The truth is hard.
It’s always easier to come up with excuses, lies or even turning a blind eye, but it is always better to tell the truth and be honest with yourself.
This is the first rule when it comes to your own transformation. … I look back on my own experience when I first began my fat loss journey. I was doing the exercises, I was eating healthy, but I wasn’t getting the results that I wanted. At the time, I didn’t know about the role that hormones played in fat loss. But it didn’t matter. The real reason that I wasn’t achieving the results I wanted was because I didn’t want to admit the truth.
For me , the truth was all the snacking that I did. Not on healthy things, but on things that had calories but no nutritional value…. things like potato chips or chocolate- lots of chocolate. I kept changing my exercise routine thinking that this was the way to achieve success. But that didn’t really work. So then I would cut my calories, but that wasn’t producing the changes in my physique that I was after, it only made me hungry (and pretty grumpy). 🙂
It was until I really got honest with myself that the transformation began. People (aka, my husband) would point out the snacking that I was doing, but I just turned a deaf ear and would say things like, “everything is ok in moderation”. However, my definition of moderation wasn’t exactly “moderate”.
So how do I get honest (because I still need to do this)? Well, the first thing I do is to keep a written food diary for 3 days. I literally track everything that I consume (either food or liquid) and when I consume it. I also make a note of how I’m feeling: am I hungry? Tired? Do I have cravings? Am I bored? This simple activity always reveals where the real problem lies and where I need to make adjustments.
I go through this honesty check on a regular basis. Because just like you, I get off track and my body starts to rebel. How do I know that my body is rebelling? My first clue is that I start to crave sugar and fat; the cravings are almost insatiable. What happens when I indulge or snack on these high fat and sugar foods too often? I see the changes in my physique: I start getting soft and pudgy even though my exercise routine has remained the same. So what do I do? I take a deep breath and get honest with myself. Not an easy task, but something that I force myself to do.
Here’s the good news:
Over the years, I’ve learned how to be a detective about how food affects me and what I need to eat in order to attain and maintain the physique I want. So when I get off track, I know that the first thing I need to look at is my consumption of starchy carbs and sugar. Almost without fail, I have found that I’m eating more bread (usually something sweet, like raisin bread or cinnamon rolls) and I’m usually eating these at night, after 9pm. It often takes me a while to admit to myself that this is what I need to change, but after a few days (sometimes weeks), I’ll go back to the strategies that I know work for me which means not purchasing these “goodies” and brushing my teeth right after dinner.
The bottom line is, that I am just like you. I fluctuate in my healthy habits. Just like you, I know that I need to eat healthy food and exercise regularly, but I also need to be alert enough to realize when things are changing in a direction that I don’t like. I need to be alert and honest enough with myself to admit where I have gone off track. I need to hold myself accountable because no one is forcing me to make bad choices. I’ve made them, but I can also choose to change the direction that I’m going in and get back on track.
Those changes can only be made when I get honest with myself and admit the truth.