Chapter 1 Reflections.
Chapter 2 Reflections.
Chapter 3 Reflections.
1. When a friend expresses success with healthy food choices and losing weight, do you feel encouraged and inspired by her example, or do you feel discouraged and envious? Do you communicate your feelings to your friend or keep them to yourself?
What a great question! Honestly, the answer here for me depends on who the person is. I am very often encouraged by several of your stories, and when you share a loss with me I am genuinely thrilled for you. I also find it inspiring. One of my absolute favorite weight loss bloggers started her journey near the current weight that I am today, and she is so close to reaching her goal. That is very inspiring to me. I know it's not always been an easy road for her, so when she has a victory, I'm thrilled and inspired to know that I can do it too.
Conversely, there are some people who shared weight loss victories with me where I immediately get upset. This mostly occurs with people in my "real" life (i.e. not bloggers!). I wouldn't even say the feeling is of envy for me, as much as it is of annoyance and frustration. So, you're 5'8", 130ish lbs and you think you need to lose weight? I have a hard time getting excited for people who think they have 5 lbs to lose or 10 lbs to lose when they hardly realize what it's like to live an obese lifestyle. I also often feel even more like $hit when super skinny people share their weight loss victories with me, because I feel like.... they're telling the fat girl in order to make me jealous? Perhaps I over think this!
2. Complete this sentence: I do/do not want to invite a friend to help me on my journey to healthy eating because____________________.
My friends in this journey are you guys. You guys who know exactly what it's like to fight the good fight of loads of weight to lose. I will honestly tell you that in my real life, there is not a single person who I would invite along to help me on this journey. Come to think of it, I actually do not have a single close friend who is/was fat, and therefore I wouldn't ever feel good about inviting any of my current friends along on this journey. At the end of the day, they don't know what it's like to have nearly 100 lbs to lose. They don't know what it's like to eat in an uncontrollable way. They cannot possibly remotely relate to the struggles I've dealt with for just about half of my life. Do you sense bitterness? Ha! Perhaps there is a little of that thrown in there!
3. If accountability is crucial, what is the biggest challenge you face in making accountability part of your healthy eating plan?
Not tracking absolutely everything I put into my mouth, regardless of the fact that it will send me into the red for the week - is the biggest challenge I have. Why is it hard for me to track? Mainly because tracking that setback forces me to come to terms with the guilt and reality of the crap I just ate. Seeing eTools going into the red (yes, it happens!) makes me feel like a huge failure!
Still, tracking is so important because, more times than not, when I've tracked a "detour", I feel so much better when I see that it really wasn't as bad as I thought. Therefore, by tracking and seeing the numbers in black and white ("Oh, that wasn't so bad afterall"), I don't send myself into a downward binging spiral. Certainly, there are times when it is as bad as I thought, but I still feel all the better because I wrote it down.
I've had this mindset that if I don't write it down, it "never happened". Yeah, I know. Stupid! You know where that gets me though? A gain on the scale (or no loss). Tighter pants and shirts. Feelings of sluggishness. The scale can sometimes lie (i.e. you ate well all week and you were "robbed" by the scale). However, the way you truly feel does not lie. Not only that, you obviously know you ate a bunch of crap that you chose not to acknowledge on paper (or eTools, in my case). Pretending it didn't happen does absolutely no good for you (or me, rather!).
4. If you were to imagine a life-giving experience of accountability, one that empowers you and helps you to feel companioned rather than alone in your struggles, how would you describe that experience? What kind of person would you want to be accountable to? What do you hope this person would do for you? What do you hope they would not do? How would you determine whether or not the relationship is providing effective accountability?
I think the way I envision it is just that I would have a best bud that I could check in with as often as I needed to. I would want to be accountable to someone who is going to support me in my journey, giving me encouragement when I need it, but to also push me and set me straight when I'm being a sissy. What I would not want them to do is leave me hanging. I would pretty much want someone at my beck and call! LOL... Obviously this person probably doesn't exist.. that's what God is for right? But at the end of the day, I wouldn't want this person to judge me. I wouldn't want them to make me feel like a failure. I would just want undying support whenever I needed it.
Share some of your answers with me!
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Posted by: Tukiyooo
Made to Crave - Ch 4 Reflections Updated at :
5:22 PM
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
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