After reveling in my latest weight loss quandary, I’ve realized something.  Moderation is what I am fighting against (at least that 20% of me).  My whole life has been a series of extremes and I’ve never lived in a state of moderation.  So naturally, my comfort zone is at one extreme or the other.  I think that must be why I can go for several weeks of eating very healthy and exercising very regularly and then BOOM, I let life’s circumstances bring me to a screeching halt and send me into a frenzy of binge eating.

After reading this SparkPeople article (you know how I love them), I realized that there is a lot more to do with moderation than just being in the middle of two extremes.  Moderation in terms of weight loss represents a commitment to living a healthy life, not just temporarily, but for life.  That means that the “diet” never ends and that there will never come a time that I can simply eat whatever I want for the rest of my life.  I’ve proven to myself that I cannot handle that.

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It’s not hard to understand why this quote speaks to me.  Does it speak to you? 

As you may know, I’ve recently had some frustrating experiences with self sabotage and have done some “binge eating” in the face of success.  And it has left me feeling disappointed and with a lot of questions.  Mainly, why is it so easy for me to give up in the midst of weight loss success?  And then I can think of 15 more questions to follow.  The thing that bothers me the most is that there is a reason for it and I don’t know what it is.

I started reading up on self sabotaging types of behaviors but I didn’t find anything that really stood out as to why I do this.  So at this point, I am still looking for answers.  Perhaps it’s best to start off by saying what I want.

I want to live a healthy lifestyle.  I want to like eating fruit, vegetables, other healthy foods, exercising, and be motivated to live healthfully.  I would say that 80% of me totally wants all that.  But for some reason there is this 20% of me that is afraid of it and has HUGE reservations about letting go.  That part of me is scared crap-less of being successful at this weight loss thing.  I mean, I’m not an emotional eater for nothing.  It only makes sense that my emotions are the key to this problem and are the foundation for the fear in my 20%.

Maybe rather than focusing on converting the full 20% to the other 80%, I should focus on a little at a time.  Rather than constantly thinking 130 pounds is my goal… 130, 130, 130, 130, 130…. 20 more pounds to go.  So close. So close. SO CLOSE.  And yet, the closer I get, the farther I feel. 

I might be more successful if I focus on 5 pounds.  And only 5 pounds.  That’s a good place to start.

But does that solve my real problem?  What is so scary about reaching my goal weight?  Why is it SO easy to give up?  I always seem to get back up and keep going but it seems to get harder each time this happens.  The internal struggle is a force to be reckoned with. 

I am nowhere near giving up though.  I’m a fighter and my defeat is only temporary.  Just at a loss for answers right now.  Looking for guidance.

SparkPeople likes to give a little explanation of each quote they have.  I find these to be very insightful.  Here is the translation they have for today’s quote:

When you fail do you find it hard to get back up? If you do, you are completely normal. Many people use failure as an excuse to give up. It is important to understand that failure is a part of the growth process. Think about this example. How many times does a small child fall over before they finally stand and eventually walk? It is countless, but somewhere along the way, most of us lose that ambition to keep trying until you succeed. The next time you are defeated, think about it as part of a process. Get up and try again and again until you move forward.

I also found this blurb of information about self sabotage from a website that actually sells guided workshops dealing with the issue. They are selfsabotagebehavior.com if you are interested. I just found this blurb to be somewhat relative to how I am feeling (although not quite to this extreme):

Self-sabotage behavior is when there is no logical or rational explanation for why you can’t do the things you want to do or why you can’t have the things you want to have.

It’s not a lack of desire, skills, knowledge or effort that hold you back. Rather, there’s something inside you that’s stronger than your desire and it sabotages your efforts to do the things you want to do and have the things you want to have.

Self-sabotage behavior can destroy your motivation to do the things you really want to do by creating an internal tug-of-war. Everyone sabotages himself or herself from time to time. Unfortunately, sometimes we sabotage ourselves to the point of not being able to live the successful, happy life we really want to live.

Self-sabotage behavior can leave you feeling frustrated, discouraged, and trapped in a situation you desperately want to change.

And lastly, I submit my problem to you.  Do you have any insight into self sabotage?  Have you experienced it and overcome it before?  Are you plagued by it as well and searching for answers?  Do you have any advice?  I’d love to hear it, even if you think it’s silly.

And to think it all started with a simple challenge. 

Well, the challenge ended yesterday with some surprising twists and turns.  As it turns out, on Saturday our daughter went to stay with her grandparents for a week, leaving Hubby and I with some much needed free/alone time!  We decided to take advantage of this time by heading out to the beach.  WOOHOO!  Talk about relaxing… it was wonderful!

So, as I’ve documented in the past, I have a very hard time maintaining my diet while I am out of my routine here at home.  There is this part of me that begins justifying poor eating and making all kinds of excuses for blowing up my healthy lifestyle.  In a word, Self-sabotage.  This is something I am going to be looking into over the next few weeks/months as it seems to be something that I really need to address.  As you can guess, I began to eat poorly just as soon as we were out the door.  And so did Hubby. 

This changed things for the Weight War because we both let our defenses down and allowed the chips to fall where they may.  Self-sabotage.  We ate hamburgers at the beach, homemade ice cream walking around near our hotel, chocolate turtle chex mix was the snack of choice on the beach, and of course Mellow Mushroom pizza to top it all off.  Self-sabotage.  My excuse was that I was already going to lose the challenge so hey, why not?  Self-sabotage. 

And let me just say that it is very hard to admit that after everything I have learned on my weight loss journey, I am still capable of caving like this.  I don’t want to just gloss over it because it is an indicator that I still have so much to learn.  I think I will always be a student of the healthy lifestyle.

As many of you out there doing the weight-loss thing know, eating poorly like this can just blow the scale up for a few days and even if no actual pounds end up being gained, it takes awhile for the scale to adjust.  All that being said, here are the final results of June’s Domestic Weight Wars Challenge:

Week 4 #’s
Hubby lost: 0.2 pound
Julie gained: 0.2 pound

And the final results for the month:

Hubby lost a total of 8.4 pounds!!! 
And I lost a total of 6.2 pounds!!!

So by all means of the agreement we made at the outset of the challenge, Hubby won the challenge!  Huge congratulations to him for sticking with  it and making big changes to his diet!!  And I am thrilled to announce that he is going to continue on this path of healthy eating and exercising! 

If you are interested in the percentages, they finished as follows:

Julie lost 4.07%
Hubby lost 3.99%

Ouch, says me.  But we already know what I learned about percentages!

So, being the me that I am, I wanted to get this whole mowing thing underway and not give Hubby all month to tease me about it.  So once we tallied up the numbers yesterday morning, we got busy right away with Lawn Mower Training!    And then there was the Weed Eater (also known as PURE EVIL) and learning to use that sucker was a whole new experience in and of itself.  Let’s just say that next time I will be wearing pants, sleeves, shin guards, elbow pads, and a helmet when I weed-eat.

So here I am mowing my little heart out. I soon discovered that mowing is very similar to vacuuming!

And showing a little sass for the camera.

Dude. Weed. Eating. Sucks.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

And the final results of all my efforts! Not too mention burning 320 calories in the process!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
What are the lessons I learned through this month-long challenge?
1) Seriously, I need to not be cocky. Go with percentages next time.
2) Healthy competition can be great for a relationship.
3) Healthy competition can be incredibly motivating.
4) I still have a lot to learn about my eating habits and triggers. Self-sabotage is something I will be tackling.
5) The readers of my blog are AWESOME!! The support and encouragement meant the world to me!!

And did you think that this would be the end of the Domestic Weight Wars? Not a chance. Look for upcoming challenges real soon. I’ve got a comeback to pull off!!!