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Weight Creep

Fooling Yourself over Weight Creep

It’s so easy to fool yourself about weight creep as excess pounds pile on gradually. “It’s just water weight gain. It’ll be gone tomorrow” or “I definitely overdid it this weekend; but I’ll get back on track tomorrow … or the next day” or “I can’t help it if my job includes so many social functions and business lunches.”

One or two pounds a year take several years to force you to go up a size. I speak from experience.

I remember as if it were yesterday the wake-up call my doctor gave me after watching me waddle down his office corridor looking like a stuffed sausage. I refused to admit I needed to move up to a size 14 (which is probably today’s 16).

He sat me down in his office and said, “I notice from your records that you’ve been gaining a couple of pounds a year. It’s really time to do something abut it.” I was so mortified that I started a sensible diet that very day.

Within a year, I had lost 38 pounds and was back to my wedding weight. That was such a powerful lesson to me that I’ve maintained my ideal weight (plus or minus five pounds) for 25 years.

Now my diet mantra is “Everything in moderation.” I don’t deprive myself of my favorite foods. I weigh myself daily and if that needle shows two extra pounds, I monitor my food intake more carefully for a few days.

I know that if I don’t keep an eye on the scale, wight creep will take over and the pounds could easily pile back on and I wouldn’t be fooling anybody but myself!

Here are some of my favorite diet tips.

“Think”: a Little “Respect” for Me

Recently I reported on a long-term Harvard study tracking almost 70,000 women over 16 years.

The researchers reported a statistically significant relationship between getting five or less hours of sleep a night and weight gain. The sleep-skimpers had a 32% greater chance of gaining more than 30 pounds over the 16-year study period.

When I look back on it, I have to admit that sleep-skimping probably was a contributing factor to my gaining 38 pounds over a 15-year span (see my last blog entry).

First came love. Then came marriage. Then came me with the baby carriage. I was working full time, taking care of the house without help and required to take graduate courses to retain my job. There were not enough hours in the day for sleep! Or for healthy eating. Plus there was probably a good bit of stress eating going on.

Musing on all this brings to mind snippets of two great Aretha Franklin songs.

Think

“You better think (think, think) about what you're trying to do to me
Yeah, think (think, think) let your mind go, let yourself be free.”

I need to think about what I am doing to myself if I don’t watch my weight.

Respect

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB” (take care of business).

And the business I need to take care of is me.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to be taken as medical advice.

 

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