Hi Brooke
I really feel like I ought to be managing my models myself by now! But yet again, I’m stuck. (I wonder if you’re starting to recognise my questions as coming from the same person!!! For some reason, I feel ashamed of that, of needing endless help…..)

My goal for this month (for this year, but for the January work we have been doing) was to lose weight, following a specific plan that has worked for me in the past but which is strict. Everyone tells me that it is not a plan for life, but I just CANNOT seem to let go of the belief that it is the only way I can lose weight.

I’m not following the plan. I have good days, when I eat pretty much to the plan save for a diet coke (not allowed) or a low fat yoghurt for dessert (not allowed); and then I have “bad” days, when I eat all sorts of stuff.

I’m going to visit my family at the beginning of March. I’m running out of time to get thin.
My thoughts go like this: “If I do not stick to the plan EXACTLY for the next six weeks, I will have failed and I’ll feel dreadful”.
I can’t come up with any thought that “feels” as “right” as this one.

I really really really want a new perspective on how to lose the weight. For the last two years I have been telling myself “do the plan, it worked last time” and NEVER being able to do the plan exactly like I did the first time. The first time, I had a life coach I was paying quite a lot of money to, and I checked in with her every day and send her my food plans and things, and sometimes I wonder if that’s why it worked – that accountability. But I can’t afford to pay her again – it will be the third time round with her if I pay again!! It’s a lot of money. My bf thinks I don’t need to be accountable to anyone but myself……but I keep on “delaying” my “start of plan”……

I guess my model looks like this:
C: It’s less than six weeks until the trip and I’m not on the plan.
T: I don’t have time to lose weight!!!
F: Panic, hopelessness, massive self hate
A: Eat off the plan, out of sheer misery and fear and stress
R: I’m not on the plan.

So I tried this:
C:Less than six weeks to trip and I’m not on the plan
T: There are no time frames anymore……
F: Pervasive tension and horror (life on the plan FOREVER????)
A: Eat off the plan (because if I’m doing it forever, what does it matter when I start? Let’s delay!)
R:……………………………

I can’t bear other thoughts for the second model like: “I still have time” and “If I work hard I can do it”. And I don’t want to keep on thinking that this plan is the only way forward!!

I seriously wish I had never ever “found” this plan, or that it had been so successful the first time round. I am now forever trying to get back what I once had, which according to those who know me say was unsustainable (I think they’re right – it was a really strict diet, I was pretty tired and faint).

I don’t know if this makes any sense. Do you think I should get some one-on-one coaching? But I’m international and finding a time is really hard.

Thank you

Anna