I have been waiting until I could say it officially: I have lost 20 pounds.
This means I am now back down to the weight I swore I would never get fatter than. So, yeah, 30 or so pounds more to go. I've given myself until Christmas. If I can keep up the rate I'm going at, I might get there before Labor Day.
You might think it is a vanity thing, because I'm turning 40 and tired of feeling like a tub. You'd be right, to a degree, but that wasn't really it. If I really cared about my waistline inch count, I doubt I'd have let it go this long. No, what did it for me was running up 2 flights of stairs with a loaded-down laundry basket and feeling like I was going to die when I hit the top. And then realizing that I couldn't even run up the same amount of steps emptyhanded without panting a bit.
So that was it. It didn't hurt that I was sick around the time of the kid's birthday, and cake just looked like food designed to hurt me. Off I went.
What's working? Eating less. Moving more. That's all there is to it.
Most days I'm averaging a thousand calories. Sometimes a lot less, if work is busy. Some days a lot more, but over the span of a week it balances out.
With the exception of splurges, I've given up drinking milk and soda. Those were huge. I've started ordering kid portions when we go out. I plan and compensate. I do still eat chocolate, but not very much. I am eating a lot of yogurt. And Slimfast -- because let's face it: I can't REALLY give up chocolate milk. I still eat the same dinner as the rest of my family at least 3 nights a week.
I'm not moving much more than I was, and not nearly as much as I should, but I do make a conscious effort to at least stretch and take some stairs. So now I can run up and down the stairs seven times before I want to die.
Baby steps! Progress!
I have also, to my husband's dismay, become a slave to the scale. I weigh myself repeatedly in the course of a day. I only count one -- the time I weigh myself while getting dressed for work. I record that in a book, along with the calories I've eaten that day. It keeps me honest, and it's a way to track progress, and reassure me progress is being made. But what keeps me agonizing and motivated is when I weigh myself again at the end of the day and the scale says I've gone up 2 pounds when I know darn well I haven't ingested 2 lbs worth of matter.
There is one frustrating thing. Every weekend I backslide. I mean, Every. Weekend. I eat more, I eat less, I skip the family dinners, I gorge at the casino buffet, I sit and watch TV all weekend, I go to the pool and chase the kid for an hour, it doesn't matter. The amount I gain back on weekends varies from a half-pound to 3 (that was the casino buffet weekend,) but it's always there Monday morning and I'm not entirely sure what to do about it. It's OK, though. I like puzzles.
The thing that's really hard, and that I try not to think about much, is that this is pretty much how it's going to have to be forever if I want to keep the weight off once I lose it. Occasional binges, periods of fasting to make up for them, but mostly just severely limited intake compared with what I used to be used to. The good news is, that actually seems doable, unlike the past. This time around, I haven't been starving at bedtime, I haven't been miserably obsessed with other people's lunches (for the most part,) and I do still eat what I want when I am in a fuckitall frame of mind, because I know I'll get back on the wagon with the next meal.
I don't know where this rational behavior is coming from. I might need psychiatric treatment.
That's great! Congratulations!
Posted by: cosmiccamper | March 29, 2011 at 09:54 AM