diet – JO HIGG OR GO HOME

I am not a believer in weighing myself constantly, I hate the scale. It is ridiculous to me that an object can dictate how I feel about myself, about my day, about my LIFE! I choose to only weigh when I am at the doctor. Sometimes I slip the nurse a few “free chick fil a” coupons to not actually tell me the number on the scale (you would be amazed at what people do for a chicky)! I am just not someone who is obsessed with the number. Or at least that’s what I thought…

I have always told people to not go by the number but to go by how your body feels. And I believe that, to a point. When I was at my lowest weight last year, I didn’t worry at all about the number. I would yell from the mountain tops to NOT WEIGH YOURSELF EVERY DAY! Then the exercise stopped and after a few weeks, my eating changed also. I began to let more of the unhealthy habits back into my life.

Haha!! Habits??? That seems like such a nice word for this!

As I was saying…the exercise and the food began to take a downward spiral. The journaling stopped and the affirmations were put aside also. I pretty much gave up on myself. Fortunately, a mental breakthrough stopped my freefall before I hit bottom.

I cannot get back to my starting point. 480 pounds is not where I want to be. 480 is the number I started at, not the number I want to end at. I sat down and did what I do best – made myself feel like crap and guilty as ever. Then when that was over, I started journaling. I wrote about my feelings and I wrote some more, then when I felt like I could come up for air, I wrote some more.

I have stopped forward movement in my journey. A cookie here, hot bread there, pasta leftovers and yes, even pizza. At the moment I ate them, I did not feel bad about it. I really didn’t. My therapist (my sister and yes she is a real therapist) asked me how I felt right before I ate too much food. WOW! That was a hard question for me to answer. It wasn’t that food game me a warm and happy feeling or that I was so in love with food I could not walk away from it. So what was it? I began to think about that question and really went back a looooong way, to when I was very young.

I believe that I overeat because it is something that I can control. My life right now now has A LOT of drama. Issues at home, issues with money, taking care of my mother and father…I feel like I have no control over anything. But I have control over my food intake and I do not want anyone to take that away from me. I don’t want to lose control and let others into my private world with food.

So I am back on the wagon (again, always again it seems). But I discovered a trick that will never let you down. I weighed myself to see how much I had gained and I saw a number that surprised me. It was BELOW my goal weight!! Right there, blinking in front of my eyes. For a moment, I cannot describe how crazily my heart flopped. Then my husband walked in and said “Oh, that is set on kilograms, you might want to change it to pounds”! NO I DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE IT BACK TO POUNDS!

Anyway, that is a perfect reminder for me to remind you that the number does not matter. How do you feel? How do your clothes fit? Does anything hurt? Ask your self that question if that scale number is not going down as fast as you want it. I have to say this because I have heard this from SO MANY diet institutions: “It won’t happen overnight”! No shit!

I think my next blog will be “Things Overweight People Do NOT Want to Hear”!

Stay strong!

Hi, my name is Joanna and I am an overeater! I eat my feelings, I eat my pain, hell, I even eat my happiness! My motto for so long was “Everything is better with a bean burrito”. I would wake up in the morning and wonder what I should have for breakfast, unch and dinner. Sometimes I would plan on eating all of them at the same time! It’s not easy to sort through extra psychological baggage to figure out why you overeat. I want to stop yo-yoing with my food and understand WHY I overeat. For instance…

There I was, minding my own business, walking through the local grocery store to pick up items for dinner (a good dinner too…not mashed potaoes with gravy and mac and cheese with a side of buttered bread) when I walked into aisle 3 and BAM (yes, just like Batman and Robin) there was the Easter candy right in front of me. I’m not talking one or two packs of jelly beans. I am talking about chocolate covered peeps, Easter snicker eggs, Hershey chocolate mini eggs, Reeses peanut butter bunnies and Hot Tamale peeps. YES HOT TAMALE PEEPS!

I spent the next two hours looking at every package, reading the back and trying to find a keto Easter peanut butter egg or a low carb peep…I would even settle for a Starburst jellybean…JUST ONE!

Alas, Easter candy is not conducive to healthy eating. Oh I know what people will say “Just eat one, everything in moderation”. Well, that is the problem Apparently I stayed home the say moderate eating was taught in 8th Grade Health. I can’t eat things like that in moderation, unless moderation means one in your mouth while 2 more candies sit on standbye in each chocolate stained fist.

I cannot eat in moderation so I refrain from eating it at all. That may seem ridiculous to you, but it is what I have to do. I once thought I had control of myself. I once thought I could eat one piece of chocolate, I could eat one pancake…fast forward 6 months and I had gained 60 pounds. So, yea, I can’t do that.It’s like being on Jeopardy and the catagory is “FOODS THAT MAKE YOU GAIN WEIGHT” but your damn buzzer doesn’t work! It is frustrating!

So, on Easter, on Christmas, on Thanksgiving and even on St. Patrick’s Day…I try to not make the holiday centered around food. It sounds easy, but when you raised that good food makes good times, it is hard to do. So I plan events, I plan games, I buy candy for the kid’s baskets/stockings BUT I only buy enough for them. No extras. Not happening. Not in this house.

Do you feel traumatized by the holidays? Reach out to me! Let’s battle this together. No successful dieter ever did it alone, I guarantee.

Tag: diet

So That’s The Secret…

I’ll Take Easter Candy for $100, Alex!