Thursday, February 19, 2004

Thoughts on Progress

I had such a good time last night talking and exercising with Sarah. It also made me realize just how much I've learned in the past year. Not just about food, and how to make the most of points, etc, but also about myself.

There is a WW pyramid (or bullseye, depending on the leader), that is a diagram of what the weight loss process changes when it is a life-long commitment to a healthy lifestyle. Roughly, it goes something like this- you'll have to mentally draw a pyramid around the following list

Identity
Beliefs
Capabilities
Behaviors
Environment


Basically, your environment is the base of the pyramid- and if you don't have a solid base, the entire pyramid collapses. So, in the same way you start to build a pyramid from the bottom, you start weight loss from the base- your environment. (For example, if you came to my house and were craving potato chips, the closest thing I'd have for you is baked latkes for 1 point each! There hasn't been a potato chip in our kitchen for almost 8 months, and even then it was only to host a bridal shower!).

I personally think that the 'beliefs' and 'capabilities' levels are a bit mixed (the way blue and purple blend into indigo in a rainbow). You change your capabilities after you believe you can; likewise, as your capabilities change, your conventional beliefs about yourself will change. For example, my whole life I've thought I was 'big boned', or 'naturally thick', or other such designations that would inherently prevent me from being thin. *as a side note, did you ever hear that if you can overlap your thumb and middle finger when wrapping them around your wrist, you were small-boned, just touch 'em and you were medium-boned, but if you couldn't touch your fingers together, you were big-boned? Well, it doesn't work. I didn't used to be able to touch my fingers at all, now I can overlap them a bit.* As I lose weight, I'm realizing that I will never be built like my sister, but I can look a bit more like her! I can, and rightfully should, weight in the 130's and 140's. My natural tendencies towards food will incline me closer to 140, but either way, it's a healthy range- one I never believed my body structure would allow!

So, I'm a bit off-topic as it relates to Sarah, but in talking with her last night, I realized that I probably really overwhelmed her with all the info I threw down in 2 hours. I mean, I've been doing this for a year solid, not to mention the 5 other times I've been a member and lost varying amounts of weight. She's been OP for a whole 24 hours, and doesn't need to concern herself with the minutia of which flavor of whole wheat bread has the lowest fat while still packing a protein punch and not tasting like cardboard. There is so much knowledge to combine between Kashrut, hypoglycemia, WW rules and guidelines, conventional nutrition knowledge, etc etc etc, and I'm a bit surprised at how far I've come, and how much I've learned in the past year.

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