Stop the emotions?

A friend of mine was kind enough to take and post this picture on Facebook and tag me in it, even though I obviously wasn't the focal point of the shot. This was taken at a birthday party we celebrated at our church for all of the teenagers whose birthdays fell in September. As can be expected, particularly with teenage girls, there were cameras in abundance and every five seconds you could see a white flash going off somewhere in the room. I won't say that I was nervous about the high probability of unknowingly being captured on camera but I was a little uncomfortable about the idea- particularly since the only person who knows how to photograph me at the best angle is my husband.

Angles can be quite deceitful but this picture is the real deal. This is what I look like to someone walking behind me and it's not pretty at all. That's not to say that I've now become super conscious of what people think about my appearance, but since I can't see myself from the back (and anyone can suck in their stomach or stand at a good angle to make themselves look better in the mirror anyway) it's always easy to fall under the dilusion that I don't look that bad. However, this picture has woken me up to the reality that I am, indeed, fat.

I read a blog post this week that really opened my mind to something. As I read of how the author talked about finding her key to success by taking the emotion out of weight loss and healthy living a light inside my brain immediately switched on.

So many of us have fallen prey to the ups and downs of losing weight, myself wholly included, and, according to the post, in letting those emotions control you, you'll never get off the dieting yo-yo roller coaster. That really hit home for me:

Ever since I began trying to lose weight at 14 years old, my emotions were always the driving force behind my successes and failures:

• At mealtime or faced with a food temptation as a teenager I would envision Shemar Moore or one of the Backstreet Boys standing infront of me with an unfriendly scowl on his face in complete disapproval of what I was about to eat. While this technique was initially quite effective it was, not surprisingly, short-lived.
• When I studied abroad in the Dominican Republic my emotionally-charged sense of urgency to lose weight propelled me to lose nearly 80 pounds in nine months. I came back to the States a new person but without that sense of urgency to keep me honest the pounds slowly but surely crept back on.
• A bad day at school, stress, PMS (among many other culprits) usually meant a decadent, fattening dinner followed by a late-evening run to the nearest convenience store for ice cream, cookies and any other calorie-laden dessert item available for purchase.

At twenty nine years old, I couldn't care less about what Shemar Moore or the Backstreet Boys think of what I eat. I no longer live surrounded by Dominican men nor am I forced to hear their comments about my appearance on a daily basis. (Not that I would care anyway). And, thankfully, marriage has somehow gotten me out of the late night ice cream and dessert run habit. But even though I've been able to break those emotional barriers, I can still see how my feelings on a given day determine whether or not I'll stick to my objectives.

The post that I read explained following an emotionless, mathematical calorie in-calorie out plan. 3500 burned calories equates to one pound lost, so logging your food intake, scheduling your exercise routine and knowing how many calories you're burning will give you an idea of where you'll be, numerically speaking, at the end of the week.

The extreme of that would be getting obsessed with counting and calculating, and I don't see that as a sustainable plan either. Obviously it's important to know what you eat and how much exercise you're getting in each day, but my goal is to make all of this such a routine part of my lifestyle that I don't even think about it anymore. Like dieting and exercise auto-pilot.

For me, that this is the gist behind emotionless weightloss. This is what I'm aiming for as I continue to get my health back on track.