Where Do I Go From Here?

I've still been mulling this over...  and I've heard from others this is a vital question.

My initial reaction was, "Of course I'll keep on going! I want to look good!".  I spent time going back over the posts I did at the beginning of this year's blog. All those reasons are still there, but are they still as compelling?

Where am I now? I am overweight. I am not obese, according to my BMI. I was obese when I started this diet at Christmas. So some of the biggest motivation is gone. Kim Bensen has a tag line, "Losing weight is hard. Being fat is hard. Choose your hard."  It's very true, but the worst of the being fat is behind me. I fit into normal size ranges. Squeezing into kayak cockpits is easier. I'm stronger and more flexible. Life is far from horrible at this time.  When I look at myself in the mirror, sometimes it looks almost OK.

But Susan Estrich has a whole chapter on this. The vignette she uses has stuck with me for years. She is off to brunch with her family, wearing her new size 12 shorts, looking good, feeling good. Thinking about the eggs benedict.  Thinking about rewarding herself for having gotten to this point. Then, it strikes her. All she has to do is keep on doing what she has been doing, and she will keep losing weight, on to the size six she set as the target.  (She was younger and smaller and travelling in Hollywood circles then, hence size six being normal.)  The point is, why not keep on going? Why not go all the way down from "overweight" to "absolutely fabulous"?

I've looked at a lot of people on the street, trying to decide what absolutely fabulous would be for me.  It's not size six - the distance between my un-padded hip bones probably makes that impossible. I'm not young, and I'm decidedly pear shaped. I don't carry my weight evenly at all. As I lost the first batch, it did come off from all over, but now, almost all of it has to come from my lower half.  For shirts and blazers, it's not likely I'll ever drop another size.  I could get another two sizes off my trousers - and I did, ten years ago with The Big Loss.  I've never wanted to be skinny, but compact and strong is where I'd like to be.

I'm absolutely committed to keeping up the exercise, and even trying to up it a notch. But I'm weary of logging all my food, but I'm equally wary of what will happen to my calorie intake without that technique.  Can I keep running totals and offsets in my head?  I think looking at the data in depth has helped keep me honest in the past six months.  I'm inclined to want to find a middle ground on the food.  And if I can up the calories burned - up the activity level - I can afford to relax a bit on the food.

Kim Bensen makes another point about the process. She was working with her husband recovering from a health crisis, and pointed out he had no guarantees for how successful he would be.  But it weight loss, over the long term, if calories burned are greater than calories consumed, the weight loss is absolutely guaranteed. It will happen. It's physics.  You can count on it.