A Year of Insanity or Just Slower Wonkier Progress?

You’ll have noticed there hasn’t been a whole lot of L3 mentioned in the last few weeks. Well time to bring you up to date, because today marks a year since the start of L3.

My current weight is 263.6lbs which means I’ve lost 40.6lbs in that year.

Sounds good when you put it like that. But most of that weight came off in the first 5 months and then I lost and put back on. In fact I’ve been trying to lose weight since Sept 2008 and in that time I have lost 53.4lbs in total but it’s been the same pattern – a period of dieting Lesamy, Less is More, L3 followed by a period of “giving up” and putting weight back on.

So this brings me to thinking about that old cliche of the AA definition of insanity being repeating the same actions but expecting different results. How many times am I going to keep trying to diet, be successful for a few months and then get disillusioned and give up again? Each time I start I feel like I’ve next to no real motivation that my conviction/will-power is wafer thin – but I always have something, a thought or a mantra that keeps me going. This time it was simply the idea that really there’s no alternative and so that this would be the last time I went on a diet. I might have lapses but I’d always return in the end because what choice do I have?

I suppose the alternative is to try to come up with a different plan – a better diet, a more sustainable/enjoyable exercise regime – something I could realistically see myself continuing as a lifestyle change indefinitely. I know myself though and I don’t know that it would make a lot of difference. I’d still feel that sense of wanting to break out of the routine occasionally.

Of course another way to look at this, just looking at the figures, is that it’s a success. That I am losing weight. It’s not happening smoothly or quickly but over time it is happening. If I lost another 50-odd lbs over the next few years then I’d be pretty much at my (initial) target weight. Of course all the sensible advice would be that diet and binge is worse for you in the long run.

Maybe I’m destined to die a fat man and I need to make peace with that and try to be healthy rather than slim[*].

So what will I do? Not sure yet. Watch this space as they say.

[*]not a new idea, and my ‘answer’ in the past has always been that starting from where I am it takes as much effort/radical change to switch to a healthy lifestyle so I may as well lose the weight too.