The Road to Permanent Change Isn't a Straight One!

Can I get an "amen?" I think there were more than a few people this week that wanted to shout "amen" when I talked about the stages of change...RELAPSE being one of them! Somehow it helps to know that lapse and relapse are "normal" and MOST of us will experience them on our way to permanent change!

We talked about the stages of change thursday, but focused on the action and maintenance stages...the one most of us are on. 

The action stage of change normally lasts 3 to 6 months. That is, taking real action to see change begin to happen.

A 10 week challenge is 2.5 months…just saying. :-)  Although we can feel like it goes on and on…it’s just the beginning of  being in the action and maintenance stage!  Think about it for a minute. What would be happening to you if for 6 months you were taking action?

And what is taking action again???

• Your thought life is on fire with new, exciting, positive thoughts.
• You are prepping , and eating healthy, you’ve grown your willpower not only with psychological changes but with physical ones as well. You are active and experiencing the effects of the miracle drug exercise!
•  You, in 6 months will and would have lost a minimum of 50 pounds!!! 50 pounds changes your life! You feel amazing, you look amazing, you’re starting to accept this new way of life and you’re letting go of your old one.  
• You’re letting go of what was, and embracing what is…6 months…not 10 weeks!

I say that to encourage you and inspire you to keep on going.  You want CHANGE, permanent change?…then you have to invest; time, money, energy, thought life.

Few people realize how much change costs.

We fail to recognize that it took years to establish your problem behavior, your habits, but we believe that we should reverse these deeply embedded patterns in a few weeks.

In reality, it takes an average of about 6 months of concentrated action before you are 
ready to move into maintenance.

Change never ends with the action stage.

Maintenance is the stage where you work to consolidate the gains you attained during the action and other stages to prevent lapses and relapse.

Maintenance is a critical stage of change and can take from as little as 6 months to as long as a lifetime. Without a strong commitment to maintenance, there will surely be relapse, usually back to the pre-contemplation or contemplation stage.

It takes work and time to perfect the tools that it takes to change. Knowing or understanding what it takes, doesn’t mean you are actively practicing these things.

Maintenance is the stage of perfecting and sharpening the tools.

This I know to be true…

The path to permanent change is rarely a straight one…but knowing that, helps us not feel lost when we’re on that path! As we journey through the active stage and the maintenance stage of change,  we learn that there’s also a big difference between lapse and relapse.

Lapse; a momentary fault or failure in behavior, a break in the continuation of something.

We surely will have lapse during the action and maintenance stages of change, but guilt and self blame won’t help us get back on the path…it’s just sends us to full on relapse.

The beautiful thing about relapse…I said beautiful, is that relapsers most often take one step backwards in order to take two steps forward!

Relapse...a scary word in all of recovery.
Relapse is a process, it's not an event. In order to understand relapse prevention you have to understand the stages of relapse. Relapse starts weeks or even months before the 
event of physical relapse.

There are three stages of relapse.

1. Emotional relapse
2. Mental relapse
3. Physical relapse

Emotional Relapse:
In emotional relapse, you're not thinking about overeating. But your emotions and behaviors are setting you up for a possible relapse in the future.

The signs of emotional relapse are:
* Anxiety
* Intolerance
* Anger
* Defensiveness
* Mood swings
* Isolation
* Not asking for help
* Poor sleep habits 

If you don't change your behavior at this stage and you live too long in the stage of emotional relapse you'll become exhausted, and when you're exhausted you will want to escape, which will move you into mental relapse.

Mental Relapse: 
In mental relapse there's a war going on in your mind. Part of you wants to overeat and go back to old habits, but part of you doesn't. In the early phase of mental relapse you're just idly thinking about it. But in the later phase you're definitely thinking about using...your drug of choice.

The signs of mental relapse are:
* Thinking about people, places, and things you "used" with
* Glamorizing your past life style
* Fantasizing about using
* Thinking about relapsing
* Planning your relapse around other people's schedules

It gets harder to make the right choices as the pull of addiction gets stronger. We talked about the tools to use at this time to stop the mental relapse.

Physical Relapse:
Once you start thinking about relapse, if you don't use some of the techniques to grow out of this stage, it doesn't take long to go from there to physical relapse.  It's hard to stop the process of relapse at that point. That's not where you should focus your efforts in recovery. That's achieving abstinence through brute force. But it is not recovery. If you recognize the early warning signs of relapse, you will be able to begin to contemplate, prep, and get back into the action stage of change.

The most important thing you can do to prevent relapse at this stage is take better care of yourself. Think about why you overeat. You use food or alcohol to escape, relax, or reward yourself. Therefore you relapse when you don't take care of yourself and create situations that are mentally and emotionally draining that make you want to escape.

How many times does a person relapse before changing permanently????  One, to many times!

Where ever you are right now. Whether you are in an action stage that is productive and clear, or feeling like you are slipping into the relapse stage. Or full on relapse…the answer to you changing for good, getting to goal weight and keeping it off, is to stay connected..stay committed, stay in one of the stages of change here at THW!

I would characterize myself as very optimistic, so forgive me if you need to, when I say that unless you stay  connected, stay committed to us, or to another program or a group of people for accountability, you will find yourself slipping, relapsing  and discouraged. We need accountability in our lives in the areas that we struggle…we were not meant to go it alone!

Our winners for the week:
Noon: Team "Materials Girls" Sandi and YoYo with a 1.77% of weight loss!
6PM: Team "Lose to Gain" Stewart and Kelly with a 7.61% of weight loss! What a week!!!

Our heart winner of the week with the greatest individual % was Erica N. with a 2.95% of loss! Congratulations Erica on your 2nd heart!! You've got a matching set now! :-)

Your Challenge for the Week:

• In preparation of next week's lesson, Listen to week #3 "What's in Your Back Pack ~ Controlling What You Can" and do the homework provided.  Glenda and I will be team teaching on this subject next week and you'll want to come prepared.

It was a very important day at The Healthy Weigh. We learned that lapse happens…relapse happens to all of us! What can we learn from it? How can we grow from it? What will it take for you to pick back up and say here we go! I’m changing…I’m doing this thing for 
life!!! One day at a time!

Always encouraging you,
Letha