Well, I did it… I finished all six weeks of The Beck Diet Solution, and have learned so very much along the way! While I know it will take time to cement the habits and strategies the book has taught me, I feel far better equipped to handle food and eating challenges than I did before I began working through the program. I’m glad I made the decision to do it.
This week I give myself credit for:
- Losing another 3.1 lbs, bringing my total lost to 38.5 lbs.
- Exercising every day but one (although, as a friend pointed out, I did an AWFUL lot of mall-walking that day, which should surely count for something!).
- Not allowing one missed day of exercise to stop me from staying on track the next day.
- Making a healthy dinner choice at the mall (Subway has great chopped salads!) and staying within my allotted calories on an evening when I was away from home, dinner was delayed, and I was ravenous.
- Planning ahead by looking up the nutrition information and logging my food on MyFitnessPal prior to going out for a restaurant meal so that I was aware of how much I should eat.
- Sticking to my plan at the restaurant, feeling great about myself, and having a wonderful, guilt-free evening with friends.
- Finishing The Beck Diet Solution program!
If you’d like to catch up on my experiences to date with The Beck Diet Solution, my previous posts are here:
- Introduction – my experience
- Week 1 (Chapter 5 – Get Ready: Lay the Groundwork) – my experience
- Week 2 (Chapter 6 – Get Set: Prepare to Diet) – my experience
- Week 3 (Chapter 7 – Go: Start Your Diet) – my experience
- Week 4 (Chapter 8 – Respond to Sabotaging Thoughts) – my experience
- Week 5 (Chapter 9 – Overcome Challenges) – my experience
Week 6 (Chapter 10 – Fine-Tune Your New Skills)
Once again, I thought I’d share a handful of the Response Cards I made and used throughout the week, to give you an idea of a few of the things I’ve been learning throughout this chapter.
There will be times of self-doubt when I wonder if what I’ve accomplished is just a fluke and isn’t going to last. This card is to remind me that I DO know how to lose weight, that I HAVE done it, that I CAN continue doing it, and that it IS going to last.
While I’ve only been recording my weight once a week on MyFitnessPal, I’ve been weighing every day and keeping track in a notebook. One thing this has done is made me aware that no matter how well I may have stuck to my diet one day, it is totally possible for me to gain weight at my next weigh-in. Focusing on a gain can be discouraging, but I think my daily weigh-ins have helped me to keep things in perspective, think long-term, and prepare myself for the inevitable plateau that will almost certainly happen at some point.
I’ve been working on building my daily exercise habit, but I’ve pretty much stuck to doing the same thing every day. Now what I need to do is to try something new so that it doesn’t become dull and routine. Perhaps a revisit to my exercise inventory would help!
How many times have you put your life – or aspects of your life – on hold until you lost weight? I know that I certainly have. This lesson was an excellent reminder to me to DO IT NOW instead of waiting until everything is perfect.
In order for me to continue losing weight, it’s important that I continue using and practicing the strategies and techniques that I’ve been learning throughout the past six weeks. I plan to keep reviewing my Response Cards, going back through a few sections of the program that I didn’t feel I gave enough attention to at the time, and keeping the book on hand as a resource for when I’m going through a difficult time or facing a challenge.
The future looks bright!