Weight Loss #7: Roadblocks and how to deal with them (why your weight goes on a yo-yo)

Just when you thought things would be easier, it gets more complicated. But just when you get more frustrated, an insight into the daily dieter's dilemma!

With all of these elements coming together, consider grocery shopping as a treat day. You get to make healthy food choices, plus the calorie-counting diet ensures that you get portions of your favorite food in menus that are easy to rotate. If you’ve been restricting yourself on the calories because you want faster weight loss, reward yourself once a week and eat what you want according to your maintaining calorie-count per day, but don’t go beyond that. This way, you’ll never feel deprived and you’ll always be raring to go.

Making concessions and ensuring that you treat yourself with kindness as described above is a good foundation especially as you delve more and more into your weight loss quest. When we first discussed how weight loss also ties up to your emotional state, that is not to mean that it’s all about you. No, there will be obstacles from the outside, roadblocks to overcome.

After all, what is a quest if not one with hardships to go through?

Oftentimes, the conflicts seem harmless and innocuous enough. Your girlfriends tell you they miss you and you decide to throw an impromptu dinner. They expect the same pizza, beer, and ice cream fare, but you want to stick to your guns and not eat any junk food. I’ve heard so many people bemoan how they went through a diet “slide” simply by accompanying friends to dinner. Imagine, just by simply going to a restaurant and observing your friends ordering anything they want, you could talk yourself out of flipping through the diet-friendly food! And even with the allowances made by calorie-counting – of eating what you want but in correct portions – you find that you’ve overstuffed yourself and everything’s gone downhill from there.

These future scenarios call for another dash of creativity. After all, simply because your girlfriends are supportive of your weight loss quest doesn’t mean that you can impose your food choices on them. For this reason, strike a compromise. It’s time to get your grill pan out and whip up a meal that’s light but still has all the key food components that non-dieters enjoy. And if you find that you’ve been glaring at their soda for the past few dinners out, make sure that you stash your own diet soda nearby!

And then, of course, there’s still the fact that you’re losing weight but still consider yourself big. A nasty coworker might just comment on how fat you are and you’d want to explain that, “No! I was actually bigger before!” but she had already raised an eyebrow and walked away. I know it’s not easy to chant a mantra along the lines of not caring about other people’s opinions. After all, we all want acceptance from our peers. But think about it this way: at some point everyone’s going to be fat in someone else’s eyes. There are those fatter than you, and those who will always be slimmer than you. If you keep on focusing on these things, you might just lose sight of the ultimate goal – health, wellness, and the license to raid mall clearances sales with the best of them!