I said I would use the holiday weekend to do some thinking, and I did. Mostly I examined the question of why this time is so different for me.
Years ago, when I had decided to lose weight, I burst out of the starting blocks at a sprint, fired up, pushed myself, never let up, and didn’t stop until I had reached my goal. I had a lot going on, a lot of stress, yet I didn’t let it slow me down. Why is it that now, so much as a hangnail hurls me off track, and it takes me months to get going again?
I came up with these reasons:
1. I feel like I can’t. I lost weight before, and I even reached goal weight. But I gained it all back, which was a huge blow to my ego and has left me feeling like I just don’t have what it takes to do this. Otherwise, as the logic goes, I would have successfully done it a long time ago.
2. My goal is so far away, I feel overwhelmed. I’m not trying to lose those pesky, last ten pounds. I’m not just trying to tone up a little bit. I’m aiming to lose a LOT of weight, about 70 pounds. Combined with #1, it leaves me feeling like I can’t do this anyway, so there is no motivation to even get started.
3. I am crazily, stupidly, insanely busy. After buying a house in December, my fiance and I have a lot of plans for the house and the yard, so I spend my weekends on home improvement projects, and I’m still in the obsessed, honeymoon phase of owning a house. I want to plan, shop, arrange, re-arrange, dig in the yard, plant flower beds. On top of that, I can barely come up for air at work, I’m so swamped. I have little energy left for much else, and time feels like it is flying by. For example, it may feel like I have been off the wagon for a few days, when it’s really been a week!
4. I’m burned out. Even when I’m gaining weight and not putting in any effort at all, I subconsciously track calories and note how long it’s been since I worked out. It’s become a rote, going-through-the-motions, knee-jerk reaction instead of a valuable learning activity. Logging, tracking, counting…lord, it all makes me just want to vomit by now.
So…solutions? I am tempted to try a common sense approach, stop logging my food, since I already know how many calories are in the foods that I eat the most. I know what I need to cut back on (eating out, soda, sweet snacks), whether I log my meals or not. And it’s not like I’ve ever been instantly struck by a thunderbolt or delivered an electric shock for logging “bad” food or going over my calories by roughly 30 million, so it’s become almost like it doesn’t matter what I log, anyway.
Clearly my biggest obstacle is #1: feeling like I can’t do this anyway. Past failures have left deep scars. It’s easy to say “get over it”, but actually doing it and feeling it in my heart are very different. I’m not quite sure how to get by that hurdle.
Normally, logging and charting and tracking are motivating to me. I love that stuff. But I’m just so over all of it right now. I am going to take a break from logging my food, but I will keep tracking my workouts. It’s too easy to pretend it hasn’t been that long since my last workout. I want it in black and white, on paper, so I can’t fool myself.
Sweat & Sparkle 
I think I'm at your number 4 the most, I am burned out, but I can relate to this entire blog down to the amount of weight I need to lose. I'm so done with trying but I feel like a failure if I give in to that thought. I stopped logging my food years ago and somehow lost accountability. I knew, like you, what to do but I just didn't do it. Somehow seeing it on paper did something for me. So I'm trying it again. I think its not the calorie counting but just getting a habit going, it makes the other good habits seem easy to pick up. I hope you are able to do better than I did. Kind of like these blogs. Not too many people read them but I write them to keep myself in check.
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I think I'm at your number 4 the most, I am burned out, but I can relate to this entire blog down to the amount of weight I need to lose. I'm so done with trying but I feel like a failure if I give in to that thought. I stopped logging my food years ago and somehow lost accountability. I knew, like you, what to do but I just didn't do it. Somehow seeing it on paper did something for me. So I'm trying it again. I think its not the calorie counting but just getting a habit going, it makes the other good habits seem easy to pick up. I hope you are able to do better than I did. Kind of like these blogs. Not too many people read them but I write them to keep myself in check.
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Your #2 was my biggest foe, especially when I had so many people point out to me that I couldn't “waste time losing less than 2 lbs a week when I had so much to lose”. It was nerve-wracking and when I'd lose less than a pound, I'd get all panicky thinking I'd never lose all 160lbs I needed to and I'd end up binging and have to start all over again. A stupid vicious cycle. When I finally committed to eating MY way, letting my body lose at whatever speed it needed to and not listening to anyone's “advice” (especially since those that were dishing out advice hadn't lost their weight at all in the 3+ years they had been telling me how wrong I was doing it and actually still haven't), I broke it into increments of 10s. I focus only on 10 lb increments and work on those. Sometimes it's taken me 3-4 months to move onto the next “decade” but in those weeks I've realized that I've been able to go out, indulge a little and not gain back all the weight I've lost because I only have to worry about a small number of pounds instead of bombarding my brain with the bigger number. So it's worked for me and for the first time in over 25 years I've continued losing and not gained back what I've lost.I'm not saying my way is THE way, I'm saying you need to find that click that will get you to the same mental place you were in when you lost the weight the last time and then find the happy mental place that will help keep you there. If that makes any sense.
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Your #2 was my biggest foe, especially when I had so many people point out to me that I couldn't “waste time losing less than 2 lbs a week when I had so much to lose”. It was nerve-wracking and when I'd lose less than a pound, I'd get all panicky thinking I'd never lose all 160lbs I needed to and I'd end up binging and have to start all over again. A stupid vicious cycle. When I finally committed to eating MY way, letting my body lose at whatever speed it needed to and not listening to anyone's “advice” (especially since those that were dishing out advice hadn't lost their weight at all in the 3+ years they had been telling me how wrong I was doing it and actually still haven't), I broke it into increments of 10s. I focus only on 10 lb increments and work on those. Sometimes it's taken me 3-4 months to move onto the next “decade” but in those weeks I've realized that I've been able to go out, indulge a little and not gain back all the weight I've lost because I only have to worry about a small number of pounds instead of bombarding my brain with the bigger number. So it's worked for me and for the first time in over 25 years I've continued losing and not gained back what I've lost.I'm not saying my way is THE way, I'm saying you need to find that click that will get you to the same mental place you were in when you lost the weight the last time and then find the happy mental place that will help keep you there. If that makes any sense.
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