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.
