I've been caught in the death spiral. Kidding. I was out of town and then I
went up in weight! , and then I was mortified, and then I tried to catch up
before the next week to avoid mortification again :-), of course, that didn't
work, then I saw some pictures of myself and weighed at home..., then I was
disappointed, and embarrassed! , then I recommited to myself last week. Per
your recent email, I started over. I plan to show up on Thursday. :-)
hopefully I'll be a pound or two down because I've been working hard since
Thursday. Thanks for asking, Laurie. It's nice that you are paying
attentionDo you ever feel like that? Caught in a spiral of not wanting to come back to the meeting because you know your weight is up, but having trouble getting it under control yourself- but you still don't want to come to a weigh-in with a gain? Fuggetaboutit!
I like to think of the Thursday weigh in time as just a mark in time. The scale can only give you feedback- it doesn't judge you. The person who weighs you in has BEEN THERE, too, and there are very few members who never experience a gain. (Not sure I ever met one!) Just forget about the spiral, your projected embarrassment and facing the scale. Often, members find the "damage" is not as bad as they expected anyway.
It is part of human life to start over. Every Thursday when you weigh in and sit through an inspirational and educational meeting, you have the chance to renew your strength and commitment to the exercise of changing habits for a lifetime of healthy eating and feeling terrific! (okay, that was a long sentence. how about reading it again?)
Let your WW meeting be a time of renewal. Don't get caught in a "death spiral." Just come back, face the scale...and start anew. What do you have to lose? What do you want to lose?!
See you Thursday!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Letter from a member in a "Death Spiral"
Hi Laurie,
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1 comment:
I like the ideas that 1) the scale does not judge you and that 2) EXERCISE doesn't have to only be physical; going to weekly meetings also exercises one's strenth and commitment and reinforces positive habits. Laurie, you're great about really caring about and supporting your members, showing them that you're "paying attention" and not just throwing words at them every week.
You're a good role model for "been there, done that" while at the same time being sensitive to how difficult a struggle it can be and that WW doesn't offer an "easy fix".
I'd like to offer another thought: that a SPIRAL goes in BOTH DIRECTIONS, so maybe it's negative in one way, when your weight spirals UP or your habits spiral DOWN, but once again, it's ultimately a matter of CHOICE and from which perspective you choose to see that spiral.
Visualizing an upward spiral, I think of making a small change in a habit that spirals upwards little by little into big positive changes. I actually know a friend who automatically used cream in her coffee every morning; she was shocked at the pounds she dropped just by using a fat-free creamer instead for 2 months.
I'm BIG with the idea of making small changes in any endeavor. Instead of leaping to the idea that "I wil change my weekly routine to now spend an hour in a WW class", here's the "baby step" I had to take: "Okay, the small change I'm going to make is driving my car into the CCMV parking lot", figuring once I was there, I might as well actually go into the building for the class. ... which for me was the FIRST baby step I had to take before I ever committed to the idea of a weekly class.
So the idea of a spiral starting small and getting bigger definitely works for me ... Each of us gets to choose the direction (up/down), the destination (positive/negative), and even the size of our personal spirals (some changes take longer than others) - and when you think about it, a stretched-out spiral is basically a timeline of this particular journey of our lives, a line that can be drawn in any shape you choose, so it's up to you to make that shape count.
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