New strategy, not revolutionary.. actually, slow and boring.

As much as I talked about my calorie-counting and exercising, that was NOT was I was actually doing. I was crash dieting. I did it with good tools, but it nevertheless what I did! I realize now that I would get really gung-ho and seriously overdo it. I would adopt an aggressive diet in my software and under-eat for it, and I would exercise for very long sessions that I got sick of within a couple weeks.

All of this was sustained by daily progress — daily weighings that showed me the pounds were melting off. Well, maybe you see this coming (I didn’t), but (this is how I understand it) my very low calorie diet did my metabolism no good, and it was in bad shape by the time I quit exercising and, burned out, started indulging in my diet. So.. I gained the weight back, and then some. All in the course of a month! I was down eight pounds by day 12, but UP a pound by day 31.

So now I am doing a much less aggressive diet: four months to lose 18 pounds. I’m allowed 2300 calories a day, and — huge change — I EAT THEM. I am (so far) exercising for 30-60 minutes 3-4x a week. And, this part is very difficult, but I am not weighing myself daily. I’m going to look for weekly results from now on. First weighing is this Saturday. Today’s challenges: a potluck at work and an event at a Brazilian restaurant tonight. I’ve already exercised, and I vow not to overeat at either event!

Relaxing without quitting

I’m not going to spin out all the details, but I had a setback — a lapse in discipline, we’ll say — when I had some meals that weren’t easily entered in my diet software, skipped a couple days of exercise, etc.
Any kind of slip seems to create a cascading effect, so, I need [...]

Good day, building willpower

Ok, so I’m not back to where I was a year ago. I lost 30 and gained back 14. I’ve chipped away at 4 pounds of that, so now just 10 more to go! I want to reinforce the “winning moves” by committing to them to everyone:

today someone brought donuts, and I didn’t eat one. [...]

Seeds of change.. grow better when watched

Ok, I know I can “do right” — eat less, exercise, whatever — but I’ll create change if I reinforce these behaviors by reflecting on how I succeeded and on things I regret from the last day or two.
One thing I learned from IOWL (inside-out weight loss) is that we all self-correct. Yo-yo dieting [...]

Back after a long hiatus; peripatetic method

Hi all! After not exercising for nearly a year, I’ve gained back about 12 of the 28 pounds lost, so have run headlong into an easy “away” motivation to get back into fitness. That is, I am motivated to escape (get away from) wearing the same few clothes I still feel ok in, instead [...]