A matter of perspective...

Exactly right- everything is relative, and our world is 90% mental.

Stay strong and consistency will land your goals.

Cheers.

I'm gonna give a little weight watchers mantra....It's not a diet, it's a lifestyle change. Allow yourself a little leeway to live. If you make your eating plan too restrictive, you'll never stick with it. Instead of taking the whole weekend off, try to think through those choices that are less healthy, and only pick those indulgences that are really worth it to you. Find a little balance and elasticity to your eating plan, and I think it will be more sustainable over the long haul.

JimmyL, You are 100% right it's about lifestyle and not about diet.

Before the change in perspective, for me, eating right was something that did between the times on the weekends when I ate how I wanted.  It was about diet and doing without during the week. Since I have had a shift in attitude, that's just now how I eat anymore. I can honestly say the desire for the stuff that I have longed for in the past is just gone.

Trust me, I am currently offshore on an oil platform and there is every kind of cookie, ice cream and pie you could ever want right down the hall. The desire is just gone.

The change has been so profound I just thought I would share the change in thinking.

I think it is about perspective! I notice that on days off, if I stay in my pj's I dont do anything. But if I shower, dress, put on makeup, and wear my jewlery, I will continue to match the effort I first put into my body by doing all those things!

I just wanted to provide a little update on where I am at since my change of perspective.

Let me start by saying what I have seen in the past 2 months was a little unexpected.  I have lost right at 1/2 a pound a day every day since the first of the year. I know this seems impossible and maybe even unhealty but it's neither.

As of the last time I weighed which was a couple of days ago I had lost 27 pounds.  This seems impossible to me after all of the effort that I had put in previously with no success.

Let me tell you what happened. As of the first of the year I said I wouldn't cheat at all. So I ate a relatively "clean" diet. I started dropping weight slowly at first.  On January 15 I had to go to an offshore oil platform for 3 weeks to manage a project that I was working on. Luckily they offered some healthy choices for each meal. Because the diet of the offshore worker is mainly fried I was limited to Chicken and fish and vegetables with the occasional baked potato. I found that to eat healthy offshore I had to stay away from processed food because it was usually covered in oil. (by processed I mean any food that goes through a process that changes what it is such as wheat to flour to pasta)  

After the first week something remarkable happened. My hunger dropped off to almost nothing. I quit craving everything and no longer felt deprived. I began to feel better and have more energy.
What I was eating was really working for me so I kept it up.

I have maintained this diet for the past two months. I did cheat once because my wife begged me to go out to dinner and I relented. Doing this set my weightloss back one week. Before I went to dinner I weighed 245 and it took me a week to get back to 245. This further enforces the my idea that the cheating on the weekends was all it took to negate my efforts all week.

So what am I eating you ask. It's not low carb and it doesn't really fall into a catagory as a diet as much as it does a different way of eating. I still eat a balanced diet but I just eat different things.  Let me say what I don't eat first.

I don't eat condiments at all. These are just things to trick your palate into thinking that what you are eating is good. If you go without them for a while you will learn to appreciate the true taste of food. After a while you just don't miss them.

I don't eat "processed" food. By processed I don't mean frozen food I mean food that goes through a process that changes the "state" of food. Cheese didn't start off as cheese. It started off as milk and changes to become an end product. I don't eat cheese, yogurt, pasta, bread or anything else like that. I don't eat salads. I think they would probably be OK to eat without the dressing, but without the dressing what's the point.  

I do eat vegetables, fruit, meat, baked potatos and anything else you can think of that's natural.
The only processed thing I eat is cereal in the morning. (honey bunches of oats with almonds) I am usually in a hurry and I enjoy it. I am still losing weight so it stays for now.

I also eat as much as I like. Turns out if you eat this diet you really won't have the desire to over eat.

As far as  your excuses go let me address them.

1. It costs to much to eat this way.
    - Not true. I spend the work week in an apartment away from my home. Each week I purchase the groceries for that week. I have nothing left over at the end of the week. I used to eat lean cuisines and oatmeal. My weekly bill including snacks like granola bars and the 100 calorie snack packs was about 43 dollars. This week I spent 23 dollars to feed myself for 1 week (5 days).

2. It takes too long to prepare the meals.
  - Again not true. Each night I dump a bag of vegetables and some frozen chicken and spices in a small pot, add a little water to conduct some heat and get some steam going and BAM 20 minutes later you have a meal. Eat half of it and save the other half for lunch the next day.

I want to add that this works for me. I know it isn't a one size fits all kind of thing and all people are different. Some folks can't just eat the stuff I am eating longterm (my wife included). For those that can this might be a viable solution to long term weightloss.  Good luck in your journey~

Edited by eitek1 2010-02-26 9:41 AM