| Height: | 167.6cm |
| Start weight: | 181.60lb |
| Current weight: | 178.40lb |
| Goal weight: | 145.00lb |
| Lost to date: | 3.20lb |
| Remaining: | 33.40lb |
| 24 |
| May '12 |
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I haven't quite fallen off the wagon... much. Yesterday was my target day to weigh 180, which I achieved by weighing 179.6lb. However today I'm back over 180, so I get the feeling that this is beginning to go sideways rather than onwards, onwards.
Easter has been a ridiculous melee of chocolate and other yummy but unnecessary things, so I clearly have work to do.
All is not yet lost.
Still alive, still here, still chugging away. I've been fairly steady over the weekend, bobbing about in 178-land. It's all good. I have not particularly been paying attention to what I'm eating so I'm going to be better tomorrow, and also cram in some long walks to make up for the lack of badminton this week.
Marvellous.
This morning, I had a pleasant surprise. The scales said 178.4lb. Yes. That is 2.2lb down from yesterday. Today's food was entirely reasonable, up until the giant milkshake that we took the boy's daughter out for this evening. Oopsadaisy. When that scale goes back up again tomorrow morning, I'll be frustrated.
I know how to play this game. I understand that it requires a steady approach, or consistency. The numbers are trending in the right direction at the moment, but I will have to start to work harder to keep this up.
Thank goodness for the weekend.
Today I walked just over three miles down and then up a hill. I ate just over 1300 calories, to compensate for the bending of the rules yesterday. This morning the scale was back up to 180.6lb - oops! I hadn't quite expected it to be so cruel, but you live and you learn.
One of my friends posted a picture of me at our school leavers' ball in 2004 on Facebook this morning. Three thoughts:
a) Wow, my hair was wonderful. I can't wait for my weird fuzzball to grow a bit longer. I had a fairly drastic haircut in January and I just can't get used to not having long hair.
b) Wow, I look skinny... but...
c) At the time, I was in a poor place, mentally, and I don't want to go back there, tempting as it sometimes feels.
Sometimes I feel like I'm still that person. Somewhere inside me is still the girl who could, who would, go for days barely eating, or would run for miles in the rain and the dark, just because anything was better than being fat. I never ate anything without knowing precisely how many calories were in it, but looking back now, I don't think I ate much fruit or many vegetables.
I also tidied up my wardrobe this evening, and found a few things I'd forgotten I owned - oops! I don't wear trousers to work these days, mainly because my work trousers require skinnier legs than I have just now. I also found some very short skirts that I used to wear at uni, and it occurred to me that a lot of my wild imaginings of being thin are actually wild imaginings of having nice legs again. Just a little something to consider...
Today started well; I got down to 179.2lb, so I've already met my goal for the end of April. Foodwise, today hasn't gone fantastically well, but I got a free lunch at Jamie Oliver's new restaurant in town so it wasn't all bad. My office overlooks the restaurant and the building works were incredibly noisy and disruptive, so we wrote a joint letter of complaint. The response? Free lunch for ten!
The many things I ate included...
The title of this entry has no bearing on anything at all, except that this is the ninth day.
Yesterday and today have been relatively painless in the world of the amazing shrinking woman. My office is at the top of a hill, so I carried all my library books down the hill and then speed-walked back up. Monday evening is badminton night, so I walked across town to get there, and then insisted on walking home afterwards. There is a step aerobics class that runs in the other half of the room while we're playing, so it always turns into a badminton-disco with all the horrendous music. Fun times! 
I sometimes get the impression that the boy is not all that impressed with my mad dancing skillz, but we do have fun and it's ever so good and healthy and suchlike.
Today work was kind of mental, so I took my lunch break at 4.15pm, walked down the hill, around town, and then did a mad rush to get home and actually do the washing-up that I should have done last night before the boy got home. This city is wonderful for hills and sunshine.
Psychologically, I am doing very well. I don't think about food, I don't think about all the things I'm missing... 
... well, not much! Seriously, though, I have been thinking about biscuits, but more from wanting to make them, rather than wanting to eat them. Beyond that, food is not on my mind and I'm not feeling hungry. Being busy at work is really useful in that regard, because it keeps my mind on higher things than my rumbly old tumbly.
The scale said 180.4lb this morning. My target weight for the end of April is currently 180lb, so I am hoping to break through that in plenty of time. I must keep myself focused, though, because I have a tendency to become complacent and find myself weighing five pounds more than I expected because I seem to forget that this actually requires hard work and willpower.
I used to be good at willpower. I was fantastic, in fact, that winter when I lost thirty-five pounds almost overnight. I would never go back, because I was miserable and in a terrible mental state, but I did not lack willpower like I have done over the past couple of years. Part of me is perversely determined this time, because of the boy - we have been together for just under three years, and just before we met, I was losing weight very healthily and successfully. That all stopped once we were together, and so he has never seen me actually doing this properly, determinedly. He has witnessed countless instances of me starting, failing, and stopping, but this time I will be different, either to prove him wrong or to make him proud of me, or perhaps both and neither at the same time.
Losing weight doesn't feel so difficult today, so I'm going to remember this feeling and hold onto it with both hands when it gets harder later.
I often get lost when I'm trying to lose weight. I become hellbent on seeing numbers going down, and then I get disheartened when they don't. In particular, I lose perspective because I forget how long I've been trying. I noticed other bloggers numbering their entries, and blogging every day, and I think this is something that will help me.
I started this push last Monday. I have not fallen off the wagon yet, and as it's just past midnight, I'm now into day 7. I will inevitably fall off, but I need to get back on there straight away. I know that this is where I always go wrong; I fall off, and then some part of me decides that something else is more important, and I find excuses not to clamber aboard again, and all of a sudden, months have gone by and I'm still the same size.
A particular excuse that I always come back to, and which needs to be filed away in a sensible place; I'm the kind of person who sometimes deals with the world by thinking of myself as an impossibly small speck in the universe. My usual tactic for dealing with emotional crises is to consider this; somebody, somewhere, is happily eating a doughnut. It's not about the doughnut - it's just about the fact that the emotional crisis is just what I'm feeling. It isn't universal, or permanent, and it can be put aside. My doughnut theory stops me getting overwhelmed, and is also designed to stop me being self-obsessed and moaning about my own problems.
This does relate to weight loss, I promise. I tend to overcontextualise myself, and decide that worrying about weight is a horrible stereotype associated with middle-class Western women who really have no greater problems in life with which to deal. While this is probably essentially true, the basic fact remains - I am medically overweight, and it is within my power to do something about this. I am lucky in that regard. I am also lucky to live in a country with a publically-funded healthcare system, and I don't want to put additional pressure on that system by remaining overweight as I progress into middle age.
That's the real thing - I'm lucky to be able to do this, so I might as well take this opportunity by the scruff of the neck.
Also, it gets really dull writing these "Today I will be so much better than I have been for the past X months" posts every now and again.
So what I'd really like to say is that this is the end of the first week of my final new beginning.
I am a fan of the sunshine. I'm very glad that the winter's definitely gone now.
The scales have held steady at 180.2 for the last two days. Weighing every day feels like the right thing to do just now. I know that it will go up and down, day by day, but I feel the need to know for certain how I'm doing. Later on, I may switch to weekly weigh-ins. I need to put myself under pressure for now.
Today I've eaten a yoghurt, two slices of toast (one with honey) and a quarter of a piece of flapjack. I've also walked about three miles today. I must improve that, clearly. Three years ago, I lost a substantial amount of weight through the medium of walking up and down hills a lot. Mm, hills.
Today wasn't too bad. I walked a relatively long way, involving a substantial hill. I may also have consumed substantial amounts of cornflake cake, but I tried to rein it in.
The scale will tell the damage tomorrow.
I'd never really thought of losing weight as a war before. A friend described it as such yesterday, and I'm not sure I entirely agree. I know I'm overthinking it. My dad probably got it precisely right when he said "If it talks like a war and it walks like a war, it's a war". He was talking about Libya rather than my waistline, but it rings true.
This morning I weighed precisely 180.0lb. The third day of the diet has passed relatively uneventfully. I'm trying to count calories this time, because doing anything else just fails miserably. I've lost 1.6lb in the past three days... only 25 pounds to go. I've just won my first battle, though.
Twenty-five pounds is completely do-able. I've seen people on this site perform far greater feats of weightloss than that. Why can't I do that? I can.
I am still fiddling about, trying to work out how much is sensible to aim for. Five pounds a month sounds reasonable. Five months from now will be the beginning of September. That doesn't sound too awful, and I find it easier to be active and eat sensibly in the summer. 2011 might just be my year of frugality.
Will it really work this time?
I hope so.
