The World According to Mitch

The scale this morning was kind to me… down 1.7lbs over yesterday.  However looking at my 30 day graph I am only down 8lbs this month… respectable, but not where I want it to be (10lbs per month).

Last week I was sitting with the Educator at the Weight Management Clinic and she looked through my food diary, and nitpicked a few of my choices.  She was right of course… there are certain things I just shouldn’t be eating.  However when she asked me why I ate those foods I had a good answer for her.

Had she asked me three months ago it would have been the depression of unemployment and living in the same house with my estranged wife.  Now that I am working, living on my own (in a great place I might add!) and no longer as down about life as I was, the answer has nothing to do with moods and depressions.  I have not been an emotional eater, I simply know that if I deprive myself of so many of the foods that I love (and which I know are bad for my weight loss progress) I will do very well for a while… and then I will crash and gain back a lot of that weight because I will start back with my old habits of ‘Oh food how I have missed thee so!’

When you have as much weight to lose as I do it is a marathon (and a super-marathon at that), and not a sprint.  A good sprinter can run a mile in under 4 minutes.  Then why is it that a good marathoner cannot finish the 26.2 miles in under 1h44 minutes?  The answer is simple… you have to pace yourself, otherwise you will cramp up and not finish the race.

 I have a long race ahead of me… there is no doubt in my mind.  But if I don’t pace myself I know (as I have in the past) I shall fail.  I don’t remember where I first heard the expression ‘failure is not an option’ but this is how I feel about my weight loss this time.  I am 42 years old, and at my weight (and with my family history) I should be thanking G-d that I do not have diabetes, and a host of other weight-related ailments.  I have gotten this far while being relatively healthy, but I know that if I don’t lose all of the extra weight I am carrying around I will not make it to 50 with the same luck.

And so yes, from time to time I will have the evil ice cream… and this week-end I was invited to my favourite Brazilian Steakhouse in Niagara Falls and did NOT weight my portions nor register them in MyFitnessPal… I ate and enjoyed, and knew that the scale Sunday morning would be less than kind.  If you don’t indulge in moderation, you will eventually engorge in its absence.

On a side note, I had a friend in from out of town for the week-end.  She is a professional photographer from Halifax, and took some great pictures of my and my younger son.  I look at them and smile – I am still grossly overweight… but even I can see a difference from three months ago.