The Comparison Trap

By now you all probably already know that I won the "MOST IMPROVED" award for the #NOEXCUSES Spring Break Challenge. Our team didn't win the grand prize, but I was quite excited to have been recognized for this award.

Wednesday night I was feeling really good. I was proud of myself for what I accomplished in the 8 weeks and was feeling the love and support from everyone at the gym. I made my little speech about how I was hesitant to start working out at this gym because I didn't want to feel like the "fat girl" in the sea of skinny/fit people. Amazingly enough, in the now 9 weeks that I've been attending this gym, I have not once felt like the fat girl. I may have felt like the "new girl" from time to time, but I was/am so that's OK.

Then Leslie sent me the pic she took of me when I accepted my award and the very first thing I thought when I looked at the pic was, "Ugh, I am still so fat". WHY?? Why is that the first thing I saw? So then Thursday I struggled. I struggled with my horribly negative thoughts about how what I accomplished over those 8 weeks wasn't enough. I started comparing myself to the other people in the challenge. I was thinking - man, that person lost 14 pounds as well and they don't have nearly as much weight to lose as I do. Or, why can't I be "better", more disciplined, a harder worker, more dedicated to losing this weight as quickly as possible, etc.?!?!

ARGH! This is one of the most frustrating things that I do. This whole not good enough complex I seem to have is really annoying. I always seem to find myself comparing my experience to other peoples' and deciding that what they did was better. This thought process is so stupid and doesn't do anything but make it harder for me to stick to my goals.

My amazing coach and trainer - Pam! 

I am  happy to report that this week has gotten better since that dark day on Thursday. I did find myself eating my feelings on Thursday, but every time I put something in my mouth I tracked it. I had earned plenty of "fit points" to have wiggle room so in the end I didn't do any real damage. I tracked everything I ate and still have plenty of extra points to get me through this weekend. This is what I love most about WW. It wasn't great that I ate my feelings; but I did what I needed to do to keep it in check. I even decided to track my food that day into MyFitnessPal to see what it amounted to in calories. I ate 56 points that day (if you remember I'm "allowed" 23 in a day + fit points + 42 weekly points to use however I want. There are also lots of 0 point foods). Ok, so knowing that I ate a fair amount of 0 point foods (like eggs and turkey) I was curious to know how many calories I actually ingested on Thursday when I ate 4 girl scout cookies, salt & vinegar potato chips and a piece of the cinnamon sugar cheesecake bars I made last weekend. Turns out I didn't even hit 2000 calories that day. This actually helped me to 1) stop eating and 2) not feel so guilty about it. I had the points, I tracked everything I ate and I moved on. THAT'S the key people! And, the fact that I was counting points and not calories kept it very much so in control. There were plenty of times when counting calories that a "binge" day tracked would amount to more than 2500 calories. Heck, there were plenty of days that a day I didn't even binge would amount to 2500 calories.

I've had a rough week mentally, but I have kept my food spot on (because I've kept tracking and have stayed within my points). It doesn't matter what other peoples' journey's look like. This is MY journey and it will be what it is. We'll see what the scale says on Monday, but I have a good feeling about this week's weigh in!