“Health Improvement”

I went to the doctor about a month ago. It was a routine appointment, but I did have something on my mind. After I quit smoking last year, I put on about 20lbs. of weight. They say that’s normal, but I used to weigh over 200lbs and had worked really hard to get myself down to 175 (well, okay, I ended up sticking at around 180). I didn’t stress too much about the weight, figuring I’d lost it before and that I could again. And then when it didn’t come right back off, I started to be concerned. The real kicker was later on this past year when I started to gain even more. Next thing I knew, I was weighing in at 214 at the doctor’s office. Now I know everyone says those scales are higher than our home scales, but I’ll be honest—I weighed on my home scale before going in and it told me exactly the same thing.

So I freaked out just a hair. Talked to the doc, asked him about my ideas. For a long time I only ate 1 meal a day, so I wanted to change that. And I used to run/jog. At one point I was doing a couple miles 3-4 times a week, or a mile everyday. And I had to absolutely cut out the sugars and cut down on the carbs as much as possible. He said that all sounded good. Keep the food ingestion going on a more regular basis to get the body out of starvation mode, exercise, and try to burn more calories than what I take in. That’s the general formula, after all.

I started eating breakfast, adding in some healthier choices. I’ve tried to cut way back on the carbs and sugar especially. I’ve started jogging again. Not everyday, but 4 times a week. I have a plan going to slowly work my way back up to a mile. It will take a bit, but what I remember from when I did it before was I was successful when I kept the attitude that it wasn’t so much about how far I went, but more the discipline of going.

And speaking of that discipline, for the past month I’ve kept the exercising up. The eating is much improved. I had a total lapse with fast food (stuffing those depressed feelings), but bravely stepped on the scales the next morning for the first time in a month anyway. The results? 209.

Much improvement.

Five pounds in a month is a good, solid amount. And who knows how much less it would have been had I not binged on fast food? So I’m feeling really good about that. Solid. Still eyeing it suspiciously, because I will need to sustain that type of losing for awhile. But I figure it’s like this: when the doc looked at my chart, he saw that two years prior to my seeing him a month ago, I’d weighed 178. Well, 214 minus 178 is 36 lbs. A big weight loss goal like that takes time. So if I lose an average of just 3 pounds a month, then in a year I’ll be back to where I was. Losing 5 pounds? Huge victory from that perspective.

And that’s why I’m only weighing myself once a month. I used to go once a week so that I could really see and track. But when I was unable to lose, I ended up depressing myself, which would lead to stress eating, which just made things worse. So to be on a downward trend of a pound a week feels good, and I hope I can keep it up.