Hi Again

This past year has not been a great year for blogging, nor for weight management.  The last post foreshadowed the issues I am still facing, and things have not gone so well on the weight front.  Two days ago, the scale hit a weight twenty pounds over my goal weight, that I achieved slightly more than a year ago.

The Evidence

Clearly, I can't be trusted to make decisions in the moment, and equally clearly, I haven't developed habits that keep me from going too far off track.  So it's back to the tried and true techniques, that require effort and discipline and focus and work, in an effort to stop this trend and wrestle my weight back down to where I want it to be.

Why worry about my weight, when the world seems to be going to hell in a hand-basket around me? How First World of me, to care about how I look and how I feel when there are so many real problems I should be doing something about.  But you know what? While I feel bad, and feel that I look bad, and my clothes don't fit, I feel less effective in everything else I do.  A big portion of my self-image is that I am competent, and out-of-control eating and a sloppy body makes me feel incompetent.  The rest of my life goes better when I feel in control of my eating and thus my body.

Here are the tried-and-true techniques that science tells me should work to create weight loss, confirmed by my own records showing they have worked in the past:

TRACK FOOD

I'm back on board My Fitness Pal, tracking every morsel that passes my lips.

WEIGH DAILY

Of course, I have continued my coming-up-on twenty years of almost daily weighing. It's accountability. My weight will continue to bounce up and down 1-3 pounds a day, so for me daily weighing enables the assessment of trends while avoiding the disappointment that would come from a single weekly weigh-in that happened to be on an "up" day.

HAVE A BUDDY

That would be you, dear reader. Even though you are few, you are vital for my accountability.

CUT THE CARBS

Ultimately, calories matter.  My history tells me the way to cut calories is to cut the carbs. This is sugar, but also bread, rice, pasta, potatoes.  I am following rules:  I am on Atkins induction.  I am apparently a rule-follower, and it is more productive for me to arrest a bad trend by planning a specific length of time to follow a specific set of rules.  I can be 100% for a month, I know that.

COOK VEGETABLES

This morning's breakfast: fried eggs over cabbage and bacon

There are luscious wonderful vegetables.  I like salads, and eat them often, and my body even seeks them out when I'm not following rules.  But cooked vegetables satisfy my soul in a way most salads cannot.  And they bring what carbs I do eat.

MOVE

I continue to go to the gym twice a week (for mostly weight training), run about once a week, and track my steps on fitbit.  Science says you won't lose weight from exercise alone, but combined with a calorie reduction it is helpful, and it's vital for maintenance.  Also, it really helps with that self-image of being competent thing I mentioned above.

I've got a new technique I'm adding to the mix.  I'm not sure of its effectiveness, but my reading indicates it should be helpful:

MINDFUL EATING

I'm personally getting a little bit annoyed with the promotion of mindfulness in everything, and meditation is not the same thing as mindfulness.  I'm a big fan of abstract thinking, planning ahead, and being transported out of the moment by daydreaming.  But that's a rant for a different day. Evidence suggests mindful eating should help with curbing out of control eating both in terms of what I choose to eat and how much of it I eat. I'm thinking mindful eating as I practice it is worthy of a separate blog post.

So guys, I'm going to try to be more frequent and faithful on the writing as try to arrest my upward trend and return to the body I had just fifteen months ago.  I think there may not be so many lavishly illustrated carefully crafted essays as shorter notes about what I am doing and thinking.

Thanks for reading.