I've realized that
I don't want to CHANGE my LIFE.

I LIKE my life.  ....Most of it.....

Maintaining a small body size
is only one small PART of my life.

To manage that part,
I'm willing to eat less.
That's really ALL I need to change.

                   

Activities, especially the ones we find unpleasant or painful, that don’t yield a positive return to us individually, are counter productive. Acts such as reducing sodium, eating “organic”, or “exercising daily” can sometimes actually prevent a person from creating a healthy lifestyle for themselves.

Hate running? Then don’t run. Don’t like giving up pizza? Then figure out a way to fit it into your diet. Don’t like salads? Then don’t eat them.

So what would be a successful strategy for weight loss?
Choose the most painless, most effective way-of-eating possible, for you personally.

It’s foolish to force one’s own fitness or nutritional ideologies on others. Many people treat fitness and nutrition as though these issues are a Religion and try to push their own preferences on to other people.

Perhaps the Paleo diet worked very well for you. That doesn’t mean that it will work for someone who feels horrible on low carbs or loves bread.

Perhaps limiting all eating to three or less mealtimes a day feels “natural” to you. That doesn’t mean eating in that manner will be effective for those who greatly value daily snacks, or for those who have a strong personal preference for eating a larger number of mini-meals daily.

Perhaps it’s easier for you to restrict the amount of your food intake by establishing a pattern of skipping meals or fasting a few days each week. That doesn’t mean that an eating/fasting pattern is workable or desirable for everyone.

If you find a diet that works for you, congratulations! It’s okay to recommend this diet to your friends, but don’t turn it into Nutritional Dogma. Just be thankful that you’ve found a good strategy and move on with your life.

Saying that there is only one way to eat is the same thing as saying that everyone shares a common heritage, comes from the same cultural background, and has the same personal preferences. People are different. We are not all the same.

Giving NOTICE to the World.
Keep any negative comments, opinions, or questions
you may have about my body to yourself.
I’ll do the same for you.

My body is the house for my mind and spirit, and is the most visible part of me.
I am with it 24/7, and every action I take, whether voluntary or involuntary involves it. My hands open and close. My lips move. My eyes see. My body is me, and it is mine.

When I was 16 I wanted my body to be shapely and thin and to look like Jane Fonda’s body. It didn’t. Now that I’m over 60 and I’m now shapely (for my age) and relatively thin (a normal weight) it still doesn’t, … not even like Jane Fonda’s current over 60 year old body… but my body’s has been good to me. Far better than I’ve been to it.

I like the way my body looks today. There are many reasons why I don’t want to become fat again. Some of them involve my health. Some of them involve my vanity. Some of them involve keeping the negative judgments of others away from me.

A flaw means a mark, a fault, or other imperfection. So saying that my body has “flaws”, would imply that I agree with the arbitrary standard of beauty that gets imposed upon it by others… and I don’t. My own personal standards of beauty have changed over the years and … most of the time, … all of my body’s physical characteristics are acceptable, even dear to me.

My own feelings about my own body are my own personal business, and this is true no matter what size I happen to be. I don’t need anyone else to tell me how to feel. The author of the article below appears to feel differently about her body than I feel about my own, but I share her basic philosophy.

Don’t tell me to love my body
            by Elyse  - March 11, 2013 - www. skepchick.org

I want to talk to you about how you talk to me about how I talk about my body, and how I talk about how I feel about my body, and what’s wrong with everything you have to say about what I have to say.

In short, fuck you.

I don’t love my body. My body is awful. I will never love my body. I never have. And I’m 35 and maybe you think that’s too old to have real hang ups about my body. But I do. And I always will. And maybe you think that because I’ve lost a bunch of weight I should feel great about my body. But I don’t. And I won’t.

And maybe you think that because it’s my body I should love it and that I should think I’m beautiful. That I should somehow ignore all the standards the world imposes on me every single day, standards that make up “beautiful.” That I should make my own standards, and tell myself that I can just create my own reality. That I should pretend that I can never be judged by the standards of others. Maybe if I just love myself enough, other people will be able to climb into my head and begin adopting my standard of beauty and the world will follow and my formula will be the new standard and I will become The Most Beautiful.

Or maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe the fact that I don’t love my body isn’t really an ...

 
I weigh daily, and I record and chart those weights on various computer graphs and tables which serves to clearly show my weight-loss or weight-gain trends. Sometimes this is difficult to continue because it involves facing a reality which I don't personally care for.

7 years ago, I reached my goal weight of 115 lbs. Since that time I've consistently and continuously worked very hard to maintain that weight. Over the past 5 years in maintenance, .... despite my best efforts of working toward weight-loss and/or maintenance every single day ... my weight has been very gradually creeping upward. At present my weight is bouncing around in the high 120s, frequently reaching  the very top of my "normal" BMI range.

Over this past 7 years of maintenance while recording all of my food and calories daily, I've varied the amounts I've eaten; I've varied the types of foods I've eaten: I've varied my eating times. In fact  I have experimented with just about every diet possible... both the "reasonable", and the  "unreasonable".  I've tried more exercise and less exercise and different exercise.  I've tried eating less calories and more calories, while keeping my overall calorie averages within reasonably acceptable ranges for my own personal BMR. 

During each of the past 5 years, my daily calorie average has been around 1050, which ... quite frankly ... is just about the lowest average that I can maintain.  Over long time periods, sometimes my weekly averages are around 1200, sometimes they are around 800.  My weight bounces around - usually within a 5 lb range - but the yearly trend has continued to creep upward.

I really hate seeing this. Sometimes I'd like to just give up watching the scale, but my lifetime of experience has taught me what happens with me when I choose to follow that tactic.  So ... I'm working to emotionally Accept what is happening with my body, while -- at the same time -- I continue to do my utmost to physically Change it, and redirect the scale downward.

Sometimes it feels like I am being drug along to a place against my will, while I'm resisting with all my might, struggling, and clutching and clawing to any object that will slow or stop that progress. It's hard, and it's not a good feeling. Again and again I've watched as others about me -- also involved in a similar struggle, -- let go and ride passively into weight-gain oblivion, or give up and embrace behaviors that cause rapid weight-gain, and I feel alone and abandoned.

Some of the people who read my articles indicate that they dislike seeing "negativity".  My response is simply that I write about the Reality that I see and that I know.  DietHobby is primarily to help ME, although I'm pleased to share my thoughts with anyone who finds them useful or interesting.

What will happen to me?  Will my weight continue to creep upward?  Will it settle here? Will it go back down?  I don't know. I'm fighting tooth and ...