Where am I going?
I'm doing it again. I've gotten successful at losing the weight, and now I'm backsliding. I had weight gains 2 out of 3 weeks recently. Why is it that when I find success in losing weight, I think it's okay to suddenly go out of control? Am I scared of losing the weight? Do I subconciously feel like I don't deserve to lose the weight? Overall, I want to say it's a fear of success. Lots of people deal with fear of failure...I wish. I'd have more drive I think. Part of me yes, thinks maybe if I lose the weight, I'll want more out of my life than what it is...that I'll want to become this crazy, free, adventurous spirit...I've seen it happen. But part of me thinks that if I lose the weight, maybe I'll be crazy and free and adventurous enough to just want to do more fun stuff with my family.
So why am I doing it?
I think I know failure so well, that I'm comfortable with it. It's so easy to say screw it, and open up a bag of pita chips and eat four or five servings. Way easier (and cheaper) than planning a healthy meal, shopping for the ingredients, then finding time to prepare it. Also, it's comforting to eat food that so easily satisfies the pleasure center--shoot, junky food is designed to hit the sweet spot.
How does that make me feel?
What really bothers me the most is that I've lost 30-ish pounds since October alone, and was really finally starting to notice that I've lost almost 60 pounds. I was starting to shrink out of my clothes, I could feel that my belly was smaller, my neck thinner, and I was even starting to be able to feel my collarbones again. So why is it, that with all this success, do I just fall off the wagon? Even as I sit here typing this, I'm thinking about pizza. Chewy, cheesy, yummy pizza. It's like my nemisis. Seriously. I'm so weak around pizza. Okay, getting off topic...Well yesterday was weigh-in, and I had gained back 3.4 pounds. I was devestated. So I ate my lunch, ate a bunch of snacks in my desk at work, then ate Taco Bell for dinner. I felt sorry for myself, I felt guilty, I felt sad, I felt like a failure. I ate. I didn't eat anything else for the rest of the evening, but I felt bad about it all night.
How did I get to this point?
A couple of months ago I started having pain in my stomach. Bad. It wouldn't go away. I had a full abdominal ultrasound (came back clear) and blood drawn and they couldn't tell me exactly what was going on. Of course, in my anxiety- and panic-ridden state, I started to believe that I had stomach cancer. One Dr. finally suggested that it could be too much stomach acid and put me on Nexium which my body promtply rejected (although it did help with the stomach acid a bit, the side effects weren't worth it). When I went back regarding the Nexium, she suggested I change my diet to avoid grain and dairy. Essentially a mostly Paleo lifestyle. I was fully on board and immediately began making the changes. Literally the weight was falling off of me those first few weeks, then not as much but still dropping the weight. I've been tracking daily in MyFitnessPal, and I go to weekly Weight Watchers at Work meetings so that I can do the weigh-ins and have a support system. I wish I could do weekly weigh-ins some other way that was more affordable. Anyways, that's another post I'm sure.
What have I done?
So how exactly have I been falling off the wagon, and just what do I intend on doing about it? I've been eating a lot of cheese again, breads, unhealthy fatty foods like chips. I've ordered out for lunch more than once and not cared the price. I track it all in my tracker, but when I go 2000 calories over budget, that's a problem.
What am I going to do about it?
Today I've eaten a banana and a double portion of low-fat (chemical shit storm) pita chips. Lunch is a healthier option of a greek salad with vinaigrette and an apple and maybe a bag of frozen brussels sprouts. Later for snack I'll have a LaraBar. Dinner I'm going to make myself eat chicken and broccoli. I've got to start adding in a lot of the good clean foods so that it pushes out all the bad foods again. I noticed about 2 weeks ago that as I was starting to slip, I was getting cravings again for chocolate and other carbs. I also have noticed that I've been drinking a lot less water than I was a couple weeks ago, and I really need to get back to drinking at least half of my body weight a day in ounces (sorry, still not comfortable enough to list that number publicly, but I'm getting there...someday when I lose most or all of the weight, I'm going to do a public Before/After reveal of my story).
