Tag: motivation

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Less is More

Less is More Week 16 – Grumpy on the Knife-Edge

Lost: 0lbs
Lost so far: 34.1lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.1lbs
Weight: 260.6lbs (18st 8lb)

I’ve spent most of the last 2-3days feeling very grumpy because pre-official weighing suggested that I would put on weight. Given that I’ve stayed as I was I’m mildly relieved and less grumpy – but I’d already thought up the title and liked it.

The reason behind these numbers isn’t a complete surprise to me. Friday night I had a pizza and a bottle of wine, after having been to the pub Friday lunch-time. Also on Saturday whilst I stuck to my calorie limit I didn’t do my walk – which is equivalent to another 800calories.

So if I had splurged in this way I shouldn’t be surprised and grumpy right? Well yes, except that in the past I have gotten away with more and still lost weight. But it’s not even that, it’s the fact that it feels like I can’t even have one day off without it having an impact. Imagine I’ve hit my target, imagine that I’m trying to maintain that weight – then this week’s result is telling me that I can at most afford to let my resistance slip for a few hours or the odd meal. That I must keep up the exercise and diet at a similar level.

Actually if I was at that level I would probably allow myself to go a pound or three up before I started to worry. Although what it does remind me is what a knife-edge I’m on. The first few pounds will go back on as quickly and easily as the first few fall off.

Ultimately I kept going – forcing myself out for a walk on Sunday and keeping to the diet – because what’s the alternative? Even if I decide I don’t want to lose weight do I want to go back to growing ever larger and finding clothes hard to find? to getting out of breath walking up the stairs? No. And the effort in maintaining this weight is an awful lot like the effort needed to lose just a pound or so a week.

In any case, that’s what I’m currently telling myself. I hope it’s working.

This week I have a regular social event on Thursday which involves a take-away and beer. I shall indulge but with one eye slightly on the quantity. I shall also be aware that I shall need to get back on the diet straight away and that that ought to be enough time to allow for a small loss by next Monday. (One of the other things I keep telling myself is that I can ‘absorb’ a single night/day’s excess and still lose weight but there’s a timing element – Friday can be too close to Monday to make it back – I bet I’m down by tomorrow night.)

Anyway with that I’ll sign off. Not so grumpy as I could be.


Categories
Less is More

Less is More Week 8 – Not Too Bad

Lost: –3lbs
Lost so far: 19.7lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.5lbs
Weight: 275lbs (19st 9lbs)

So, a gain. A not unexpected gain but one which was not as bad as I feared. Which in itself is both good and bad. Good for keeping the motivation going but bad in that I’m thinking in terms of a gain being acceptable this early on.

I’m 8 weeks in. By comparison, 8 weeks into Lesamy I’d lost 34lbs and never gained. Or if you take a start point of a similar weight (week 4) I lost 26lbs without any gain ‘blips’. Actually 26lbs down is about where I’d be if I’d stayed level the two times I’ve put on weight (though of course we know that some of the subsequent loss is losing that ‘new weight’ – easy on/easy off in a way at this stage).

So reasons to see good and bad. I’m a glass-half-empty kinda guy but I must be holding on to some good or my glass would be full of something not conducive to this whole exercise.

I thought about this a little today. To do this, to keep going, you have to have some sort of inner core of will power. Something you focus on. Something you tell yourself when you want to give in. Last time it was the idea, somewhat vague, that things would be ‘better’ when I reached my target. I’d be fitter, healthier, better looking and people would like me more. It was sort of true (people respond positively to what they see as a positive change with encouragement and that feels like they like me more for being thinner even if it’s not that simple in practice). The thing that caused the metaphorical glass to shatter on that illusion was when I realised that I was almost certainly going to have ‘loose skin’. Suddenly the secret dreams of being “better looking” seemed false.

After this, I’m naturally nervous about the fact that I’ve started the process again and I don’t seem to have the same level of drive/motivation. I seem to have simply decided to start again, what, if anything is my ‘core’ this time? I guess it’s this: that if I don’t move forward I will slip backwards. And quickly. The time it took to regain the weight (not all but most) was scarily fast. More importantly I was soon back noticing the same thing that started me off the first time (which I sort of lost sight of with all my dreams of youth and beauty), the thing that has become not the core itself but my slogan for it:

If don’t keep going I’ll soon be back at the place where I’m out of breath climbing the stairs.


Categories
lesamy

Less Is More (is Lesamy mk II) – week 1

There’s a line in the first episode of Studio 60 where Danny Tripp, the recovering addict who’s just failed a drugs test talks to his partner about slipping up. He says,

I had twelve years, now I’ve got eight days

(or something like that I may have the numbers wrong)

Anyway I sort of know how he feels.

Which is to say I have become the cliche.

Which is to say that about 3 months short of 2 years after I started Lesamy I’m almost back to where I started. Ok I didn’t put all the weight back on. But I am back to wearing a lot of my ‘fat’ clothes (which I only still have because I never got around to giving them to the charity shop) and crucially I’m back to getting out of breath when I climb the stairs.

*sigh*

*shrug*

I was going to post all about how it happened. About the point where my motivation failed me and the stages of decline after that. But, well all that’s in my blog really. You can take it that since my last Lesamy update I more or less went back to eating how I used to two years ago. And of course not exercising.

The crucial thing now is to somehow find that motivation, that commitment, that stubborness to not give up that I managed to maintain for several months but haven’t had for longer.

Anyway I’m starting again. I’m counting from where I am now(*) which I think will help me “start over”.

So:

Week 1

Lost: 1.9kg (4.2lbs)

Weight: 131.7 (20st 10lb)

(*)ok, technically where I was last week.