Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Driven

I was so frustrated with my no-loss weigh-in last week and so afraid that I would face the same fate tonight that I spent my lunch break reviewing my weight loss. I looked back in my WW book and found successful weeks where I've lost an amount of weight that makes me happy (1 pound or more). Then, I went to those weeks in my food diary and reviewed what I had been eating. Then I compared it to the not-so-good weeks. Then I wrote a list of a few things things that I observed through all this analysis that could help me ensure future good weeks. After that, I calculated that as of last Tuesday's weigh-in, I had 11.8 pounds to lose in 10 weeks in order to meet the May 1st weight goal I set for myself (and then I want to lose 5 pounds after that, but first things first, right?). That means 1.18 pounds per week- and since my weigh-in was tonight, I realized that in the past week I would have to have lost that much in order to get back on track with my goal. And guess what- I didn't. Which set my brain spinning again, because it means I had to re-do my lunchtime calculation, and I now have 9 weeks and must now lose an average of 1.2 pounds a week to meet my first goal.

You might be thinking that I'm obsessed. And let's be honest, you'd kinda be right. Even so, I take issue with the word "obsessed". Visual Thesaurus.com shows the word "obsessed" as being about halfway between the words "possessed", and "taken up", "preoccupied", "haunted". This all seems too negative. I certainly don't feel haunted or possessed; those words bring to mind ghosts and exorcism, which are not applicable here (although in a way I feel I have exorcised a few demons from my life, now that I think of it). But "obsessed" has a negative undertone; I'd appreciate adjectives with a positive connotation, such as "driven", "focused" or "determined". After all, my "drive" is simply the opposite of laziness, my "focus" the opposite of indifference, my "determination" the opposite of hesitation. Instead of wishing I'm doing, instead of hoping I'm training. Instead of walking-- I'm running.

5 comments:

  1. Good post! You inspire me to get healthy!! And i love the title of your blog! Be blessed~

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  2. I always keep my old trackers and often go back to compare and contrast! I think it's helpful to see those really good weeks, what I ate and what exercise I got in. However, sometimes the scale just does what it does and we just have to hang in there. Don't worry so much about "losing this much by this date". all that matters is that you are doing all the right things to get yourself healthy, which you most definitely are! The scale will catch up :)

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  3. That's awesome that you're keeping such close track of everything and are able to look back and compare like that. On the other hand, one pound more or less could be the cause of muscle or water-- I'd look at your success over time, rather than beating yourself up over one week. If you'd weighed yourself an hour before, the scale might have said something different, right?

    Either way, congrats! It sounds like you're doing fantastic.

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  4. That last paragraph? Brilliant!!

    I'd like to print that out and thumbtack it right in front of my eliptical trainer - just to remind me of why I do what I do everyday.

    Awesome post!

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  5. Popping over from OSB!

    I saw where you were having a pizza craving so I wanted to pass along my new fav recipe for good for you pizza:

    http://www.hungry-girl.com/week/weeklydetails.php?isid=1676

    I promise it's not spam! The first one is great - I leave off the veggies because I don't like them, but just plain cheese is good too! It's not like "real" pizza but it's pretty good and might help with the craving :)

    ReplyDelete