Diary of a Habyt Girl PT. 6
By Kate Holland - a Habyt Member
It's about midway through my Habyt journey and I feel a bit stuck. I feel like my body and I are at a standstill. When I started the Habyt, the initial few pounds of body weight fell off fast. This was expected, since I was eating absolute garbage before I started working with Christina. No, I really think trash has more nutritional value than the crap I was eating. My body was in shock for a few days, but once the doughnut withdrawal subsided, I got used to my new eating habits. There have been a few bad days here and there, but overall, sticking to my macros has been easier than anticipated.
Despite mastering my macros, something felt like it was missing. I decided to take advantage of The Habyt Facebook group to help deal with my slump. I had initially dismissed the value of the group, using it to only post snarky comments about my cooking disasters or the disgusting protein snacks I got conned into buying at GNC. Plus, when it comes to girl gangs, I fall somewhere between enjoying the camaraderie of other women and having the overwhelming desire to tell everyone to suck it and sit in a dark room by myself. However, I found myself consistently going back to the ThinHabit page, scanning it for recipes and inspiration.
It turns out, my slump isn't specific to me. The Habyt member Anna told the group, "Be patient and focus on small wins! I’m overly critical of myself and was bummed the pounds and inches weren’t just falling off like it did for some people. It takes TIME! I’m on week 17 and finally starting to see more changes and get the hang of it so keep going with the program even after the 90 days if you can! I’m still going and have more goals I want to meet." I realized that I was putting an insane amount of pressure on myself to see results within a certain time frame. Not only was this an unrealistic expectation, but it was damaging to my mindset. My therapist taught me a fun term called "negative bias." There's a lot of different components to this concept (Wikipedia it on your own time, people) but it pretty much means that negative thoughts can completely overpower anything positive. In particular, I have the bad habit of taking one negative outcome and using it as evidence that everything else will suck. Example: "The scale hasn't moved in a few days, so this whole diet is going to be a failure."
The most important thing I learned from the Habyt group is to keep going. All the Habyt members have a singular thing in common: We are willing to work hard to make long term changes. It's nice to feel supported and encouraged by other women when you feel like you're at a standstill. Don't be afraid to ask the other women for tips. Share your failures and your successes. Everyone is running a different race and has specific goals to meet, but we're all in this together. I'm hoping this running analogy will help me out as I tackle the next big challenge: working out. Stay tuned.
