Are You Up Two, or Down 30?

Black or white, positive or negative, our emotions can control the way we operate every single day. And nothing, but nothing can dictate the mood of a WLS patient than the scales or sad step as they have become known here at Bariatric Cookery.

Not the ‘naughty step’ but the one that can make us happy or sad for the day ahead. A loss, a whoop and a spring to the step; a stall or gain, a sigh and a down-turned frown! All so typical which is why this small but relevant posting that came into my in-box this morning had me thinking.

I can, and you can, view this one of two ways – as affirmation that things are going right or even a signal that you need to address something that isn’t, or a pre-cursor to throwing the towel in (and I hopefully know you better than to consider this)!

Often a re-boot is all that is required to lift the mood, make changes and get back on track … we have lots of information to help with this. In the meantime … read this and see if you recognise yourself first …

GUEST POST: It’s something I see all the time. Someone’s done an incredible job at cultivating a new lifestyle and has also lost weight.

Then life throws them a kick of some sort (illness, injury, mood disturbance, holiday, birthday, vacation, promotion, etc.) and things go a bit awry and those new behaviours slide and some weight is regained.

Really, that’s real life. Our efforts, our motivation, our stressors, our responsibilities – they’re not straight lines.

And with most areas of our life, we’re cool with that. We appreciate that our best efforts will vary.

But not so much with weight management.

Often times with weight management, slight, real-life related slides in behaviours and rises in weight, lead people to quit altogether. Suddenly they’re up two pounds, frustrated, and worse, considering themselves failure and their efforts impossible.

It’s times like these that I tend to remind people, like I did yesterday in my office with the patient whose chart is up above, who has lost over 30lbs over the past 16 months and recently regained 2, that it’s their choice whether they want to perceive their outcome as being up 2, or down 30.

If things aren’t going your way, if you’re unhappy with what you’ve been doing or not doing, rather than beat yourself up about it, reframe, respect reality, and them remember that the best question you can ask yourself is, “What can I do right now that will help a little“, and then do it!

Courtesy of Weighty Matters