Cold Turkey is for Nov. 26

So I mentioned to a friend that I didn't know what to write about next on the blog, and she recommended I talk a little bit about the hurdles I initially faced when I started losing weight and how I overcame them. So maybe I'll spend a few days on those kinds of things, and then I'll go from there.

Before I do, though, another friend (I have awesome friends, obviously) mentioned that her friend has another breakfast idea: quinoa. Now, I'm new to quinoa, which is healthy, protein-rich seed from South America. It looks a bit like couscous. It's delicious with vegetables as a rice alternative, but I had not thought to make it a breakfast food! Like steel-cut oats, it takes a bit to cook, but not as long. Maybe 5-10 minutes or so. I tried it this morning with a little honey, some blueberries and a little yogurt to make it creamier. It was delicious!! And quite filling for about 4 pts. There are lots of reasons to try quinoa, but now you have one more.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, right? I started WW in October 2009. Being a fatalist and self-defeatest extraordinaire, I assumed it would probably be another opportunity to fail. I always looked at the "results not typical" part of the ads on TV and did that little derisive sniff thing. "Psh. Yeah. Results not typical. Results not for me." I was sure I didn't have the willpower. I was sure I was genetically too predisposed to being overweight.

But there I was, at the first meeting. I got my book and figured out my points allowance. I went home. I started tracking points the next morning. It became quickly obvious just how rotten my seemingly innocent choices were: granola bars, a little piece of candy here, a little piece of candy there. That package of Oreos was even worse than I thought! Oh, man. That frozen pizza is a nightmare! Orange juice?!?!? Even that's a lot of points? It's fruit!! The problem, though, of course, is that I wasn't ready for an immediate and radical change. So I started a kind of phasing out process.

I started by working down the junk in my cupboards. I allowed myself only one Oreo per day until they were gone and then vowed not to get them anymore (I don't like them that much, so I knew it wasn't a big deal). I started cutting in half the amount of orange juice I had in the morning instead of eliminating it outright--oj was a lifelong tradition for breakfast!! It would be a challenge to cut down, so eliminating was out of the question. I started making myself drink one glass of water in between each can of pop, rather than cutting out pop or too drastically (too quickly) cutting it out of my life. It was already diet pop, but I knew it was still part of my problem.

I loved and adored pasta, but I decided to try the whole wheat kind instead of eliminating it. It worked! I wanted to keep meat in my pasta sauce, so I tried ground chicken instead of ground beef. It worked! (Now I'm just fine without any meat at all.)

I wanted to keep pizza in my life, so I found brands that were easily portion controlled and not too outrageous on points (Red Baron French Bread supreme did the trick). No more buying entire frozen pizzas.

I wanted to eliminate going out to eat so many times a week, so I made a deal with myself. If I was good on weigh-in day, I would stop on the way home for Taco John's tacos (4pts each). That became my weekly restaurant treat. Then if I was feeling too lazy to cook, I was allowed one night stopping at the grocery store for something easy to prepare. (Now, I never eat Taco John's and I only stop at the grocery when I need a bunch of stuff--healthy stuff.)

What all these things added up to was a series of small changes that became a radical change. There was not one thing that I quit cold turkey. There are few things now that I've entirely given up, come to that. The important thing to know is that every healthy thing I do now is a result of a build-up of little things. If you're just starting out, or just beginning to think about starting out, don't decide on a particular day when everything changes. Just do a couple little things at a time.

I know this is not stunning, novel advice, but it is worthy of a repetition. I think most of my friends, and most people more generally, feel like everything has to be like a New Year's resolution, like a grand event or ceremony. Bull. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Think about two things you'd like to change, and figure out how you can change or improve those two things. Look for a worthy substitute or a weaning schedule that you can live with. Then, when that becomes acceptable, keep it up and add two more things. Or three. Whatever.

People think I have so much willpower. I don't, which is exactly why this strategy worked. If I had given any one thing up on a cold turkey basis, I would have failed miserably, just as I had initially predicted. I'm only successful because I was kind enough to myself to be realistic.

Maybe tomorrow will be part two of this: how I learned to stop worrying and love the exercise. (Or at least to tolerate it.)