my thm journey, part one: confession is good for the soul

If you don't start somewhere, you will never start.  Just like a baby learning to walk, you will never have a perfect beginning, but you'll make a good start by taking the first step.

I am a lazy perfectionist.  I am the kind of person who wants everything perfect right from the start, and who is ready to give up in despair at the first blunder.  And then wallow in despair for a while before getting up and trying to be perfect again.  I am too lazy to work at it.

I first found out about Trim Healthy Mama during the summer of 2013.  I understood the concept almost immediately, and thought, "Wow!  I can follow an easy diet full of foods I love and crave, and the pounds will simply melt away without my even half trying!"

As soon as I had enough Amazon gift cards (earned through swagbucks), I ordered the book.  It's a huge, thick book, but I dived in right away.  Everything I read made perfect sense to me.  I was sold.  So sold, I went out and bought enough of the specialty items I could find locally, and started gung-ho into the plan.

Within the first several weeks I had lost ten pounds, I had told numerous friends about the plan, and had sold a few of them on it.  They ordered their books, and started seeing the same results I had.  I was so pleased to find a plan that worked.

But then laziness kicked in.  My long-suffering husband, having watched me start and fail too many times, was not keen on having the whole family diet radically changed on what he perceived to be just another whim.  I was going to have to prove it first.

Which meant that I was going to have to prepare six meals every day: three for them and three for me.  Every dieter in the world knows how hard it is to stick to a plan no one else is following, in a house full of forbidden eatables.  Sugar and wheat flour were the biggest temptations for me.

Every day started well.  The girls and I would get up and start breakfast for the family.  Then, while the family had Bible Time, I stayed nearby and contributed my thoughts while making my own breakfast of THM-friendly ice cream and cake (a chocolate muffin in a mug and a whip made of frozen strawberries, cottage cheese, almond milk, and THM-approved natural sweetener).

However, as the days went by, I often found myself too busy to fix a meal that was different from what the family ate.  At noon, I would typically grab some sort of THM munchy such as cheese, a spoonful of peanut butter, or a bit of cottage cheese.  Something quick and easy, but not very filling.  By supper time I would be just ravenous, and not caring about E, S, FP, or even Crossover.  I gobbled whatever the cook for the day had made (my girls take turns), then spent the rest of the day feeling very bloated and very guilty.

And the numbers on the scale stopped going down.  In fact, they began to climb back up to pre-THM levels, and then higher.  I hated what was happening, but despaired of ever changing.

So I came to a decision:  I'm just going to get back on the bandwagon and do the very best I can in an imperfect way.  I'm going to stop "starting over" every morning, and just go with it.  I'm not sure how well things will go, but I'm going to work hard and see where I end up.

February 28th marked my last "start over" day.  I'll come back in another month with a THM update, and let you know how it went.  I plan to keep a journal of each day's ups and downs which I will post in the update.

Pray for me, especially those of you who know me personally.  :)