When you are on a weight loss plan, you forget that good days should not be measured by how far you walked or how many minutes you spent doing aerobics. Instead it should be remembered as walking to the school and playing on the playground set with your kids. A good day is not one in which you only ate your allotted calories with specified ratio of fats to protein and number of vegetables. It should be remembered as enjoying that seven layer dip and fondue because it is so rare that you eat those things, it becomes a treat.
This is the most difficult part of the balance. Weight loss is not a life style change unless you want to become a person whose good days and bad days are measured by what you ate and how much you exercised instead of how much you enjoyed your foods and who you spent time with. The part that can be "lifestyle" related is integrating these things into your day.
It becomes bigger than the rut we fall into. First, you find yourself coming home from work, turning in the television, and only turning it off to go to bed. Society demonizes this as laziness. A person who comes home and reads all night is just as lazy, but more accepted because in the end, it isn't about laziness. It is about forming a habit that does not lead to social interaction. If you have a significant other or kids, it is so much easier to bond with them by having the daily habit of following work with a nice long walk or a game of Let's Dance on the Wii. If you live alone, find someone else who lives alone and create a walking group.
I would still love more interaction with my spouse than what we have now, but it has been a great stride toward that simply by finding opportunities to spend more time away from the house. One of the ways we do that is by going for our walks which get longer as our health improves.
Second, the rut becomes wanting those thing we enjoy eating more and more often. By not eating those things, when we do treat ourselves, they taste ten times better. Laying off is not only about what we put into our bodies for health, it is also a way to enjoy those things even more. The funny part is that some of the fatty foods don't taste good to me at all now so even fewer of the things I once enjoyed are things I even want when I am heading for a treat.
So again, I reiterate, it isn't a lifestyle change. It is a mentality. Start thinking differently and eventually that is the way you will think. Act differently and eventually it is the way you will act.
I am trying to put my thoughts into words. We have used the term "maintaining" and the phrase "taking a break" to explain where we are at right now. People want to know what we are doing to lose weight because it doesn't seem to be working right now. Well, we could say that we are watching what we eat and continuing our activity levels in order to maintain, but for me, at least, that isn't exactly true. I am not gaining weight, it is true, but I check it less often because I'm not going anywhere very quickly. Maybe it is taking a break, but it's mostly taking a break from thinking about it. The habit of a daily walk is now so necessary and refreshing that we go for the walk every day because we want fresh air and to escape the mundane house. We eat what we want and I try to steer my tastes toward things that aren't too salty or sweet so that when I am at a holiday party (of which there will be many this season!) I can enjoy the variety provided there. We are not on a maintenance plan, we are simply sitting in a general weight range because we now think differently enough about what we eat and what activities we do that we can just rest on those new habits.
This could easily become falling back into old habits, of course, so a small amount of thought does go into those things each day. It is still good to monitor the weight and use it as a reminder that we don't want to fall back into those bad habits.
We do intend to return to the more strict regime in the future. I won't use the holidays as an excuse because we did pretty well during the holidays last year, but I think we just felt so burned out by the constant thoughts, that we need to remember who we are without the weight loss before we will feel ready to push ourselves again. That's okay. You wouldn't think so because of the sheer number of people who ask what we're doing now, how much we've lost recently, and, of course (my pet peeve) offering unsolicited advice on how we can lose more, but it really is okay!
It has always been my advice to take yourself away from a situation that is burning you out if you can because it only takes willpower to return. Willpower is difficult at time, but in the end, you have control over it. If you continue to push and push, you will burn out completely and never return. In fact, it is my belief that burning out completely is what leads to a return of bad habits more quickly - because you worked too hard and now all your brain wants are the things that are bad for you. It is better to keep yourself in check and if you can't think about it right now, just step away and return refreshed instead of keeping your head in the game until you just can't think about it anymore.
