I have been thinking a lot recently about how this year turned out to be so different from every other year that I tried to diet. Here are some of the influences that made a difference:
1. I had what I considered to be a fairly serious problem with 1 of my legs due to blood circulation problems due to my weight.
2. I had a strong desire to get home and visit my parents, but flying was going to be very risky with already clear blood circulation problems in my leg.
3. Slimming World helped, because it's AWESOME! The recipes are healthy, tasty and filling! What more could you ask for. Nevermind the fact its a sustainable way to eat the rest of your life, even when you have nothing left to lose!
4. I had a friend, Steve, who pushed me real hard to start exercising, which has had an incredible effect on my state of mind and attitude to this whole thing!
5. My wife, Karen, led from the front by tirelessly, and some days being very tired from it, cooking and preparing nearly all my meals the Slimming World way...Tasty, Filling and SYN Free! Without her help, it would have been too much effort!
6. Going public, facebook and blogging about what I was doing, for ALL my friends, old and new, work colleagues, old and new, and my Family to see, was a massive amount of pressure. I chose to do it for that exact reason. There was NO WAY I was going to puclicly fail at this for literally EVERYONE I knew to see!
However, the more I contemplate it, the more I realise that there were 3 vital steps that made the biggest difference:
1. I chose to do it for ME. Every other time I had someone else pushing me into starting. Or making me feel that bad about being fat I did it because I felt like I HAD TO! This time I actually went into this thinking it would fail because every other attempt to diet had failed, but that this was a vital step toward a gastric band which I believed at the time was the answer. It wasn't till I was 3 weeks in, after a few decent losses with minimal effort, that I decided to give this a real go, for ME!
2. At about the same time, I had met a couple people (Lesley, Ian and Stuart) that turned that choice and desire into an honest, sincere belief that losing all the weight possible! They had proved it by doing it themselves! That for me was a vital element. I'd never believed I could do it. I had hoped. I had wished. I even wanted it! But I had never beleived it was actually possible!
3. Then doing it became a case of small targets. Achievable, and challenging targets. The key was making me have to work to achieve them, but at least making them achievable, because achieving them bred an incredible feeling of satisfaction from the success. Eventually I became addicted to that feeling of succeeding. Examples:
a) Steve set up very small achievable exercise goals. I started walking 200m a day, 6 days a week. Initially they seemed stupid targets. But it was hard to get up early, get dressed for a walk no matter the weather, and get out there for 5 minutes to walk around the block. Believe it or not, at 28 stone, walking 300m was actually a challenge! Every week we increased the distance. Just enough to keep it challenging to ensure the feeling of accomplishment at the end of the week.
b) I promised to give up crisps and bread for a week. When I succeeded at that, I thought..Ok one more week. Then a third! Eventually lasting that long without them felt so good I had to keep going. Every now and then, I didn't last a week. So the next week I was more adamant to go without!
c) Steve set a longer term goal to run a 5km fun run in June. Despite an injury to my leg a week or 2 prior, and the fun run turning out to be a fair distance away, instead of setting a new goal for a closer fun run another day, I absolutely HAD to achieve THAT goal. My addiction to achieving my goals demanded it!
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