Stalled

I haven't been posting much recently. That is mostly driven by the continuing frantic pace at work, and no corresponding let-up on the homefront. But not coincidentally, I made no weight-loss progress in February. First, let's get the brutal truth out there:

Horizontal Gridlines are 2 pounds apart

NO progress in February. A whopping eight pound total in six months. There was the holiday stall, from Thanksgiving to New Year's.  I got that fixed and back on track in January, but since then-- not so much.  February did see crossing into a new "decade" of weight, but only on brief bounces on individual days, not yet for a weekly average.

So what's going on? What am I doing wrong?

I was not diligent in tracking my meals at the beginning - in fact, I didn't do a full day before February 19. So the data on intake is scarce. Once I started tracking, I would guess I probably also cut back and stopped such generous interpretation of what constitutes an acceptable carbohydrate. Looking at my calendar, I did have some wacky days in there, with a cold, and The Big Speech, and other disruptions.  I've been pretty good about tracking since then - almost every day. There are no days with totally out of whack total calories, but the carb counts are considerably higher than I am targeting.

I did wear and transfer data from my little armband limpet calorie counter. And here is the sad, sad, truth.

Since I've been tracking my calories burned, February 2011 is the lowest average for the whole month, and January 2011 was also very low.  (The other low point there is March 2010.) Many days I never even made 2000 calories burned, which I wrote before should be the absolute baseline.  I kept up my paid appointments at the gym (except when I had a head cold) but I'm not doing much beyond that. If I don't take a walk at lunch or in the evening, I'll be below 2000 calories. Period.

So the truth is my energy and commitment are flagging.  My single biggest excuse is pressures from work, but if that is not going to change, I need to figure out how to adapt.  If being in shape, and being thinner is important to me, I have to make changes. Often I am deciding to stay in my office and catch up on emails during my work day, which is strung together as back to back to back to back meetings, so I have to block bathroom breaks onto the calendar.  I'm at my desk about twenty minutes earlier than six months ago, and spending time catching up on emails in the evening.

Brief off topic rant: I am now averaging well over 100 actual work-content emails from people I know a day - these are things I have to read, think about, and often reply to, after I've applied fancy filters to weed out broadcast messages and news bulletins and other things where I don't absolutely have to be responsible for digesting the content.  There is an expectation at all layers that all emails are read instantly during the work day, which leads to attempting to read your blackberry in meetings, which means not focusing on the subject at hand.  I have a bunch of people stopping me in the hall saying "did you get my email?" which is eliciting borderline rude responses from me - the mildest is "which one on what topic?".  

Back on topic.

Since my only "found" time is first thing in the morning, and since I am much more a morning person than a night person, I am working on how to add activity in the morning. And lunchtime walks have to be prioritized higher, which will get easier as it gets nicer out.  But, next weekend is the time change, and it will be dark again in the mornings, but lighter in the evenings. Hmmm....

Awareness and focus is what I need, and this public accounting helps keep me focused. Thanks for listening.