I am not a psychologist but I am someone who has fallen off his own particular wagon, so I believe I know what I am taking about.
Our mind is the "one ring to rule them all" to quote one of my favorite authors. And often it is not our conscious mind but our subconscious and our emotions that play the biggest roles in determining our actions.
But I believe that by understanding what makes us tick, what makes us feel or think a certain way, we can use rational thought to influence both emotions and the subconscious self.
I believe how we chose to see things sets us up for success or failure, as you suggest.
Concentrating on the positive, on what you can eat rather than what you can not, certainly helps.
I am a t2 diabetic. I have been for five years now. I control my condition with oral medication but primarily through diet and exercise.
In a very real sense, I had to turn my life around when I first became diabetic by completely changing my diet and sedentary way of living.
Doing so at the time was easy. Fear and guilt can be very powerful driving forces.
Then there is also the inevitable subconscious effort to cure oneself, to rid oneself of the diabetes.
But time goes by and the diabetes is still there and you have to keep finding the motivation to fight an enemy you can not see but you know is only hiding in ambush for you.
An enemy that you can not defeat.
Time goes by and you make the mistake of thinking that this thing is easy. That you are good at it and have got it all figured out.
Complacency sneaks up on you.
You start relaxing. You start taking liberties and before you know all the old habits start creeping back. You have fallen off the wagon, almost without realizing you have fallen of the wagon.
You are embarrassed to admit it to yourself, let alone your family.
You are embarrassed to go back to your doctor that had called you a "perfect patient" last time you met him. Was it really that long ago that you did meet him?
And then the guilt and self loathing hits you.
But then you realize you have a choice.
You realize that you can either give in to these negative feelings, give up and suffer the consequences that will inevitably bring, or you can feed on them, use them as motivation to turn things around.
Fortunately, I chose the second option.
I acknowledged my mistakes. I forgave myself for them. And I went about correcting them.
I could do little to change the past, but I could still do a lot to shape my future.
I went back to basics, I returned to this forum for the support and focus I needed and I started about getting things right again.
Fortunately I was able to do so quickly enough. In doing so , I was always very consciously aware of the need to manage my own expectations and emotions so as to retain my motivation.
I know myself well enough to know that I am much better at sticking to things that I enjoy rather than things that I just do because they are good for me. So the trick for me was finding things, meals and exercise that I both enjoyed and were good for me.
I started taking daily morning walks and combined that with my photography and gardening interests by photographing plants in my neighbors' gardens.
I took up tennis again.
I tried out new low carb recipes.
I started taking trips outside my home town on Sundays to places that I could discover by walking around.
It all seems to have worked.
In the three months since returning to this forum, I have lost almost fifteen kilograms and, more importantly, my glucose has returned to what is very much a non diabetic level.
So getting back on the wagon is certainly possible.
I am living proof of it.
Pavlos
