I'll begin with the good things:
1) I'm 13.8 pounds lighter than I was on this date last year.
2) I'm six weeks into the blog this time around and still going strong. It was about this point last time that I ended up sliding back into my old ways. Fortunately, the Big Carrot--a Broadway-filled weekend in NYC--is making this a lot easier to stick to long-term.
3) WOP culture is really, really growing on me. I actually love my long, weekend workouts. I'm not as big a fan of working out in the evenings after work.....I tend to do it more begrudgingly than anything else...but I do it because it is clearly working and it allows me to eat more. Win-win.
So those are the good things. But as happy as I am to report the good, I'm equally upset with myself over the bad.
For starters, there's the obvious fact that I never reached my goal to get to 130 before giving up and quickly gaining almost every pound back. This is dually upsetting because it not only means that I failed in the past, but also, to quote a friend, "it scares the crap out of me" because it makes me so afraid of making the same mistakes in the future.
I do not want to write shame-post number three. I don't want a two-year blogiversary where I celebrate losing the same 13 pounds again and again. I don't want to be the girl who yo-yo diets. I don't want that for myself.
What happens after I reach my goal--IF I reach it--and the blog is over?
What?
I honestly don't know.
I have been very self-aware of my past mistakes this time around and I am hoping to learn from them. I hope that my new focus on exercise and being less strict with myself about each and every little calorie will make the difference, but I would be a huge liar if I didn't say that I worry about the future of my waistline every single day.
For now, I will try not to borrow trouble and just focus on the task at hand: get through the day without getting fatter. Then I'll do the same tomorrow. And the day after that. And, hopefully, I'll have the will to do it long enough that it just becomes second nature.
That's what I want for myself.
Happy Blogiversary.
Cool factoid I just learned. It takes 6 months for an exercise/diet lifestyle to "take hold" at a cellular level. There's an area of study called epigenetics which has been studying how our environment can affect the way our genes express themselves. And since we have genes that code for proteins that promote or inhibit our metabolism, the upshot is that we can rewire our metabolisms AT THE DNA LEVEL.
ReplyDeleteThink of it like this: if your body is a forest and your genes are different hiking trails, the trails that get used the most stay clear and usable, while the other trails start to get overgrown. When the overgrown sections of the genes get activated, they are chemically less effective at doing that part of their job. However, after about 6 months of forcing your body to create proteins that jack up your metabolism, the same hiking trail process takes place in reverse. The parts of the genes that code for metabolic proteins keep getting their trails cleared away until eventually when you take a day off working out or have a Christmas feast, the trail that says "ugh, just let all the fat sit here. No biggie." is too overgrown to let that happen, so your metabolism keeps burning away.
You can do this, lady! Blaze that trail!
That was an incredibly vivid analogy. Well explained. That's kind of awesome to know.
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