When Less is Actually More

If you read my journal with any regularity you'll see that I struggle with my body image and my thoughts regarding this. Yesterday I was doing some thinking about my life and I came to the shocking realization that in the past 5 years, I have spent at least some portion of every year on some sort of diet designed to help me lose weight I had gained. With the exception of this summer, I was always "successful" in losing that weight, for a time, until an increased work load or stress interuppted my careful planning and exercise and things went awry and I gained the weight back.

I don't want to live like this. I want a normal life. I am slowing realizing and working on the fact that maybe in order to live a normal, healthy life where I am not constantly countingcalories or constantly on one diet or another, I will have to weigh more and carry a higher percentage of body fat.

What I finally had to realize is, when I am 50, 60, 70+ do I want to look back on my life and see that I maintained my weight at 125 pounds and 15% body fat but I was constantly battling hunger, tiredness, always on a diet, never enjoying life or do I want to look back and realize how healthily I ate, how I enjoyed life and how exercising was pleasureable and not a simply a way to create a calorie deficit in order to lose weight. I chose the latter.

I also have been realizing that the times in my life when I have been most satisfied with my body, most happy with myself and able to get the most out of my workouts have been when I haven't been counting calories or on some sort of diet and simply been using my hunger as a guide to when I should eat.

It's almost like this, when I am dieting and exercising in such a way to achieve something, either a certian number of pounds lost or a certain percentage of body fat lost, I get so focused on seeing those number and in turn it causes me to focus on all my bodies imperfections and faults. I can't see the forest for the trees so to speak. And then when the loses were not there(as they typically weren't, even before when I had success in weight loss, they weren't always there) I got discouraged, angry, ect.

And I also realized this: when I am not dieting, I dont' go crazy and binge on chocolate or chips or cake because I DON'T FEEL DEPRIVED!

I dont' want to be on a diet the rest of my life. I have come to realize that how I eat now will shape how I am able to eat for the rest of my life. If I continue on the path of restrictive lowcalorie diets then I will be doomed to that for the rest of my life.

I also don't want to feel trapped into needing massive amounts of exercise in order to maintain my weight. I want exercise to be for my health, my sanity and frankly for my enjoyment. If I miss a workout, it shouldn't be the end of the world.

On muscle and fitness and fitness hers there's a woman who has a great quote as her signature, and it says "insanity=doing teh same stupid thing over and over again and expecting different results". I feel like I've been doing the same stupid thing over and over again(exercising excessively and using restrictive diets) and yet I don't get the results I want, neither in my running nor in my muscle building. I have been reviewing other journals and blogs and I look at people who spend way less time working out that I do, eat more than I do and yet, they run faster, can do pull-ups, are stronger and more toned...the list goes on. For so long I've looked at that and instead of thinking maybe I'm going about it wrong, I thought, well I must need to do more because MORE is MORE....Faulty logic for sure

More is not necessarily more!