I wrote a few days ago about giving up sugar and to help jump start that plan, I am starting a 3 day cleanse tomorrow morning. It consists of 3 nutritional shakes a day with specific vegetables and fruits eaten throughout the day. I am NOT going to weigh or measure myself before doing this cleanse because I do NOT believe in numbers in my personal fitness journey. Coming from my background of serious eating disorder and body image issues, I cannot weigh or measure myself. I went to the doctor in November and was weighed, of course. I usually ask the nurse not to say the number when I get on and I don't look either. But the doctor blurted it out at one point in our conversation and I almost burst into tears right there! I know from that number that I've gained about 20 pounds in the last year and having my weight gain actually quantified makes me sick. I have to push that to the back of my head and try to ignore it. A number is a dangerous thing for an obsessive person like me. So instead, I judge progress by pictures I take of myself (yes, lots of selfies!) and by how my clothes fit. And I can tell you right now, I do not like how my pictures look or how my clothes fit! That's why I'm jump starting getting back on the clean-eating-wagon with this cleanse.
My main goal this year is first to shed the holiday weight gain, but also increase my maintenance calories. Everybody has a resting metabolic rate, which is how many calories you burn at rest. For many people this number is very high. For others, it is very low. I am one of the others. Right now my maintenance is around 1000 calories. For the last many years I've eaten less than 1,000 calories a day on average and when I turned 30 this past year I decided to stop doing that to myself. I slowly added calories back to my diet and that's why I started gaining weight. But you cannot live on 1,000 calories a day! It's not healthy and I can't do it anymore.
Last year for my 30th birthday I made the goal of getting super lean and competing in a bikini competition in 2015, but there is no way I could do that this year because I can't eat enough to maintain the amount of muscle I'd need to put on or enough to cut and still be healthy during the cutting phase. A coach I talked to said I need to get my maintenance calories up to at least 1500, if not more. So instead of setting an unattainable goal like competing this year, I have to step back and make smaller, more attainable goals. So for this year, I'm not looking to shed all my fat and get super ripped and lean. My plan is to stay as lean as I can while working with a health coach on calculating my macros (carbs, fats, proteins) week to week to try and get my calories up. I might gain more weight :-( But the goal is to increase very slowly and maintain a clean diet so that weight gain is a minimum and all the while, I will be revving up my metabolism to get it back on track after the years of abuse I have put it through and then later I will be able to healthily shed the weight I have gained.
When it comes to goal setting, especially with our bodies, you have to set reasonable and attainable goals. Setting an unattainable goal that you won't reach will set you up for failure. If you need to lose 100 pounds this year, set your goal for 50. Weight loss can be a slow process for many people whose bodies aren't primed for it. Weight loss can take time. If 6 months have gone by and you've only lost 25 pounds of your goal, how likely will you be to get upset and throw in the towel? But if your goal was to lose 50 pounds, then you're halfway there! How good does that feel?
Set yourself LONG term goals and then break them up into short term, attainable goals. That will be the key to your success.
No comments:
Post a Comment