Checking In

How is everyone  doing today? I'm happy because when I weighed myself today I discovered that I've now lost 22 pounds altogether thanks to Ana! Yay!

I'm not about to broadcast my actual weight here yet as it's quite revoltingly high and I don't want other Anas to think that I'm any less in the same boat as them by being so much further away from my goal. Saying that though, I'm sure we all feel the same way about our bodies right now, regardless of how much we actually have to lose, so all of you can probably identify with my own thoughts, feelings, struggles, trials and tribulations.

The best part about this way of eating is that the severe restriction has led to my stomach shrinking, which in turn has naturally lessened my appetite. I find myself becoming fuller, faster and the urge to eat has diminished somewhat. I'd often heard people say that over time their appetite lessened, but I never quite believed it. I always thought it was just something that folks would say to annoy the hell out of the rest of us. But it's actually true; my stomach is definitely smaller and I'm nowhere near as hungry any more. That can only be a good thing.

Do any of you ever become a little 'overwhelmed' at the enormity of the whole Ana lifestyle thing? Not so much what it entails, but more the fact that it's going to be something you'll need to do for such a long time? Maybe it's just me, what with my plan having to be so much more long-term, but maybe you guys get it too. It's not that I think 'I can't do this' or that I'm worried I'll get bored or lose patience, more that I think it's just going to be an incredibly long journey. Does that make sense? Probably not. I think it's more just a case of slow dawning and a realisation that can only come about once the initial giddiness of a new approach has passed.

When we first start out on a new eating plan, we're almost invincible. "THIS!" we tell ourselves "THIS will be the diet that FINALLY works for us! THIS is our time to succeed!" And we jump into it all feet first; we start assembling all the relevant information, resources and products we'll need to help us on our way and when the weight first starts to drop off of us, we're so excited, it just spurs us on to do better and lose more. 

But for those of us who have a longer road ahead of us, we might come to a point when we have to shift gears a little. Just as you would have to change gears when driving a car uphill, so too do you have to alter your approach when you pass into the second phase of your weight loss. It's at this point that a lot of us will falter. Not because we're not losing weight, not because it isn't working and not because we're finding it difficult. Generally it's because we get complacent. Not 'bored' exactly, but more benign. More neutral, more indifferent to our lifestyle. We're happy that it's working and we're plodding along just fine, but we're not gripped by the same excitement that we had at the beginning. 

Anas with a lot less to lose won't have this. They'll be fast approaching the really low weights, numbers they have only ever dreamed of and it's a dizzying, exhilarating place to be. But us long-term Anas, we've got a way to go before we start seeing anything drastic. We need to stay the course a lot longer and it's at this point in our weight loss that we can feel a little 'blah.'

We need to maintain our focus. 

And for that I suggest a re-evalution. Every so often, say every three months, I recommend taking stock of everything. Sit down and write a letter to yourself. Write a new commitment to yourself, detailing your goals, your plans, your hopes, your wishes and your feelings at that moment. Then, in three months time when you sit down again, open that letter you wrote yourself, read it and see if you've managed to meet any of your goals. See if you feel any different to that person you were three months ago, write yourself another letter, seal it up and leave it for the next session. 

The idea behind this is to break up your journey into smaller, less overwhelming chunks that you can look at and approach much more easily. When you look at the whole journey, with no actually knowledge of when you'll reach the end, it's easy to become overwhelmed. Instead of trying to tackle it all at once, you should go with a more finite time scale. Something you can actually visualise and something you can begin to work towards. 

That's what I plan to do anyway. Take it day by day and only work towards smaller more manageable goals. Right now it's August. In three months it'll be November. Winter will be on the horizon, the days will be shorter, the nights longer and that cold, crisp, frost in the air, nipping at our fingers and noses. How much smaller I'll be by then I don't know. But at least I can visualise that time. I can see a date that I need to work towards and do my best within that time frame. 

The way I see it, I have three months to make the most of my resolve. After that is another kettle of fish altogether, I'll cross that bridge and re-evaluate that new time scale, when it arrives. Until then I'm sticking to the plan, keeping my head down and striving every day to get this fat ass of mine to shrink down to the size it's meant to be!

Ana catch the bus