Hello there,
Welcome back to K&T blog. How are you doing?
We sincerely hope it was a good week for you and that you managed to contribute positively to your weight loss journey and to your overall health and wellness. On our side it was a good week, we were able to maintaining our regained training momentum and we payed special attention to our diet as we recently had fluctuations on our weight. These fluctuations had a number of consistent weight spikes which reminded us of the emotional pain of gaining weight, especially when you are making efforts to lose the weight.
Every time the scale goes up for a sustained period of time (a week in our case) we get a wake up call to check out what is happening. This call always brings the flashbacks of the pains we endured on our journey when the scale was continuously on an upward spiral regardless of our counter efforts. Trust us, it hurts when you get on the scale for a few days in a row and the scale keeps going up and up. This painful experience can be discouraging and maybe leave you distraught or helpless.
It is only when you broaden your view and change your perception that the pain subsides ,it is when you start to realise that the scale is an ally and not a foe who is trying to make you feel bad. The scale is nothing but a tool that gives you insight on what is happening in your life at that time, it is just saying “Hey, something is causing you to gain weight, you might want to check what it is and do something about it if you would like to lose weight”. This painful experience can be a good thing because without this early alarm, you would probably continue with what you have been doing and gain a lot more weight that might even be harder to lose at a later stage.
Changing your perception about your weight gain can save you from unnecessary hurt and rumination, life is already hard to maneuver for daily survival and weight management should not be another source of resistance in your life. Changing our perception about our weight gain every time it happens (and it happens a lot 🙂 ) has helped us from avoiding undue self-attack on our self-esteem, our efforts and our competence, it has helped us to see things as they really are and not as negative, obscure and precarious as it would be if the focus was solely on the number that we see on the scale.
There are a few things that we do and recommend to help with changing the perception on weight gain and managing the emotional pain of gaining weight. These have helped us in those days where we are gaining weight even though we feel that we are doing what we are supposed to do. Unfortunately we had to experience the pains and suffering of failure to lose weight firsthand before discovering some antidotes, it does not have to be so for you. Let us look at some of the helpful things to do when the weight is consistently on the rise.
1. Assess your current situation
Weight gain is a result of a number of factors that are unique and contextual to one’s life. Although the visible and resulting cause might be increased food consumption, food might just be a symptom of the real cause of the weight gain such as stress, environment , sleep pattern, type of food, work engagements, family dynamics, current or upcoming events, and the season such as winter or summer. Losing or gaining weight is really not black and white, by just focusing on eating less and restricting calories does not guarantee that you will lose weight, there are so many shades of grey that are involved and so many other colours that are summed-up in one’s context.
In tackling weight gain, a good question to ask oneself is ” What is happening in my life that is causing me to eat more than I should”. For us (Kat & Tshepi) when we ask ourselves this question we are able to identify the changes that have happened recently or are currently happening in our lives, such as change of season, work challenges, events/celebrations (a nightmare for introverts 🙂 ), physical and emotional state, diet changes, ease of food access and finances. In assessing our context, we are able then to see the real causation of our weight gain and we are able to start the remedial course. It is better to know what is wrong soon because at that point the mind somehow naturally starts working on a solution.
2.Start with small recovery changes
When you have assessed your context you are able to uncover the hot spots and are able to identify small changes you can make to recover from the weight gain. Taking small steps of change at a time will ensure that you don’t overwhelm yourself by doing too much too soon and end up back where you started or far worse. Small incremental steps give you a guarantee that you will accomplish the task you set for yourself, it is something you know you can do. Desmond Tutu once said “there is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.” , this applies so well to the process of losing weight and to conquering the weight gain. Therefore, start small and keep increasing with time and ability.
Small recovery changes also means that you don’t eliminate the positive efforts that you have been doing but you acknowledge them and tweak them where necessary. Starting from scratch and overhauling ones life always seems like a good idea but it is very hard and chances of failure are a lot more. Paying attention to the positive efforts , the areas that are working well and remembering the rewards they brought is a good place to start the recovery process, it provides the leverage of speed to get back on the right track. The truth is that even though you have gained weight, there are things you are doing well for your health, there are positive takeaways, there is no need to start from zero because not all is lost.
3. Look two weeks behind and two weeks ahead
Be realistic about your perception of the gained weight as well as the recovery course you plan to take. The weight gain that is visible today did not just happen now or yesterday, it took a while to get there, and the reality is that it will take some time as well to reverse it. We have noticed that whenever we gain some weight we are able to trace the cause from two weeks back, this is when the wheels of weight gain began to be in motion and we are only seeing results now. So it is better to cast your eyes a bit further back to see when did the weight gain start because we turn to remember and focus mainly on recent activities and ignore the past where the real cause emerged.
Likewise, when looking at the remedial actions, it is good to have a long term view because the changes will not happen immediately. Trying to reverse the gain in an instant will add unnecessary pressure, so instead we look at two weeks ahead to notice consistent changes as a results of today’s actions. It is in our nature to want changes right away , but giving yourself time will yield better and consistent reduction of the gained weight and will avoid a pre-mature collapsing of your efforts and plans. Our opinion is that we want changes immediately because we want to avoid the discomfort of our reality. It would serve us better to learn to stay with and live through our discomfort as it drives the change we desire.
That’s it for this week, gaining weight is painful but can become a good reminder of the reason you want (or wanted) to lose weight and a reminder of “how badly you want it”. With a change in perception ,the pain of weight gain can be a driver of transformation, it can be used as a start of a journey to a desired body weight. Orson Scott Card said “Happiness is not a life without pain but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price”, it is time to trade the pain of weight gain for the joy of weight loss. The joy of weight loss far exceeds the temporary pain of weight gain.
Until next week, stay blessed.
Kat & Tshepi
Kat & Tshepi 