Saturday Swapit #19

Welcome to week nineteen of Saturday Swapit, a forum where you are invited to share ideas, tips and diet stories to encourage others who may be flagging or losing heart.
Last week was about budgets and generated some great comments.  Nip back and have a read of them here.

DISCLAIMER:
I am not, nor do I claim to be, a professional dietician, nutritionist or diet programme consultant.
I rejoined SW in May 2019 and have managed to stay within my target parameters since August 2019.
Saturday Swapit is not intended as a diet programme, and anyone who wants or needs to lose serious weight should consult a medical professional or their GP.
Topic for this week is ‘Giving Up.’

There are loads of reasons for giving up, like the weight isn’t coming off anymore,  boredom, frustration, fed up with the jokes, put downs and lack of support, or on the brighter side, you’ve reached your target or accomplished what you intended so there is no need to continue or try now.

Ah.
All that effort, success is yours and you’re feeling great……….. then go back to your old eating habits and before you know it, those pounds have come back again plus a few others and you can no longer blame shrinkage in the washing machine.
It’s a fact of life, and a vicious dietary circle. IMO, for a diet to be totally successful, it’s not just a case of changing your eating habits for a specific period of time, but for life.
If your new food intake is satisfying, varied, your weight is more or less stable (it will always fluctuate by a few pounds either way) , and you are enjoying your food, why tempt fate and change back to the old ways which did the damage of weight gain in the first place? You can even have the occasion splurge of all things naughty and it won’t hurt that much long term.
 
This of course is a very generalised statement as there are many factors that lead to weight gain, and they are not all food related.
However, there is always hope that all is not lost, and for most of us long term dietees, we have a few ‘tricks’ up our sleeve, and that does not mean starvation or working out for hours to sweat off those excess pounds when we have ‘had a rest’.

I have been naughty this week. Actually, 150% bad, so much so that the diet was completely ignored for FOUR DAYS.
It was a friend’s 80th birthday so I had cake, a generous slice covered in butter icing.
Syns? Don’t bother, Well off the charts.
Tuesday was our wedding anniversary. No cake, but we did have a set meal for two which involved onion bhajis, chicken Korma, chicken Moussaka, naan bread and pilau rice, and a small bottle of wine!
Wednesday was an aftermath day when the taste buds had woken up in full drool mode and we had everything we shouldn’t, including a bar of chocolate (show willing and it was between us), cheesecake (not made by me, so again the syns would be off the charts) but I did make an effort and have a lot of veg with my dinner plus fruit salad for my last snack.
Thursday was my birthday, and I’d bought a cake…….. one that served 15, but there were only 10 of us having a piece. No special meal this time, just left overs from Wednesday with cold stuffing balls, bubble and squeak and a couple of slices of spam. I was given another cake and a box of chocolates so it was an excellent day!!
Friday it was all out war and getting back on track as it’s weigh in on Monday and I have my work cut out for me.

I hadn’t given up on my diet, just given myself time out. The food diary has DAY OFF scrawled over it for three days and the syns are partying in overdrive on two of the other four. The trick up my sleeve is that I know my weaknesses, so when I put my mind to it, I don’t pull a rabbit out of the hat, just a bunch of carrots.
I’m not saying I’ll lose all of the extra pounds I’ve put on this week, but I will get back on plan and they will eventually push off.  I did this at Christmas, enjoyed all of the traditional things with guiltless gusto, and then went back on plan after Boxing Day. and by New Year the scales were back where they were on Christmas Eve.  Sometimes we have to get the naughtiness out of our system, be it a craving for savouries or sweet stuff (which usually is mine), but after we’ve satisfied that, we can get back on the diet wagon and resume where we left off.
Be kind to yourself. No-one likes doing something they hate or resent. Dieting is no different, but with so many varieties of food now available practically all year, we can enjoy our food, budgets permitting of course.

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