Actually, recently is probably a little misleading, since I've been trying to lose weight since I was like fourteen. Off and on, of course, just like the rest of the American population (most of it, at least).
Dear bathroom scale: You suck.
Most people probably have a similar M.O. to mine, which includes a few days to a few weeks (maybe even months, if I'm lucky) of general diet improvement and increased activity. Occasionally, depriving myself of every food I've ever craved and then trying to kill myself everyday with the latest popular exercise routine yields some results. Nothing spectacular, but enough for me to notice and begin feeling good about it.
Then what happens? A myriad of options here. Someone visits from out of town, or the holiday season creeps up, or maybe I just decide I've been really good and say "Fuck it!" for a few days. No matter the trigger, I end up miserable and hating myself and decide this will never work (just like the last time, and the time before that. Oh, and the time before that one, too). So I go straight back to eating like an idiot and pretending I've never heard the word 'exercise' in my entire life.
Nobody wants to see me jogging down the street. Trust me.
Why in the hell do we do this to ourselves (I'm assuming there are others stuck in the same cycle, since it makes me feel better)? It's not like I don't BELIEVE all the hype about feeling great when you're at a healthy weight - I do! I really really do! If you've ever been significantly overweight like I am, then you probably totally get how fucked up and hopeless it all seems when you fail (yet again) to succeed at another weight loss attempt. It's like the shittiest roller coaster ride of all time. Eventually, I find myself wallowing in self-pity (and maybe a few cupcake wrappers) and throwing in the towel yet again. I spend a few days (or months) in this broken state, and then I read something inspiring or see something awesome online or on tv, and the whole moronic thing begins anew. Fuck. Me.
Now that I've painted a really depressing picture of the weight loss world from the perspective of the eternally fluffy, I can lighten things up a bit....
I've discovered a pretty great new (free! woohoo!) tool. This new tool, combined with a modified outlook on the whole business of gettin' skinny, has me feeling markedly more optimistic about my most recent weight loss endeavor. It's called MyFitnessPal, a free app that I can access from my phone or online, and it's been a tremendous eye opener for me. It's essentially a food and exercise tracker, which sounds like no big deal, but I think the reason I love it is because it's so damn easy. I don't have to calculate every damn thing I eat and then enter it myself, because there's an unbelievable amount of foods already in the database. Even cooler, it has a barcode scanner, so I can just scan a barcode with my phone and it pulls up the food automatically. I just enter how many servings I ate (usually just one, honest) and it logs it for me.
So. The benefits? I was able to enter my current weight, a goal weight, a desired timeline for losing that weight, and it calculated a daily calorie goal for me. That gets adjusted if I log any exercise, which I keep track of just like my food intake. It's even compatible with some of the fancy new body monitoring doohickeys (scientific jargon), so you can even more accurately log your calories burned and consumed.
The down side of this? I had to own up to EVERY SINGLE THING that I ate. In the beginning, this was completely embarrassing - despite the fact that I was the only one who saw my food logs. Seriously. I thought I was doing ok, but once I had to log every little thing and then look at it at the end of the day, I was blown away at how not ok I was doing. The amount of bullshit making its way into my diet without my conscious acknowledgment - holy shit!
So, yeah. Now that I've forced myself to take accountability for literally everything I eat, it's much easier to tell myself NO when I'm nearing my limit. Easier than I can ever recall, actually. This feels like a huge win! I hope, though, that this becomes a small win in comparison to meeting my ultimate goal.
Speaking of my ultimate goal - I was going to elaborate on my new thoughts about all of this, but it's late. That's good. Now I have something to write tomorrow....
So. The benefits? I was able to enter my current weight, a goal weight, a desired timeline for losing that weight, and it calculated a daily calorie goal for me. That gets adjusted if I log any exercise, which I keep track of just like my food intake. It's even compatible with some of the fancy new body monitoring doohickeys (scientific jargon), so you can even more accurately log your calories burned and consumed.
The down side of this? I had to own up to EVERY SINGLE THING that I ate. In the beginning, this was completely embarrassing - despite the fact that I was the only one who saw my food logs. Seriously. I thought I was doing ok, but once I had to log every little thing and then look at it at the end of the day, I was blown away at how not ok I was doing. The amount of bullshit making its way into my diet without my conscious acknowledgment - holy shit!
So, yeah. Now that I've forced myself to take accountability for literally everything I eat, it's much easier to tell myself NO when I'm nearing my limit. Easier than I can ever recall, actually. This feels like a huge win! I hope, though, that this becomes a small win in comparison to meeting my ultimate goal.
Speaking of my ultimate goal - I was going to elaborate on my new thoughts about all of this, but it's late. That's good. Now I have something to write tomorrow....
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