Even if I’m not doing well with my food intake, or my workout schedule, I need to maintain the habit of posting here regularly. Otherwise I end up were I am today, where I have 5 days worth of food to enter, and I just can’t recall everything I ate anymore.
I drove through Carl’s Jr. last night, sometime around 2 am, and got a burger and a shake. That’s over 2000 of the worst calories you can consume about an hour and a half before I went to bed. That’s so bad, I’m at a loss for words on how else to describe it.
I ate that burger last night because I don’t feel like I deserve to be happy or healthy – a feeling that has been steadily reemerging in me for some time now. It’s no coincidence then, that my resolve and dedication have slowly fallen apart over that same time period. Whatever it was, that I had, which prompted me to lose 40 lbs, I’ve lost it. That sense of self worth that made me want to be better is gone, and without it, I feel powerless – I’ve no reason to fight.
Does stress do this to person; break them down until they feel as if they deserve it? Or, does the feeling that one deserves to be broken the thing that drives us to create the stress that breaks us down? I don’t know. I’m not even sure whether I’m posting this as sign of defiance, or self pity. I hope it’s the former, and am terribly afraid it’s the latter.
The proverbial “they” say that the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Well, I have a problem. What’s step 2?
Second day in a row my weigh-in has jumped 4 pounds. That’s 8 pounds in two fricking days! Seriously, wtf?
These are the kinds of results that cause people to quit. I mean, I know I haven’t been eating like a saint or hitting the gym like a champ, but an 8 pound upswing just feels like sucker punch straight to the gut. I didn’t see a jump that bad from day to day during the holidays, even when I ate cheesecake multiple days in a row.
I know I’ve really got to get more disciplined if I want to keep seeing results as I lose weight, but I had felt like I was doing alright this last week; not great, but alright.
My only real option is to soldier through and work harder. Maybe alright isn’t good enough.
I’m a big fan of Buckminster Fuller who’s book I Seem to Be a Verb takes its name from the following passage:
I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe.
Conceptually, that’s a pretty important concept I think. The idea that there are no nouns in nature, only verbs, only processes; that a person is not a known quantity and therefore not subject to the limitations that come with a single definition.
For the last few months I’ve definitely fallen off of the weight-loss path I’d set for myself. I set goals, and failed to meet them. I started each day with the best intentions, but ate poorly. It wasn’t long before I was updating the site less frequently, and shortly after thereafter, not updating at all.
There were, of course, outside factors that contributed to recent my struggles – Holidays gave me an excuse to eat more, technical issues kept the site unavailable to me, external stress factors wearing me down, etc. I’m not making excuses, mind you, as I am the one that made poor choices, these are just some the justifications I used to make them.
Now for the stupid part – those justifications have nothing to do with why I haven’t gotten back on track. For the last few weeks I’ve really been anxious to start tracking my food and hitting the gym again, but I haven’t, and the reason I haven’t is because of this site.
I realized last night that the notion that I was somehow behind where I ‘should’ be and needed to somehow ‘catch up’ was the primary reason that I wasn’t posting anymore. It felt that, before I could just start again, there had to be some sort of an explanation as to why I’d stopped. I’d become bound by some definition of what I thought my weight loss and this site were supposed to be, and I felt guilty for not living up to it. I’d let my weight loss become a thing – a noun, rather than a process.
It’s the reason I didn’t post about the chicken & garlic pasta I made at home, or I didn’t post pictures of my new gym headphones, or post about how (despite not really losing any weight on the scale) I am down yet another loop on my belt. I kept waiting to write some post explaining why I’d been gone first. Oddly enough, the minute I realized that I don’t need to have a reason for not posting recently, this post more or less wrote itself.
Now I’m off to the gym.
Mary over at A Merry Life has the absolute best resolution I’ve read yet:
I’m just going to throw it out there that this year is going to be awesome. Seriously. My goal? Be awesome.
I’m totally adding that to my list.
Happy New Year everyone!
While I didn’t end the year on a great note, I played most the chords right in 2009; a trend I intend to build on in 2010. I’ve broken my goals into two categories – Resolutions are things I intend to WILL begin doing, or do better, Un-Resolutions are things I intend to WILL stop doing.
The only problem with resolutions (both the standard and “Un” kind) is that they are usually high level concepts or long term goals such as “Be Financially Responsible” or “Stop Feeling Guilty about the Past” which makes them both difficult to implement (where do you start?) and hard to keep in focus from day to day. To quote Tyler over at 344pounds “The more important part is how we’re going to accomplish your goals…”
With that in mind, every Monday I’m going to create a list of things I intend to do that week in order to achieve my longterm goals. Most of the time the list will consist of small, easy to do things, as success in most of the goals I’ve laid out is more a matter of consistency than anything else. Other times, bigger, more significant items will make an appearance. All of them will be done.
With that in mind there’s almost certainly going to end up being a lot of overlap between my Perfect 10 Challenge goals and my weekly list, but that’s fine. Participating in a challenge is good, continuing to evaluate myself weekly after the 10 weeks are up is better.
The last twenty days mark the longest I’ve gone without posting on this site in the 35 weeks since I’ve started all this. Twenty days – that’s a long time.
Long enough for me to see my biggest jump up on the scale since I started weighing in everyday. Long enough to gather a few questionable glances from friends when eating a holiday cookie, as if to say “Are you even paying attention to what you’re eating anymore?” Long enough for me to start craving soda with certain foods again. Basically, it was long enough to illustrate that I’m still much farther away from my goal than I am from the 325 pounds I used to be.
I’ve been catching up with the sites on my blog roll and I’m definitely not the only one who’s posted a gain this holiday season, so I’m definitely in good company. However, I am the only one who was more or less stalled headed into the month of December. And I’m definitely the only to have hit this long a plateau so far removed from their goal. It’d be a real disservice to myself to try and pretend that the gears weren’t in motion well before the holiday temptations crept into the picture.
Luckily I’ve got some great support to help me get back on the wagon. A coworker of mine has challenged me to run a 5k with him this April. South Beach Steve has a great new challenge to follow up the Hot 100. And Daria’s comments (more specifically, the email I get on my phone telling me I have new comments) kept reminding me the site was sitting here, begging for my attention.
I spent the better part of 2009 trying to undo years worth of bad habits. While I certainly haven’t finished that process yet, I saw more success than failure, and that’s a victory in my book. For 2010 I plan to continue that work, but it’s also time I started to replace those old poor habits with some new, healthy ones. I’ve got until the 1st to put my list together for The Perfect Ten – Any Suggestions?
I’d been very busy leading up to the Thanksgiving holiday and, while I’d been mentally tracking my calories and intending to input them when I got a chance, I didn’t set any time aside for the plague of death I caught. After lying in bed for three days feeling like I’d been hit a by a truck composed of sweat, I could barely remember my name, let alone what I ate 6 days ago. And thus, once again, the universe stresses to me the importance of staying on top of things in your life.
But I’m back at work, back to updating the site, and hopefully back on track. So aside from feeling like crap, having no data on what I’ve eaten for more than two weeks (granted the last few days has been practically nothing), and not being to the gym for almost week straight, I’ve been doing great. How’re you?
So it appears Kate Moss is catching some flak for sharing one of her motto’s – ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.’
Now from what little I’ve read, I guess Moss is sort of an icon in the world of anorexia and bulimia, and that maybe this phrase has already been something of slogan for that lifestyle, so I guess I understand why some people are upset about it. On the other hand, it’s not really fair to criticize the message of the motto based on the reactions of people who are clearly not emotionally well; I mean, I didn’t read anything sinister or dark in the quote at all until I was provided the additional information.
After giving it some thought, I realized that the real problem with the motto as originally stated is the word ‘skinny’ which, in a number of circumstances I hadn’t really considered at first, can be read as oppressive and unhealthy in terms of self image. So why not change it?
One of my new motto’s: Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels.
I Know I haven’t been updating the site too much recently, but it’s just been cus I’ve been really busy, as opposed to being unmotivated.
Unfortunately being busy hasn’t led to the greatest food choices, but I’m sticking with the gym and averaging about my goal calories, so all is not lost.
