Lying to oneself, that is. Telling yourself, “I’m getting lots of activity!” or “This can’t be too many points,” or whatever the thing is that one wants to believe.
I think that a combination of dishonesty and just plain denial contributed to my recent meltdown. And the only thing that could get me out of it was facing up to stuff with myself and then with some supportive others.
Tonight I noticed Geneen (Women Food and God) Roth’s status update on Facebook: “A last thought for the night: Truth, not force, does the work of ending compulsive eating.”
How true is that! Today I realized how “fuzzy” I had become in my thinking about all sorts of things: my exercise levels, my eating habits, and my thoughts. It was great to sit down last night and write out a list of what my WW BFF and I call “Our Unhelpful Habits” (as opposed to Weight Watchers’ HELPFUL Habits which we are constantly preaching!). It was a funny, painful, illuminating and humbling exercise.
Today I vowed to be more honest. I returned to REAL tracking of my food (as opposed to “quasi” tracking). I returned to multiple-times a day blood glucose monitoring. Now THAT was sobering. I knew that my fasting BGs had been creeping up but now I realize that so have my post-food ones. That was not happy news. But I am going to see my doctor next week and I will deal with it. What else can I do? I hope that I can just increase my oral medication a bit and not make the leap to insulin. Cross fingers, people! (for those of you who have seen my show you know this is the moment for AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION!)
My little Philips DirectLife has also been very interesting in the honesty department. It definitely lets me know (with extra commentary from my DL coach!) what I’m doing vs what I *think* or *wish* I was doing. So, my daily calorie target (based on my weight, age, goals etc) is 741 cals burned. I’ve been wearing this thing a while and have NEVER gotten to that number. So today, on top of my morning walk/run, I also: USED THE STAIRS to get to my 9th floor office; had a very active WW meeting, and THEN went for ANOTHER walk before dinner! I mean come on. I got home and the graph said I’d burned 734. OMG. I put it back on, did 30 jumping jacks, and voila! 743!!! FINALLY!
But there have been days, a lot of them, when I felt like, “I’ve done enough,” and really it wasn’t.
Hopefully this will be my 2nd wind, my round two towards better health. And I do believe that being honest about things is THE ONLY WAY.
foodfoodbodybody 
May 28, 2010 at 10:07 am
You make me want to pull out my Gowear Fit. It is sobering, isn’t it, the diabetes stuff. Unlike other folks we have a stark visual reminder of what we need to be doing. Fudging the scale is one thing but the glucometer is something else. I can’t imagine you’re getting anywhere near insulin though. Aren’t there other oral agents to look at before they get into that? And you have the luxury/motivation to use exercise which works so much better than anything else! I hope all goes well at the MD appt. Great, helpful post.
May 28, 2010 at 10:58 am
I don’t think I’m anywhere near insulin, either, it’s just the next BIG STEP that I don’t ever want to take. Right now I’m at the very lowest dose of oral meds and there are a lot of steps to take in that area. It just makes me sad that I feel like I’ve been doing SO WELL and somehow still this disease is Progressing.
May 28, 2010 at 8:35 pm
(((fingers crossed!)))
You *are* doing well! Don’t be too hard on yourself. I mean, we all have room for improvement, and facing up to that is a good thing, but please don’t beat yourself up over it.
I’m wondering if stress might be messing with your numbers a bit? You mentioned not getting enough sleep, and feeling stressed, and mental and physical stress can affect those numbers. (Lack of adequate sleep sometimes does it to me.) http://www.diabetes.org/living-with-diabetes/complications/stress.html
May 28, 2010 at 9:41 pm
Gosh that made me think! Just yesterday I thought I had done so great. Logged in my meals for the day dinner with wine was over 1000 calories holy S**T! Dead serious I had convinced myself it was a great meal.
The biggest reason we dislike food journaling and weigh in’s is because they keep us in check.
Good luck at the Dr. I know you will get it all balanced out and back on track. Sometimes we just need a reminder that it is for life, weight loss, maintenance, diabetes etc. We can’t go back so we have to keep the changes in order to go forward and live healthy lives.
XO
June 5, 2010 at 9:36 am
This is so true… I think we learn a lot about ourselves in the process of transforming our health. It is so easy to slip into denial.