I wonder when I will stop holding onto every chronic dieter’s fantasy:

I work hard.  I lose the weight.  I then go on to live a “normal” eating life and never have to think about it again.

Please tell me I’m not the only one.

I have once again put on my “West Coast 4″ due to over socialising. (Good!)

And under exercising. (Bad!)

I want to rage against the unfairness of it all when the sensible voice in my head says something like, “You do know that’s how the human body works, right?”

Sigh and sigh again. Of course I know. But I still want to arrive at my holiday destination weighing 145lbs, eat drink and be lazy for three weeks and continue to weigh 145lbs.

So I guess I’d better start incorporating  “No, thank you” and “Where are my running shoes?” into my daily conversations.

Onward………

I never intended there to be such a lull in writing but summer life has enveloped me.  I like that summer lull and appreciate the down-time.  Just wish I didn’t gain weight while lulling my days away but that seems to be the inevitable side effect.

The challenge of my life is that I tend to come away for 6 weeks of summer – far too long for a normal holiday – so I have to decide where to draw the line and declare the holiday over.

The scales are suggesting that NOW would be a good time but my social calendar is thinking maybe in a week.  Calendar wins but I will do my best to not gain any more weight.

It’s funny – but a couple of pounds gained through happy socialising don’t bother me nearly as much as a couple of pounds gained through lonely simple carb stuffing. Of course a couple plus a couple equals a few and THAT stresses me out.

But for now I’m going to enjoy the view, keep sorting out this funny old people’s house, take a walk once in a while, and love and respect my body when it comes to eating. On that note – I may be a salmon the next time anyone sees me as the husband came home with 40lbs of the stuff.  At least I’ll have plenty of omega 3 coursing through my body.

Day 3 of the holiday is starting and I’ve fallen into a vat of simple carbs. And not in a good way.

So what’s the plan?

I hate having to plan.
But, even more, I hate the thought of putting on 5 pounds because I can’t be bothered to plan.

So today I’m going to think before I eat. I’m going to recognise hunger and stay away from the simple carbs that seem to fuel this city.

Lunch is a family bbq where there will almost no healthy food, the kind which, helpfully, I don’t find appetising. Not that that always stops me eating, but I will focus on how unappealing and unhealthy it all is.

Dinner is undecided but will certainly be at a restaurant. The challenge will be finding a salad which really is healthy. Or maybe some tomato based pasta.

I don’t need anything else. Breakfast is over and done. If we go for coffee, I’ll choose the smallest size. If the weather clears, we’ll do some walking.

I’ll check in tomorrow.

Girl Guide cookies are not suitable meal replacements.

So far the plan (or “plan”) I concocted from the other side of the Atlantic seems to have gone the way of missing luggage.  I’m sure it’ll turn up eventually.

But today I’m off away from my home from home for a whole week and I’ve decided not to take the laptop.  I can blog on my Blackberry if I feel so inclined but I’m guessing I won’t.

So – see you in a week or so.

I don’t get something. All the so called experts on weight loss seem to agree that before you can be successful taking off and keeping off the pounds, you have to understand the reasons why you are eating. Not only what started you down the wrong road but what is happening right now that makes you run for the fridge. So how is it that I have figured out the origins of my eating issues and I also recognize what the current problems are that are triggering my ongoing battle, yet I’m not successful in losing weight? (oh boy, was that ever a sentence full of mangled grammar) I know what my stressors are, I know how I should be dealing with them, I know that eating won’t fix them, I know, I know, I know,,,, BUT knowing doesn’t seem to translate to success. All the insight in the world doesn’t seem to translate to success. How does one make the leap from knowing to doing?

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…)

Lying awake last night, in an effort to stop thinking about packing, I started thinking about this whole weight loss journey.

For ages now I’ve been thinking that I’m ready to experience maintenance, finally – for the first time ever – actually paying attention to keeping my weight stable.  But I’m not yet at the weight I want to maintain.

SO…..and this is where I’m feeling a little bit clever, what if I focus on maintaining the weight I want to be?

What if I just eat and move as though I’m lighter than I actually am?  Wouldn’t I eventually just weigh that much?

I’ve taken 2 years to get to where I am anyway and that slow process has been the best thing possible for changing my thinking about the “all or nothing” pendulum of weight loss and weight gain.  However, it’s only slowed it and I want to stop the pendulum completely!  I want to just eat the way I’m going to have to eat for the rest of my life, understanding that I will need less as I get older and that I will have to stay committed to moving.

There’s no getting away from the fact that, to lose weight right now, I have to put myself into “diet” mode and I need a break from that. A big fat permanent break.

Of course, I’m only saying all this because I’m not particularly unhappy with how I’m looking these days.  For my optimum health and vanity I should weigh less, but, in the big scheme of an increasingly obese society, I don’t look very fat.  I also own clothes that I like and want to wear again in the autumn and winter.  In truth, I’ll be very happy to take a whole year to lose the last bit of weight.  But I’m not sure it’s going to take that long.

Here are the numbers:

A sedentary 50 year old woman who is maintaining a weight of 135 pounds should eat about 70 calories per day less than a moderatley active 49 year old woman who weighs 145 pounds.

When I factor in my minimal weekly activity,  I figure I’ve got a deficit of around 230 calories per day.

Of course, I will lose that 70 calories from the age and weight difference as I get older and lighter, so I’ll have to move that much more every day.  I’m hoping that walking about extra mile will do the trick.

If 10 pounds equals 35,000 calories, it will take me around 22 weeks to actually end up weighing 135 pounds.  That’s basically how many weeks there are left this year.  And I’m not that fussed about the 135 number – it was just nice and tidy to think in terms of 10 pounds. I’m also not that fussed about the 5 months.  I turn 50 at the end of April so wouldn’t that be a nice gift to give myself?

So – a recap of this experiment.  For the next few months I’m going to eat as though I’m an inactive 135 pound 50 year old.  But I’m going to live as though I’m a moderately active 49 year old. By the time I’m actually 50, I will know what it takes to stay slim and healthy.

That’s the plan.

At least until someone points out the fatal flaw in my apparently flawless thinking……….

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’m in my usual countdown panic as I try to tie up things in the UK and think ahead to what I’m going to need for the next 6 weeks in Canada.

And I’m still reflecting on this past week of “stepping back”.

All in all it’s been a good thing.  I’ve been chilled out about food and have lost the weight I gained due to stupid eating.  I’ve done a bit of running and a bit of walking and have enjoyed not writing it all down.

In my “counting unhatched chickens” way, I was thinking that I would have a relaxed week, get a final diagnosis from the senior consultant and then get on with life in whatever direction it was going to go.

But instead, as is normal in these “pre-hatched chicken counting” situations, I didn’t get any news at all from the appointment. Instead,and I quote the consultant, “we are back at square one”, which means that I know nothing more than I knew 6 months ago. I feel knocked back and maybe not quite as reslilant as I thought I was feeling.

But one good thing came out of a not very good appointment.  Firstly, I decided to take the husband into the room just so he could witness what I’ve been up against.  The senior doc was NOT pleased that I was seeing him rather than the other guy but – and this is the new thing for me – I just didn’t care. I think maybe I’m getting to the point where I’m not feeling awkward about being a pain.

Anyway, after telling me that there was no news, he leaned back in his chair and said, “Would you like me to refer you to the specialist liver unit for a second opinion even if it is a bit early for that?”

Old me might have given the decision back to him, asked him if I should wait until his team had had another chance.   New me just said, “Yes, I would.”

New me was also still too polite to ask how I could possibly get a second opinion when I hadn’t had a first one yet. But never mind.  I figure, God willing, I can be rude when I’m an old lady.

The slightly humourous thing about hospital appointments is that, when you step on the scales, everyone is hoping that you haven’t lost any weight. The nurse who weighs you smiles and commends you for not being much lighter than you were 3 months ago, and the doctor comments on how well you’re not losing.  I didn’t dare tell them how bloody hard I’d been working to lose it.  And I was truly glad to know that I could sit there and not worry that the pounds were falling off for the worst possible reason.

Funny old world.