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Monday, November 14, 2011
And not necessarily in a good sense. That first blog post, at the six week mark, was done just after going to the gym, in an optimistic mood. 8 days later, I haven't made it back, although intending to on two different occasions, defeated by sheer laziness. I bought a new toy, and used it three days in a row, but not for the last four, even as it was available to me, a mere few yards away, a heck of a lot closer than that pesky gym, and requiring far less effort on my part. But there it lay, unused.
It's not that there's been a weight gain slowing me down, depressing me in the short term. Any change on teh scale was well within normal fluctuations, or my understanding of it. The 5-6 lb reduction I claimed last week is still intact, as I've been careful to make sure any such decrease is real before declaring it so. No, instead, the week was lost to laziness, being uninclined to actually do exercise.
I suppose, then, it's a good sign that despite going out on Friday and Saturday both, and letting Little Caesar cook for me Sunday, that that scale hasn't moved significantly. But attitude wise, I'm in a far less optimistic place than I was last weekend, and I'm not entirely sure why that is. In one way, it's recognizable as the indifference that's defeated prior attempts to lose weight, which might be a bad sign, as there's no external driver of such indifference (ie too busy to make it to the gym).
Throwing the thoughts out into a public space, not for the pity or the scolding that it may generate, but just to have it out there. Force myself to think, I guess.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
I've gone on mini exercise binges before, with the thought of dropping weight. Usually, there's a specific incident that triggers such attempts, such as getting on the scale and seeing an increment that hadn't appeared before, or just *feeling* fat. (To explain that last thought, you know how sometimes, you know a couple extra pounds have crept up on you, but it doesn't feel like it, and then one day you wake up, and you feel 'em?)
Back when I was a grad student, it manifested itself in extra visits to the gym, or trips down to the fitness room in my apartment building's basement. Unfortunately, as I was starting from a base of negligible visits to either, it didn't really add to to much more than a hill of non-magical beans. Also working against any attempt to lose weight was the fact that for most of that time, I had a girlfriend who could cook well.
But that's a tale from years ago. More recently, at the start of 2010, I had an extended period (6 weeks or so), when I actually went to the gym regularly, two to three times a week, playing basketball on many of those occasions, as I figured out when a game would usually be occurring, and made a point of leaving work to get to them gym when others were playing. The effort worked, I lost approximately 15 pounds, going from 202-ish to 187-something at best. But then work caught up. Due to managerial errors, the workload on my plate in the February/March 2010 timeframe was overwhelming (more so that usual around deadline time), and the trips to the gym didn't just decrease, they ceased. And when work eased, they didn't resume.
Between March 2010 and October 2011, I, frankly, wasted the gym membership fees I was paying every month, maybe averaging a trip per month, certainly less than two. Some of that was the summer sessions of ultimate frisbee and softball. Some of that was just laziness. Actually, who am I kidding, most of that was laziness. In 2011, I let an online game suck up free time that might have otherwise been spent exercising, not that I'm entirely sure that without that, I would have gone to the gym.
All of that is prelude to what happened in September 2011. Once again, I started waking up just feeling fat. That was the case before I wandered down to Atlanta for a metal festival, and balanced a bunch of eating and drinking with walking. On one of those walks (to get food), I mentioned to a friend, who had occasionally chronicled her wight loss, that I was feeling obese, and she mentioned this site.
A couple of weeks later, I stepped on the scale, and it read 205.4 lbs. Unlike previous episodes, rather than triggering a rush to the gym, it led to stopping in on this site, and signing up. And rather than trying to lose lbs by exercising, I started watching what I ate, really for the first time ever.
It's 6 weeks later (exactly). I just glanced at the scale again. It read 195.0. Granted, it's an illusion, as I haven't had dinner yet, and I just got back from the gym, only the second time in these 6 weeks that I've been there. But I've been paying attention to food details, letting some of details influence some of my meal choices, and giving a crap about what I'm eating, rather than just shoving it down my piehole (mmmm, pie), and, obviously, it's making some semblance of a difference.
Will it continue? Hell if I know. But I'd like to think that having dropped 5-6 pounds in 6 weeks (legitimate reduction) without exercise being a significant component, I'd be able to lose 5 more adding that to the mix. And, I've grabbed the wii fit (balance board/game), in an effort to try a technological approach. I really don't know if it will work, but it seems that I'm starting out on a more balanced path this time. And maybe that will be the key.
At the end of 2012, assuming we get there, I would like to weigh 180 lbs, pretty much the goal I stated when I joined my gym in August, 2009, and have made absolutely no progress towards...until these past six weeks.
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