This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

But, Its Been 3 Weeks!

Being the Executive Director of a program that helps overweight kids and their families adopt a healthier lifestyle has nothing to do with this story. Or does it? 

From time to time, I like to go on a "diet." In our program, we teach the definition of the word diet, since it is so overused and misused in our society today. Diet simply means "what you eat." Plain and simple. There are good diets, bad diets, etc. 

I wanted to change my diet to a philosophy I heard about from a friend. From time to time, I like to try new things, just to keep life interesting. When you change up your diet, it pushes you to try new foods, new recipes, change habits, etc. Which works for me... food is interesting and changing my diet keeps it interesting, reducing the mundane. 

So, I decided to embark on a new diet at the beginning of September. The Paleo diet (aka Caveman Diet). I had done it before in the spring and liked it. I like the concept -- no processed foods. This is a challenge as most of us likely don't realize how many of the foods we eat have been chemically enhanced, preserved, etc.  So, lean meats, fish, fruit, veggies and nuts would be it for me! I was also doing this because I wanted to shed a few pounds - about 10 to be exact. I am getting in some good workouts and together, I thought this would do the trick. 

Well, three weeks in, I have not seen much change on the scale. I complained to my husband "But it has been three weeks!"

Then it dawned on me... three weeks is nothing. The hard work of watching what I eat and the workouts take a lot more time to set in before you can start to see the results. If you think about how much time it took to gain the weight, you need to think about how much time and effort its going to take to lose it. 

Three weeks is nothing. I thought back to another time in my life where I lost about 15 lbs. It took about 4 months of solid hard work and a consistent healthy diet to lose that weight. Once lost, I was easily able to maintain the loss (it was excess college weight I had been carrying for too many years). 

That made sense to me. 3 weeks was nothing. 3 months is likely what it will take. 

Then, I thought of the kids in my 8 week program. I thought of the changes they are trying to make at home and how they too want to see results. Today's post is just reminding everyone that it takes a lot of hard work and discipline. It doesn't happen over night. I should know this as well as anyone, but for some reason this time, I expected drastic change in three weeks. Crazy!

So, keep up the hard work and dedicate three month. I plan to. Hope you will join me!

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?