How to re-motivate?

[Vivian]

Hello everyone, long time lurker here. I'm trying to wrap my head around re-motivating and getting back on program.

I first found PP about 10 years ago, it all made sense to me, but I didn't really follow it until a couple of years later. We had moved to a new town, one son had graduated and gone off to college, I sold my business and was enjoying temporarily not working. About that time, I decided to make peace with the extra 20 lbs I was carrying around. After all, I was in my early 40's, had been married for over 20 years and was in good health. I found PPLP in the bookstore and for some reason decided to give it a read. My father had passed away just a few months earlier after 30 years of heart disease, and it just all clicked with me that I needed to follow the plan, not so much for weight, but for health.

Well, I managed to lose 15 - 20 lbs (don't really know the starting weight, and I changed scales partway through). I felt great and even got my husband to lose too. I did well for about 3 years. What happened? I started working again. When I was home, I spent a lot of time reading this bulletin board and researching other low-carb sites for menus and tips. I cooked most meals at home and logged everything in Fitday. Now that I'm working and our "nest" is empty, more often than not we'll stop and meet for dinner on the way home or have friends over for a football game or something - all with food involved. I start the day with good intentions, but by dinner time the resolve is gone.

When I was successful before, I devoted a huge amount of time to research, recipes and logging, but my boss probably doesn't want me doing all that on company time (I'm on my lunch hour now ;)). I have to figure out how to stay on plan with all the distractions of daily life.

[Roadstr]

I remember a number of years ago I was in a specialty store that sold muscle building supplements. I said to the owner, who had muscles busting out of his t'shirt, "All I want to do is gain some muscle and loose some fat!" and he said, "Don't we all."
Only you can do it and your asking what will work for you this time because you can't do what worked for you before.
That's easy, if what you mean by successful is following PP WOE, focus on low carb veggies and protein and look at the rest as if it's the source of your failure. Once you put a spin on a bagel and cream cheese with that cup of coffee with heavy cream as a source of failure you might take a second look at it in a different light (I'm talking about the bagel here). You used reading, research and other methods to keep the spin on your thoughts going in the right direction.... it's the same thing. If you can't have it, then you have to spin it so you don't want it. Just think of it turning on your fat storing machine the next time your about to take a chip for that dip.... that's the spin.

[gitfiddle]

Hi, Vivian! Post and spin is just what I do. On my lunch hour, too! :)

[Vivian]

Breakfast and lunch are easy. I've never been a breakfast eater, so I do shakes almost every morning. Theres a Mickey D's just across the freeway, so lunch is either a grilled chicken caeser salad or a double cheeseburger/no bun.

Yesterday we met friends at a Mexican restaurant after work. I had a lite beer instead of a margarita (just a few sips of my hubands though!!). I only had 5 or 6 chips (yay willpower!) and I had an appetizer called Mexican Pile-on which was supposed to be a dip with beans, taco meat, sour cream, guacamole, salsa and cheese. I wish I had asked for no beans, because they really weren't that good and added a lot of carbs. Yeah, I could have had fajitas, but I wanted to try something different.

Weekend Challenge - San Antonio: lots of delicious Mexican food is calling!

[Vivian]

Oh - and I didn't realize which forum I was starting this in, so it probably needs to be moved! Did I mention I don't post much???

[maxlharris]

Hello everyone, long time lurker here. I'm trying to wrap my head around re-motivating and getting back on program.

I first found PP about 10 years ago, it all made sense to me, but I didn't really follow it until a couple of years later. We had moved to a new town, one son had graduated and gone off to college, I sold my business and was enjoying temporarily not working. About that time, I decided to make peace with the extra 20 lbs I was carrying around. After all, I was in my early 40's, had been married for over 20 years and was in good health. I found PPLP in the bookstore and for some reason decided to give it a read. My father had passed away just a few months earlier after 30 years of heart disease, and it just all clicked with me that I needed to follow the plan, not so much for weight, but for health.

Well, I managed to lose 15 - 20 lbs (don't really know the starting weight, and I changed scales partway through). I felt great and even got my husband to lose too. I did well for about 3 years. What happened? I started working again. When I was home, I spent a lot of time reading this bulletin board and researching other low-carb sites for menus and tips. I cooked most meals at home and logged everything in Fitday. Now that I'm working and our "nest" is empty, more often than not we'll stop and meet for dinner on the way home or have friends over for a football game or something - all with food involved. I start the day with good intentions, but by dinner time the resolve is gone.

When I was successful before, I devoted a huge amount of time to research, recipes and logging, but my boss probably doesn't want me doing all that on company time (I'm on my lunch hour now ;)). I have to figure out how to stay on plan with all the distractions of daily life.

You can never go home again.

You can only build a new house.

You had a set of circumstances before:


New Town
No Job
Newly Empty Nest
Recently Deceased Family Member

You are not in a new town anymore. You now have a job. Your nest is not newly empty and your father, while still alive in your heart, is not as recent a wound.

This set of circumstances are not replicable.

What is left to do is forge a new set of behaviors that fit with your current circumstances.
If you go out to dinner, eat low carb.
If you have friends over for football, serve low carb.
If you have a motivation for doing it, revisit that motivation and make it a daily reminder.

Ultimately, the old circumstances would be great to go home to, but that's simply not reality. You're going to have to build motivation, habits and reinforcement mechanisms that work with your current set up.

I am in the same process. I will never live in Northern Virginia, work at DOL Headquarters, be morbidly obese, and all of the other circumstances I had when I went from 265 to 210. The things I built for that (alarm timing, gym schedule, leftovers/set fall backs, etc) do not work as well with my current circumstance. They need tweaking. So, I am tweaking.

[Mitra]

Oh - and I didn't realize which forum I was starting this in, so it probably needs to be moved! Did I mention I don't post much???

I've moved it to Making Protein Power Work 24/7 :).