The Lost Year

January 13, 2010 @ 07:24 am

I knew it had been a while since I'd blogged about my weight loss; but I was shocked when I came back to blog again and saw that it had been over a year since my last post in September of 2008. What in the world happened to 2009? Had I really done so little for losing weight for a whole year? I looked to my old gym journal and found the same thing - all written record of my journey between 9/2008 and now just ... isn't. Never was.

Here's what's been happening:

• In October of 2008 I lost my job for redundancy.  The firm (which was making me ill anyway and I hated it there) acquired a new company to do what I was doing, so we parted ways. To make up for it, I decided to finally branch out on my own and started my own business.  That's what I've been doing ever since - which takes a lot of time away from blogging - and alas, from fitness as well.
• I did not give up on fitness entirely. It was just in drastic fits and spurts. Even though I stopped recording it all, I still went to the gym and tried to eat okay ... some of the time.
• We moved from our super-fine apartment and the great fitness center in the building to a better apartment in the city. It's cheaper, has a home office, and we like it a lot more. No downstairs gym, though. I still kinda miss it.
• We joined New York Sports Clubs.  Long ago I was a member of Equinox and part of me really enjoys going to a gym. I got into going for a while, though of course I allowed my life to get unbalanced and stopped going for weeks at a time, and ultimately my winter project took all my time. 
• We started a second business this past fall, which culminated in a two-month pop-up store here in NYC. It was a great experience (I'm still kind of decompressing), but it literally took all my time and energy. For the first two weeks I was dead on my feet every day. My shoes were crap. I didn't have time for gumption for the gym but I did have to walk over a mile and a half almost every day - sometimes a lot more. I wasn't eating so well, but I was definitely burning those calories working. 

The one thing from the last year that disappoints me most is that I failed to lose any weight by the second annual family vacation. In 2008, my extended family went on vacation together for the first time and had fun, but it was marred at the very last moment by some rather cruel offhanded thoughtless comments from my Grandfather. That moment sent me reeling and inspiring a hard push at the end of that year, which fizzled with the pressures of life. And though I'd resolved to lose significant weight by 2009's vacation, I didn't. I was just as fat.

Oh and the vacation was to the shore. Awesome! 315+ lbs on the beach. Beached whale more like it. Le sigh.

Here's where I'm at now:

307 lbs.  Which basically means no net change in weight. I know I've definitely gone higher than than and when we were opening our pop-up store I'm pretty sure I went under that, but for whatever reason my body pretty much holds steady at just over 300 pounds. 

My house is clean, my life is more or less back in order and I'm re-establishing a routine.  That will be good for getting fit. I can cook again, I can get to the gym again, I don't have to worry about the phone ringing. I need to get back in the groove of many more healthy behavours, but I'm getting there.

I'm working on instituting better work behaviours. Frankly, life was insane for a long time. I was checking email constantly - literally every minute. I was on-call, overworked, over-scheduled. I've since turned off the email auto-checks so that I only check it a few times a day. I'm trying to focus on one thing at a time and not overworking myself.  Right now I have a lot of my plate but I'm sorting through it.

I'm not following any one particular plan or diet.  I dropped Weight Watchers - only because I wasn't using its tools. But the principles are all very useful. I've picked up on the Gabriel Method, but I'm no groupie or die-hard fan. There are certain universal principles to weight loss and every plan highlights different aspects of them - so I find myself learning from many different sources. I'll talk more about my current plans later.

And frankly, I'm not feeling so well emotionally. My relationship with my partner is fantastic - no qualms there and we're actually stronger than we've ever been. But over the last couple weeks I've been rather down about things because of my weight and obesity. I'll blog through those soon.

I'm returning to blogging.  And twittering! This is cathartic for me. It gives me an outlet. And I want to connect with others along the journey.  I'm really shy and ashamed and so I'm keeping this anonymous (for now), but I still want to record this and stay accountable at least to myself by putting it all out there. And with a sexy new look for the blog and some drastically improved technology to power it I'm hoping the whole process of managing this will be easier to maintain.

And so here go again. 

307 pounds and counting.

2 comments | Topics: depression, gym, shame, vacation, work