Review of "Progress" - not so much

I have been keeping track of my weight for twenty-five years!  I have no memory of specific weights before then, and if I wrote anything down, I can't find it now.  But for 25 years I've got data points.

I've been blogging for three. I started this specifically for some motivation. And its been really motivating. Besides weight loss, I have increased my fitness considerably. (Which by the way just came in handy as my 60-pound, 13 year-old dog had a seizure and I rushed to the vet in the middle of doing this post. She couldn't walk, and I was able to get her into the car though it took setting her down three times in the process.)

But all my weight loss progress was made in the first year and a half. I didn't choose maintenance, I just plateau'd, and then started to backslide.

So these graphs tell me I am perfectly capable of losing weight. I just have to actually do it.

They also tell me that I have a lot more success if I cut out the sweets and breads. Going low carb is the way to do it for me. That's how I did the Big Loss, and that is what I was doing to get back on track in 2008-09. This is what I'm striving for now. I'm not willing to go Atkins for life. But, to lose weight, I've got to cut the carbs. My current food tracking system, My Fitness Pal, does the nutritional analysis as well as calories. I ignore their suggestions of how to divide up between fat-carb-protein, because they are way too high on the carbs. But I think I'm going to be a meat eater for serious for the next while.

Atkins is also big on the vegetables. Green leafy vegetables. I'm on a roasted brussels sprouts kick (fell into it at Thanksgiving, thanks to my fabulous hostess!) and that will help. Atkins says two salads a day. Or a salad and some cooked greens. So that will be part of my focus now.

Looking back on my New Year's posts from the past couple of years, there is a resolution I made last year that I didn't stick with for very long at all. It was to eat only at the dining room table, sitting down, not watching TV or some other consuming focus away from the food. I want to try to do that again, though I keep forgetting. I just ate while posting, not good.  Got to keep reminding myself!

It's good to have history, because my memory is colored by the way I want it to be. It's very good to look back over the past three years and remind myself that the first half went pretty well, and I'm still much better off than I was.