I'm properly ashamed. Yesterday, I already had the most SERIOUS angry and depressing thoughts about dieting, starting goals, living life, eating breakfast, and everything else ever forever. I wanted to wallow around in it and indulge as if it were that blasted choclate cake from Ikea that I get every time along with my Swedish meatballs with extra meatball.... I was feeling so rebellious and belligerent that I purposely read ALL of the one-star reviews on Amazon for the Fast Metabolism Diet. These people felt my pain!! They were wallowy as well!!! I don't think it's legal to copy and paste their words here, but lots of them WERE downright hilarious in their..uh.....lack of..um..intelligence? One lady was ranting and raving about how she had spent $800 on groceries for JUST HER ALONE and still had only lost about 4 pounds. She was 130 pounds and wanted to lose 15 more. She said something like, "I could have lost THAT much weight just eating how I NORMALLY eat, with POTATO CHIPS AND EVERYTHING!!" (Come to think of it, I might want to be a little nicer, since this diminutive lady might end up reading this, finding me, and beating me to death with her beloved potato chips.)
Anyhow, the one-star reviews were just what you would expect. Anger, anger anger. "I followed this to a T, and it didn't work and I gained weight! I'm beginning to think that Dr. Oz is a filthy liar, and just swindles women into buying weight loss products that will never work!!!" Somehow, these one star reviews soothed my nerves. I suppose misery DOES truly love company. I wanted to "accompany" all of these people in their failure. That's right. I wanted to fail. In my brain, failing seemed to much easier. Why is that? Why would I POSSIBLY want to spend a month doing a strict diet, only to fail? I think I know part of the reason. I felt like, it didn't work, then I could go on with business as usual. I could feel sorry for myself, I could be angry and resentful toward my body and the way my clothing was fitting. I would stay in my wretched comfort zone. No one would really judge me for being there. I would say, "yeah, my body just WILL NOT lose weight" and other women would nod their heard sympathetically and talk about how THEIR bodies are totally the same. They understand. They're happy there with you. Misery loves company.
On the flip side, if I had great success, I would have to keep going. Success breeds success. It puts the pressure on. It says, "Wow! Good job! You DID IT! I wonder what ELSE you could do?" Success wants you to reach greater heights. It makes demands of you. It wants you to never enter back into your comfort zone again. When you want to wallow in self pitying, it demands that you get over yourself and go change the world! Oh, it's so much work!! Can't I just stay here in my little hidey hole???
This is another book that has changed my life, and I think that no matter WHAT diet or goal program you're setting out to accomplish, you should use this. It helps you retrain your brain. I'm not positive that you end up thinking like a "thin" person, and so perhaps the title of her book was not quite right. "Thin" people still have self-deflating, self-defeating, sour thoughts. Anyhow, the idea is that you use cognitive therapy to rearrange your thinking, and when you start heading down a bad path, you teach yourself to switch directions. I call it "talking yourself down from the cliff." I imagine myself up at the edge of a precarious precipice. "I'm going to jump!! It's not worth it!! I HATE life and HATE myself right now!!" But then, there is this calm, rational version of me at the bottom of the cliff, and I'm all like, "Michelle, you are a wonderful person and life is beautiful and worth living. Come down from the edge."
Speaking of positive and coming down from the edge. Here are my stats for today.
Michelle-Day 4-183 pounds. What the junk! That's actually down NEARLY 3 pounds from yesterday? Oh, no! Success! Rearing its ugly head!!
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