The 'Starting Not To Care' Stage

I realised today that I am entering the 'starting not to care' stage of dieting and calorie counting. It generally hits about 6 to 8 weeks in and as I am officially 6 weeks in this week, I guess this is rather timely!

Anyway this phase sees you going from total obsessive to slightly more relaxed, but... BUT... it is dangerous territory in my opinion. This is the make or break point.

Firstly - you arrive at this point because you start to get used to the new routine and eating structure. Your mind is no longing rebelling at every opportunity and instead seems to reach a kind of resigned approach: you're in this for the long haul.

Secondly - you keep eating the same things, so in the end you begin to know what you can and can't have. By the 6-8 week mark you have had quite a bit of practice at weighing and measuring, and calculating and logging. It's time to let go and release the reins a bit.

Thirdly - if you stay in the anxious, hyper aware, obsessive stage forever, you will become completely exhausted and/or risk developing some kind of eating problem...

So, the starting not to care stage sees me:

• Not measuring quite so much (for example, I am not weighing my bread after I slice it)
• Not logging after each meal (for example, I may allow two meals to go by before I start to log online, so I am beginning to work out how much I can have before I actually log it to find out if I am right or not)

The point of this is that: a. it happens naturally and b. you need to start to learn to judge for yourself and, more importantly, trust your own judgement. When you have quite a bit of weight to lose, you can find yourself at a point where you don't trust your own judgement (after all, possibly part of the reason you find yourself needing to lose weight is because you have a tendency to eat too much or whatever). Then when you are measuring and calculating and logging everything like a frantic nutter, you develop the actual 'need' to do those activities to reassure yourself that you are actually doing it right. Due to these reasons, I think it is good to slacken off a little... see how it goes. You can give yourself a little challenge of maybe a couple of weeks of more relaxed calorie counting before you judge whether you have learnt enough to be able to work this way and still lose weight...

That's the theory anyway!

I am now going to try and put this all into practice. As I said at the beginning, I am naturally finding myself at this stage. It feels instinctive, so I am going with it and will see what happens. I do think I need to give myself the mental space to go through this stage and see if it works and whether I can then continue on as I am doing. Otherwise, it's back to the drawing board and probably more measuring and weighing. Of course I feel a little "hmmm" about the prospect that it might not work and I may stay static or gain. I don't think I will gain to be honest... more likely stay static, but if I can keep my exercise up and am hopefully eating the right amounts, then I don't see why I should not lose as I have already been doing.