HEALTH Neill O’Neill’s weight-loss diary – Week 7

Hanging in the balance


Weight loss
Neill O'Neill

My weight-loss diary – Week 7
“YOU have an all-or-nothing mentality, and it was all Motivation for the last six weeks and no indulgence, then as soon as you went out last weekend it was the opposite,” Imelda told me at my weekly Motivation consultation last Wednesday.
She was 100 percent correct. There was no denying that I had been as good as gold for the previous six weeks and embraced every element of the Motivation programme wholeheartedly. I did not deviate from the programme one iota. But when I fell off the wagon, I really fell off it.
I’ve always been honest in this column and there is no point breaking that trend now. I told her that I had parked Motivation the entire previous weekend. The terminology did not endeared me to her, and to be honest, once again, she was absolutely right.
I have to stress that I was always encouraged to go and socialise throughout the programme, to live with relative normality. But normality is different for everybody, so I decided a clean break to give it every chance of success was necessary.
It has worked a treat, I’m a few pounds shy of shedding two stone. However, what I really did wrong that previous weekend – and the reason last Wednesday felt like visiting a parole officer after a crime spree – was throwing all I’d learnt out the window for no reason in the world. And after being a good boy for an age.
There was no reason why I couldn’t have eaten regularly, taken my appropriate level of water, engaged in a bit of healthy living and socialising, and given myself every chance for continued success. I didn’t even take the vitamins. My food diary has vast blank tranches, and I visited some of my old haunts for some of those timeless favourites.
Physically, I only gained 0.6 of a pound on the previous week (the first time my graph reversed), which was remarkably low all things considered. However, by consciously forgetting Motivation completely, I ended up forsaking all I had learnt, and that, really, was not necessary. If I had balanced myself as I have learnt to do, and found some level of happy medium, I would have been much better off. But hey, we’re all human. Lesson learned, and we move on.
Since that episode (which I’m putting down as a professional experiment for the sake of this column!) I’ve been back doing what I should be, but I am now socially active again, and not afraid to take a little bit of the bad with the good.
I have done very well on the programme, but it was not a true representation of myself to remain so completely one-sided in favour of it. The programme does not ask or want that, so all in all, if I keep at it, my weight loss should continue to fall and my life run to a very normal pattern.
As I near the end of my eight-week Motivation programme, people keep telling me to stop losing weight, that I’m going too far with it. There is no fear of me fading away, however. Maintaining a healthy balance is now the biggest challenge.