How to balance mental, physical and spiritual?

I'm Kathy as I have lost 100 pounds 3 times in my life. I'm back to lose 65 of it again. I know one of the things that continues to kick me in the back side is the inability to balance mental, physical and spiritual.

I seem to focus on weight loss at the detriment of everything else. When I can't keep that focus of spending at least 8 hrs, exercising, planning meals, reading materials, posting, etc., the weight starts to come back on. I need a way to keep a balanced focus in my life so I can sustain the weight loss, exercise and overall good health without it becoming a 24/7 focus.

Ideas? Similar experiences? Appreciate any thoughts you can share.

Kathy, I've lost 50 pounds and gained it back three times. From what I've read in the past year, the problem might simply be hormones, so don't kick yourself too hard. There's a study which I've posted here a couple of times. Some med school researchers studied people who had lost 10 pounds at the beginning of the study. A full year later, their blood work showed that their bodies were still making a kind of appetite hormone. The human body seems to be engineered to survive famine, not to stay at a healthy weight.

I've been dieting and exercising (this time around) since March 2011 (though I only joined MFP in September), when I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes. I've intentionally done this very slowly. My goal is to lose 1/2 pound per week. I've been eating 1400 net calories for a year. At some point, when I've lost the last of my abdominal fat (the metabolically active stuff that's so bad for you), I will begin adding 100 net calories per day back, and I'll increase my calories over two or three months until I'm just maintaining. At that point, I will continue to log my food and exercise every day.

Like you, I have to exercise. It's very hard for me to cut back on the portions of food I eat on days when I can't exercise. It makes me feel deprived! I've been working on having more ways to exercise. For instance, I've bought some DVDs that will teach me how to do line dancing (a lot of my MFP friends here do line dancing). I've started doing calisthenics including partial push ups and squats and using small dumbbells. It's surprising how much exercise you can amass over the course of a day by doing ten minutes here and there of strength building or calisthenics or yoga. I bought a collection of stretchy rubber resistance bands, so when I travel I can use them to keep up my upper body workouts without the dumbbells. When I'm traveling, which I do a lot for conferences with my husband, I try to keep up my walking goals. I get up early and walk, rain or shine.

I pay a lot of attention to my feet and legs. Diabetics have a greater risk of foot and leg injuries than other people, and if I injure my feet or legs, I won't be able to walk. I get occasional reflexology treatments, and I give myself foot massages every night before I fall asleep.

In terms of mental, physical, and spiritual, there are a lot of resources for that. I've taken meditation classes, learned Qi Gong, and taken Reiki classes. I practice Reiki on myself daily and that helps me a lot. I actually took extra classes and became a Reiki Master last year. I don't teach Reiki professionally, but I took the training, so I can give classes myself and give the gift of Reiki to friends and family who need it.

I get an enormous amount of inspiration here. Whenever I feel the need to replenish my motivation, I go to the discussion groups and start reading other people's stories, suggestions, and questions. It's a whole lot easier to stay on course when I can keep reminding myself that I'm a part of a large community here of MFP members who are struggling with the same issues.

I hope you have a similar good experience here.

Judy

Same issue here in terms of the obsessive factor. I seem to be an all or nothing sort of person. I either let go totally, stop monitoring my weight and exercising, and just eat what I like, or I become obsessed with the number on the scale, what to eat, what not to eat, what close ones eat and weight and exercise. Currently, I am having the same problem with balance. I go to bed too late, get up too late, base how much I allow myself to eat on whether I feel alert enough to go cycling the next day, and become utterly miserable and angry if my weight does not go the way I wanted, or if I don't manage to exercise. Between my cycling and seeing my bf, I seem to have no time for anything else. It is really hard if you are of that sort of personality type. I can only suggest allotting yourself a certain amount of time each day to planning meals and exercise. I dont really plan my meals, I just know what is pretty healthy and cobble it together in the evening. I usually take minutes to have an idea of what to eat.

Maybe you could do a week's worth of meals planning at the weekend so it is out of the way in one go?
And stick to an hour of exercise a day.
Then use the rest of the day to get on with other things you would like to do.

I contribute my weight loss "this time" to drastically changing my daily routine, friends groups, and hobbies. My entire life was in a rut and I found that by making drastic changes I was no longer able to open that fridge/cupboard door as often. I was to busy to graze all day.

Bump

take it one day at a time... there are a few christian groups on this site that you could join. you can add me if you'd like!

Similar experiences? YES!!!!

I find that with the fitness goals, I find myself in a giant realm of self improvement. Once I fix one area of my life, I want to fix everything else too, and it can be very overwhelming to see the pounds to lose, rooms to clean, grudges to get over, promotions to shoot for at work, etc, etc, etc.

I just confessed to my husband today that I am feeling like a hamster on a wheel. By the time I go to work for 8 hours, then cook an elaborate healthy dinner, wash the dishes, and MAYBE workout, I am exhausted, and there is no fun time left.

He was very supportive of it and he let me just blurt out all the things that are terrifying me at the moment. It helped a lot!

I've decided this week that perfection is not worth chasing. I will never be perfectly fit, happy, and sane. I can be more fit, and more happy and more sane than I am now, but if I miss a workout, or let my house get dirty or pass on some opportunities at work, it's ok. There are many shades of gray. Yoda says "there is only do or do not; there is no try." Well, I'm here to tell you that if your goal is to work out five times a week and you only worked out four, it's still a hell of a lot better than not working out at all. If you show up to work and you drop the ball or half @$$ a project, you just dust yourself and move on. It's not like you got fired, and even if you did, there will eventually be another job. If you go to church 50 times a year and 2 weeks you didn't go, you are still a religious person. You get the idea.

Life will never be perfect or fit into a neat little box, but as long as you are making progress and moving a little closer to your goals, you should be proud of that.

I think this is such a great topic. I think the best way to keep going is to quickly recognize when you are loosing focus and keep steering back. Like a plane takes off right and goes towards a directions, but it is actually off course like 90% of the time because it is always over correcting for getting off course, but it always has that final destination in sight, so the pilots just keep steering in that "direction". Just remember your direction, when you get off track- self correct - and keep going towards your target. I think a lot of people (myself in the past included) just think that getting off tract (loosing focus) means you can't reach your destination- THAT IS SOOOOO WRONG!!! You may get there slower- but you'll get there!!!!