The ELEM-6 Diet, Part-10: El and Em--Even Thanksgiving Week!

Just wanted to touch base with those of you beginning (or contemplating) El and EM. Well, I survived my second Thanksgiving on the ELEM-6 diet. Last year, 2008, the year I discovered/invented the ELEM-6 Diet and embarked on it in earnest, it was just a few days before Thanksgiving (!). I just couldn't wait until afterwards to get started (although then I was kind of terrified in anticipation of the EL aspect). I was afraid that if I waited until after Thanksgiving day, my fresh new motivation might fade and I'd not get started at all (as had happened so often before). That Thanksgiving--one year ago--I had to, like this year, face meals at the homes of three relatives in the course of two days. Not to mention leftovers (Yum! Thanksgiving leftovers!) in the days after. Nonetheless, I stood my ELEM-6 ground  then, and did so again this year.

Thanks to a year's worth of El and EM, I was able to have a more-or-less normal-sized plate of food this year. Just no seconds. I also even allowed myself a small piece of apple pie for dessert. Even though I didn't eat all I could have--or wanted to eat--I nonetheless had enough and didn't feel deprived. Remember, this is the diet with no "no's"! Simple common-sense portion control means there is nothing--and I mean nothing--which, in itself, is off limits.  That is one of the wonderful and liberating things I love about the ELEM-6 Diet.

Part of the key to the ELEM-6 is not making exceptions for holidays, birthdays, celebrations, etc etc. So, on Thanksgiving Day I got up at o-dark-thirty as usual and walked (on snow!) for a full hour. That keeping of my EM routine (and the same the day before and after) "bought" me a normal/moderate portion of wonderful turkey dinner and trimmings.

As I said in an earlier post, I'm not going to be some hard-nose about you beginning this diet just before Thanksgiving. If you weren't ready to begin last week, no sweat. If  that was the case, I just  hope that now you will be joining me and getting under way (or is it weigh?) any day now.

Keep coming back and checking out this blog space because, as I mentioned, my sister Lauren will soon be contributing her great input about weight loss which, I can assure, you will find very insightful and inspirational.

Above all, don't buy into the voices--yours included--which whisper to you, in one way or another, "you know you can't do it, so don't even try" or, "You've ftried and failed many times before, so no use setting yourself up to fail and be disappointed again." Stick your spiritual fingers in your ears when you hear such things. Instead, be your own best coach and repeat to you heart and mind, "I must. I can. I will!"