In this chapter, I'm going to show you how to prepare yourself to deal with behavior that may undermine your otherwise sterling efforts at weight control. It is said that fortune favors the prepared mind. If your past history gives you the slightest reason for thinking you might give up on the most effective and satisfying weight loss plan you've ever tried, read this chapter carefully.
Is it possible that part of your weight problem is emotional? You may be using food as nurse, mother or comforter, as well as a source of nutrition. Many people use food for far more than mere sustenance. Okay, I'll be honest, we all do-some of the time. But there are individuals not infrequently, people with serious weight problems-for whom food is a major pillar and support of their emotional life. If this sounds familiar, you may have already considered the psychological components of weight loss.
I also know that right now a few of you are saying, "Dr. Atkins, you told me that being overweight may be due in part to a metabolic problem. I don't want to hear about emotional issues; I prefer the simple answer you already gave me." I did give you that answer, and if you're already doing Atkins, you've probably discovered how real my claims were. Yet, sadly, there is a small percentage of people who try to do Atkins and discover it isn't metabolically suited to them. I'm talking about the folks who lose perfectly well and feel perfectly fine-but give up anyway. Their situation really troubles me.
Mapping the Patterns of Your Life
Have you failed on weight loss plans before? You won't have forgotten my criticisms of low-fat and low-calorie diets. It may seem natural to fail on those programs. But, if your pattern goes back a long way and represents a lifelong tendency to gain and lose, gain and lose, then you may be in the grip of what I call emot/ona/eating.
At this point in the book, you may be doing Induction. Are you staying disciplined on this important phase? Then, perhaps all is well. But if you tend to have meals here, there and everywhere, when you eat what you shouldn't, you may need to address other issues.
Emotional Eating
The air conditioner is broken, the repairman didn't show up and the thermometer stands at 96 degrees in the shade. Or the dinner date you've been anticipating all week has just been canceled. To console yourself when you're sad, lonely or have just had a really bad day, you pull out the chocolatechip cookies and dive into the rocky road ice cream, right? It is so easy to use food to comfort yourself when things aren't going well.
If you do, though, you not only won't feel better for very long, but after your blood sugar goes awry and the postbinge guilt takes over, you'll feel really awful. There are other ways to deal with a bad day, and some tricks you can use that will help you do so in a healthy way.
So let me offer a few practical reslnmses to situations in which you need to assuage an emotional hurt or alleviate big-time stress:
·Treat yourself to an acceptable food. This isn't the best answer because it reinforces the idea that eating is a way to remedy emotional pain. But at least it won't leave you with the guilt of a bad binge to deal with on top of everything else.
·Log onto our website at www. atkinscent'er, com or the many other Atkins-friendly sites and chat rooms on the Intemet and interact with someone who understands your situation. Looking to another person for emotional support is much better than looking to a bowl of ice cream for it!
·If you're at home and feeling lonely, go out to a movie (ignore the concession stand), a friend's house or the Local bookstore. Getting involved with something interesting or entertaining can cheer you up or at least distract you from the compelling urge to eat.
·If you like to cook, make yourself an Atkins treat (see the "Food and Recipes" section starting on page 367) and put it in the refrigerator where it can save you when temptation strikes in the future.
·Call up a friend and talk. This is when an "Atkins buddy" can be a godsend.
·Get some exercise! Are you groaning? How I wish I could teach you the emotional payoffs of exercise. Simply walking, for instance. On a day when life has thrown you some punches, go out for a brisk walk. I guarantee that when you're done, your problems will seem more manageable. By walking fast, you lower your levels of adrenal chemicals, you oxygenate your system and you release brain-soothing endorphins. These natural chemicals actually relieve stress, stabilize your appedte and thereby minimize cravings.
·Recite the principles of the Atkins Nutritional Approach. Remember them from Chapter 1? You will lose weight. You will maintain your weight loss. You will achieve good health. You will lay the permanent groundwork for disease prevention.
That last suggestion deserves a more extended discussion.
Teach Yourself, Lecture Yourself, Habituate Yourself
You must have found this book's arguments convincing or you wouldn't still be reading. Now let's use your new insights to alter your way of life. i want you to figure out exactly how doing Atkins has benefited you; then I want you to use that knowledge as a form of self-empowerment. A conscious realization of how important your health is can actually overcome your old, bad habits. In the game of life, good reasons can trump oldhabits.
Settle down in a nice comfortable armchair with a pencil and a pad and ask yourself this short series of questions:
·What did I want to achieve by doing Atkins?
·Am I getting there?
·Do I feel good?
·Do I understand why Atkins makes me healthy?
·Is it worth controlling my carb consumption for a lifetime to maintain the weight control and get the health advantages I'm experiencing?
Let's assume your answers are largely favortable. Turn them into a list of p0sitives. For instance:
·I'm losing weight steadily without starving myself.
·I'm enjoying the foods I'm eating.
·I feel more energetic and more focused than I have in years.
·I no longer suffer mood swings, afternoon fatigue or_________(fill in your own symptoms). Look at the "Blood-Sugar Symptom Test" on pages 150-151; it may remind you of some irritating symptoms you've already put behind you.
·My lab tests show that doing Atkins is good for my cardiovascular health.
The list that you draw up should reflect your answers to the question of what you believe Atkins is doing for you. Now don't lose those answers. Ponder them. Refine them down to a short list that you thoroughly understand and believe in. If I were you, l'd recite that list daily, a sort of morning mantra, even before your first bite of the day-perhaps while you're putting on your makeup or shaving. Would so much conscious preparation embarrass you? It shouldn't.
it's by consciously preparing yourself for the challenges of the day that you outflank the powerful world of habit. If you know why you're doing things differently, you'll have a far better prospect of doing them long enough so that they, in turn, become habitual. Once doing Atkins is a habit, you will really be able to bask in your success. Until that happy day arrives, those of us who are all too familiar with weight loss failure must use our brains to survive.
Remember my suggestion to continually visualize yourserf at your goal weight. Think about how much you deserve to look and feel good, to enjoy the happiness, health and sense of weB-being that will come with weight loss. Fating healthily is something you're doing for you-a gift to yourself,not a punishment. Value yourself and you'll be able to enjoy and succeed at this endeavor.
Finally, don't be afraid to get help from a counselor or psychotherapist. The reasons we all overeat are so complicated and challenging that the emotional support and insight a professional can offer can be invaluable.
Ask People to. Respect Your' Needs
This conscious approach has another use. It helps to keep you focused on your health. Isn't that what's' really important? If you can convince yourself that it is, you'll be ready to stand up for your own needs. Many people find it hard to assert, "What I need for myself is important." Women in particular-perhaps because they function so often as caregivers-have trouble saying, "My needs are essential, too."
If your spouse or significant other is giving you a hard time about your doing Atkins, that calls for self-nssertion. You simply must make it clear that this nutritional approach is a need that you won't compromise. Even the most sweetnatured and unassenive people have areas in their lives in which they won't allow interference.
Time for Realism
I've just advised you to work out your own version of what Atkins does for you. Now I want you to apply a touch of realism to that grand scheme. Don't be trapped by expectations. This is a typical vulnerability found in people who repeatedly fail at weight loss. They have a preconceived onceived version of how a weight loss plan should progress and demand perfection, or, at least, a steady and predictable progress that can't necessarily be achieved—.even by doing Atkins. Your experience will not he like your sibling's or your parents', and certainly not like your spouse's. YOu have a body that's unlike any other, with a unique history, and ns you advance in years it will not behave exactly the way it did when it wns 18. And sad but true, that "bud' may never be a "perfect 10."
But you can make it the best body possible if you don't fall into the trap of demanding a perfect figure and weight · loss schedule that exists only in your head. You can succeed only if you forgive yourself your missteps, raher than calling the game a failure and withdrawing to the sidelines. The same goes for the faa that you'H hit plateaus, lose a little ground or sometimes lose more slowly than you'd like. I can assure that you will most likely succeed by doing Atkins, but each one of you will succeed differently, at a different pace.
Here are three more ways to defeat yourself-and I'm telling you about them only because I want to encourage you to avoid the pitfalls.
1. Getting on the scale four or five times a day is a form of slow torture. Even the most effective weight loss plan (this one) can't produce a change every few hours, nor even guarantee that you'll lose weight each day. The human body doesn't work that way. By doing 'Atkins, you're making highly favorable changes to an immensely complicated system. Your metabolism will decide how quickly you lose. There is, unfortunately, no little Dr. Atkins inside you ortiering your metabolism to take off precisely threequarters of a pound a day. The ultimate proof the plan is working is that you see a steady loss over a significant period. And, as I've said many times before in this book, you may notice a change in the fit of your clothes before you see it on the scale. You simply must not demand mathematical exactitude.
2. To think that the present will be just like the past is an0othor mind trap. Alarm bells ring when I hear someone -say, "But I'm not losing the way I did ten years ago." It isn't ten years ago, Ace. I wish I were ten yeats younger, too. The normal pattern of human aging is that we find it easier to stay slim when we're youg and it gets harder as the decades pass. Unfortunately, this rule applies to you, too.
3. The same thing goes for exercise. Sometimes people with a fair degree of metabolic resistance find that to lose at a decent speed they have to exercise (which I urge you to do anyway). Then they tell me, "But back in 1994, I lost 20 pounds in two months without exercising." Get real. It's not 1994. Send all complaints to Father Tune, Box Office Eternity
Remember how individual your body is, and you should be forearmed against any other personal mind traps that I neglected to mention.
This is heavy stuff psychologically, and we all face it. Yet a high percentage of people do succeed doing Atkins-permanently. How?
Create Good Food Habits
You've already learned some new eating habits and I would 'like to see you extend that ability further. You can learn not just what to eat, but how to treat food in general.
We are all plugged into our. habits, If you can discover your bad connections and disconnect them, you will start to change. If you can learn new and improved connections and solder them into place, you'H do even better. Try these steps and see if they make your nutritional life easier:.
·Eat slowly and extend the meal to give your brain time to signal satisfaction before your stomach is distended and you feel stuffed.
·Don't eat as much as you can; eat as much as you need.
·Don't finish something just because it's there.
·Establish food rituals that slow down the process eating. For example, set the dinner table-even when you eating alone-and don't eat standing up at the kitchen counter.
·Don't eat meals in front of the television set or compurer, especially not snacks that you could eat great quantities of while distracted without even realizing it.
·Try not to eat while talking on the phone.
·Don't cruise the kitchen during the commercials.
·Eat three meals a day-or four or five smaller ones. Skipping meals leads to unstable blood sugar and crnvinks, which might allow your bad habits to kick in.
·If you're not staying on the program as perfectly as you should be, start a food diary and carry it around with you. This is an excellent way to bring your eating behavior to the forefront of your conscious mind.
Keep Control or Else Regain it
Maybe everything I've told you will make you perfect. But so far I've met very few perfect people, and it's quite possible that you will slip anD slide now and then. Or else you'll go through a short perirod of rebellion and cheat with a vengeance. Here are a few ways to create a strategy for lifetime success:.
·Try to keep the control you've won; don't re-addict yourself.
·If you do slip, be realistic-no one's perfect one hundred percent of the time. Above all, recover immediately; don't wait until tomorrow. One slice of pie may have linfited iii effects. A late-night debauch could send you off in the wrong direction for a month.
·If you've slipped up badly, don't tell yourself there's no use trying. Learn to live in the gray area when you're not being perfect! A mistake in eating doesn't mean yotk should stop taking nutritional supplements or exercising. Quite the contrary-everything good you can do for yourself makes it that much easier to get firmly back on the right track.
· Be on your best behavior during Induction, the phase in which you break your bad habits and addictions and establish healthy eating patterns.
· If you're bound and determined to cheat, at least do so in the least harmful way. If a fruit will satisfy your craving for something sweet, it's better than a cookie or candy bar. · Adjust your aims to your realities, If you're going on vacation and you know you won't be able to comply perfectly, don't make continued weight loss your goal. Instead, go on the Lifetime Maintenance phase and aim to maintain your weight and stay in control of your food choices. When you return, go back to the appropriate weight loss phase.
· Give yourself a cushion, If there's a special occasion on the horizon, why not drop down to an earlier phase of Atkins a few weeks before the event?
· Learn from your experience. If you slip up and go off plan, ask yourself why. Did you give yourself permission? How did you think you would feel after? How did you feel? How should you deal with a similar situation in the future?
· If Atkins works for you, don't let other people vote on your health. It's your life, not theirs.
What if you've muffed it and you have to start over? Don't be embarrassed! Don't let those naysayers say, "I told you soy Just pick yourself up and start over again with Induction. And at the same time, you should ask yourself a series of soul-searching questions about what happened. This is especially true if you're a person for whom overeating and being out of control have been ongoing problems. Think about the situations and circumstances that led to the problem and creatively change your life to avoid them in the future. Try to teach yourself new ways of responding to the challenges.
I wouldn't have written this chapter if i didn't believe that nearly everyone could succeed doing Atkins. I want you to believe in the immense power of human adaptability. Do a conscious appraisal of why you've chosen Atkins, and then adapt with all the willpower and energy you possess.
Don't Go There!
Here are some mind traps you must learn to avoid:
· Using food as an emotional comfort.
· Quitting the program altogether if you've cheated.
· Eating less than three times a day.
· Doing what other people want instead of what's right for you.
· Being afraid to ask family and friends—or even a psychotherapist-for support.