Weight Loss – Just NOT doing it

So my weight loss journey is not going very well. So not well in fact that I’m going in reverse which has been extremely de-motivating. I know what I should be doing. I have done it before. But I’m just not doing it. 

I’ll start working out, get a couple of days in, and then just stop. I’ll start eating healthier, then I’ll just stop. My weight will bounce around down to 207lbs, back to 210lbs and the other day I managed to see a 215lbs. I want to lose weight. I really do. But I’m not wanting to put the work in and stop doing the bad habits that are causing the weight gain.

I am feeling pretty stuck.

Just four years ago (before Covid, before I rupture my Achilles) I was at 175lbs and working out 5 days a week. I felt good and strong. I loved the way I looked and I loved the way I felt. And then I started to drift, slowly my workouts dribbled to nothing and stopped. My eating got worse. For a bit it wasn’t a big deal, I was hanging around 175lbs and maintaining and I still felt pretty good. Then it started creeping up on me. My body was in a decline and I wasn’t doing anything about it. And I would push my body hard on weekends. A real weekend warrior making a body that had lapsed back into being out of shape and making it do things it really shouldn’t have been doing. Like playing soccer against a bunch of teenagers. I think that’s when I first tweaked my Achilles. Then I finally pushed too hard (literally pushing a truck on a trailer) and my Achilles fully ruptured. Now I couldn’t work out and I was just laying around eating while I healed. After I recovered I was so nervous about my body breaking down I treated it very gently. When I would work out, it was so light it wasn’t really accomplishing much other than at least I was doing a little moving. I am still not sure I trust my body enough to push it. 

And so here I am, 40lbs heavier and out of shape, and seemingly unable to push through the mental blocks that are holding me back. I’ve talked about it some in therapy, but I think I probably need to talk about it some more. I want to enjoy my life and for some reason eating healthy and exercising feel like they take that away from me, which I know in my head isn’t true, but it seems like I believe it to be true in my heart.

I figured a good step would be to write out some of my thoughts, see them in black and white. Admit out loud that I’m struggling, sit with that and try and decide where to go from there. I mean, I know the things I SHOULD do. I just don’t do them.

Making my In Progress Dashboard

I’ve got a lot of things going on and things I want to accomplish. Some I think I might actually manage to do and some I will probably just have to get real and abandon.

House projects, personal projects, career goals, health (mental and physical), and more. I’ve had a lot of these kicking around for years either started and never finished or just buzzing about as thoughts that I’d like to explore. It’s time to get them in progress.

I started working on putting together a little dashboard of the various things I have in progress (or want to have in progress). I really like the way Brandon Sanderson does that for his writing projects (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/) so we’ll see how that comes together so I can start to visualize just how things are going. Going to try and finish that up and get it shared out this upcoming weekend! The big thing is I want to force myself to make something even if it’s not perfect just have to get started.