noob once again

when i left for nepa in september, i was in decent shape and at my goal weight. i had spent the months before the trip doing cardio, hiking, eating wholesome food in reasonable quantities, logging, and so on.

in dolpo, after 175 miles of walking, high altitudes, long work days? no problems. it was a marvelous adventure.

i came back and let things fall apart... eating badly, not logging, not doing regular cardio. i was just, you know, "taking a little well-deserved break" .

the break got longer and longer. i got bigger and bigger. i *was* lifting again, which was good, but i credited way too much of my weight gain to training, and ignored the fact that no one, even a teenager (which i am decidedly not), could put on that much meat, that fast.

the result, after six months? regaining almost all the weight i spent the previous year losing.

so today i accept my noob status and start from scratch. i have twenty-five pounds to lose, which will take six months. i have to re-build the habits of logging all of my food, doing cardio five days a week and weighing in once a week. i have learn, once again, that the only way to manage my weight is to eat wholesome food in reasonable quantities, that i am not one of the "one cookie is all i will have" people, and that i do better when i don't do free form.

while i am a rather annoyed with myself for engaging in a long bout of magical thinking of the "i can start tomorrow it will be fine it is only a cookie i walked so much last month another day without cardio is okay i will weigh in next sunday" sort, i am not feeling too grim about the whole thing. after all, i know what i need to do and i have done it before.

it's not rocket science, just the slow, steady, sometimes hard work of doing what needs to be done and not deluding myself along the way.