard was I always had an eye out for what could go wrong. Left alone it could seem easy to stick to my plan and routine. But the world generally doesn’t leave us alone for long.

misterhub

I grew up riding horses. The trope about getting back up on a horse from which you've fallen is based in solid truth.

As a result, I've developed a tenacity for accomplish what I want to accomplish. I don't always get there; I make a lot of mistakes. But, I do start up again as soon as possible. As has been stated in the previous posts, one cannot expect perfection. However, one can expect to do the best possible given whatever circumstances in which one finds themselves.