Mastering Maintenance

Since I last checked in I decided to end my attempt at a Whole30 because of major sleep issues. I'm feeling much better since I ended it on Tuesday but my sleep issues haven't completely resolved. My shoulder was acting up again last night so I had trouble falling asleep because I couldn't get comfortable. I finally did what I should have done earlier in the day and took some Motrin. I'm leery of taking too much Motrin but I think it's better to rely on it short term if it gets me back in action sooner. I went to the gym Wednesday morning and did my workout but the pain in my joints kept me from enjoying any of it. That's why I think it's more important to manage the pain rather than worry about any side affects from Motrin.

The title of this post refers to something that I'm reluctant to talk about, something that's pretty embarassing. But I have to talk about it if I have any chance of fixing it. I was feeling rather down on Wednesday (due to the joint pain, sleep problems, "failure" to finish the Whole30 goal) so I decided to reach back in my archives to listen to some of Leigh Peele's podcasts. The one I picked was called "Belief in Fat Loss". I don't know why I picked that one but I'm glad I did because it hit me over the head with major emotion bombs. There were so many nuggets of goodness in there I can't do it justice but describing them. At one point, Leigh explained what she was saying with an hypothetical scenario that was anything but hypothetical to me. She was describing my life exactly to a T. And it hurt big-time because the question posed by the scenario was why would I want to do this (meaning trying to live a healthy lifestyle and lose body fat).

It's a good question. Why would I want to keep doing this? I'm not trying to date. My husband doesn't care if I do this or not. There's no one who cares about this except me. It would be a hell of a lot easier to not do it. I realized that the reason is pride and vanity. Yes, I want to be strong and healthy, especially going into my senior years, but I want to look GOOD. No, I want to look DAMN FINE. Like I could date any guy if I wanted to. In other words, my self esteem wants to do this. Which is why it's embarassing to admit this. My self esteem has take a big hit over the last year because I've been unable to finish the job of losing the fat and really establish a permanent and sustainable healthy maintenance. Then Leigh said you have to master maintenance in order to master the deficit. If you don't really master maintenance then all you're doing is yo-yo dieting.

And that's when the emotion bomb really fell on me. That's when it finally dawned on me that's exactly what I've been doing the past year. I diet for a period of time (sometimes long, sometimes short) and then say I'm going to do maintenance, usually for a vacation, and wind up using the time to drift back to overeating. I have never mastered maintenance. I have no idea what it feels like to truly eat at maintenance and certainly not for any length of time. That's when I had to admit to myself what is at the heart of the matter. I've never really put my food issues behind me. I've always thought that because I haven't indulged in binge behavior for almost 20 years that I didn't have food issues any more. But that's not true. I do have issues because I obsess about food all the time. I love to pore over cooking blogs. I'm always thinking about when the next meal is coming. I love going out to dinner and when I know we're going out I think about it all day. And the biggest thing is that I still look at sweets as the forbidden holy grail, my "precious". That's the one thing I don't allow myself so that when I do decide to eat it, it's like taking drugs.

I don't think I will ever have any success losing more body fat until I master maintenance and deal with the food addiction. I don't know how I'm going to do that but I want to start by learning what the heck maintenance means for me. I've never actually done it so I have to learn by trial and error (hopefully not too much error!) I calculated what my maintenance calories should be based on the fact that I'm more sedentary now with this new job. I will track my food every day in SparkPeople so I learn what that number of calories (2100) look like in the amount of food I get. I know my food addiction will rear their head during this time because that part of myself looks at "maintenance" as oh goody I get to eat whatever I want. When I don't let that happen, my food addiction is going to complain. When that happens I will write about and listen to Leigh's podcasts again. I hope to figure out what is really triggering my addictions other than the food itself so I can figure how to fix it. I have no idea how long that will take but right now I'm thinking I'll do maintenance for two weeks and then re-evaluate where I'm at. In the meantime, I'll do my workouts and rehab to heal my joint problems. I can't think about doing a fat loss deficit now because it will just be more yo-yo dieting and not really permanent.