It has been a miserable failing summer in the realm of health and weight loss for me. I have done some SERIOUS damage to the efforts of the last year. And it is sad and disheartening how much much easier it is to put weight on than it is to take it off, and over the course of the last few months (because it actually started before summer) I have taken my 50+ pound weight lost and mangled it down to 30-ish (less then 30 as of this morning by about a pound, but that could change from one good day.)
The vicious cycle of self-disappointment and emotional eating is a hard one to overcome. Any "knots" I tied to stop the "bleeding" quickly became unraveled, and ounce by ounce my weight has been creeping up the wrong direction.
The emotional eating is a HUGE issue, and the fact the stress and disappointment is running RAMPANT in life right now doesn't help. I had a horribly clear visual of the issue of emotional eating in my life on the way home from a particularly bad day at work last week. I was belting back a box of junior mints like a bottle of whiskey as I drove away from my (precarious) job in a bundle of frustration and anger. It smacked me right in the face, food for comfort and emotional management is not really any better than taking a swig on an actual bottle of booze or even taking a hit off a joint or snorting something right up my nose.
Is it more acceptable? Yes. Is it legal? Yes. But the emotion behind it is not very different at all. OUCH.
Outside of my immediate - hubby and children - family situation, stress it pounding on every front. There's nowhere I really find myself content other than at home. And the reality is all the hurts, frustrations and problems pound at my front door, and late night snacks and poor food choices call out to me for a moment of relief. It's ugly. It makes ME feel ugly.
So I have worked myself back to not fitting in my clothes, hating to stand on the scale and feeling like I am falling into the pit. Added to that the pain in my shoulder and now a knee that keeps hyper extending on me and lots of tight and painful muscles being roadblocks, now added to the heat from hell September we've suddenly stumbled upon, exercise too has been limited. Even the pool hours I put in over the summer (not nearly as many as I'd hoped) cannot counter what's been going down, plus one good pool day usually led to three or four painful shoulder days after. Sigh.
So tomorrow starts yet another attempt to do SOMETHING about my weight. I am not in the right mindset to manage low-carb living right now. (Though this next challenge will make it clear if anything else can even be successful.)
I am taking part in a 60 Day Body Mind Spirit challenge with three other team members that is hosted by the blogger over on http://www.funkyvintagelovely.com/. A friend of mine who had some really good results with the last 60 Day BMS challenge suggested it to me. Her take was that I would thrive in the biundaries of it - of which there are many - food lists (noes and goes) and exercise requirements, spiritual adds (because the bottom line is this is more a spiritual issue for me than a physical one) and even extra credit opportunities. Counting my points (I am an accounting girl you know) and keeping and giving myself credit for my efforts, there's even an opportunity for rewards. Bottom line, the rule follower in me will have lots and lots of rules to occupy her time. I hope my girlfriend is right.
So tomorrow morning I begin, and I pray I can get moving the right direction again.
