BDS Day 2

Today's task for the BDS is to choose and commit to two diet plans.  I am sort of skirting by this one and only choosing one.  The idea is to have a back-up plan for if the first diet plan fails.  I sat and thought long and hard about another diet plan that I would want to try if WW failed and realized that WW has not failed me ever.  I was able to stick to the plan enough to lose 75lbs.  When I stopped following the plan completely is when I gained, it wasn't the plan, it was me.  Obviously if you stay true to any of these diet plans, they will work.  It's simple math, calories in vs. calories out.  However, WW is the only plan that I've managed to live with without feeling deprived and have been successful.

So WW is my first choice and also my backup plan!

Every day I am supposed to read my Advantages Response Card at least twice a day.  Breakfast is always provided at my Thursday morning meetings.  I typically try to avoid this breakfast because it usually consists of bagels, donuts, etc.  I always eat breakfast at home so that I do not feel compelled or tempted to eat the food.  However, there have been times in the past when I eat breakfast at home and eat more breakfast at the meeting.  Today I really worked hard to avoid this and I am proud of myself.  By usuing a combination of WW and the BDS I was able to resist eating the unhealthy food at the meeting.  Here's how I did it:

WW:  I ate a little bit larger breakfast than I usually do and spread it out through my morning so I felt satisfied at the meeting and not hungry.  I filled up my breakfast with Power Foods to help keep me satiated (the meeting is 2 hours long).  First I ate an egg fryed in a tsp oil on two pieces of light bread.  Then I made myself a WW brand coconut smoothie with almond milk and pineapple and drank that on my ride to work.  During the meeting I did not feel any hunger and was not tempted to eat.

BDS:  Being satisfied is only half the battle for me.  There have been plenty occasions when I am not hungry but still choose to eat because it smells good or looks good.  Today I read my ARC before going to the meeting to remind myself of all of the advantages of losing weight.  On the way to the meeting I gave myself a pep talk and decided if there was any food at the meeting that I really wanted I would take it and eat it as a snack later (I have 6 DP's to play around with today for snacks).  Turns out that even though the food smelled good, there was nothing that I wanted enough to take for later and was able to resist eating anything in the meeting.


I am so proud of myself for using my skills today!  This was my first test on how I would be able to utilize the BDS to assist me in making the right choices.  The next test will be Saturday night when I go out to dinner with my boyfriend in the city.

I would also like to comment on some of the reviews I read about the BDS.  Though many of them were extrememly positive there are always the negatives.  In the instance of one review the writer states that Beck asks you to treat losing weight like it's your job and has you place constant reminders of your reasons for losing weight around you, they say:

"Though it sounds harmless, I found the work to promote unhealthy obsessions with what I'm eating and how I feel about how I look."

For me, since beginning WW and most likely for the rest of my life I will spend a large portion of my day thinking about food, what I'm eating, when my meals will be, when I can get activity in, how many points I've used, etc. etc. etc.  The days that go by without the consistant thoughts about the food I'm eating are the days that I do not stay OP.  It's all about when you do with those thoughts and it's only unhealthy if it disrupts your life (i.e. not going to work because you're planning your weekly meals).

they also write:

"The reason why I am reviewing this book in particular and not shouting from the rooftops about what is wrong with Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig or Atkins is that I believe that the book promotes obsessing about dieting, your personal imperfections (in a roundabout way, as the focus is on what you want to change positively rather than what is wrong with your body) and takes the deprivation of dieting to extremes by asking that you starve yourself temporarily"

CBT in general is about taking your negative thoughts and turning them around to make them positive.  If you are trying to lose weight there is a reason whether you don't like how you look physically or you have to do it for health reasons you are already looking at your personal imperfections...but the point is to try and change your thoughts about them and make your thinking work for you and not damage you.

I haven't read much of the book, but I can't comment of the part about asking you to starve yourself temporarily.  My feeling is that Beck is saying that you will be fine if you miss a meal or snack, but I doubt that she would be asking you to "starve" yourself in the literal meaning of the word, but I could be wrong.  And that's where your own judgement comes in, like I said in my previous post WW has taught me it's okay to have a snack between meals as long as it's a healthy option and also that I shouldn't let myself get too hungry because that puts me in the danger zone.

The writer then goes on to say that she hasn't lost any weight, has beeing dieting for 20 years and is at the heaviest they've ever been.  To that I say clearly your cognitive thoughts are not where they should be, it's not 20 years of diets that have gotten you to the heaviest you've ever been, it's you that's gotten you to the heaviest you've ever been.  Stop blaming the diets or the people like Beck who are trying to assist people in altering their thoughts from negative to positive and take ownership of your own behavior.

That review sort of got under my skin (clearly) and probably deserved a post of its own.  But we'll see, I haven't finished the book or the program so I can't say for sure if it will help me, but it is worth a shot!