If you’re anything like me, you’ll have had times in your life where it sometimes seems impossible to stick to your plan. You may have done it before with ease but this time, months on, you’re finding every day a struggle and somehow foods not on your own approved list are sneaking past your lips and onto your hips.
How do you feel about that?
Some may feel disappointed, guilty, or deeply ashamed; for others there may be a sense of bravado, a kind of child-like pride in having beat the system… Whatever it is you feel, it is usually disproportionate to what has actually happened – and this is every single time it happens.
Let’s take a couple of months as an easy way to describe it. Sixty times, you promise yourself tomorrow is different and you’ll start your diet. Sixty times, you feel positive and like you’re going to finally do it. Sixty times, you get to a certain point in the day where thoughts creep in and tempt you to have something not on plan. Sixty times, you tell yourself not to but do it anyway. Sixty times, you feel anger/disappointment/shame/let down/bravado/guilt for yourself and sometimes because of the people you’ve told sixty times that the diet definitely starts tomorrow.
You’ve heard the saying “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me?”
When you’re stuck in a cycle you can’t seem to get out of, at what point do you consider changing the plan?
More often than not, we try and fail over and over, until we get to the point where we give up all together. What if we didn’t do that? What if instead, we looked at what we were trying to do and acknowledged, despite our best efforts, it is not the right thing for us at the moment?
If you’re at the point of giving up on yourself totally, is it not better to adjust the parameters of your plan a bit, give yourself some planned wiggle-room, than to continue berating yourself and feeling crappy?
One day, after struggling to get back onto LighterLife after a successful 5 stone loss, I looked back and realised I had been struggling to do it for quite a while. I lost count of the “best intentions”, the starting, the successes because they all blurred into the overall message of “I can’t do this”. I told and showed myself this over and over, until I gave up.
Then, I began to wonder if it was not me but the plan I had for myself which was at fault.
After all, I am not in the same job/house/relationship as I was then, so why was I trying to get myself to fit into the exact same path? This was incredibly freeing AND successful. As soon as I allowed myself to be open to changing my plan to something which suits my current lifestyle, I was well away!
So whilst it might go against the grain to alter your plan, it’s sometimes necessary.
Be kind to yourself.
Think, would I force a friend to do something which made them so unhappy? If not, why are you doing it to yourself?
LighterLife Wollaton Park 
Another great blog. So true, we would be encouraging to friends and yet won’t be too ourselves. When we are kinder to ourselves, we are a better version of ourselves! Thank you!
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