Confession: Despite having much success with my weight loss thus far and being closer than ever to my goal, my worst fear in this journey is gaining all of that weight back after working so hard to lose it.
Even though I’m a completely different person than I was two years ago, I can still hear that inner critic saying, “You’re going to fail.” It’s a justifiable fear considering something like 90 percent of people will regain some or all of lost pounds back. You always hear that losing is the easy part, maintaining for a lifetime is trickier.
Second to my fear of regaining is my fear of not being able to reach my goal in the first place. Most days I feel really proud of how far I’ve come with my weight loss. I mean, 65 pounds! I’ve done it all on my own and worked my butt off for every ounce. But then other days I think of how much further I want to go and it just seems like a daunting task. Isn’t it cruel and ironic that the smaller you get the harder you have to work for every pound? That first 10 pounds just melts right off, yet it takes weeks to drop the final few.
One of my biggest struggles then and now are the weekends. It’s relatively easy to be an angel all week when I have a busy schedule and don’t have as much spare time to misbehave.
My healthy weekday routine is now such a habit that eating right and working out just sort of happen without much conscious effort on my part. But our weekends are often spontaneous and plan-less. That’s part of the joy of the weekend, right? The freedom to be compulsive.
Whatever’s thrown our way that sounds fun or interesting is what we end up doing, whether it’s discovering the best fried seafood platter I’ve ever had from Friendship House, spending the entire weekend on the river drinking Bud Light and learning how to wakeboard, or a girls night out complete with dinner, drinks and dancing. Our weekend shenanigans are exacerbated by the fact that Ryan’s job schedule gives us a three-day weekend. Every weekend. It’s a hard life.
So, this four-days-on and three-days-off has me in a holding pattern as of late. I battle the same few pounds from Monday to Thursday, only to gain it back from Friday to Sunday. Blah. I’m struggling to find the balance of reaching my weight loss goal and having a full fun life.
If pinpointing the problem is half the battle then all I have to do now is fix it, right? I’m newly motivated to have a weekend plan, complete with making time to eat enough during the day even when I’m running from this adventure to that, so as not to be ravenous at night, drinking way more good ol’ H2O than cocktails, and making sure to get in plenty of activity (which is the easy part for me.) I’ll keep you all posted, and in the meantime I’d love to hear how you balance food, fitness and fun.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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