Hi all,
I hope you are well? Well I am now just over half way through the 28DBT process. I won’t lie to you, it has been tough and a little emotional. I spent the first two weeks sticking to the programme to the letter – no dairy, no alcohol, nothing processed and no complex carbs and attending the group PT sessions every weekday morning at 6.30 – and I felt great. I had to go back to the family home at weekends to look after mum, where I experienced my first challenge and negative feedback.
While my mum was in hospital for the first time, my dad and I got into a routine which revolved around hospital visiting times and food and wine. The habitual nature of it gave us comfort, and my dad immediately wanted to revert back into that pattern when I was home. He was very uncomfortable about the fact that I wouldn’t. This was then compounded by an article that was published in the Sunday Times about ‘fad diets’. My dad took it upon himself to counsel me that the approach I was taking to weight loss is completely wrong and that I needed to eat ‘normally’. He was concerned that I was eating and training “like a weightlifter” and that I am just going to bulk up (not that I can bulk up much more than I already am!) and as soon as I stop the programme it will all turn to fat and more. I found his views extremely challenging to rationalise, but eventually he did acknowledge that I looked like I had lost a considerable amount of weight so it must be doing some good…
My mum has now been rehospitalised and is in a specialist unit in Newcastle which revolves us staying in hotels at the weekend. I didn’t realise how weak my willpower is – when presented with the array of restaurant food at every turn, I struggle to make ‘the right choice’ over what to eat. Last weekend I gave in which involved me falling off the wagon spectacularly. I felt that I had failed to stick to the programme and went into ‘sod it’ mode and just ate rubbish. This is where RISE came into its own. I spent some time talking it through with Jon and he highlighted that this is a known issue (especially with women) called dichotomous thinking – it is either perfect or ruined. There is no half way house. Jon helped me to see that the changes I have already made to my way of life in the past few weeks are making a positive difference. I can’t change my habits and mental processes which have been ingrained in me for over a decade all at once – it will take time. I have continued to attend group pt sessions throughout my transgressions, so I am actually far from being a failure. I am doing well.
I am now focused on making the exercise an ingrained habit and trying to eat ‘clean’ as much as possible. I am not going to beat myself up so much. I need to break this weight loss challenge down into small bite sized chunks and deal with each one in turn: exercise first, diet second, then introduce supplements etc. The fact that my ‘sod it’ mode didn’t result in me giving up completely is a great testament to RISE. It is not going to be a quick fix and it isn’t going to be easy but Rome wasn’t Built in a day.
I hope this is helpful to some of you.
L x
Jon’s note: Dichotomous thinking is something that affects a lot of people when they first start with us and is something that we help people to work on over time. I’ll do an article on this shortly.
The ‘fad diet’ and ‘balanced diet’ things that people said are something we hear quite a lot too from friends and family members of the people we work with.
We have successfully evolved on the kind of food that we recommend for millions of years. The only stuff we suggest people cut down on is the unhealthy, processed crap that has been introduced in the last 100 years or so and has led to an explosion in obesity, heart disease, diabetes, etc.
How adding processed rubbish that is bad for you into a natural, healthy, balanced diet that is good for you can make it more balanced is an interesting thought process that doesn’t really hold up to questioning.
Again, I’ll do an article soon on what a real ‘balanced diet’ looks like.
Laura’s journey: Negative Feedback – Macclesfield and Buxton Personal Training and Weight Loss
