Mission:DIET

I think I've lost the same six pounds at least four times now.

It's frustrating; I go all "MISSION:DIET" for a few weeks, lose those six pounds, and hit the big scary wall of 150lbs. Then, I get frustrated to see the scale not move, or worse, wildly swing up and down from 148 (yay!) to 153 (buh?!).

I recently read Portia de Rossi's book, "Unbearable Lightness". It was a chilling account of how a seemingly healthy diet led to her lowest weight of 82 pounds. But the part that has stuck with me the most is the epilogue, where the author describes her post-recovery life with her wife Ellen Degeneres, and her current relationship with food. She doesn't think about food anymore. Let me repeat that.

She doesn't think about food anymore.

If she wants some ice cream, she eats it. If she feels like celery, she eats it. And she maintains her weight at 130lbs (at 5'7", this is still slim, but more importantly, she feels healthy). Part of the reason I get frustrated about six weeks (or six pounds) into a diet is that I'm exhausted from focusing so much on what I'm eating and when. The focus is often on what I can't have, and it's mentally exhausting. I start to feel like I don't deserve to eat this or that. And I don't think that's a healthy way to think.

My body deserves food – it deserves good food that will help fuel it. That doesn't mean it deserves McDonald's, not because McDonald's is "bad" for me, but because when I eat McDonald's, I feel terrible. Start paying attention to how you feel after any given meal – it's easy to divorce that reaction from what you ate, but I've been trying lately to connect it in a meaningful way. Then, when I'm craving those tasty McNuggets, I think about how I felt after I ate them last time. Is it worth it?

In an effort to break through this plateau, I'm going to try a new approach for this week. Instead of fixating on the food (although I'm still trying to make healthier choices), I'm going to try and burn 3,500 calories this week (or the equivalent of one pound of fat). I don't know how it will affect my weight loss, but at least it might give me a week of mental rest.