I would imagine that my absence speaks volumes in this case, but it doesn't take too much imagination to realize that I've gone off my diet again.
I barely made it two weeks on this new diet, and I was loving it... but I just got sick of dieting completely. My rationalizations are as follows:
- it was way, way too expensive
- it took too much time and concentration away from schoolwork
- no matter what I did or ate, my weight stayed in the same fluctuation of about 180-184
- I felt terrible, overly emotional, and increasingly really deprived and miserable
- I didn't need any more sources of stress in my life
Ridiculous, I know. At first I only planned to go off the diet for a few days until we sorted our finances out (a bit of a snafu with student loans and such). We ordered a bunch of take-out and were eating one big meal per day, usually as cheaply as possible. At first I enjoyed it, but I was even getting tired of that.
As the time off my meal plan increased past a week, we started eating a little more sensibly, buying ingredients for sandwiches or more balanced meals.. but then we also started buying ice cream and treats. While it was certainly a relief to not have to plan and prepare all these fussy little meals, it's not like it freed me of having to deal with food entirely. I recognized that I had become despondent and depressed, but I just stopped caring about trying to lose weight. As it was, I neither lost nor gained weight, which made my efforts at dieting even more frustrating.
For simplicity's sake, let's say my body operates on the following equation:
weight loss = diet x exerciseNo matter what I ate, then, if my exercise remained at 0, so would my weight loss. This is a very easy concept, but I just couldn't accept it. I was furious that the only changes to my weight came in retaining water and then seeming to "lose" when my body stopped retaining. The bottom line was never going down, not even gradually.
This is the state of mind I was in yesterday. I had talked at length with my parents and my brother (all of whom are struggling to lose weight as well) about how frustrating and demoralizing this all is. My father told me how his doctor had said that Atkins is good for short-term, quick weight loss, but not really a healthy lifestyle. My brother insists that Atkins is the way for him, but he's stopped losing weight because he cheats so much. My mother meanwhile persists in losing weight on NutriSystem, but very gradually, and she's not always happy about it, causing her to cheat often as well.
I thought it over yesterday, and as I was leaving for my evening class, I remembered we needed groceries, so I asked my boyfriend if he would pick something up for dinner and have it here when I got home (since I hate rushing from class to catch the grocery before it closes at 10). I surprised myself by asking if we could do Atkins for a while, but he was immediately agreeable, so I figured we'd go for it. I know all the health risks, and I myself would be the first to clamor on about how unnatural it is.
But right now, I want to lose some damn weight and not have to constantly think so much about it. For now, I'm going to say I'll just do it through the end of the semester (which is these 2 weeks), then see how I feel and evaluate my progress. Maybe once I have more time and my finances sorted out, I can give sensible dieting another crack. I'm also going to try to do this without all the rigamoralle of photos and blogging every single meal, since I worry that while that keeps me accountable and honest with myself, it also makes it very easy to decide I don't feel like staying on the diet because those activities take too much time or are a hassle.
The way I feel about all this is kind of ashamed, lazy, and overly simplistic, but I see it like this (forgive the extended metaphor): if I were to go to the gym right now and get on an exercise bike or something, yes, it would kick my butt. I would be sore and exhausted and gasping for breath in no time. Meanwhile, part way through writing this entry, I got a phone call and had to run downstairs (I live on the 5th floor of an apartment building). I decided to take the stairs, and since I was beating myself up, I declared that I would take them back up, too, which is something I almost never do. By the fourth floor, my legs were aching and I was starting to lose my breath, but I realized I only had one more floor to go, so I ran the last set. When I got back to my apartment, I was really out of breath and my legs hurt, and I spent a minute berating myself, but when I was finished, I thought "ehn, that really wasn't so bad," and I know that the next time I take the stairs (which I plan to start doing more regularly), it will be a little bit easier.
So with all this diet and exercise stuff, I know that the road is still long and difficult, even if I take a brief short-cut. The thing is, I feel like if I have some little jump forward, lose a few pounds so I can say "yes, I made some progress finally," then it won't be so abysmal to think of running the next leg of the marathon and really pulling my discipline and faculties together. I realize that my language is full of rationalizations and justifications, but I'm at a pretty desperate point to just see something improve.
As of today, my weight is 181.5. Let's see what happens.
