Ok 2017..I'm ready for ya!

It's been a while since I posted anything to my blog. My apologies  for that. I do write quit a bit for my Support Board and my FaceBook page, so I hope you all take time to visit there. But being as how this is a blog, and they tend to be a little more personal at times, I decided to come here to share what my plan is for this new year that is rapidly approaching.

Like most everyone, I have overdone it with the holiday eating. Yes, I know better, but I also know it's not a death sentence because I have my beloved Cambridge to rescue me! My son and his lovely girlfriend have temporarily moved in with us and their eating habits are typical for most 20 something's. Lots of sugar, fried fast foods, pizza, and...well..you get the idea. My son likes to cook and bake and I've been lax in my normally strict eating habits. So..like all of you, I will be beginning my Cambridge Diet damage control come January. Well...I'm actually going to start right after Christmas. I feel sluggish and uncomfortable with the weight I've gained. I have a very small window with extra weight and I feel it right away. Not good.

Will you join me?

Changes And Challenges

If there's one thing that life teaches us.. it's that it happens while we are busy making plans.

We come to the beginning of our Cambridge journey with a common plan, to lose the weight and get healthy. We have no way of knowing what twists and turns our life may take along the way, and it can get pretty twisted at times! When you consider all that is required of us to succeed at this, it is not unlike a master juggler keeping all his objects in the air, even if the floor tilts or someone tosses in a few more items to the mix. It's no small task and requires a whole new collection of skills and practice.

Typically, when faced with challenges, we would self medicate with food and ignore a lot of the emotional and physical issues we are dealing with. "Drug of choice" and all that. Being stripped of that coping tool can cause some panic with the realization of how dependent we have become on comfort eating, or how much in denial we may be about our personal struggles. While you may have been prepared for the physical demands of being on a restricted diet, you probably were caught unprepared for the emotional ones.

As you begin, (or continue) your Cambridge experience, go in to it knowing that at times you will be required to face emotions you may want to pacify with food, or you may suddenly be faced with a health crisis that you will want to escape from temporarily by self medicating in the same way. These old habits and behaviors need to be removed from your arsenal of coping tools. Finding their replacement is part of the goal when changes and challenges come your way.

Which Comes First?

It always interests me how the same person can have very different experiences doing the exact same diet at different times. The only thing that changes is the person's mind.

Typically, when we begin any diet, the first thing we do is clean out all the food that may distract us or tempt us. We purge the kitchen (as much as the family will allow) and try to clear the calendar of events where food will be the center focus. We plan our necessary grocery shopping trips and try to avoid those places we may have previously stopped for fast food etc. We structure our environment as best as we can to set ourselves up for success, but we completely forget that while purging the external world of distractions, it is our mind that is the control room of our behavior.

Just as a person purges their living space of distractions, replacing them with healthy alternatives, we need to purge our minds of negative distracting thoughts, replacing them with positive, forward thinking, progressively determined thoughts.

We can't always control our environment, but we can control our reaction to it and that is one of the keys to a successful weight loss, and just as important, a successful maintenance.

Anniversary and Birthday

Today is my 4th anniversary of marriage to my loving husband, Andy. I will be forever grateful for when this old cowboy viewed my profile on Match.com. We ended up meeting when we never would have otherwise. He began proposing to me on our first date. Either he was crazy, or insightful.

This month I also turn 57. The same age my sister turned right before her death 2 years ago. I can't comprehend being at the end of my life as she was the month of her 57th birthday. I'm just getting started! But as we know, none of us are guaranteed another day or hour.

Some people say, Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. But what they don't think about is how much quality of life is lost by living irresponsibly. Life in an unhealthy struggling body is not ideal. I know. I lived in one for 20 years. I told my self it was bad genes, but that was a lie. For some people the option of a healthy body is not in their hands. But for most it is completely a matter of choice. We can be mindful of the choices we make that impact our health and that offer us an active fulfilled experience during our turn on Earth, or we can be careless and pay the price.

Day 16 of Sole Source (SS)

I decided back on the 15th to get back on SS to lose some weight that I had been accumulating since my vacation back in Oct. My husband and I went down south to the Florida Keys and I was in vacation mode. I pretty much ate whatever he did and while that has no effect on him, for me it was probably more then twice what I would normally consume.  With that and the holidays, I got kind of lax in my dietary habits and some weight had crept on while I was looking the other way. My pants were tight and that's my signal for getting my act together. So, along with a great group of people on my Support Board, ( http://members5.boardhost.com/pam140/ ) I jumped on the SS train and I've been going strong!

I made the decision not to weigh when I started. I didn't want a number to mess with my head and I figured it really didn't matter anyway. In fact, I have not weighed at all! Yes, 16 days and I have absolutely no idea how much I've lost or what I weigh. I'm feeling kind of free because of it! No judge and jury staring up at me from the scale every morning. No number in my head telling me how I should feel about myself and if I was going to have a good day or a bad one. I am stresslessly going about my days knowing that I am doing everything I can possibly do to allow my body to lose the weight. It's a different approach, especially for me since I tend to be a meticulous chart keeper.

About a  year and a half ago I had set a goal to get back to my high school weight by my 56th birthday. Well..I didn't get there.  Now my 57th is just 19 days away. I won't make that goal in 19 days, but I'm determined I will be on my way there!

What Is Your Normal?

Being a person who has struggled with being overweight since toddler-hood, my sense of self was that I was an obese person, like I was made this way. Obese was my "normal". My identity. My destiny. My attempts at weight loss were frequent and varied, but the results were always temporary. The times I spent close to my healthy weight never changed my personal identity. I always knew that all those pounds of fat were waiting in the wings, ready to slam back on me. I was never safe from it, like I was being stalked.

The emotional chaos of never feeling at peace with my body took it's toll in many ways. Every choice and decision I made in life, somehow pivoted from my low self esteem and my knowledge that I would never be good enough.

I could never figure out how other people maneuvered through their lives, seemingly free from the constant anxiety I had with food and body image. Did other people go to school with a burning empty stomach in their attempt to be normal? I would watch my thin friends and try to figure out how they ate so much, so freely, without any guilt or shame. Why weren't my siblings fat? What was wrong with me? Why was I different? Oh..right...obesity is me.. my normal.

I lost my weight on Cambridge 14 years ago. The amount of effort to lose the weight, was nothing compared to the mental work I had to do to change everything I believed about myself and who I was. Instead of seeing my obesity as normal and moments of thinness as temporary, I had to flip that and force myself to believe that my obesity was what had been the deviation from normal. My body had spent 42 years trying to deal with my physical and emotional demands. It hadn't failed me, I had failed it. I may or may not be more prone to weight gain then someone else with different DNA, but that is my reality to accept and to be responsible for.

We all come in to this world with different challenges. There is no standard "normal". Just your own personal story. My story is that for most of my life, I believed a lie. A lie I convinced myself was true. Obesity is not my identity, my destiny, or my curse. I spent my life justifying my poor health and not ever really taking responsibility for it.  I am not that person anymore.

Starting Sole Source Today

I made the decision to jump back on SS for a while to lose the extra pounds I've gained since Oct. We went on vacation and then we had the holidays...well...no explanation needed. My pants are tight and fortunately I have my beloved Cambridge to come to my rescue once again! I just had my first shake for the day, the one I call my "Favorite Blend". I take one full container of 330 Rich Chocolate and mix it in a big Tupperware bowel with a container of 330 Original Dutch Chocolate. This gives me the creamy thick texture of the Rich shake along with the deeper chocolate taste of the Dutch. I add about 1/4 cup of cocoa powder and mix it all together. Voila! Perfection! To make it even more dreamy, I keep a jar of brewed decaf coffee in the fridge and use that along with a couple of ice cubes in place of the water. Now we're talkin'!

So I figure I'm going to give it a couple of weeks and then decide if I want to start adding food back to my diet. I'm looking forward to that wonderful feeling of lightness and clarity that being in ketosis gives. This will be fun!
Cheers!

Customer Success Story!

This is my customer, Mary Gilmour, who lost 45 pounds! She submitted her story to Cambridge Diet USA and was chosen for the Jan Newsletter that is sent to all Distributors and customers on the emailing list. For her story Cambridge will pay her either $250 cash, or $300 in free product, her choice! Congratulations Mary. You look amazing!

Maintenance?

Like most, I have lost and gained the same weight so many times over my life that I could never put a number to it. The gaining part took no effort what so ever. The losing part seemed like endless sacrifice. Maintenance? Hmm...now that was an interesting concept. From childhood on I was either losing or gaining...never maintaining. My body didn't do maintenance. Dieting=weight loss. Eating=weight gain. Those were the two options. 

So needless to say, these past 15 years of figuring out how to not gain the 120+ pounds I had lost back.. has been as labor intensive as anything I did to get here. My body is so prone to weight gain that for me, maintenance requires vigilance and effort. I wish I could say that my body was "healed" from being a fat storing machine, but that wouldn't be true. If I deviate from my normal controlled eating plan for more then an occasional meal now and then, I will gain. If I take a break for a week and  eat like everyone else around me is eating, including people who are not overweight, I will gain. And it's not necessarily the calorie count that is the issue, but the food itself that will cause the weight gain. 

Grain based foods and sugar are the welcome mat in front of my fat cells. My insulin spikes and every calorie gets locked away like squirrels storing nuts for the winter.  On top of that, eating them also awakens the sleeping beast that is appetite and hunger. Uncontrolled type 2 diabetics can have a voracious appetite that is beyond anything imaginable. As far as you body is concerned, it is starving, no matter how much you consume. Obesity is the natural result.  

It is my JOB to be mindful of the food I consume and I know that each choice comes with consequence for me, good or bad. Because I am diabetic, I have a built in alarm system that fires if I go astray for more then the occasional deviation from my normal diet. I will feel like crap! I keep my blood sugar and insulin levels under control with lifestyle choices, but when I choose something different, BAM! Diabetic Pam!  

It frustrates me to accept the fact that I will never be"normal", whatever that is. I'm still not sure how "normal" people go about their lives. Do they just naturally run checks and balances in their heads constantly to keep their weight and health on track? I know that's how I live now. I generally know the caloric and nutritional value of everything I put in my mouth and I keep a running tally in my head. I see other people eating breads and sugary deserts and know that I can't have it. Let me rephrase that, I choose not to have it. Do I want it? You know I do, but if I want to stay on this planet with all my original parts and be healthy, I have to say "No". That is maintenance for me.

Why Cambridge Was My Success Story (finally!)

As I have shared before, I spent most of my life, beginning in toddlerhood, on a diet. I was born chubby (9lbs, 3oz) and I was always aware of the fact that I was different from my three thin siblings. Going through life constantly mindful of every bite of food you take and labeling it "good" or "bad" can really mess up any chance of feeling normal.

Going on Weight Watchers at the age of 9 with my mother was my reality. I was the only kid there in a room full of adults. I can't count the number of times we started and stopped that diet. We would lose some weight, and then gain it back...over and over. The meetings and weigh ins were torture. I can remember how labor intensive it was to follow back then with the counting, weighing, measuring, substituting, and generally having to choke down weird tasteless food. Yuck!

Now, many of you may not be old enough to have been on WW in the early days. It was very structured and detailed. I have to give most of the credit to my mom for the amount of work involved since she did the cooking. Once I got older I took over some of the kitchen duty and it was an enormous pain. It took up the whole day, planning meals and special prep work, making sure we had our weekly meals planned including the mandatory servings of liver and fish and veal, etc. I came to the conclusion early in life that dieting makes a person even MORE obsessed with food! Not the result you are looking for when you are already giving way to much of your time and attention to it.

I was poking around on the Internet this morning and came across this article that has the old original WW plan as I remember it from the 60's/70's. Maybe you can see why Cambridge was such a miracle for me and others who were completely burned out on conventional weight loss plans. This is long, but unbelievably and intensely detailed! Not unlike most weight loss plans that have you accounting for each bite of food you take. Cambridge's simplicity is the reason I was finally able to succeed at losing my weight and keeping it off for the past 14 years.

Here is the Weight Watchers original plan. You will be even more grateful for Cambridge. Click on the link below and prepare to be amazed!

http://www.dwlz.com/WWinfo/old1972ww.html

Good Article Worth reading

I saw this article in "Huff Post Healthy Living" today and thought it was worth sharing:

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anne-ricci/6-things-no-one-tells-women-about-their-weight-loss-journey_b_7003184.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

Expectations while losing weight can be a tripping hazard and it's best to not have them. You can have goals and milestones, but they should be a guideline, not  a win or lose line drawn in the sand. It may be hard, but it's best to put your focus on following your chosen plan and not judging your progress only on what you see on the scale. If you are following your plan, your body will be shedding the weight at the rate that's appropriate for you, not what others have experienced and certainly not on a scheduled time line. So many things come in to play when it comes to scales. Remember, it is not only weighing your fat content, but also fluids, waste, bone, muscle, all of it in constant fluctuation.

Focus on your chosen plan and let your body take it from there. You will lose the pounds whether you acknowledge them on a scale or not.