I thought it was time to explain to you what my plan is to lose weight.  First of all let me explain what I’m not doing…

No surgery

No fad dieting

No pills

No liquid diets

No meal replacement bars

No bouncing from one diet to the next

I’ve tried everything above in the past (well, with the exception of surgery) and let me tell you, they do not work!  I think I’ve finally figured out after 20 years of dieting that diets don’t work.

Diets don’t work because you’re forced to eat abnormally for x amount of time until you either reach your goal weight or you quit because you can’t take it anymore.

So I say NO to dieting for the rest of my life.

Instead, I’m commited to changing all my bad eating habits and entirely changing my way of eating permanently.  Therefore, I am not on a diet.  I merely eat a certain way (which I’ll explain in a bit) which is condusive to weight loss until I reach my goal weight.  Then, when I do reach goal I’ll continue to eat this way to maintain that weight for the rest of my life.

I know that in order for this way of eating to work for my entire life I have to stick with certain general rules forever.  And I’ve finally come to terms with this and accepted that in order for me to get what I want, I have to make certain sacrifices that will stick with me always.  And that is totally fine.

All of the above came to me when I had the epiphany that I’m just like an alcoholic or a drug addict.  Except that my drug of choice is food.  Therefore, I must treat myself like a recovering addict and realize that I will struggle with my addictive issues for the rest of my life.  And I must have a solid plan to follow in order to stay “clean” forever.

And so far so good, as of my writing this I’ve lost 30 pounds.  And I must say its been the easiest weight loss experience I’ve ever had.  I fully believe its because of my major shift in mindset and the way I’m dealing with my issues first this time, instead of only focusing on the ‘diet plan.’

My healthy lifestyle guidelines:

Eat mostly ‘real food’

This means that I will mostly eat nonprocessed foods such as lean meats, low fat diary products, potatoes, legumes, fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds.  Basically if its food in its natural state, then its good enough for me to eat.

I will avoid eating processed foods most of the time and only occasionally have something processed or man-made.  For example, breads, pastas, candy, cakes.  These are meant for special treats only – about 1 to 4 servings a day.

Keep a food journal

I’ll write everything down that I eat, every day for the rest of my life.  I’ve battled about this one in my head for years.  Basically in the past I’ve never wanted to track because ‘normal’ people didn’t track what they ate so why did I have to?  Well I justified this argument for a long time until I realized just one little detail…um, I’m not ‘normal.’

Normal people have a normal relationship with food and therefore don’t need to track. I, however, have all sorts of issues like emotional eating problems, binge eating disorder, compulsive overeating disorder, and food addiction.  I’ll never be normal and therefore I’m always going to have to track what I eat everyday.  It’s the only way that I’ll every stay accountable, and that’s just how it is.  And it feels good to have finally accepted that because now I can stop that battle and just move on.

Drink only water or tea

I will only drink soda (real soda) for very rare special occasions like holidays.  I don’t like diet drinks and they actually give me headaches so there’s no way that I’m going to drink them.  I looooove regular soda though and in the past I always drank way too much.  So I’m limiting my real soda intake to special occasions only, such as holidays and parties.  That way, I really look forward to having that special treat.  I used to feel deprived when not allowing myself to drink regular soda daily, but I’m so over it now…consuming all that sugar just isn’t worth it to me anymore.

Exercise for 2 to 3 hours per week

This one is tough because I really don’t like to exercise but I know that even just a little bit every week is necessary for a healthy lifestyle.  I know that once I lose more weight I won’t whine as much about it, so for now I’m sticking to just walking on the weekends.

No more binge eating

This is extremely difficult.  I’ve binged my whole life and for me to explain this aspect of my life, I’ll need to write several more pages.  So for now let’s just say that I can not allow myself to binge eat again.  I’m learning to control this very well and I rarely binge anymore – maybe once a month when I totally lose it.  Just a few months ago I was binge eating 2 to 3 times a day.  Now that is improvement that I am so proud of.

Treat myself like a recovering foodaholic

Junk food is my drug.  My response to junk food is the same as a drug addict’s reponse to drugs or an alcoholic’s response to alcohol.  Unfortunately I just can’t stop eating so a fine line has to be drawn between what I can and can not eat.  I strongly believe that my eating plan above takes care of this fine line.

One thing that I must realize is that I will always be addicted to food.  This is not going away and I have to deal with this forever.  And as soon as I realized that a few months ago I was able to finally turn things around and lose weight.

Therefore its so true…the first step in dealing with addiction is realize that you have a problem.

Treat myself and my body with respect

I’ve had such low self esteem for years that its been normal to hate myself and my body.  The past few years I’ve actually told myself that I deserved to be fat and unhealthy.  How horrible is that?

Now I’ve learned that I am a good person that deserves everything in this world.  And my body and my mind should be treated with utmost respect.

As part of this guideline, I’m learning to take care of myself again.  I’m starting to enjoy dressing up, putting on makeup, doing my hair, doing my nails again.  When you feel like crap its easy to let all these things go, but treating myself well on the outside makes me feel better about myself on the inside.

Develop a lasting positive attitude and mindset

Since my self-esteem and attitude towards dieting as been so scewed for so many years I’m really going to have to work at restoring a healthy, positive mindset.  This doesn’t happen overnight though and since I’ve learned that mindset is the deal breaker to weight loss, I’m taking this one very seriously.

I’ll only eat when I’m hungry

I have so many bad habits of eating whenever: whenever I feel bored, tired, stressed, depressed, mad, lonely, or anything really.  So I’ve resolved to break this seriously bad habit and listen to my body again.  When my body tells me I’m hungry I’ll eat, if it doesn’t tell me I’m hungry but I still feel like eating, I’ll ask myself what’s wrong.  I’ll figure out why I’m wanting to turn to food.

This has worked extremely well but it is hard.  Its so hard to actually deal with those feelings, those underlying issues.  But its so incredibly important to do so.  Because I’m overweight for a reason…because I have all this emotional baggage that I’ve always dealt with by eating.  I’ve never actually stopped myself and figured out why I’m bored or depressed, I just choice to eat instead to occupy my feelings.  And this has got to stop.  Its complete self-sabotage and robbs the life right out of you.

Whew, it feels good to write all that down…its so therapeutic to have my plan all laid out in front of me like that.  I feel like all of these guidelines need to be expanded quite a bit so I’ll plan on writing a lot more about each of them.