The Calendar - Time For Change

Do you need something a little different to try. Just to do SOMETHING different?

I have found that one of the biggest challenges with weight loss is getting bored with the same old same old. It isn't always necessarily food. Sometime it is just any change that is needed.

Every year or so I go back to a trick my mother taught me when I was about 10 - 12 years old. It is really stupid and really simple but for some reason it seems to work when I need a change.

I know this is going to be entirely too much information but seeing as I have this compulsive need to share my ENTIRE life with the world I will let you know that as a youngster I was a bed wetter. I wet the bed until I was about 12 years old.

After many doctor's appointments etc, it ended up being a calendar (Ok ...maybe it was just aging and coincidental timing) that solved the problem.

My mother bought a calendar and put it on the wall by my bed. Every day I didn't wet the bed she drew an "X" on that day on the calendar which stood for "success". It became a game to see how many days in a month I could get an "X". Damned if it didn't work. For some reason the visual really helped.

So every now and then I get a calendar out (the old fashioned kind...and not an online one) and place it where I see it all the time.

If I have been good I draw one line from the upper left hand corner to bottom right. If I have also tracked my points I draw a second line from the bottom left hand corner to the upper right. If I totally blew it the square for that day stays blank. As time goes by I get a clear visual in my face of how well I am doing.  You can do this even if you don't track points. One diagonal line could represent a reasonably good day, and an "X" could represent a perfect day.

I know...it is silly...but if you do it I bet you will find it motivates you to get as many "Xs" as you can.

I pulled a calendar out this morning and am going to do it retroactively from January 1st. I have been on a quest to be "perfect" as long as I can hold out starting January 1st, and have tracked foods according to the "Filling Foods Plan" technique everyday so that means I get to start with 8 "X's". Yeah!

It is important to remember a perfect day doesn't necessarily mean you were perfect. It just means you stayed on your plan, whatever that plan may be. I had fried Fish Cakes and fried Sweet Potatoes the other day, but it was "on plan" and I counted it, so it is still a perfect day.

As Mikey says: "Try it...you'll like it"!

Be healthy!

Alan