New stats

These are my first stats since October. What happened is that I was at an emotional and physical low point when it was time to measure in November, so my trainer suggested I skip it that month. Which was good. I think he sensed that I was near a breaking point.

Then in December we did measure, but I had gained. I was upset and I didn't write down the numbers, and I cried in the car on the way home. Not writing them down was a mistake (not that I can't get them from him now). Not facing something does not make it go away. That's an old coping trick from childhood that has no place in an adult's life...unless you are Scarlett O'Hara (look it up).

So no more skipping the measurments.

And as I have written, my low point was followed by a rally and I am on fire right now! Check out that waist measurement - 6 inches lost! There's a number anyone can love!

The sizes have question marks because I haven't bought any new clothes in a while. That will change soon.

Look what I found!

This morning I needed a three-ring binder for a project, and I'm working from home, so I pull one out of the bookshelf and lo and behold, it's the 2007 version of my "new diet" book which I started exactly one year ago today!

Here is my "before" picture from that book. I was 315 pounds:


This really made me feel good...because I weighed 285 on Monday night which means I am down 30 pounds in the last year. Wow! And that got me to thinking...I know my top weight ever was 330. So that means at this point I am 45 pounds lower than my all-time high. That is awesome!

I'm not exactly sure if this is me at my all-time high, but it would be close (it's from October 2001):


I know...the dark hair. Not my favorite look.

I get new official stats from the gym on Saturday.

Beliefs and feelings

Yesterday I spent the holiday working on my plan for overcoming my food issue. Now that I'm exercising regularly, it's time to face my food problem head-on.

One of the many books I'm reading about emotional eating is called "If I Am So Smart, Why Can't I Lose Weight?" by Brooke Castillo. The book's primary focus is to change the way we react to the feelings that cause us emotional eaters to overeat. In order to change your reaction, you have to understand and change your feelings. In order to do so, however, you have to explore the reasons why you have those feelings.

The author describes how to figure out the beliefs that are the source of our feelings. She says beliefs cause feelings, which cause actions, which cause results. If you change the belief, you ultimately change the result. This makes sense to me.

At work we call this a "root cause analysis". When we have a production or computer problem, the true cause of it is usually not obvious, or the problem would not have happened. We usually have to go through several rounds of questions to find the cause. If the cause of the problem was a badly-worded instruction in a manual, the problem will keep happening until we fix the wording in the manual.

So each time I feel the urge to eat when I'm not physically hungry, my first step is to stop and identify the feeling I'm having, then figure out where that feeling comes from. At the root will be a belief for me to explore and challenge and change.

I used to think that I was incapable of changing my feelings, that they were just there and I could only keep trying to change how I reacted to them. To think that I have the ability to actually change the cause of those feelings is empowering.