Well, I must admit, I’m a perfectionist… Is this a defect or a quality? It depends on who’s asking…they say there are no uncomfortable questions, but only uncomfortable answers. So, I’ll give the first answer.
When I was a child I used to be very selective when it came to making friends, to places I liked to spend time in and to activities I choose to take part in. This helped me in life, so in this situation perfectionism proved to be beneficial.
At some point, there comes a period in any woman’s life when the presence of a child is needed. This is a reason of joy, of course. Of happiness, even if you are not a perfectionist. In other words, it depends how quickly you deal with the fact that your physical image doesn’t correspond to standards anymore. At this point, perfectionism becomes harmful. In my case, it caused a serious depression. I was angry at myself, not at others, and I though the whole thing is my fault, because I had to be a perfectionist.
It took me a while to understand that being perfectionist doesn’t be you have to be perfect. It only means you will do your best to get things as close to perfection as humanly possible. And I looked at the surplus weight I’ve gained during my motherhood so far, and then decided to return to my perfectionism times and do everything humanly possible to get rid of those pounds.
I took baby steps in my diet, right about the time my daughter started taking her first baby steps…a quite happy coincidence. So, I didn’t try anything radical. Being a perfectionist, I’ve done my homework right before throwing myself into anything. SO, I found out that restrictive diets harm the metabolism, that avoiding proteins only loosens muscles and starving the body will cause it to retain extra fats when the diet is over. I’ve also learnt about the importance of exercises, but I was already jogging and walking a lot each day, so I was aware of that.
Instead of eating sweets I decided to eat fruits. That didn’t work that well, so I changed tactics. I allowed myself any sweet desert, but I though of how much of that I would regularly eat, then took only a third of it. I did the same with fat meat, and then replaced the remaining lacks in alimentation with raw fruits, vegetables, seeds and fish meat or cereal bowls. I wasn’t missing anything important, and I was allowing myself to consume stuff I loved and yearned for, but in smaller quantities. So once again, perfectionism helped me in my search for ways of regaining my initial weight. I am pleased to say that I’ve found them…but one of them is respecting the 8 hour sleeping program, so I’ll see you with another occasion!
