Naa, I'm Good

I think a lot of people on weight loss journeys think in terms of “being good” or “being bad”.  “I was so bad, I ate _____”.  I wonder what this kind of talk does to our psyche.  Maybe nothing.  Maybe it’s just semantics.  But, even so, I am trying to stop myself from saying that I was good or bad.  Maybe I’ve made choices that made me feel guilty, but that doesn’t make me a bad person, or a failure.  My self-worth should be separate from my weight loss efforts. 

This losing weight thing is HARD.  There is a reason so many of us are out here.  If it was easy, we’d all be skinny.  We’re smart people, we know what we need to do.  Even though knowing is half the battle, doing is the other half.  But, struggling with the ups and downs of losing weight is better than not trying at all, right? 

I recovered from my little slump/pity party yesterday and tried to put things in perspective.  Even though I wish that just the *thought* of losing weight actually made me lose it, I know the truth is that this is not going to happen overnight.  Two or three days of eating well does not undo the prior weeks/months/years.  Patience, Grasshopper. 

The miracle isn’t that I finished.  The miracle is that I had the courage to start.  ~John Bingham

Resolve Waning?

So, here I am on day 3, and I’m already starting to feel slightly less committed.  To be honest, I think it’s because I’ve really been feeling like I’ve done great the last couple days, but I made a critical mistake in weighing myself this morning.  It is so defeating to feel like you’ve made some good changes, and then see that the scale is up – more than a pound.  Seriously, how could I have gained more than a pound in one day? 

I was sitting in an 11:00 meeting this morning and after 10 minutes, my brain was consumed by the thought of going to get Mexican food for lunch - even though I brought my own tasty, healthy meal to eat.  Do you ever hear your inner dialog argue with itself? 

“I’ll just go grab some Mexican food”

“No, you brought lunch”

“Well, I’ve done so good the past couple days, it won’t matter anyway”

“Yes, it will. That’s just over processed junk food.  You have real food at your desk.”

“Maybe it’s good to plan a cheat day.  Maybe today should be my cheat day.”

“No.”

“Ok, how about if I do good the rest of this week, I can splurge on Mexican on Friday.”

“…”

 (that last part was inner me giving a disappointed look to itself)

Well, I won’t keep you in suspense – I did not cave in.  I enjoyed my healthy leftovers for lunch.  And I’m just trying to say to myself, “Screw that scale, it doesn’t even know what it’s talking about.”

I find that I really want to sign up for one of the monetary motivators, but I am really, really scared that I won’t meet my goal.  What if I do the year long plan to get to a healthy BMI and don’t do it?  I'd have to weigh 142 to be at a healthy BMI.  I have not weighed 142 since at least my freshman year of high school, possibly middle school.  Is it really possible that I could be that weight as an adult? 

Monetary Motivation

I was thinking about two years ago (gosh, was it really so long ago?) when I competed in the Ultimate Girls Challenge.  It was a Biggest Loser type of competition, where we each put in $10 and the top 3 winners split the pot.  We earned points not only for the amount of weight we lost, but also for daily and weekly healthy activities.  It was a great motivator for me, I think because it tapped into my competitive side. 

I didn’t even get to finish the first competition since I got pregnant in the middle of it, and I’ve since pretty much lost touch with that group.  So, I’ve been looking for similar competitive motivators, and I have found a couple of websites that strive to do something similar:

DietBet (www.dietbet.com) has you set up a game with your friends.  You decide how much money goes in the pot, and how much each person has to lose in four weeks, and then the winner gets the pot.  It seems like a nice tool to track everything fairly, although I feel like you could easily do it without the site.  My problem is that I don’t think I have a group of people who would want to do this with me. 

Healthy Wage (www.healthywage.com) is slightly more intricate.  They have 3 different challenges you can take part in (and you can do one, two, or all three at the same time).  The first is the 10% challenge.  You put up $100 and if you lose 10% of your starting weight in 6 months, you win $200. 

The second challenge is the BMI challenge.  You need to have a starting BMI of 30 or higher to do this one.  The goal is to make your way to a healthy BMI (under 25) in 1 year.  You can put up $150 to win $400, $300 to win $1000, or you can put up no money to win $100. 

The third Healthy Wage challenge, the matchup, is more of a team competition.  You join a team of 5 and each person puts up $60.  For 12 weeks, as a team, you try to have the biggest percentage of weight loss vs. other teams out there.  If you do, your team wins $10,000; second place wins $5,000, and third place wins $3000.  To prevent unhealthy weight loss, they do only count weight loss up to 16.6% per person. 

With Healthy Wage, you can put a team together yourself, or you can have the site add you to a team of people from around the country.  To keep things fair, you have to have your starting and ending weights verified by your doctor or at a Weight Watchers meeting. 

I find myself more drawn to Healthy Wage, and I really like the way they have their Matchup challenge set up – there are also weekly contests within the Matchup challenge, and since it’s only 12 weeks, it’s a quicker reward.  But, again, finding 4 other people to do the challenge with me might be difficult. 

Both of these sites say that wagering money makes people up to 5 times more likely to succeed. 

Have you heard of something similar?  Is there anyone out there that is interested in putting their money where their mouth is?