Fat Loss Diary — Day 10
I got a surprise this morning when I stepped on to the scale. I’m lighter than I was yesterday. I didn’t expect to be. That got me thinking.
Sometimes, results take time. Sometimes they don’t make sense. As it is with life, so it is with fat loss. You can do all the right things, and things will still be terrible. But if you weren’t doing the right things, life would probably be worse. Doing the right things might never pay off like you hope, but it will usually be a mitigating factor.
What are the right things to do? With fat loss, the right thing to do is to cut your calories. The hungrier you remain, the more weight you will lose. Zoom out, and the trajectory of the hungry person will be one of steadily reducing body weight. Zoom in, and the path disappears from view.
I was surprised this morning because I was not seeing the wood for the trees. Last night I ate biscuits and chocolates. I didn’t do it because of hunger, I did it because of boredom. After the first hit of sugar, I wanted more, and I indulged. Before stepping on the scales this morning, I put my jeans on. Usually I’m wearing less when I weigh myself. The jeans were going to be my excuse. After seeing a higher reading than the previous day, I could say to myself ‘it’s probably just the weight of the jeans, and I’m wearing a belt as well.’ But there was no need. I’m half a kilo lighter than I was yesterday.
Is there a lesson in this? I think so. It’s annoyingly familiar. I heard Jim Rohn say it like this “Do the right things with your time, all of the time, and it doesn’t take a long time.” What was he talking about? Specifically, Jim was talking about making money. He became a millionaire quite quickly in his day, then lost it all, then became a millionaire again. But those words apply to weight loss and any other endeavour. The middle of the statement is the most important ‘all of the time.’ My rule of thumb for losing fat is to ‘be hungry.’ I wasn’t hungry all of the time yesterday, but I was hungry most of the time. And I’ve been hungry most of the time for the last 10 days. I’ve definitely spent a lot more time being hungry than I have snakcing unnecessarily and stuffing my face. Thanks to that, even though I was seduced by sugary snacks yesterday, my weight has still dropped. That realisation is not a reason to go off the rails and undo all the good work. I can’t give in to sugary snacks every day! Yesterday was just a bump in the road. I’m staying on this road because I know it’s going to a place where I feel better, look better, and assuming death by natural causes, I live longer.
I am lighter than I was when I started this fat loss journey. I could travel much faster if I was hungry all of the time. But I must bear in mind that difficulty kills consistency. I’m aiming for just the right amount of hungriness. I’m hungry enough to know that my body will eventually need to burn fat, and I feel this way most of the time. I’m not so hungry that I don’t think I can take it anymore and I throw in the towel. If I get too hungry I might feel like trying to lose fat is just not worth the discomfort. Real and present discomfort has a powerful hold on us. It’s more powerful than the known but unfelt discomfort of being too fat and too unhealthy to do a lot of things that should come easily. Is it more powerful than the pain of watching my children distraught as I fall to the floor clutching my chest because my fat clogged arteries are failing? Is it more powerful than the pain of hating the fat man in the who stares back at me? Is it more painful than seeing my children and then my grandchildren rolling their eyes and being disappointed because I’m too fat and unfit to get up and play with them?
I’m being imaginative here. That’s to make a point. Imagination is a great tool. You can use your imagination to create compelling and useful answers when you ask yourself why you are doing something. If you know that thing is good for you, when you doubt your course, make imagination your ally. Imagining the scenarios I outlined in the previous paragraph has made the hunger and doubt I had been sitting here with disappear.
I didn’t expect to be writing about imagination in a fat loss diary. But it turns out to be a salient factor. Eating less, being hungry, not letting temporary setbacks derail me , and continuing to do the right thing are all easier with the help of my imagination.
