This Is The Story of A Girl...

Right now I feel like my weight loss story should start with once upon a time.

"Once upon a time, there was a girl who was very tired with herself. In light of this, she decided to make some changes starting at the end of April, vowing to shed pounds and low self esteem in an effort to reveal the skinny girl within. Her progress, once started, was fairly rapid, and she was pleased with her results. She trained herself to run, and eventually ran a race. But then, after the race was over and done with and she had no more short-term goal, something happened. She didn't feel the same motivation she had before. She'd lost more than 40 pounds, which she knew was no small feat, but then she was stuck. Her motivation had left, the wind had abandoned her once full and robust sails, and she sat drifting in place, lost in the sea. She still wasn't happy with the body she had, but she was more comfortable in her own skin than she had been when her journey. She couldn't help but wonder if this was part of her problem. She also thought that perhaps she simply needed to take a break from the heavy focus of actively trying to shed pounds - So she decided to try taking a more passive approach. Be more lenient, don't reall try to lose weight, just try not to gain any. She was mostly successful, but eventually she got the creeping sensation that if she didn't reign herself back in soon, she would spiral back to the place where she started, a place she had not wanted to go back to at all. Unfortunatley she seemed to have lost the passion she had once had, and really didn't know how to get it back in time to keep things from getting out of hand. I would like to say our heroine made it out of her slump and triumphed in the end, but I do not know the ending to this story as of yet. Only time can truly tell."

I really do think that the break I've been taking has been necessary, but I also know that I am in a VERY precarious place right now. For the last month/month and a half or so, I've simply had the goal of staying right around the same place as far as my weight goes. That's all I've wanted, and as long as I managed that I would consider myself successful in this time period. I would say that I've been successful in that, although I saw 230 on my scale this morning, which did not make me terribly thrilled after spending almost all of this time in the 224-227 range of things. Halloween candy is dangerous, in case you didn't already know.

I can't really consider this a faliur yet, though, because like I said... I've been here for long enough. I decided today that I really need to pull myself out of this ridiculous slump and get my head back around the weight loss game. I was happier when I was focused and paying attention to my eating and exercise. The last time I ran was the last time I posted a blog... A month ago. Almost to the day. This is so completely WRONG in so many ways, I can't even get into it right now.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the more lax approach to things I've been taking. More dinners out, almost no time spent on physical activity that would cause icky sweating and huffing and puffing... Hell, I stopped weighing my cereal in the mornings. This seems like such a trivial little thing, but it really counts. It's nice not having to work hard all the time to do the right things. It really is. But it absolutely has to stop. I know me. If I don't stop now, I will easily return to my miserable 266 pound ways.

DO. NOT. WANT.

I still don't feel like I know how to get my motivation back from all of this, but I've decided the best thing I can probably do for myself is start almost entirely from scratch. Treat it like a new weight loss journey. Who says it all needs to be one solid piece? As long as it gets done eventually, I don't really care. I'm just so sick to death of this scared feeling I've had recently. It's like I know I'm on the brink of all of my hard work falling out from under me, and I'm just scrambling mentally to understand and figure out how to pull myself back before my little ledge of hope crumbles beneath the weight I still have left to lose.

I miss my summer challenge. I really, really do. Those guys were astounding at keeping me going and motivated... Especially a shout out to Rochester, who I still like to talk to(Not that I've talked to you much at all these days... My bad. Definitely my bad.). But I can't exactly just go back to that... I have to keep going forward with this journey. I just hope I figure this out before it has a chance to degenerate into entirely old habits.