Fear of dieting success!
I lost four pounds in six days but instead of it spurring me on I was totally freaked out! Is fear of success why so many diets fail?
Last week I got what should’ve been a very pleasant surprise. I got on the scales and was four pounds lighter than the previous week. Not even a full week. Just six days. I went from 12.2 to 11.12. (170 pounds to 166/77 kilos to 75). Instead of being well chuffed with myself it totally freaked me out. Why had this occurred? Was something wrong with me? You’re not supposed to register such a huge loss in so short a space of time when you’re only a stone away from goal weight.
Was I ill? Surely not. For this wasn’t an unexpected and sudden weight loss which can be an indication of a health problem. It was very much a wanted one. Even so it didn’t make me happy. It scared me. I was convinced something was wrong. Or if not, it was just a fluke. I rushed to the scales in Boots to check it wasn’t my scales playing up. It wasn’t. Boots scales confirmed it (see pic above).
What had gone right? Well I did decide to try semi fasting one day a week after my success with Yom Kippur. The 6:1 diet rather than the 5:2. So maybe it was that? I also stick to the 16:8 diet pattern where you only eat for eight hours in 24. Still I worried. Once I’d dismissed the thought of it being a health issue something else kicked in: fear of success. I was achieving what I had wanted to for so long. My weight hadn’t been this low for 20 years. I know this because 20 years ago I used to record my weights in my diary. And I haven’t been under 12 stone (168 pounds/76 kilos) since 2001. And one of the nicest things about heading back to those weights is that it makes me feel a lot younger; as if I am recapturing those days, reliving them.
But it was all happening too fast. So what did I do? Do you even need to ask. I binged. It was as if a switch went off in my head saying, Whooops! Watch it. You don’t really want to succeed do you? Isn’t failure much easier to cope with? Most dieters put the weight back on. Few diets work long term. My theory for that is you get a lot of energy and a big buzz from dieting and watching the weight come off. But once you hit goal there’s a big, what’s next? It’s an anti climax. The journey is the thing, not the arrival.
I scared myself by succeeding so I did what so many of us do. I sabotaged myself. I ate and I ate and I ate. Well didn’t matter now did it? I’d lost four pounds without really trying so I could eat all I wanted. I gained first two pounds then two more. So basically I put those four pounds right back on! I’ve taken two of them straight back off and the other two will come off in the following few days. I had a detour. Often it’s gaining weight when you think you should be losing it that triggers a binge. In this case it was losing much more than I even dreamed I could that made me hit the ‘fridge. Also it was horrible on Saturday; rained steadily all day so I couldn’t get out to do my steps. So I ate instead.
Hey ho. Another dieting lesson learned. If the scales bless you with a loss you weren’t expecting, accept it, enjoy it. Make the most of it. Don’t think it gives you licence to binge nor for that matter starve to build more loss on it. Just stick to the plan. Always come back to the plan. We all go off the rails at times because we’re human not robots. It’s not failing that matters. It’s how you deal with it.
At 11.12 I was one pound, just one pound, off a total loss of four stone in little over a year. It scared me. I fear success. If this sounds familiar maybe try to work out why you don’t think you deserve success. It’s a common feeling. At the root of diet plans that work there simply has to be a feeling of self worth. If you don’t believe you deserve to be a healthy weight you’ll never get there. (And by the way the same applies to giving up smoking. It’s not just willpower you need. It’s not just self belief. It’s a strong sense of self worth.)
We need to work on much more than our food plans and menus if we’re to get to goal weight and crucially stay there. I had a blip. But I’m back on it now. Blips are good. Breaks are good. As President Bartlet used to say: “It’s not a bad idea to take a break every now and then. My point is this: break’s over.”