Cliff Climbing

Any time I stop doing something I've been doing deliberately for awhile, I tell myself, "I'll revert to my better habits in a day or so." You know that feeling?

Then time goes by, and more time goes by, and eventually I realize I am completely off the wagon, and don't particularly feel like getting back on it. So there.

And then eventually I realize that I actually kind of miss the wagon, miss feeling better, miss feeling like I'm accomplishing something, miss feeling like there is hope. I find myself mourning the loss. I find I want to get my act together.

And so then finally I actually DO it, I'm back on the wagon, I'm happy to be there, and I have a fresh enthusiasm that I obviously lacked previously around the time I hopped off. I might add that I stopped my 12 week cycle 1 week and 6.5 lbs short of my goal. I mean that's just stupid. It's been basically six weeks I've been 'off the wagon' and eating high-carb and not much exercising.

So today, I find myself looking at this straight-up cliff that seems somewhere between impossible, ridiculous, and unfair.

"Didn't I already climb that cliff?" I ask myself. "I could swear I recognize how few handholds there are in that stretch, and how hard it was going up that place over there."

"Why, yes," says my Conscience. "As a matter of fact PJ, you DID climb that very cliff once already. Possibly twice. But then you went off the wagon, see. So those very same pounds of cliff will have to be traversed yet again. So there."

Actually, to be honest, I'm astounded that I am only 21 lbs heavier six weeks later. I believe the majority of that is probably water/glycol-weight and likely to come off in the first couple weeks of a solid induction, taking me back to where I was when I left off. We will see.

Now, I am at 392.5. I was at 371.5 on July 25 when I basically lost interest in everything that related to "me" which happened to include my food, weight, exercise, etc. Of course just around that time, the governor was out declaring my county a disaster area, the 'walking park' was like 30 feet underwater from the flooding, but that is no excuse for not lifting weights or eating right.

As I mentioned previously, I've had a lot of time to think about the stuff I blogged on a few months ago, the "fat politics" stuff. I am going to be taking my weight and the whole "weight loss" angle off the face of this blog. It is not a 'secret' and my info can be found at my lowcarb journal, or a link I'll put on an 'about' page to my weight tracking spreadsheet. But I do believe that lowcarb should be about health, and if a person is to be appreciated or congratulated for how they eat or exercise or whatever, it should be first and foremost because they are making a genuine effort toward health and happiness.

For me, that means losing weight, simply because I am not comfortable weighing nearly 400#. I feel much better than when I weighed nearly 500#, I'll give you that. But I suspect that if I continue reducing that, I'll be better able to do fun things like karate and rollerskating again eventually, and I would really like to do that.

I don't want the lowcarb focus to be "weight loss." First because "fat, not weight" is much more important to focus on. Second, because lowcarb is a health regime. If a person were underweight, they would gain weight on a sufficient protein lowcarb eating plan! So it isn't about a 'diet' to 'lose weight'. It's about improving your life via health. For me this means I lose weight. Others might gain it. Many others might not change that much, but might feel better, feel stronger, increase muscle to fat ratio.

What matters is that lowcarb is cool. The food is great, the recipes are often droolably divine, the health improvements are awesome, and the people are the greatest collection of supernice humans I've met in ANY field online (and I've known quite a few). So my blog will be changing ever-so-slightly over the next week, to shift that emphasis toward health and away from weight-loss. Just so ya know, it doesn't mean that I am not continuing on a journey that includes that pretty front and center. It just means that lowcarb is a larger-vision that deserves a better context than the one I've been giving it.

But I am back on the wagon here.

Stupid freakin cliff. Now I have to climb it AGAIN.

PJ
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