October Challenge, Final Check-In

This week, I am actually going to do a post about Amber‘s October Challenge. I was not so good about posing my progress, but I thought I should at least check in at the end.

When I started the October Challenge, my goal was to work through a 30-day program I have, in book form, called Thin Within. It is a grace-based approach to weight loss that involves dealing with your views about yourself and about God, with the goal of healing the things that compel us to emotional eating. It does not focus on calories, forbidden foods, etc, but on conscious eating – listening to our bodies, eating only when we are hungry and stopping when we are full.

Well, as you probably figured out from my lack of posting, I have had a terrible, horrible, awful, no good, very bad month. Things have been really stressful with D. I have not had any time for myself. I did not find or make the time to read Thin Within. I was also sick 4 times – yes, in 4.5 weeks – so my exercising was sporadic at best.

But that’s okay.

I did apply some of the concepts. I started listening to my body and tried to eat only when I was hungry, stopping when I was comfortably full, not stuffed. I also worked on correcting some of my faulty thinking.

I did a final weigh-in to see how I did during the challenge weight-wise, but the most important thing was the work I was doing inside. I firmly believe that this weight thing is all on the inside. Not just the fat, but the yucky things, the sadness and pain that makes some of us turn to food for comfort, the stressful days, the warped perceptions of food and of our bodies. There is so much one needs to get right before any weight loss plan will stick, for most of us anyway.

One of the most important concepts in Thin Within, at least that I have read so far, is the ability to forgive ourselves when we fall short of our weight loss goals and not beat ourselves up with the “club of condemnation.”

For example, I know that I did not do the things I wanted to this month, but I am not going to dwell on that. I am going to continue to build on the changes I made, until I achieve success.

I weighed myself this morning and I lost 3 pounds. That was without much exercise, and while being sick and having an overall stressful month. That was a recipe for weight-gain, so I need to focus on the small victory I had.

Another thing that I am keeping in mind is that if I continue to lose 3 pounds a month for the next year, I will weigh what I weighed when I got married more than 6 years ago. Thirteen months to lose what took 6 years to put on. That is not bad.

Sure, I would like to lose weight more rapidly, and I may yet, but I think that correcting my behaviors in a meaningful and sustainable way is going to be better in the long run.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to start exercising more and continue to change my eating habits, but pushing my self into a lifestyle that makes me miserable (ie fat-free cheese and rice cakes, instead of real food) will not be a lasting solution that I will stick with.

So, I didn’t hit my very ambitious goal, but I made some small changes that I can build on and lost 3 pounds during an extremely stressful time when I was also sick, which are two situations that make me want to eat comforting (fattening) foods, so I am feeling good about it.