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 