Climbing back up that ladder

Over a year ago, when I created my account with myfitness pal, I had been working to change my lifestyle for a few months prior. I had started at 210 pounds, it was down to 185 when I created my account. It was great, and it taught me how to really count calories the few times I used it, and before I knew it I wasn't on my account anymore, I was able to maintain my lifestyle pretty well on my own. Last summer I had managed to get my weight down to 163 and I was over the moon. That's when things changed.

Summer brought on the stress of my daughters being home, and trying to keep up with them and stick to my daily routines. Just prior I had gone without my regular workouts due to some major scheduling conflicts for about a month or two, but I stuck to my diet and everything so I actually didn't see much fluctuation in my weight. When summer rolled around, I assumed it would be the same since I felt I would be able to maintain my healthy diet etc. I did for a little while, but things turned a little emotional and without realizing it I started turning little by little back to things I felt I was capable of letting back into my life in small amounts. A cookie here, pancakes there, a bag of candy for the family to share. What I didn't realize was as I let those things back into my life, I started pushing other things out of my life. Daily salad, gone. Fresh fruit and veggie smoothies out. Vitamin rich produce missing in action. I somehow lost sight of the goal, and I forgot the one thing I always had told myself from the start. I always told myself when I started seeing the results coming in, that this was just how I was going to have to live, there would be no going back because going back would result in me turning back into the person I was before I had started this lifestyle journey. I had upheld the philosophy that if I had been at it this long and had lost as much weight as I had, imagine in a year from now how much weight I will have lost and how good I will feel....but I still lost sight.

Summer drifted by, and I maintained, but I noticed I was feeling a little bit more doughy than usual. I kept telling myself I would get back into it, the workouts would start more consistently again now that the kids were back in school and I could once again get back to that healthy person I was before summer started. As I struggled to maintain my workouts regularly I kept telling myself that I needed to up my routines obviously, because I just wasn't getting a strong enough workout anymore. Never mind the fact that I had completely thrown my diet to the wind, and had allowed pastries, cookies, bread, fruit juices, sodas, coffee drinks, candies, excessive butter and fat, Dairy, and prepackaged shelved foods completely back into my life.

Another small yet huge factor in my weight maintenance is the fact that the battery in my scale died and instead of replacing it I decided to just let it go. I never realized what motivation getting on the scale at the same time every morning gave me to keep going and keep trying to lose the weight. When I didn't have to get on the scale every morning, it was very much an out of sight out of mind situation. I had lost control.

Halloween rolled around, and I found myself eating most of my children's candy, telling myself that it was better me than them since I don't condone that kind of lifestyle habit for them anyway. Very hypocritical, but they don't witness me eating the candy, no one does, it was a ritual that took place when I was alone in private, bored and sad.

By November, I decided to get a physical. I was weighing 176 pounds, which impressed my doctor since I had weighed so much more at the beginning of the journey, but to me my heart sank as I realized I was getting ever closer to having put on 20 pounds of weight that I had already lost. Things pretty much spiraled from there. Thanksgiving was a World of buttered up potatoes and homemade mac & cheese casserole's sitting in front of my face with bacon brussels sprouts and spiral cut ham calling my name. I just kept telling myself that it was just one meal, it couldn't possibly affect the state I was already in. Then Christmas came with all its holiday cheer, stress of shopping, boxes of chocolates, homemade cookies and homemade fudge, without realizing it I had completely given myself back to the lifestyle I tried so hard for so long to destroy.

Just a few weeks ago I finally got on my neighbor scale, I was close to 190 pounds according to her scale. My heart sank to my feet. That's a mere 20 pounds away from where I started this journey two years ago. I tell myself what I used to tell myself every time I would stop my workouts back in the day.."You had already lost close to 50 pounds in almost A year and a half, imagine how many you would've lost had you just continued that for these last eight months". It's a harsh reality, and I have no one to blame but myself. It's rather easy to let these things hold me back and make it even more difficult to start up again.

I finally decided that it was time to get back onto my fitness pal, I was curious, because I had myself so convinced that even though I was eating things I shouldn't of been, I wasn't eating too much of them. I shouldn't be gaining the weight I was because of the things I was eating, that's what I kept trying to tell myself. I went on to my food diary and logged what I ate yesterday, and my confidence in my diet was shattered when I saw that I had eaten over 2000 cal which was about 1000 cal over what I should be eating daily. I am only 4 foot nine after all. What was more shocking though was my sugar intake and my carb intake. I was over 220 g above my allowed sugar intake, and carbs were somewhere in that range as well if not more. it shook me to the core. I realized that the workouts didn't seem like they were working well enough not because they weren't good enough workouts, but because I wasn't providing my body with the healthy nutrients needed, I was not doing my job and eating what I should have been eating in order to lose the weight and keep it off. It was my fault, and it's always been. I realized I was doing what I had done in the past before I tried losing weight in the first place. I was trying to lay blame on factors that were insignificant. I was trying to take the focus away from the fact that I was allowing myself to eat things I shouldn't have been. And tried to blame it on arbitrary things like needing new workout equipment, needing more time to work out etc. God forbid I admitted that I ate three muffins in one day.

I know this is a long droning post. I suppose I wrote it more for myself than anything, but the guilt I felt was overwhelming, because I had told myself that once I had gotten down to 163 there was no Way in hell my body would ever even allow itself to gain weight again. I had completely rewired myself so I thought, so it was quite depressing to actually see it written in front of my face, that I had completely reverted back to my old habits. And so now instead of being 153 or maybe 143 or maybe even less, I'm closer to 190. In one way I am writing this so others can see that it's so easy to fall and seemingly hard as can be to get back up again. I'm also writing this though to see who else has had experiences like this that I can see and show myself so I know that I can get back up and start back up and do this and continue on until I do reach my goal weight or something Close to it. If you read this and take the time, I very much do appreciate it. We are all here for the same reason, so hang in there and keep up the good work.