My apologies to the friend of a friend on Facebook who used that phrase. I stole it because it FITS. Actually, this is not a surprise. It fits every January. Holidays are over and decorations are down. This makes me very sad (as if I need that in January). Apparently, I’m self-medicating with food and shopping. But also just as apparent, I’m fighting it. I’ve been making an effort to get on the treadmill for 30 minutes a day. I’ve not been successful every day, but I was successful TODAY–t hat means a better mood, a better attitude, for today. And that, in turn, means better eating.

Once again, I find myself needing to start over. I can do it. I’ve done it often. Instead of feeling like “here we go again,” I can feel hopeful. If I keep starting over, I must have a great desire to succeed, and that will help foster success. I must remind myself that no matter how bad it feels, the gloominess is not permanent, it is a bad case of January. But there are good things in January too, and I have to remember those.

What does January mean? It means cold, dark, snow, depression, the desire to sleep all day, withdrawal from the outside world, isolation, and loneliness. But it can also mean sun, endurance, the will to succeed, and a new start. Hope. I’m not inclined to leave the house this weekend. It’s cold and snowy, and a good time to be inside. On the other hand, the sun is shining, and what better cure for January?

Starting over. Again. For the bazillionth time. I guess that if you put an optimistic spin on it, I never give up! I have never lost hope that I’d get to my goal weight and maintain it for the rest of my life. To put an optimistic spin on that, the older I am when I finally get to my goal weight, the less time I will have to maintain it… Ok, that really doesn’t work, does it? No.

For my first step, I made a journal in Microsoft OneNote. I love that software. It’s like one of those 5 subject notebooks, but with a Turbo setting. Picture an open notebook, with tabs across the top for the sections, as many as you want. In each section are pages, as many and as long as you want, and when you title a page, the title hangs off the right side of the page on a tab, so you can find it quickly. These pages are not pre-formatted like Word is. You can plop something right in the middle of the page if you wish. You can put anything in this notebook:

• Copy and paste interesting things from the web
• Create a chart in Excel, and copy/paste it, and you can add to it on the OneNote page
• Add audio and video files
• Add pics and graphics

This is my favorite Microsoft program (and no, they did NOT pay me to say that!). I have one set up with sections labeled “Journal,” “Food,” “Exercise” and “Motivation.” The exercise page is a chart from excel with columns to fill in. Motivation contains separate pages to categorize what kind of files are in there: Ralph Marston, ditties I find on the web, my own personal thoughts, anything I think might have value when I need a boost. And best of all, I got a Windows phone for my birthday last month, loaded with Word, Excel, Power Point, and OneNote. When I make notes on my mobile phone, they automatically sync with my MS Office stuff. So if I hear something interesting or motivational, I can add it. If I change my food plan for the day, I can update it. And when I sync the phone with the computer, it’s all there waiting to be organized into its proper section in my notebook.

If you are thinking that I am a geek, you are 100% correct. I am, and I am proud of it! Maybe that’s why I bought a motorcycle–to balance out the geeky half of me. I don’t think it worked though. I’m really the geekiest biker EVER. But I want to be a slim, healthy, biker-geek, and that is what I am working on. Eating right, working out, taking care of myself, dealing with the overload of stress heaped on me by my employer, doing all the things I need to do. I’m on the right path. I have the knowledge of 10,000 diet books, etc. I just need to make it all work for me.

I see that my eating is not all that bad right now, without really monitoring what I’m eating. This is a good place to be starting over. I’m going to journal what I eat without counting points or calories. I’m just going to do what comes naturally, and try to work enough exercise in there to knock off some weight. That’s my starting point, and I’ll re-evaluate at the end of the week to make course corrections. I’ve always started out with a bang, joining WW or buying into some book or plan, buying new toys. Maybe I don’t need to buy or do anything new, maybe I don’t need to focus on all the “stuff” that’s supposed to “help” me do this. Maybe I have everything I need to make my dream come true. (Could it be that easy? Hmmm…)

I suppose people might wonder where that title came from. I started thinking it was time to “Grab the bull by the horns” with regard to my many weight, health, and exercise issues. That, in turn, led to a mental picture of that bull stomping around a china shop. And from there, the horse you can’t force to drink, swapped for a bull because that’s where I started. So I’m the bull (in case you were wondering) in this little vignette. The china shop represents all of the zillions of things I’ve spent 100′s of gazillions of dollars on to help with weight loss. I have a top-rated, very expensive treadmill that doesn’t get used enough, more than many exercise DVDs, dumbbells, barbell w/ plate weights, Wii w/ Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, and several other workout related Wii games, three different steps to go with the step aerobic workouts, risers to be able to use the step as a weight bench, and have also bought and given away or sold more pieces of exercise equipment than I’d need to open my own store! On top of this, the countless dollars paid to weight loss businesses, predominantly Weight Watchers, but also Jenny Craig and a host of others. And let’s not forget the hundreds of diet books, cookbooks, kitchen gadgets, and other things, all purchased to facilitate my weight loss. And what have I lost? Nothing? Oh, no–I’ve lost money–a lot of it, and thousand of pounds, over and over and over and over, and gained them back each and every time. Does anybody see a problem here??? I know I do. If I had those dollars back for all the things I failed at, gave away, sold, and quit–including all the money paid to Weight Watchers over the years of joining, quitting, and joining again, only to quit–AGAIN, I’d be putting in for retirement! Instead, I’m as heavy as ever, broke, and very unhappy. That has GOT to change. It’s time to actually drink–unlike the stubborn fool in the title of this post.

So what to do? That’s what I’m going to figure out. What works? What doesn’t? (To be honest, I already have a really good idea of what doesn’t!) How do I get motivated, stay motivated, and keep the process moving forward? Why is this important. Is it important? Sometimes I wonder how important it really is to me. I want (I think…), more than anything, to be a size 12. I don’t aspire to be a size 6. That’ll never happen, unless I have my hip bones shaved down by a few inches. Not gonna happen. I just want to be able to wear all the kick-ass jeans I have, and I want to be healthy doing it. I want to be able to pick up my motorcycle if it hits the ground. I want to be noticed as “that woman on the motorcycle” NOT as “that FAT woman on the motorcycle.” So I have goals. Now to head toward them. If it truly is important, then it’s time to make it happen.

I’ve made hundreds of “plans” before to get my eating and my spending under control. Why didn’t they work? Because they were plans, not commitments. A plan isn’t worth much if there’s nothing behind it! So that’s what I need to do–have a plan, and COMMIT to it. Sounds simple, but is it? I think not. It does need to be done though. The plan needs to be more specific than usual, to cover the loopholes I usually find to get out of them. And it needs to have me fully on board. Today seems like a fitting day to begin facing this, so Day 1, here we come.

This is my third evening without TV, and my second officially back on WW. So far, it feels good. I cooked tonight, chicken/peppers/bulgur w/ EVOO & caramelized balsamic, and made enough for 4 meals. That’s in the fridge. Last night, I made a huge kettle of my favorite soup. I like it enough that I eat it for lunch all summer long, in my air conditioned office. That’ll be in my freezer shortly. I’ve gotten into the habit of walking at lunchtime. I love to do that, as long as it’s not too hot. No worries today, it was 44 degrees and breezy. I wisely left my jacket behind, as I knew I would be plenty warm enough walking in the sun without it. It feels good to be making such a big change by ditching TV at the same time I start WW. I find that  I need some kind of novelty to help get me going. Usually it’s a WW toy of some kind–and I did get a WW cookbook. The TV thing is really big for me though. Hopefully that big a change will really shake up my routine which is just what I need. I was spending too much time plopped on the couch. Ok, I’m plopped on the couch right now, but I’ve cooked, eaten, cleaned, and taken care of some household stuff. And I didn’t plop down here until 8: 30. Progress.

Now what? Now I do what I’ve spent my whole life learning how to do. Follow a plan to lose weight, work out regularly, plan ahead, be mindful of the choices I make. (More on mindfullness when I get farther into the book I’m reading. Seems to be helping so far!) One of the things I’ve done the past two days is eat “real” food. Not diet stuff, but real cereal, regular ol’ grocery store stuff. In the long run, that’s what I want to be eating anyway, so I might as well make it a habit. I can no longer do the frozen entrees. Blech. I do keep a couple of Healthy Choice soups in my office just in case, but that’s the extent of it. I also eat the sandwich thins that are all the rage these days, but because I like them, not because they are lower in points or calories. No more diet dressing on salad, I use EVOO & balsamic. It doesn’t feel like a diet now. And that is just what I need!

It occurs to me that I have been struggling with my weight since I was 14. At that time, I weighed exactly 135 pounds at 5′ 7″. And I was convinced that I was SO fat. Not in the anorexic “never eat anything” way, but in the “crazy fad diet” way. And we made most of our diets up. A donut for breakfast, followed by diet soda and cigarettes the rest of the day. Then McD’s for dinner. Of course, by that time we were starving, so we’d go with the big sandwiches and large fries. And we wondered why it didn’t work! I know why it didn’t, but back then, we couldn’t figure it out. I DO know how to make it work these days. I just haven’t had the internal…fortitude? …strength? …guts? to do it. Why? I don’t know. Does it matter why? Can I just accept the fact that the answer to “why?” is not available to me right now? Can I just do it anyway, and find another way to deal with whatever it is that keeps me from meeting my goals? Maybe exercise, or something social that doesn’t involve food. Maybe getting out on my bike and clearing my head of cobwebs and old garbage.

To that end, I am going to be signing back on to WW Online at some point this weekend. In the meantime, I’ve stocked my kitchen with the right stuff, and have planned some changes to some of my habits, even the healthy ones. For instance, even though I know I can lose weight while eating a big bowl of air-popped popcorn almost every night, I’m going to switch that up with a (measured) bowl of cereal–something healthy but tasty, and some milk. That way, I can get a bit of sweet without depriving myself. It’s time to get the job done. I’m almost 53 years old, and am still struggling with whatever internal demons are making this difficult for me. I’ve done many things I’m proud of, that required strength and persistence. I can do this too. Even though money is tight right now, there are some things that ARE important enough to pursue despite the cost. And this is one of them. The trick then is how to approach this differently this time. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, then I can’t do this the same way I have been. The result has been giving up, regaining weight, and ending up right where I started–or worse!

That’s one of the big challenges then. How to do this differently, to change the result, and get out of the grips of weight yo-yo insanity. Luckily, I have some time over the next few days to think about it. And I already know what my first step is. On Monday, I am turning in my DVR, and canceling my cable TV. I will keep my internet service, of course. But without the convenience of watching TV constantly, that will leave my schedule open to more things like cooking from one of the zillion WW cookbooks I own, or getting out for some exercise, or reading one of the many books waiting for my attention, or goofing off to help burn up job-related stress. While the idea of not having TV at the ready was scary the first time I thought about it, I am now looking forward to the possibilities. The idea started as a result of an experiment in taking a BIG step in changing my life, based on a class that I took at the local university. I tried it for a week–no weeknight TV. And it was very freeing. I was afraid to stick with it, so I let it slide, but I’m ready now. That extra cash will be helpful in many areas, like helping pay for my WW online subscription. Thanks to life coach Jeanette, who instructed that class, for starting the process that generated that idea! And I truly believe that this is the start of something big. Or maybe “less big” is the way to say it.

Back to the classic muscle car analogy, because I like it. If I was really restoring a classic car, I’d have to know how to wrench on it. That means instructions, which means my WW materials. And supplies, tools. That means the right groceries, measuring tools, kitchen gadgets, etc. And a way to know how much progress I’ve made. I can use my eyes, as I would with the car. I can also use the scale, and the fit of my clothes. I also need the right frame of mind. If I don’t have that, how will I handle the bumps and hiccups during the long process? Not very well. Tools might be thrown, there might be some bad language (Might? Try “will!”) occasionally. I need to be ready for whatever comes my way during this project.

Another helpful thing to have is plenty of time to work on the project. This is not something that’s going to come together in just a few minutes a day. I’ll need far more time than that to get things restored to their original beauty. So forget the days of working on the fly. Plan to spend enough time to do the job right. Lube the moving parts with exercise. Feed the engine and the computer with the right gas & oil, and enough rest. And once the original beauty has been restored, it will be very important (VERY!!) to keep it that way. This will be hard work as well, so no giving up, EVER.

After my last Aha! moment, I haven’t made much progress. Transmission is stuck between R and N. No forward progress yet. I know that I can have some things in the house and not eat them all right now. I don’t know what things will cause a problem, but I suspect that large open bags of stuff will be harder to deal with than single servings. Because let’s face it, a large open bag IS a single serving, if I’m being honest and realistic. And if I’m not going to be honest and realistic, what’s the point? Without those things, I will never get my transmission into drive and start leaving some of these pounds in the dust. And I really want to do that. I want to be thin and fit and healthy. I know that. I’ve been spending a lot of time in my head lately, and what’s up there, besides lots of numbers (helloooo, I’m an accounting geek), is a strong desire to do this. I don’t want to do it for anybody but myself this time. Not so I can date, or look for a new job, or please my mother. It’s just for me! I love classic muscle cars. If I’m going to stick with the car analogy, then I am a rusty, barely functional 69 Camaro SS, sitting in somebody’s backyard, just waiting to look great again. And let’s face it–while the new Camaro is cool, the panache of a perfectly restored 69 Camaro SS is over-the-top awesome. I want to be that vintage 69 Camaro SS.

Time for a change in thinking. I was buying something I know I’m better off without. And buying more than one, knowing that they’d all be gone before tomorrow. That’s when it hit me. WHY DO I NEED TO EAT THEM ALL TODAY??? Ta-daaaaa! Shift in thinking. So if I buy several of them, eat them all at once, feel guilty, then deprive myself for days and days, what happens? I do the same thing all over again. What if (hang onto your hats!!) I bought some, and only ate ONE now. What if I had them there for if I wanted them, but felt that I didn’t really need one right now? Could I leave it till when I really DID want it? Turns out that the answer is yes. I CAN do that. In fact, during the times I’ve been successful in losing weight, that’s what I did. I bought something that I would parcel out a few points-worth at a time, when I wanted it. Journal it, eat it, enjoy it, move on. So I will be “playing” with that concept for the next few days. Let’s see if I can make it work again. Because I will do ANYTHING to be successful at weight loss, including having the occasional treat! (Big sacrifice, I know…) Stay tuned!

It’s happened. I can see the light of day. I knew that I was doing the right things despite how dark and gloomy I felt, and this is my reward. I’ve also recovered from the usual sinus infection after almost two weeks. Now I can turn my energies to taking better care of my body, exercising, eating right, and all those things that just don’t seem important when I’m in the slump of depression, and feeling like crap. Luckily, my meals are generally healthy, low in bad stuff, and high in good stuff. So I’m ahead of the game there. It’s the snacking, the extra stuff, that sends me off track. That’s the thing to deal with first. I don’t do well if I set a lot of strict rules for myself, but I think “no sweets” is one that needs to be called up right now. Aside from that, I enjoy air popped popcorn, fruit, a Balance Bar mid-morning at work, fresh veggies with hummus. It doesn’t sound like deprivation, does it? No. It sounds like good, tasty, healthy food. And that’s just what I need. And I have plenty of it in the house, so no sense delaying any longer–my depression detour was delay enough. Now, let’s get on with it, already!