Know Yourself

When starting any kind of diet or life change don’t forget to consider the emotional side of change as well as the physical.  Today’s topic is about knowing yourself and triggers that may lead you to success or disaster along your journey.

When I asked a friend who has been losing weight with me what her number one piece of advice would be for people starting a journey.  She without hesitation said, “You have to know Yourself.” At first I thought this was a strange response, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.  At my core I am a very controlling person.  Sometimes I feel like a puppet-master guiding all of the pieces in my life to where I think they belong. I am also very impatient with myself and hold myself to very strict set of expectations.  So how did this transfer to my weight loss?

Every morning I am excited to get on the scale.  I reflect on the good choices I’d made the day before or maybe ponder some poor choices I’d made.  Before I get on the scale, there’s a number I’m hoping to see.  Usually I don’t see it but sometimes I do.  However, I have to pep talk myself that whatever I see is fine.  Half a pound gained is not a failure.  30 pounds gained would be a failure. All through my weight loss I had to adjust my expectation of success and failure.  Would success be 3 pounds a day? NO! Is failure anytime the scale goes up? NO! I had to learn that I could mostly control the number I saw but I had to let go when I didn’t see what I was expecting.  I had to learn forgiveness!

Some people have told me I have amazing will power through this process.  However, I’m not sure that’s true. I hold myself to high expectations in all areas of my life.  I push myself and consider it failure if I’m not the best. When I decided what I wanted to do with my health, that was the end of the discussion.  If I decided no chips for a month, I ate no chips for a month.  If I decided that a certain food was awesome, I’d eat it all the time.  It’s not just discipline, it’s who I really am to the core. While this might sound like a blessing, it created problems as well.  Sometimes I would hold myself too accountable and would then get depressed for a whole day if I didn’t see the results I wanted.  I still have to remind myself, it’s a process.

So as you are on your own journey, you will discover things about your self.  Maybe you get really close to a goal and then pig out for three days and sabotage yourself. Do you do this in other areas of your life? Maybe you struggle with a meal plan because it feels like too many rules.  Do you struggle with rules in general? If you know yourself well, you can tailor your eating habits to what your pit falls may be.  If you know for sure that you need ‘rewards’ in your diet, schedule them.  If you need one meal a week to eat whatever you want, factor that in.  Knowing who you really are and your natural habits will help you be successful in losing weight.