Today's homework is in two parts--one for fun and one for introspection.

Part I - The Name Game

Give one name of a car or pet you've owned (or one of your children, if you prefer), and tell us the history of the name (why you chose the name or how it came to be). Bonus points for entertainment value.

P.S. The pet or car can be from any time in your life.

Part II - The Head Game

Give us your thoughts on this sentence: "Success at weight loss/maintenance and/or healthy eating over the long term is as much about your thought process as it is about the process of eating and exercising."

You can give reasons why you agree or disagree, pick one specific mental attitude or behavior and talk about how you struggled with it or overcame it (or still struggle with it), etc. As long as you're addressing the mental process of the journey, you are, as our friend Leslie Sansone says, "doing it right."

Part 2 This reminds me of one of the funniest moments on my favorite game show, Jeopardy. While Ken Jennings was well into his 75 game run, a woman challenger's answer to the final jeopardy question was "What is whatever Ken says?".

I agree, Sheri said it very well. And Sheri, you know what they say about geniuses thinking alike. I know for my own experience that a lot of mental and emotional go into the eating. The recent mental and emotional healing that I have experience have done more to put me on the right track for healthy eating and lifestyle than anything else.

Part 1 My first 2 cars I named. The 1962 American Motors Rambler was named Heathcliff. Yes, from Wuthering Heights. See! I still can't get away from books! My second car was a 1963 Plymouth Fury II with the moniker Schroeder. This, too, was from my reading. This time it was my favorite comic strip [u]Peanuts[/u]. Schroeder loved playing Beethoven. So do I.

Part I - The Name GameWe had a Chevy when I was 16 - 18 --- my girl friends and I called it
Auntie George. Auntie George was also the name we gave to TTOTM.....just like Auntie George in our lives, the car would give out or fall apart just when we didn't want it or didn't need it to do anything but go like a car. Auntie George (the car) was a pain in the rear, we hated the car, it used up too much gas even at 20 cents a gallon it was too much. I was never so glad to see one car die --- just as when menopause came to me -- as I was to see that car pulled away by the towtruck.

Part II - The Head Game
I totally agree. Loosing weight is planning, thinking ahead, playing a game with yourself to keep from repeating the same habits of overeating, under exercising that you have been doing your whole life. I believe I have to make up rewards for myself, reasons for not eating something that is unhealthy for me in order to keep going. I lost .4 pounds this week, that put me to another 00 mark on the scale. I played a game with myself all week that if I got there,
I was going to reward myself big time. But getting there involved, planning my week, planning and executing strategies of eating and exercising that didn't involve eating. It was seeing a picture of me healthy, happy and satisfied that didn't involve putting something into my mouth. It involved a mind game.

Pt I - I never named any of our childhood pets and we don't have any now and I definitely don't name cars - sorry!

Pt II - I too agree that successful weight loss/maintenance has an huge psychological/emotional component. One of the biggest changes for me was in re-defining my own self image of who I was. Once I started defining myself as healthy and active vs fat and lazy (the tape that had been playing in my head for years), it was much easier for me.

Believe it or not, I think the first part is harder than the second part!

Car names just "come to me" and have no real meaning. My dog Jerry came pre-named. Though, sometimes I like to say that it's short for "Geronimo" or "Jerome." Our cat is named Roscoe, just becase it seems like a rascally name.

So instead I have two mildly interesting names. Our other dog is named Moon, because she has a perfectly round black spot on her left side. Her previous owner thought it looked like the dark side of the Moon.

When I was growing up, we didn't really "own" pets. We fed and petted random neighborhood cats and dogs that wandered through out house.

One was a gigantic, filthy white and grey tom cat, whom my stepdad decided to call "Blanche."

I believe the mental / physical approach is the difference between long-term and short-term. In the short-term, just physical can work. It can even lead to the mental / long-term change, in the form of "fake it til you make it."

But if that transition doesn't happen, and both sides don't work together, long-term success becomes much harder.

quote:

Originally posted by SheriaVa:
Give one name of a car or pet you've owned (or one of your children, if you prefer), and tell us the history of the name (why you chose the name or how it came to be).

Rrr Rrr, my favorite cat. She sat on our porch for 3 days and yowled, "Raaayyyyrrrrr!!!! Raaaayyyrrrr!!!" until we let her in. Bought a bag of cat food and had ourselves a cat.

Made a vet appt and they said, "How do you spell that????" and dh said, "Capital R-rr, Capital R-rr".

quote:

Originally posted by GoingSkiing:

quote:

Originally posted by SheriaVa:
Part II

I truly believe that, until you tackle the mental issues around food/eating and exercise, you will not be able to achieve long-term success at weight loss/maintenance or healthy eating. That doesn't mean you have to CONQUER all your "head games" in order to have success...it just means that you have to work on them at the same time you're working on eating and exercise.

"All or nothing" thinking has been one of my hardest mental issues to overcome. For decades, I was either "on the diet" or "off the diet"--there was no middle ground. I think that I have come a LONG way in improving in this area, but certainly there is work left to do.

Sheri has our brain today and did our homework for us.

Exactly what I would have said, but she said it better!

Agreed, I was going to quote Sheri and say "What she said."



Regarding pet names... I've never had a pet that I named. My mom and I tried to name our dog Dutchess, but my 2 year old brother kept calling her Spotty, and it stuck. DH named both cats. DH and I agreed on the name of our son "Aleksander". I always wanted and Alexander, and DH wanted to use a Russian spelling because he was a Russian and Soviet history major. So, now we have Alek. His middle name of Sean after a friend of DHs.

Dawn

quote:

Originally posted by GoingSkiing:
Sheri has our brain today and did our homework for us. Exactly what I would have said, but she said it better!

(chuckle) Cheater!

quote:

Originally posted by SheriaVa:
Part II

I truly believe that, until you tackle the mental issues around food/eating and exercise, you will not be able to achieve long-term success at weight loss/maintenance or healthy eating. That doesn't mean you have to CONQUER all your "head games" in order to have success...it just means that you have to work on them at the same time you're working on eating and exercise.

"All or nothing" thinking has been one of my hardest mental issues to overcome. For decades, I was either "on the diet" or "off the diet"--there was no middle ground. I think that I have come a LONG way in improving in this area, but certainly there is work left to do.

Sheri has our brain today and did our homework for us.

Exactly what I would have said, but she said it better!

Part 1 - The Name Game
When I first found out (in Sept.) that I was pregnant dh said he wanted this child (he already had a daughter by a previous marriage) to be named after him whether it was a boy or a girl. His name was Dean Roger and since I was sure in my mind that it was a boy (they only did sonagrams on problem pregnancies at that time) and did not want the baby to be a "junior" we agreed on the name Jeffrey Dean. Four months later dh had a brain hemorrage and went into a coma on Christmas Eve. He died two months before our DAUGHTER was born. No girl's name had been pick out but he had said he wanted the baby named after him so I took the letters of his name D-E-A-N and rearranged them to spell D-E-N-A and that is how our daughter got her name. I considered just adding an "a" to the end of his name but was afraid she would often be called "DeANNA instead of DEAN-a and even now with it spelled DENA she still gets called DeANNA a lot of the time. Sometimes even by relatives who have known her all her life.

Part II - The Head Game

"Success at weight loss/maintenance and/or healthy eating over the long term is as much about your thought process as it is about the process of eating and exercising."

I agree. The term "as much" indicates to me that one is not more important than the other. And as with everything else it is an individual process. What works for one may not work for another. Just as we all have our own eating plans and styles we will all have our own different mental issues and different ways of handling them.
I think it is good that we have this forum where we can "think out loud" and share our mental processes. As we post our thought processes it may encourage someone else who is struggling with the same problem to explore a different way of dealing with it. Or someone's reply may cause us to see a different solution to our own problems.

Part 1 -

When I was very little mom brought us home a cat. Well mom let me name her. Well when I saw her getting ready then pounce I decided to name her Wiggly Hoptoad because of the way cats wiggle their bottom then pounce

Part 2 -

It definitely has everything to do with mental attitude. When I first started I was all excited, hyped up and the pounds were melting off. As my attitude chilled, sure enough the weight loss slowed to nothing. Guess I need to work on getting the excitement built up again.

Laurie

The dog we have was my mother's from about 12 weeks until he was almost 8 or 9 months old. When my mother decided having a puppy was too much work she gave him to us(which I have to say has been one of the best gifts ever, he is so awesome). His name when he moved in with us was Maxwell(Max for short). He is white but he has always reminded us of a little bear cub, if he had dark fur that's exactly what he would look like. Anyway, we started calling him Little Bear and it stuck.

I think that absolutely, 100% without a doubt until you overcome your mental attitudes/behaviors there will be either no change, very minimal change, or the evil cycle of yo-yo dieting. This is why I know I struggle-I have not overcome my mental "blocks" when it comes to eating.
JIll

Part I

My current car is a gold 2004 Toyota Camry. I have always been a practical girl who bought practical cars. Until this, I'd never owned a car with leather seats or a sunroof or a CD player, any of those bells and whistles that many people take for granted. When I was shopping for a car, I knew that I was within 5 years or so of retiring so this was likely going to be my last car purchase before retirement. I figured that I had worked hard all my life to make and save money, and I may as well give myself a few luxuries. So, for the first time, I bought a car that was the luxury model. It doesn't have ALL the bells and whistles like GPS and on-board computer stuff, but it's pretty upscale for me! When I brought her home, it was a sunny day and her gold color was beaming. I said to myself "THIS is a car that knows she is special...she is sort of regal, being gold and having all these special features." So I searched my mind for a regal name and, being a fan of the "Barefoot Contessa" on Food Network, I dubbed my car "Contessa."

Part II

I truly believe that, until you tackle the mental issues around food/eating and exercise, you will not be able to achieve long-term success at weight loss/maintenance or healthy eating. That doesn't mean you have to CONQUER all your "head games" in order to have success...it just means that you have to work on them at the same time you're working on eating and exercise.

"All or nothing" thinking has been one of my hardest mental issues to overcome. For decades, I was either "on the diet" or "off the diet"--there was no middle ground. I think that I have come a LONG way in improving in this area, but certainly there is work left to do.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sheri in Reho,

Part 1 - Berries

When I was 5, some neighbors knocked on our door with a basket full of kittens. Really! We picked this little orange tiger cat because she was so pretty. Blueberry eyes and strawberry fur, so we named the kitty Berries. Shortly thereafter, it turned out Berries was a boy, but the name stuck. He had curly belly fur that he loved to flash by rolling around at your feet when he wanted something, and all of us were at his beck and call for 17 years

Part 2

quote:

"Success at weight loss/maintenance and/or healthy eating over the long term is as much about your thought process as it is about the process of eating and exercising."

I agree, but I also feel that it is tough to hear this at the beginning because the physical part of acquiring the eating and exercise habits seems overwhelming enough, without also having to get a brain transplant! I think it is easy to say looking back after you have achieved a fitness goal, but I hate when people say this to beginners. It is the reason a lot of people feel they won't be able to get to goal. Perhaps I would add this to the above statement: ...and changing your perspective about eating can be as easy as going for a walk, if you take it one day at a time.

Lynne