First Returns Are In

Well, here it is. I'm actually a little shocked that I can see a difference. Very helpful for the old psyche, and well, emotionally, physically, everything.

Here are the specifics. First a little correction. Matt, J.D, and I weighed New Years Eve after piling down pizza and the like and I weighed 325, as I previously reported. On the morning of January 2nd, when I actually started eating differently and changing my habits, I weighed 320. This morning, just slightly over six weeks from January 2nd, I weighed 287, a weight loss of 33 pounds.

I'm excited and motivated again, but not inhuman. I've found myself more tempted in the past few weeks with some of the food choices I used to make. Finding the balance of occasionally enjoying those things, in other words, keeping those times as the exception and not the rule, is a continual battle. I think Dr Phil's book on weight loss (haven't read it) has a chapter title that captures this: "Weight is managed not cured". It won't be "fixed" one day, it will be a lifetime of making the choices.

So, there it is, the first six week update.

By the way, I hope I'm posting often enough for Kyle, who has talked of "weeding" out infrequent posters. Please, don't delete me, please... ; )

Worth a thousand words...

So coming up soon I'll be posting a new picture of myself. I actually started my new lifestyle on January 2nd, so I've decided to post the first side by side comparison photo approximately six weeks from then. That adds up to about the 16th of February, but that falls on a Friday, and I actually weigh on Tuesdays. In order to give updates on weight lost, I'll be posting the picture on Tuesday, February 20th. I'm pretty nervous, but maybe not for the reasons you would suspect.

Having already crossed the line once, I'm not so nervous about putting a picture out there. What I'm mostly concerned about is if I will actually look any different. I'm actually doing quite well, I won't reveal my current weight loss yet, but I'm getting into an area where I've bailed before. When you have a significant amount of weight to lose, and I believe I need to lose anywhere from 130 to 140 pounds, even significant early losses still leave you very much overweight. In the past, I've lost more than 40 pounds, and then looking in the mirror and seeing virtually no change, I've gotten very discouraged and quit.

Certainly things are different this time, I believe that. However, I know that I'm coming up on one of the mountains I've failed to climb, and it makes me a bit nervous. I guess I'm facing a reality that I've tried to escape in the past. This is a lifestyle change, not a temporary program. I think I used to get so discouraged because I was looking forward to getting my weight off so I could get back to eating whatever I wanted. I think we all want to be able to win our battle, whatever it is, then be done with it and go back to our previous habits. No wonder we are so defeated and discouraged at times, because that is a false hope. To change means exactly that, to change. It's not a diversion, a sabbatical, it's a complete directional shift.

I think that applies to anything in life, and I think in our desire to live without thought and responsibility we sabotage ourselves. We must accept the truth that true freedom from a struggle does not come because you take a temporary route to get it under control, but freedom comes when you take responsibility for the defeat and do something different. Freedom from food abuse does not come when I can eat whatever I want, freedom is when I can eat what's best and turn down what's not.