Archive for the ‘Diet’ Category

I don’t drink coffee, but I’m thinking about starting.  I notice that my friends who drink coffee, in general, don’t really have a problem with over eating.  I might be making this up, but I am exploring the idea anyway.  One of my friends said, “Coffee is a cruel mistress.”  And, this makes me want it more.  What I love about coffee is really the culture and the experience.  It smells good, it feels good, there are special stores devoted to it, there are lots of different varieties, and there is special equipment and cool accessories for the preparation and consumption of coffee.  There is even a language that goes a long with it.  And people like to meet for it.  I think it would be better for my weight loss goals to meet people for coffee rather than for lunch.

Here’s the deal, though.  I don’t really like coffee and I don’t really need another vice to add to my already impressive list of vices.  And, I have to ask:  does coffee make me feel or contribute to me becoming sexy, healthy and happy?  Well, coffee is “sexy” and I know people who would definitely attach “happy” to their coffee, but nobody is even attempting to sell coffee as “healthy”.  In fact, most of my coffee loving friends are either trying to cut back on their coffee or they are throwing caution to the wind and drinking as much as they want before they have to cut back.  Ha ha, sort of like me and food.  It’s part of what I like about the “coffee conversation”.  I like to imagine that I could give up my struggle with food in exchange for this dance with coffee.

I just can’t bring myself to do it, though.  I’ve been flirting with the idea for a couple of months and I just can’t bring myself to drink a cup of coffee.  Essentially, it just doesn’t fit into my identity - it is incongruent with who I believe I am and what I believe I’m about.  One of my girlfriends would say, “It’s against my religion.”  Not literally, though.  I’m Catholic and coffee is an acceptable vice.  You need something to balance the whisky and wine ;).  And, since we’re on the subject now, I also notice that my coffee drinking friends are also the ones who enjoy wine on a more regular basis.  It is pretty basic physiology that if you take stimulants all morning, you might want/need/crave some depressants in the evening.  It’s an interesting connection that I’m not sure people are making.  I can and will make a lot of other connections between some of my current habits and overeating, too.  Just not today.

For today, I’ve decided that I’m not going to take up coffee.  I might change my mind tomorrow and I’m open to your opinion about it.  For today, I am drinking tea.  I’m loving Chai tea.  Yum!  It totally works and may be my newest guilty pleasure.

This post is dedicated to Cindy, my girlfriend who forces herself to eat breakfast because of the prevailing dieter’s wisdom.

I am a good American girl.  I eat breakfast every day.  My mother would not let us walk out of the house without breakfast and I make sure that all of my kids get breakfast every day, too.  And, I’m smart and pay attention in school and perform well on tests.  AND, I’m overweight and three of my four kids are all fighting weight issues, too.  My husband drinks coffee for breakfast and my skinny 18 year old prefers not to eat breakfast.  I also know people who force themselves to eat breakfast because they think it’s what they’re supposed to do.  And, EVERY diet I have ever been on starts with “don’t skip breakfast” or “here’s what you eat for breakfast”.  Well, I’m trying something new - new for me anyway.  I’m skipping breakfast.  Seriously, now that I think about it, breakfast is a joke.  Bacon and eggs with toast and butter or a bowl of cereal with milk.  I think we can all agree that is not a good formula for maintaining a healthy weight.  So, let’s look at my “diet breakfast”.  I’ve done everything from bagels (loved the “fat free” days in the 80s), bacon and eggs (thank you Atkins), steel cut oats with fruit, nuts and flax seed oil, fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, protein shakes, etc.  Oh, it makes me hungry to think about.  Hungry.  What an interesting idea.  It’s after 10 am and I am just now thinking that I might possibly be getting hungry.  I was not hungry at 6:30, 7:30 or 8:30 when breakfast is what is supposed to happen.  And when I do eat breakfast, I am generally hungry mid-morning.  And, then I have a whole new food conversation about snacks.  It’s exhausting and it’s no wonder I am behind in the laundry.  I eat (and feed my kids) so that I won’t get hungry later.  I’m running from my fear of hunger.  I don’t think I’ve been hungry except for maybe a handful of times in the past 20 years.  I would venture to say that most of us don’t even know what hungry feels like.

So, I’m experimenting with giving up breakfast.  I figure it can’t hurt.  I know all the sane dieter’s wisdom says that skipping breakfast sets me up to be ravenous at lunch and doesn’t give my metabolism a chance to start working and all that.  Well, let’s see what happens.  So far, so good.

I’m sure you all remember my love and affection for Diet Coke.  Okay, addiction.  It’s the one thing that was on my 1st Personal Diet plan that I was allowed to have that made me feel like I was cheating.  It was my guilty pleasure that I got to indulge in every day.  Especially in the beginning, it was such a big deal because I wasn’t allowing myself to have Diet Coke for all the reasons that you’ve heard.  I know it’s bad for me, blah, blah, blah.  So, being able to include something that felt like a cheat was actually really helpful.

From a coaching perspective, I have recently explored this as being able to hold polarities or inconsistencies and include both sides of an idea.  It’s way better than denial of the “less popular” perspective.  Instead of denying that there is a part of me that wants to, loves to and longs to cheat on my diet, it is very helpful to include the idea - to find the gift in it and how it serves me.  It helps to explore what values are being honored and what values I have that need to be included in the journey that I am on.  Instead of trying to shift my values so that I honor my health and fitness over choice and freedom, I can find ways to honor choice and freedom at the same time as health and fitness.  Pretty cool!  And pretty effective!

And, today I am also embracing my sexy, happy, healthy body and looking for what she wants and needs.  And it makes me think about the fact that people who maintain their ideal weight, don’t drink Diet Coke (or eat diet food or go on diets or a lot of the other crazy things that I have been doing in order to attempt to reach my ideal weight).  So, today, I gave up Diet Coke again because skinny girls don’t drink Diet Coke, especially the skinny girl that I want to be.  I will indulge in other ways - like skinny girls do.  WWSG do?  What would skinny girls do?  I know - it’s  a little irreverent, especially on a Sunday.  And, I’m cool with being irreverant because it’s better than finding one more way to “sell my soul to the devil” in order to reach my ideal weight.

I know I’ve written on the distinction of diet vs lifestyle before, but I don’t know that I was really listening.  It’s kind of like the new trend, ya know?  Diets are bad.  Diets don’t work.  Everyone from Weight Watchers to Lifestyle Coaches are telling you that diets don’t work and that a diet isn’t the answer.  And, then they offer you their very nicely packaged “lifestyle”.  Well, I think it’s really just a matter of semantics for me.  I am not really embracing a new lifestyle.  I am starting a diet.  My goal is to lose weight and I think that the way I’m going to do that is by dieting - restricting my eating in some fashion in order to get the results that I want.  I also hold the belief that once I reach my goal weight, I’ll be able to eat what I want - in moderation.  That’s what “they” keep telling me any way.  And I’m pretty fed up (haha, funny metaphor).

I am realizing that it really is about embracing a lifestyle.  So, I am spending some time thinking about and journaling about who I want to be.  I’m am really looking deeply into that.  I’m asking myself who I am, who I want to be, what I want, what habits support being like this and what habits don’t.  I am looking at, instead of going on a diet, creating a structure for staying connected to who I am and who I am becoming and practicing the habits that support that and letting go of the habits that don’t.  Sounds easy, right?  So, let’s go.

For the last two months, I have been dieting.  More specifically, I have been cheating on my diet.  I am realizing that a shift happened.  When I first started following my current plan, I didn’t think of it as a diet.  I decided to change the way I eat, permanently.  I decided that my health and my weight were more important to me than eating what I want, when I want.  I decided that I was perfectly okay giving up certain foods - for life.  I acknowledged that bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, fast food, processed foods and junk food are not good for me and make me feel horrible.  I decided to change my lifestyle.  I found a lifestyle plan for people who want to lose a lot of weight quickly and easily and I followed it.  And I felt great.  It was easy - really easy.

A couple of months ago, it started getting hard.  It only started getting hard when I started cheating.  It’s really a mindset game.  You don’t cheat on a lifestyle, right?  You cheat on a diet.  I stopped thinking of my plan as a lifestyle and started seeing it as a really restrictive diet.  I had all kinds of people colluding with me, too.  A lot of my friends have tried the diet, based on my previous great results.  And a lot of my friends and family have had the pleasure of dining with me on my diet, too.  The general consensus is “I don’t know how you do that.  I would starve.”  Well, I think that’s the idea.  I wasn’t really “starving” and I was never hungry.  Hungry is not my problem.  I never eat because I’m hungry.  I eat because it’s time, because I’m bored, because I want some entertainment, because I’m stressed out, because I’m lonely, because … fill in the blank.  So, anyway, somewhere along the line, my very effective lifestyle became a diet and my new lifestyle is all about cheating on my diet, beating myself up about it and resolving to get back on.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  The cheats start lasting longer and my resolve starts being shorter.

So, here I am.  I am aware of where I’m at - the first step.  I have been avoiding this awareness, which is why I’ve been avoiding my blog.  I realize that it’s not helping me.  And, I actually humbly admit that I don’t know where to go from here.  I am still committed to my goal.  The only thing more painful than being fat and not losing weight, is being fat and gaining weight.  I refuse to lose any more ground.  I am committed to exploring my vision and looking at the solutions that are present in my life right now.  I know that it’s simple, just do it.  And, simple isn’t necessarily easy.