LITTLE BLACK DRESS DIARIES

When one is overweight, one has developed what I call “The Art of Lying.”  Oh, don’t get huffy – we have all lied to ourselves at one time or another when it comes to excess weight.  How do you think we got to where we are?  Whether it is 10 pounds or 200 pounds, somewhere along the line, we did that settling I’ve talked about and decided we look just fine.

Of course, if that is true, why are we always thinking about those extra pounds?  Why is it we don’t want to go to the store for fear of running into people we know?  How many times have we been depressed because there is nothing to wear in our closet (read, nothing that looks good on us)?  Too bad we don’t have talking mirrors.  If we did, it would be easier to be honest… or more probably learn to destroy mirrors. 

But the kind of lying I am talking about is that deep down lying you probably don’t even realize you do.  Take the food journal you need to be keeping.  While tracking down ever bite you eat, knowing you have a daily calorie intake limit, do you ever, say… feel the urge to cheat a wee bit?  Say, shave off a serving size or two, telling yourself, “It won’t really matter?”  Or maybe you write down that oatmeal but don’t count the butter and sugar you put in it?  Or maybe you don’t count the cream in the coffee thinking it won’t make that much difference to the bottom line?  YOU are the ONLY one you are fooling.

How about not counting the “reward” day you give yourself for being good all week?  Do you realize you can undo every beneficial thing you’ve done the prior week in one little reward day?  Are you lying to yourself about how much of a reward you are giving yourself?  I was.  I had to stop the reward days, reward meals and reward anything because I discovered that pretty soon I would flip-flop and have 6 days of reward days and one day of eating right. 

WE DID NOT BECOME OVERWEIGHT BY BEING HONEST WITH OURSELVES.  We have spent this entire time saying, “I’m not eating that much.  I don’t know why I keep gaining weight.”  How about the old, “I’ve tried every diet program out there and they all don’t work for me.”  Unh huh.  Sure.  Yep.  How about, “I quit every diet program out there and that is why they didn’t work for me?” 

Let’s quit lying to ourselves.  My all-time lie to myself was that a diet program didn’t work but the truth was I began to finagle and change up the program a little bit.  You know what I mean.  If it said, “Eat 350 calories for breakfast” and meant healthy serving size of oatmeal, dry whole wheat toast and orange juice, I would say, “Hmm, if I eat one biscuit and some gravy and coffee, as long as I eat the same amount of calories they mandated, I’ll be fine.”  Yeah, except I didn’t factor in the extra fat, the white flour (which is a trigger food for me) and so much cream in my coffee, it was off the chart in calories.  Or that I’d eat “just one more half of a biscuit….”

The trouble with lying to yourself is that if you lie to yourself long enough, you will begin to believe yourself.  You really do believe you aren’t eating as much as you are because you have no idea how much you really are eating.  An example?  You may not be eating as many times a day as you used to, but you may be eating more at each meal to make up for it.  You also really believe you aren’t eating that much or that every program has failed you.

In the beginning of the journey into the Little Black Dress, face the fact that you have been lying to yourself all this time.  As you begin to learn true portion sizes, check and make sure you are not cheating on your journal and lying to yourself about the amount of exercising you are doing.  If you think, “I’m not eating that much” stop and say, “No, that is a lie. I am obviously eating too much somewhere or I wouldn’t need to lose this weight.”  The more honest you are with yourself the faster you will get into your Little Black Dress and feel better about yourself!