I thought I was done with weight loss. But maintenance was hard. I gained over 10 lbs. from my lost weight in the past two months. And one of the things that made maintenance difficult is that I started breaking my fast at night. I used to eat in the middle of the night whenever I woke up from sleeping and I often and still wake up couple times a night usually. So I would eat my breakfast type of food in the middle of the night, and then eat breakfast food again when I woke up. And I was eating more rather than keeping to my portion control. And I was eating snacks which were not on my schedule of meal times! Basically I was eating extra snacks. So that is how I went from around 135 to around 145 lbs.
Clothes fit ok still and I feel healthy. But I know my body fat percentage and BMI are back to unhealthy range. So I started wanting to eat healthy again implementing portion control and also eating only planned meals at scheduled times. I tried to journal my way to a discovery of why I started eating more and eating at night again, but journaling wasn’t quite getting me to stop eating more or not eat in the middle of the night. But what helped me was a podcast. It’s only been couple of nights of not eating at night and not eating extra snacks and eating portioned meals. But still, I started feeling like I could manage my eating and not eat through my emotions.
I listened the other day to Katrina Ubell MD weight loss for busy physicians podcast on imagination. The podcast was called using imagination to lose weight. She talked about how we use imaginations all the time, way more than we realize. Basically whenever we make judgments about what people are thinking about us, or what we think of others, we are using our imagination! And also when we tell ourselves that we can’t lose weight and keep it off, we are imagining a reality in which that is true. So if we are imagining a future about ourselves when we believe we can’t lose weight, why not choose to imagine a world in which weight loss and keeping the weight off is possible? In my particular case, I thought, why don’t I direct my imagination to envision a reality, a world in which when I wake up in the middle of the night, I don’t eat and just go back to sleep?
Drum roll please. It worked! Power of the mind is strong and amazing. It’s practically magical! I got up in the middle of the night. I would think for a split second, eat? Then I would quickly respond back, as if it were a knee jerk reaction, no. And then I turn around and go back to bed. That is really, honestly, truly what I experienced past two nights. My weight was on an uphill trajectory. But it’s on a downward slope. More than the weight on the scale, I know this means I will be losing some fat rather than storing more fat in my body, some near my organs, which is what I fear. I highly recommend the podcast. And try directing your imagination. We are shaping our thoughts, feelings, and action by our imagination anyway. So if we are doing that anyway, why not direct our thoughts by imagining something that is connected to a positive outcome rather than a negative outcome? Let me know what you think.
revalicekim 