Weigh-in day 16!

WOW - I can't believe it's been a month and a half since I posted!!! I didn't realize how long I'd been kind of slacking off in my weight loss. So - that's what my blog today is about. THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT GIVING UP!

First, let me tell you where I'm at. I posted some new pictures of what I look like today. The top 2 pictures are almost exactly like the ones I took at 212 pounds (16 pounds ago!). The bottom one was a request - it was the dress I wore to the Sex and the City premiere that I was so proud of. Sorry I couldn't fit in the shoes, Sarah! Now, on to weight. I weighed myself today for the first time in almost 2 weeks, and I'm at 196.0. Which is actually kind of exciting, because it's 1.8 pounds less than my weigh-in in May, and about 2.5 pounds less than my weigh-in (which I didn't get around to blogging about) 2 weeks ago. So, the past couple of weeks I haven't been doing to bad. Before that, however, got a little crazy. I went to Bonnaroo, which was a blast. But, it's difficult to diet while camping, and the only food you have is what you make or buy at the food stands. Which, needless to say, isn't exactly the most healthy stuff. Frankly, I ate whatever the crap I felt like eating because it was 95 degrees during the day. I didn't want to make myself anymore miserable than I already was by depriving myself of the delicious fattening foods whose aromas were filling the air around me. And even if I did eat well, there was no way for me to log my points because I had no internet access. Obviously, I didn't go too crazy, because I've managed to lose whatever I gained there (and a little more). But you get the point - I certainly wasn't on plan. Once I got back - I got a little better, but couldn't quite get in the habit of daily logging my points. And my intention was to do better starting last week, but then I got a stomach flu this past weekend (which probably helped me lose a little weight), and I ate whatever didn't make me nauseous. So - here I am, deciding to get back on the horse today.

Now, here's what this month has made me realize: NO MATTER HOW FAR BEHIND YOU FALL, this race is about REACHING the finish line, NOT how long it takes you to get there. Yes, everyone would love to diet hard-core for a month, lose all the weight they want to, and then go back to their regular life. But it doesn't work that way. There is no magic word. There is no Staples "easy button." You have to do this the long, hard way - however long and hard that is for you - if you want it to work. I did the quick fix once - and I ended up heavier than I had ever been before. So, yes, it takes some serious determination to decide to "start over" or "start again" - but that decision WILL be one that changes your life if you stick to it. It doesn't matter if you gain back 10 pounds, stay exact the same, or only lose 1 pound over a month. If you DON'T decide to get back on the weight loss track, you're going to regret it. Maybe you won't gain all the weight back, but you will be stuck at a weight that you're not 100% happy at.

Here's the thing I think thin people don't get - you don't wake up one morning fat and miserable. You start out gaining a pound here and there, and it bothers you a little, but not enough to do something about it. You're still happy. You go up a jean size, and that's frustrating, but you're not ready to diet yet. Your shirts start not to fit, and you get a little more sad. And what comforts you? Food. You start to dislike the way you look when you try on clothes in a store. (Or, for me, you start to dislike it more, because it's very rare that I don't leave a store feeling like life would be easier if I was just a little thinner.) You go get an ice cream. As you get more depressed about your weight, you start to focus on other things that make you happy. You look for a way to distract yourself because you feel hopeless about how you look. The horrible body image stays with you for so long, you forget that you ever felt any other way about yourself. You don't realize how much emotional weight you're carrying around, how exhausted your body feels because it's not supposed to be working this hard to walk up stairs. You DON'T KNOW just how miserable you are - UNTIL you start to change.

If you're reading this, and you want to lose weight, but haven't started a program yet, PLEASE listen. Give it 3 weeks. 3 weeks of really sticking to a plan, not cheating (as much as possible), making active changes in your diet and activity level and trying to change. If you don't feel better about yourself, if you don't start to feel more confident, have more energy, have people notice that you look good, have the scale show that you're losing weight, then you can tell me to shut up. But I really believe that you'll realize, on some scale, how much the way you feel about yourself can change the way you live your life. Can change the person that you are. If you've fallen into a weight-loss rut, don't let yourself feel guilty and sink back into that unhappy place. Everyone struggles on this journey - if it were easy, everyone would be thin! Instead of wallowing in self-pity with a pint of ice cream, try to remember a time when you were really succeeding. Didn't it feel fantastic? Did you do things that surprised yourself? It might have been something as small as wearing an outfit that you never would have worn before. Or going somewhere new. Wasn't that feeling better than what you're feeling now? Getting it back is as simple as deciding to take control of your life again. One day at a time.