Some good news

Some good news this morning. I’m down 6 pounds from my last weigh-in, which was about six weeks ago. (Current running total is ~71 lbs. I say approximately since I’m guestimating my starting weight.) This is good, because three of those six weeks included a week of vacation at Nags Head, and two weeks way off the wagon.

“Off the wagon” for me means back to the old behaviors, which included all sorts of excess, in terms of both food and drink. My therapist (a big AA fan) and I have discussed that all three of my “relapses” this year have been related to travel. I’m good at home, but get a bit cocky while away…and I’m clearly overestimating my ability to get back on track afterwards (see Debra’s point number one here…my life’s story in a nutshell).

Anyways, I got back on track in late August, and was hoping that I hadn’t done too much damage. BTW, I know that lots of weight experts suggest avoiding the scale entirely so that one doesn’t get fixated on the number. Of course, my theory is that I’m probably a long way from hitting a plateau…if I’m not overeating, my weight should be coming down. Weighing myself is meant to be a way of being accountable to myself.

So my compromise is to only weigh myself every two or three weeks. And so far, I’ve avoided weighing myself after my “relapses” so that I don’t make it any worse on myself. I use a Weight Watchers scale that has a 380 lb capacity which I needed at first.

Unfortunately, I’m still about 30lbs away from my previous high. I hit that mark about 15 years ago. I lost weight at that time because I was in both my sister’s and brother’s wedding parties (two months apart). I did the liquid diet then, and lost about 100lbs while on the fast, and another 30 on maintenance. I actually maintained that weight loss for a couple of years. Of course, I think I was really an exercise bulemic at that point…I was doing about three hours a day of walking, plus another hour at the health club on the stairs or bike.

I started gaining after my mother’s massive heart attack and death four months later. I gained it all back plus another 100 or so over a period of about eight years. I might have kept going except the weight finally interfered with my job in a “break the chair” kind of way…I had to go to my boss and back out of an important trip because I wasn’t physically up to it. A week or so later, I got back into therapy. It took a couple of months of personal life housekeeping before I was ready, but I’ve been managing the overeating (with my three relapses) since early February. So it’s been about 70 lbs in 7 months. Not exactly a record-setting pace, but it’ll do just fine if it’s something I can maintain.

Worth a visit