Desperately Seeking Lost Motivation

Trying to figure out the best way to "re-boot" my motivation here.  I've had about a month of very dodgy dieting.  I don't think it's that I want results any less, but there has got to be some rational explanation for why I was going great-guns for so many weeks, and then, "BLAM!" - attitude shift.  My attitude the past 3-4 weeks has been more one of, "Hmmm...that looks tasty.  Maybe if I just eat a LITTLE..." and then naturally, I eat the entire whatever-it-is, and then I feel guilty, and then I eat more because I feel so crappy about it.  Same 'ol, same 'ol.  It's always the same.  The only difference is that this time, I had been seeing some real results prior to the slackishness.  Now I just NEED to re-boot my desire to FINISH what I started, and re-set my goals.  

I think I've allowed myself to be too affected by the goals that I set and then didn't reach.  Back in February, I had estimated that I could feasibly lose 3.5 pounds per week, which would have had me hitting my 40-pounds-lost goal by the first week in June.  I WANTED to hit that mark so bad I could taste it!  (Mmmmmm, I bet it tasted good...)

So I did great, lost 19.0 pounds in about 11 weeks...then started waffling.  (Mmmmmmmmn waffles...) 
 
I started slacking with keeping track of calories, and I started eating the foods that I had made completely off-limits during the previous many weeks of dieting/denial.  I know I'm lucky I didn't gain back the entire 19 pounds in the past month, seriously!

I haven't exercised AT ALL in a MONTH!!!

Today, I'm starting again.  I'm drinking ice water (with nothing in it, ICKY!), counting every bite (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz), and aiming for 1100 calories by the end of the day.  It WORKS.  And after re-vamping my goal to a loss of 3.0 pounds per week instead of 3.5, I should hit my 40-pound loss by July 25th.  

I feel really good setting this new goal.  Yeah, all it really means on paper is that I've already blown half of my summer-swimsuit time.  But if I don't re-set my goals NOW...I'm afraid the guilt and depression I'll feel over coming so close to success and then screwing it up will make me a completely miserable wretch to be around after summer evaporates.  

I HAVE to do this.

It's Rapture Week!

I'm taking the week off of dieting, and of feeling guilty for not dieting.  The reason:  The Rapture.  If I live until Sunday I'll get back on the old diet horse, until then I will stuff my pre-apocalypse face with anything I want.  I have a feeling my post apocalypse face will be a little fatter, if it's not burning in eternal hell-fire.

I Second That Emoticon...

YES, you have readers out there...I check this page every day!
And it's not because I have NO life, but because I have found that this blog, as well as my other one, are really helping me with motivation to stay on-track with my "healthy eating plan," more than anything else has to date.  I need the accountability of "checking in" with someone, even if I never see a person.  I don't have time to drive to a Weight-Watchers or Tops "weigh-in" every week, so blogging is the next best thing for me.

I, too, have had a couple of "rough" food weeks.  I am not yet completely disgusted with myself, though I'm getting there.  I'm trying to allow myself the reality that due to a few unavoidable, extenuating circumstances, it was very difficult to stick to my regimen on many of the last 16 days.  Of course, that has not been the case EVERY one of those days - so I don't have any excuse for some of the random days that I slacked off.  

I still start every day the same way - motivated to make it a good one, over-all, with 1100 calories consumed and some kind of exercise every day.  I go through the routine of filing away my little scribbled calorie-count from the day before, regardless of how unsuccessful I was by the end, and start each morning with a clean sheet of paper and a cup of tea.  My mornings have been OK, for the most part.  Afternoons have been so-so.  I've eaten too many restaurant lunches, a Big Daddy's burger here, and a few Dairy Queen cones there.  These are, obviously, a no-no...but Dairy Queen just opened for the season near our office, so...I've indulged.  Dinners and evenings in general have been pretty horrific.  Not a lot of calorie-counting going on there.  But I'm ready to get back to it now.

My "excuses" aren't anything monumental, but I'm still gonna cling to them...Starting with April 25th, when I had a (super-duper fun) procedure done at the Duluth Clinic that has prevented me from getting back on the treadmill and elliptical yet.  (The short version:  I had myself sterilized by having little "Essure" coils jammed up into my tubes; RAH RAH RAH!)  It was an easy procedure, done right in the office, but I've been..."tender" ever since.  I can't bend at the waist too fast unless I want to feel little twinges of weird pain in my abdomen, and I DON'T want to feel those.  So I have been totally taking it easy, and avoiding all exercise, and I know that has been a huge reason for the subsequent apathy with my diet.  

It's gotten to the point that I can't do one without the other anymore.  When I would exercise, it made it a LOT easier to stick to my strict calorie intake - because I didn't want to blow it after sweating through an entire work-out!  And vise-versa; when I'd get home after work and had only eaten 520 calories, it prompted me to eat a super-healthy dinner and then get on a treadmill, so that I would end the day in REALLY great shape.  When one component was missing, it made the other that much harder to stick to.  Weird.  I was really starting to LIKE the exercise, and I swear I never thought that would happen.  I am going to try a slow treadmill walk tonight.  Hopefully.

Anyway, April 25th was kind of a messed-up day of decline over-all.  Within an hour of returning home from my "procedure," our baby swallowed a fish bone, which somehow speared through her right tonsil, and 17 hours later we were still camped out at the hospital, waiting for discharge papers after her minor surgery to remove the bone.  Joy joy.  Anyway, after eating "dinner" in the hospital vending machines (TWO cans of Coke, Twizzlers, nacho Doritos, and Pop Tarts...), I think I really just had several days afterward where I ate a lot of foods that I've been seriously missing since February; specifically, JUNK FOOD.

I prefer now to look at the past 16 days as simply a little "hiatus" from my strict, regimented, ultra-controlled diet.  I think it's OK to do this once in a great while.  Hell, sometimes it's probably even NECESSARY, to keep oneself feeling like a living, fully-functioning human being.  The one thing I do know is, all has not been lost.  It's not as though I have to completely start over from scratch.  I had "figured it out," after all.  I knew what I had to do to keep losing weight - I was doing it, day after day, and I was losing!  At my lowest, I was down to 147.0 pounds - or 18.5 pounds lost since February 7th.  This morning, I weighed 149.5, which is only 2.5 pounds re-gained.  That's not so bad.  I can lose that again fairly quickly.  All it will take is a few days back on my strict plan, and getting back into my exercise, and I'll be back on track.

Don't worry, girlie!  It's all good.  I think it's only fair that you give yourself a "pass" on the diet when you're on vacation.  I don't think I could EVER force myself to reign it in with the "fun foods" when I'm out-of-town, no matter where I am.  I know, I know.  It's not supposed to be a "diet;" it's supposed to be a "total, permanent lifestyle change" and "food-choices make-over" that follows us everywhere, no matter where we are.  Yeah.  I also know that just because I'm drinking a can of Coke and eating Good N' Plentys while I type this doesn't mean that I can't or won't get back on that (big fat) horse this afternoon, and eat better the rest of the day if I really really really try hard.

The Unraveling

Hello?  Is anyone still reading this blog?  I have been avoiding it because I have been avoiding dieting and coming to a diet blog when you're not dieting is masochistic.  But I gotta get back on that horse because I'm only ten pounds down and I have 16 more to go before I start the long, steady process of gaining it all back plus ten extra pounds reach my goal.

The unraveling started when I went on vacation to Washington D.C. with my kids.  I figured that my sister was also eating healthy so the eating wouldn't be a problem, and we would be walking miles and miles every day, so the exercise wouldn't be too terribly interrupted.  We did walk miles and miles and miles; to the point that my butt-sides hurt and my feet would actually swell, but I ate like a little piggy.  Pizza, ice cream, fried food, pasta, hot dogs, more hot dogs etc. etc.  I've been back for over two weeks and have yet to get back to the good, healthy eating/exercise regimen.

This past weekend I ate HORRIBLY and I think I'm paying for it with pain and agony right now.  My knees and hips are inflamed and hurt in the extreme.  I think that may have something to do with my diet consisting mostly of fatty meat (is chicken skin considered "meat"?), potato salad, ice cream, and donuts the past few days.  No fruit, no vegetables (except potato salad) and an excess of sodium and sugar; and about as much activity as a 50 year old sloth.  Could that cause inflamed joints?  I bet it could.  I literally poisoned myself.  Either that or I have some other disease. So now I'm sitting on my couch with a heating pad on my knees, feeling sick and bloated and sorry for myself, and longing for the days (a few weeks ago) when I was eating well, exercising regularly and feeling like a teenager.

Why do I ever go off the diet?  That is the eternal and frustrating question, isn't it?  It's like I'm constantly sabotaging myself.  Just this afternoon I was driving home from work and told myself that when I got home I would exercise right away (mostly to get it out of the way, but partially to see if that relieves some of the joint pain), and not eat anything except roasted vegetables for dinner, and fruit for snacks.  Good plan, right?  Well, I got home and I ate the remainder of a bag of pita chips (there wasn't that much left), and now I'm sitting on the couch, decidedly NOT exercising, and seriously considering having tater-tot hotdish for dinner.  I don't even really like tater-tot hotdish, but I feel like I should have something made with a "cream-of" soup because it's cold and clammy outside.  What is wrong with me?