Update on my Self Reduction Adventure

Friends, family, and faithful readers (well actually those last two are mostly same!), it's been 3 1/2 months since my last post, and perhaps some of you are wondering what has happened in that period of time.

To sum up my progress, I've been....well.... human.  I've had my ups and downs, and frankly I won't be a poster child any day soon for successful weight loss and acquisition of great health.

This journey began back in August of 2014, and has been fraught with plenty of ups and downs, including stringent exercise and healthy eating for weeks resulting in little or no weight loss, holiday eating set-backs, lack-of-purpose-and-direction-induced depression, a somber winter that never seemed to end, and plenty of debating with myself as to whether the effort is even worth it.

Son Caleb, a successful fitness and health coach with the Team Beachbody company, regularly tells me not to compare my present results with any of the successes I had in the past.  (Years back I had experienced a healthy slow 132 pound weight loss.  At the end of that adventure I felt so amazingly healthy and at the peak of my life.  Due to some major surgeries and injuries I gained it all back.  Now, fully recovered from those setbacks, I've been trying once again to get healthy and fit.)

It's just that my body doesn't seem to want to cooperate this time, as it did before.

Some of my recent home workouts

Whereas before, I lost an average of 10 pounds each month - a very reasonable and healthy rate of loss - now I've only lost 15-20 pounds.  IN NINE MONTHS!  My doctor tells me I'm understating my success, that 20 pounds is still 20 pounds less, and is good progress.  However, knowing I still have another 100 pounds to lose becomes discouraging.

And, then I waver.  I start skipping my workouts.  I start eating a few more potato chips and slices of pizza than I should.

I start questioning and replaying the debate in my mind as to whether putting in all the required effort to make this healthy change is even worth it.

You see, I hate:
  1.  Changing in and out of sweaty, stinky workout clothing.
  2.  Sweat that drips into my eyes and onto my carpet.
  3.  Flab that jiggles.
  4.  Being bored with workouts that just are, well, boring.
  5.  Seeing little or no results.
  6.  Muscles that are so sore that the act of sitting down requires a pep talk to myself.

And that, folks, is precisely where I am right now at this moment.

It has been three weeks since my last workout.  It has been days since I've concerned myself with watching the size of my food portions, or avoiding the junk food.

When I had begun my massive weight loss transformation before, I had gotten to the point where I wanted to be thinner AS MUCH AS I WANTED TO BREATHE.  There was nothing that was gonna stop me from doing what I needed to do to make that change happen.

This is in the view out my window, as I ponder my life.

And it worked.  Steadily, slowly, the pounds fell off, the sizes dropped, and my feeling of health and well being rose.

This time?  Not so much.  Frankly, I guess I'm just not there.  When I don't see progress after a month or so of consistent effort, I want to throw in the towel.  I'm human.  I need to see progress.  Without the balance of seeing some progress, the sacrifice of giving up snacks and pizza just almost doesn't seem worth it.

Yesterday Caleb made a Facebook post that still has me thinking:  "You just gotta want your life to change...MORE than you want it to stay the same.  When you get to that point, you'll do whatever it takes."

Apparently I'm not yet at that point.

But I wanna be.