Wednesday, July 25, 2007

I feel lame

I feel pretty lame right now, posting for the first time in a month only to say that my progress has pretty bad because I've been eating doughnuts for breakfast and cookies for dinner. Okay, I'll buck up and be honest:

The good:
* I've been going to the gym on a very regular basis
* Since my last post (a month ago) I've lost weight, not gained

The bad:
* I've only lost half a pound.
* I've only lost half a pound because I have sometimes been having doughnuts at breakfast and three cookies and a beer for dinner.
* In other words, I have only myself to blame.

Does this sound like dedication to anyone? Commitment? Goal-oriented thinking? Yeah, I didn't think so. I'm doing a lot of thinking and reading about being mindful with my eating, so I sure know what I'm doing wrong. I'm tracking all my food intake, so I can sure see the cause and effect in action. But have I been doing less of the bad to see more of the good? No, not really.

As I often do when I'm feeling down on myself for my most recent eating transgressions, I have been looking at charts of my weight loss and gain, which I've been tracking since 2001. After I pat myself on the back for not having lost forty pounds in what is becoming more and more the misty past, I get down to looking at more recent ups and downs. Since roughly three years ago, when I finished my last big weight loss effort, I've cycled up and down in weight a few times, roughly 152 lbs +/- 4 lbs. Here, here's the chart I'm looking at right now.

I've made no secret of my desire to ultimately get my weight down to 138 pounds. But it's pretty. damn. clear. that if I don't actually change my habits substantially that I'll never get there. Instead, I'll keep bumping around the 156-148 pound box, enjoying my beer and cookies and sometimes looking into the mirror and wishing I didn't have a belly roll. And there's nothing wrong or less about that outcome, if I wanted it. But I want 138 pounds and I'm not doing any of the things necessary to get there.

In other words, I have a serious motivation problem. Blah.