|
Falling Off the Wagon
 Posted by Sally Kilpatrick Oct 15 2010, 12:01 am in bad habits, Sally Kilpatrick
Kinda like now. So, today’s question is: what does it take to pull yourself back up on the wagon? I’m not going to ask why I fell off the wagon. At some point we all fall off the wagon because we’re human. My problem is I can’t hold on to the tailgate with a couple of fingers and grunt my way back up there right away. No, no, I have to sit in the dirt and wallow for a while before I finally get up and start plodding in the right direction. In my early twenties, I used to work out at a gym. I didn’t have children, my husband worked odd hours, and the gym was on the way home from work so it was easy to stick with the habit. Even better, that particular gym had a nutritionist in house and with an affordable program, so I learned to keep a journal and to watch my calories. At one point, I was down to a size 4 and had less than 20% body fat. Then I moved to Atlanta and became a teacher. Being a teacher is not good for your health because you get up early, come home late, and usually work for hours each evening and on weekends. Being a teacher then having kids is even worse. By the time I was 33 and had had two children, I weighed the most I’d ever weighed without the benefit of pregnancy: 175. I went to an L.A. Weight Loss Center and worked my way back down to 137 because I was staying home with Lorelai by that time and could use those three hours a morning to drive back to the gym and work out. (That said, I would not recommend L.A. Weight Loss—if you have any questions about why, please feel free to contact me at skil24@yahoo.com and I will be happy to tell you.) But then my writing suffered. So I shifted my writing time to the morning and my workouts to the evening where they eventually were crowded out by Cub Scouts, Wednesday night church and grad school classes on one or two nights a week. To make matters worse, I started working 20 hours a week as a Graduate Assistant in order to get a discount on my tuition. I’ve since graduated and planned and run a major conference, and, to make matters more fun and exciting, injured my foot to the point I was told to do no cardio but swimming. My doctor wouldn’t budge when I pleaded for recumbent bike, anything; he didn’t even laugh when I told him we hadn’t dug the pool in the back yard yet. I should have been lifting upper body weights all this time, but, to tell you the truth, that’s the part of working out I like least, so I didn’t do it. So, here I am back up to 150 pounds. We don’t even want to talk about body fat percentage. So, what have I done so far?
Part of my posts will include any progress that I’ve made as I’ve tried to re-establish good habits and to get back in the gym where I belong. But, my question to all of you out there is: what do you do to climb back on that wagon?
Comments
9 Responses to “Falling Off the Wagon”Leave a Reply |
The Latest Posts
archives
tags
10 Healthy Guidelines
Anna Sugden
bad habits
calories
clothing
confidence
cookbooks
cooking
eating healthy
Emotional Eating
exercise
Expectations
fear
fitness
food
food diary
goals
guest blogger
health tips
Holidays
inspiration
Inspiration Sunday
Keri Mikulski
Michelle Butler
Michelle Mondays
motivation
non-scale victories
portion control
positive thinking
process
progress
Rachel Graves
recipes
running
Sally Kilpatrick
small changes
stress
Tawny's Thursdays
Tawny Thursday
Tawny Weber
The Biggest Loser
Trish Milburn
walking
weight loss
Writing
feeds
the healthy writers
|
|||||||||||||
home | about | the writers | resources | blog | contact
©2010 The Healthy Writer Blog. All rights reserved.
Site designed and maintained by Bemis Promotions.
Hey Sally, my fellow newbie, glad to see you here.
Great post! SO many of us are in that boat.
FWIW, my advice is actually quite simple. Make that first step. Then one step at a time.
Give yourself a plan of action, with bite-size goals (pardon the pun) and SMART targets – specific, measurable, ACHIEVABLE, REALISTIC, timed. Those two middle ones are key.
One of the reasons we fall off the wagon and find it hard to get back on IMHO is that we want to get back to our ideal as soon as possible. Even though it took a long time to get to where we are, we want to click our fingers and get back! We blitz. Then, not surprisingly, we burn out.
If we make small steps, and keep achieving those small steps, pretty soon we’ll discover we’ve made a large one! Think of it in writing terms – if you try to think about writing a whole book, and how long it will take, you freak out. If you think about how long it takes you to write a chapter and get that done, then another, then another, pretty soon, you have a book. Or if you write a page a day, in 100 days you have 100 pages!
Oh, and one other thing (speaking as one who is also injured and has to give up my exercise), adjust your targets and make them balance out. So, if you can’t focus on exercise, focus on healthy eating. If you can’t run, can you walk? If you can’t do a mile, can you do half a mile and so on. If you can’t exercise can you do stretches? You may feel like you’re letting one set of goals slip, but you’ll be storming ahead on others. In the end you’ll achieve them all.
Small steps! Keep yourself balanced. Keep moving forward.
The great thing is, Sally, you’ve taken that first small step. Now focus on the next one. We’ll be here cheering you on!
Thanks, Anna. You are absolutely right. It reminds me of something Bob Harper suggests in his book: start with just cardio for 4 weeks and then worry about adding weights and variety. I think that’s where I will start when I get back from Disney. Already I’ve learned that I simply can’t eat as poorly
as I used to–and that’s a good thing.
Usually, what helps me climb back on that wagon is something pushes me to do it such as a stretch of bad sleep/insomnia (& I hope exercise will enable me to get some good sleep) or my clothes get too tight.
I definitely recommend breaking it down into smaller steps to ward off burn out. What do you think is one of your bigger challenges? Poor food choices? Perhaps eating Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food or Marion Nestle’s What to Eat will help you make better choices. Too much mindless eating or snacking? Perhaps reading some articles or books on mindless/emotional eating would help. Not enough time? Perhaps reading an article on time management would give you some tips.
Did you get anything from the biggest loser books or the ones by Jillian or Bob?
Thanks, Michelle–to be honest, the Jillian Michaels book was so hardcore that it was daunting, but I’m considering
my own copy of the Bob Harper book. I also want to check out the book you recommended several months back about ways to soothe yourself without food. Tight clothes are definitely
a consideration, too!
Books that are too hardcore – way too much all or nothing thinking in my mind – backfire for me. I’ll never read the skinny bitch books. I really try to keep in mind how to make this all liveable.
Sally, I totally understand the frustration. I’ve been barely keeping within view of the wagon lately. For some reason, when we get busy or stressed, the things that could help us the most through that (rest, healthy eating and exercise) are inexplicably the things we let go first.
Anna and Michelle have very good advice. I’m a particular fan of taking it one step at a time, in small chunks. I think trying to do too much too quickly sets us up for failure.
And have fun at Disney. All that walking around the parks will be burning some calories.
Trish,
I think that’s the problem: I think I ought to be able to do more than I actually can. Great advice from all of you, and I’ll definitely be sharing my baby steps as they come. Oh, and it’s a good thing Epcot is a 1.3 mile circle because I’ve eaten way too much. : )
I think if I lived in Orlando I’d have season passes to Disney so I could just go out there and walk all the time. Good exercise, fun atmosphere, and great people-watching opportunities for writing inspiration.
Hi Sally,
I could be you what with the teaching and the kids and the grad school. Actually, immediately post-childbearing was my best weight ever. I couldn’t gain a pound if I tried when I was chasing around two kids under 3.
Looking back, I’m pretty sure my weight started as stress pounds and from unhealthy snacking when I got home from work. Now that I’m eating healthier, I am losing, but I find myself falling off the wagon whenever I start to see progress. Maybe I need to check out some of those self-help books Michelle has recommended.
Good luck to you. The people here are very supportive and that helps a lot!