Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Reality Bites

You know the saying, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive"...(it's something like that; I'm paraphrasing)? The point is I believe that I was deceiving myself and my body was punishing me. I'll explain: My goal for the month of June was to reach 267.5lbs, a total of 55lbs lost in 6 months. I reached that goal June 29. Shortly thereafter came my TOM and I went up to 273 then 275, hovered there for a while, reached 277 and hovered around there for a while and one day I even weighed 280. I was pretty devastated. I was working out 60-90 minutes of cardio 4-5 times a week, I drink about a gallon of water daily and I thought I was eating pretty well. But my weight never went back down. Now, the whole time I figured, "Ok, here it is, the dreaded PLATEAU. I'll just wait it out." But waiting out the plateau is very hard. I kept thinking, "why work out or not eat that extra cup of rice since I'm not losing any weight anyway?!" I refused to update my weight-trackers to go backward...I felt that by doing that, I'd be admitting defeat. I was in denial.

This past weekend, as the last couple of weekends, I busted my ass working on the condo: 2 12hour days working on that thing and I was SORE. But I was feeling lean and good about myself. I live on the fourth floor but have been taking the stairs up, even when I have groceries or things to carry. Well, Sunday I peeked at the scale: 271.5. Yippeee! I was thrilled because that was my lowest weight since July 2. But I didn't want to get my hopes up because a couple of weeks ago I moved from the 275-278 range into the 273-274 range but it stopped there. Yesterday I weighed: 271.5 again. Great. At least it didn't go back up. So, I finally decided that it wasn't a plateau, that I'd actually gained the weight. It was like confession to myself. I updated my weight trackers to reflect 51lbs lost instead of 55. I figured, time to refocus and recommit and I can just go forward from here. This morning I weighed 268.5. I don't really know what it means. I mean, I could be up a couple of pounds tomorrow morning. The point is, psychologically it was important that I confront and accept the fact that I had gained the weight--not because of my TOM or a plateau or my body holding on to fat because I'm not eating enough to balance the calories I'm burning. This is a journey of many, many, many steps. I will experience setbacks. The key is to face them head-on and stop burying my head in the sand like an ostrich. No more of that.

So, I've set a new goal. I want to get my 60lb bear by October 8 (week 39 on NS). SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE!! Wish me luck. Hope you all are well.

No comments: