Recognizing my "week-long shame spiral."

This article hit the nail on the head for me. If you don't have time to read it all, or have no interest in Paleo eating, I'll tell you what stuck out to me.

He said that newbies to Paleo hang on to the 80/20 way of eating because it's so new and so hard and they need those "cheat" days to keep them "on the diet." He said it took him a year to get over needing his "cheat" days before he could really embrace this way of eating as a normal and natural way of life without feeling restricted.

Hahaha at me. I gave it a mere 30 days!!! I realized as I was reading through the last month of my posts that I really lack patience. It seems that I go from one extreme to the other in my way of thinking and if something doesn't go my way, I instantly fall into the trap that NOTHING will ever work for me and then I'm depressed and hopeless and eat whatever the heck I want.

In my defense, I have been struggling for over 2 years just to get to a healthy weight. I would say I've been exercising regularly and at least monitoring what I eat for that long on some level for over 2 years with very little success. My days on Medifast yielded about 15 or so pounds and that was living on 800 calories a day for three months.

So I'm a little hyper-sensitive about whether or not something is "working" for me because honestly and truly, most things don't "work" for me in terms of weight loss.

I thought long and long and long and hard about why I was trying the Paleo way of eating. I really wanted to have this amazing feeling and have all my Hashimoto's problems vanish and then lose weight and have a healthy gut. I wanted to SEE and FEEL a difference. I can say I FELT a difference, but since I didn't SEE a difference, I decided it was all a bunch of crap. (a little short-sighted)

There was like a golden week for me where it did feel normal and natural and I didn't feel I was missing out. There were also days where I just wanted to eat pizza.

He pretty much described my week to a T in this little paragraph:

And another thing. Those designated “cheat” days? Who are you people? Amateurs.
Here’s why. Because as long as you see the world as either/or, the SAD (Standard American Diet. High carb, low fat. Without this, we never would have known Snackwell’s Cookies. )will continue to haunt you. You will never accept Paleo-style nutrition as “normal” when it is, in fact, the most normal and sane way to eat as a human on this planet. I believe it is the healthiest, the most commonsensical, the most ethical, and the most environmental way to eat. Period.

I saw an ad in my Sunset magazine recently for Weight Watchers’ Smart Ones frozen meal selections. The page was divided into quadrants, each one adorned with some sort of edible foodlike substance. Some sort of weird beige breakfast sandwich, two pasta meals with “cheese” sauce, and a dessert with some sort of caramel-chocolate sauce drizzled over. Folks, it didn’t even look like food to me and I instantly felt deep sorrow for whoever thinks they’re doing their body a favor by eating that garbage.

Why do I mention this? Because all SAD food is the exact same thing. I don’t care if it’s a fresh made scone or a Twinkie. It’s. All. The same. Shit.

It’s perfectly fine if you decide to eat it with full knowledge and control. As long as you return to us, that’s all that matters. How will you know you’re ready? When you no longer see those dietary aberrations as a threat to your Paleo cred. A few tortilla chips? Dessert to celebrate your anniversary? Go for it. Now keep going because there’s nothing to see here. It is not a failure, a weakness, or a mistake. It is life, it is food, it is fun. That’s all.

How do you know you’re not ready? When chips and guac turn into a week-long shame spiral. When you feel like Paleo is “hard”. When convenience trumps everything you’ve learned about how to take care of yourself.

That was DEFINITELY me last week. I caved for a lot of reasons and then spent a week nose-diving and then questioning everything about this way of eating. Thinking it was stupid and lame and too hard and pointless because I was never going to lose weight eating this way.

Well I've done some thinking and some experimenting and guess what? I still think it's a difficult way to eat for a long period of time, but I also tracked my calories yesterday and felt a lot more hungry than I usually do and still ate way more than I usually do on a typical day eating paleo and NOT feeling so hungry.
Hmmm,...What's a girl to do?

It honestly felt weird to eat a sandwich yesterday for lunch. It felt weird to eat cake and cookies at the superbowl party. All the yummy foods tasted great going down but I have felt like a bloated cow for the past week.

I'm still trying and I'm still a newbie and I guess it's going to take a lot longer for me to adapt to this way of eating, but I think I'm going to give it another 30 days and then another 30 days and another 30 days and not beat myself up if it takes me a year to not "need" my cheat day or my few moments of un-paleo eating. 

I might not ever reach the point where I am hardcore paleo, but I think I can see myself adapting this way of eating longer than I give myself credit. 

Here's to another week of eating like a cavewoman!