12-Week Check-in
Confession is good for the soul. It is confession time. I am sliding down a slippery slope again. I do not know what is wrong with me. I am feeling lazy and unmotivated. My jeans are way too tight. My butt is getting bigger by the hour. And I do not seem to care enough to make a lasting difference. The fact is that this weight would have been gone long ago if I had the desire. The 4th of July will mark the 3-year anniversary of my fitness journey, and I am basically back to where I was on New Year’s Day and only halfway to my goal. Ugh! The first 60 pounds melted away. When I got down to 200 pounds, the real struggle began. Did the bottom drop out of my metabolism on my 35th birthday, or is this a mental block? For the past year or so, I have been bouncing between 200 pounds and 180 pounds and back again from a size 18 to a size 14 and back again. What is my problem?! Yes, my weight is back up to 200 pounds again, so 6 months of hard work just went down the toilet. :-( I cannot begin to imagine how I managed to gain 15 pounds in a week.
I have been careful not to eat anything that causes an allergic reaction. It is time for my cycle, but that is only good for 5-7 pounds.
How did I respond to this? Well, I went to Cracker Barrel with a friend last night and ordered my usual fare. It did not taste good at all. It did not taste good when I ate there on another friend’s birthday. I just picked at my dinner and had a Blue Bell frozen mug sundae for desert because I was hungry. That was the last thing I needed. Weekends are tough for me, but eating out is my biggest challenge. The old Heather rises up and orders without thinking. The new Heather does not enjoy it and ends up just nibbling and grazing on food that does not satisfy. When will I learn that eating out does not require me to order fattening junk?
I am planning to go out to eat with another friend tonight, so I will get a do-over. I hope I make better choices. I refuse to gain another pound. What blows me away is how easy it is to pack on the pounds now that I am older. In my 20s, I had to binge to gain 5 pounds in a week. Now I just have to relax my workouts and eat too much processed food to gain more than twice that much. My portions do not have to be huge to cause serious damage.
My friend Cynthia lost 16 pounds in one week just walking in the pool. She is in her late 40s, so I cannot use age as an excuse. I have never had impressive results like that. My weight seems to creep off slowly and pile on instantly. It is like trying to hold a beach ball under the water. I look away for a second, and it pops up again. One of the girls in my Ya Yas check-in last year wrote that her weight never truly leaves. It just hides behind the sofa and jumps back on her butt when she is not looking. I can relate. I am so disgusted with myself right now. I am tempted to throw in the towel, but that is not an option.
There was a recent thread in Open Discussion about the important of nutrition vs. exercise. Most of the posters believe that weight control is 80 percent nutrition and 20 percent exercise. Even when I eat clean, I cannot control my weight with diet alone. I guess I could if I ate 1,000 calories a day, but I like to eat around 1,800 calories a day. In fact, I like it so much that I did not adjust my calories for the less intense workouts I have been doing lately.
I need intense exercise to see results. I need to get back on track with a Cathe rotation. This other stuff is fun but does not give me the results I desire. I can still do other workouts just for fun, but I need a solid rotation. My boss will be out of town most of July, so that will be a good time for me to make a fresh start. I feel miserable right now. Forget the way I look. I hate feeling this way. And I did not sleep well again last night.
As much as my flesh wants to roll over and cry and give up, I am far too resilient for that. I will come up with a new game plan and give it another whirl. As much as I hate seeing this in writing, being transparent keeps me out of denial. I am doing so much better spiritually and emotionally, but I am backsliding with my exercise and clean eating. When I get one area of my life under control, something else goes to hell. It is so frustrating and discouraging. x(
I think I am going to win the 12-week challenge for the greatest change in the wrong direction!
Blessings,
Heather B.
“So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31 NIV).
