Another Year Comes to a Close

I am probably one of an infinite number of would-be bloggers who starts having gut-wrenching reality checks about their blogging (and other) habits as they start to consider year-end and new year plans.

I'd really like to take up blogging again in the new year. I think it's therapeutic, and it would be good to be able to practice writing on a fairly regular basis. Even if the kind of writing I do on here isn't exactly what I would like to be doing.

Here is what has been happening to me lately. I have, largely, gotten rid of my headache, though strangely without the aid of any food plan or drugs. It just seems to have eased up, and my head has reset itself.

Of course, the corollary to this good news is that I've been eating. Badly. And without immediate consequence (read: splitting headache). The long-term consequence, of course, is weight gain. Not a lot of it. In fact, I'm not actually sure that I weigh more now than I did back in June. As of a week ago, I was almost exactly the same weight as I was in June. But I have more fat and less muscle, I think. My pants are tighter, and I just feel heavier and more flabby. And you know that roll of flab around your midsection that you get when you wear form-fitting clothing and tummy-squishing undergarments. Um, yeah...I have that. In spades.

The good news was a couple of long hikes while I was away for Christmas proved that I am, without a doubt, still in much better shape than I was a year ago (and still down 50 pounds, which is nice).

But now that 2009 is just around the corner, it's time to get serious about this healthy lifestyle thing again. I don't feel healthy at the moment. Don't feel sexy or confident. I don't even really feel very good about myself. And a huge part of that is my weight. It's funny how you can feel good and skinny and confident with some newly-minted weight loss, but as time goes on and you get used to the skinnier version of yourself, you forget how good you felt and readjust to the "new normal." So your "fat" days now occur at a much smaller size than before, but they still occur. And let's just say pretty much every day for the last several months has felt like a fat day.

So tomorrow is New Year's Eve. I know I'm going to a party (it will be low-key, but it will still have lots of not so healthy food). And then I have the rest of the week off. I'm going to take advantage of that and really sit down and try to figure out what I want with my life and healthy and body and mind. It's a tall order, but I need to do it. I normally don't set resolutions, but this year I think I will.

So expect to hear back from me soon. I have a feeling one of my resolutions will be to write here more.

Happy New Year!

Doctors' Scales Are Evil

Happy post-Thanksgiving to one and all. I hope you had as relaxing a holiday as I did. For those of us trying to lose weight, Thanksgiving can be a bit tough, but because of my super-fun headache problems, I did not have too much trouble with overeating this year, despite my required presence at no less than three separate Thanksgiving meals! I mostly ate turkey and carrots and probably had a bit too much of a headache safe apple crumble and a sweet potato casserole I made, but I did exercise all five days of the very long weekend and am still very sore today to prove it.

So I was feeling pretty smug about my success this long holiday weekend until I got on the scale at the doctor's office for my annual. Ugh. 192. I am guessing it is calibrated differently than my scale at home (which gave a glorious reading of 189 last Tuesday). And although it is undoubtedly more accurate than my scale at home, the doctor's office scale has not been recording the changes in my weight. So I shall try not to let that evil scale weigh me down (get it? bad pun) and will wait for the "official" results from my weigh-in tomorrow on my slightly faulty but hopefully much nicer home scale. I'll be sure to report. Is it bad that I've been dreaming of being 185? That would be 4.2 pounds in one week, which is not exactly realistic. But it would put me just into the "overweight" category and out of the "obese" category, which I've been in for so long.

In headache-related news, I'm still headache-free. Which is awesome. I'll say again (mostly for myself), I really do think it's all about the food for me - when I eat according to my diet, I don't get headaches. When I go off the diet, I do. Ugh. On the downside, it's hard to eat this way. On the plus side, it's much, much healthier! (Also, just a side note that I need to add - I keep calling this an anti-headache DIET. It is a diet in the strict sense of the word - in that my particular diet describes how I am eating right now. But I am summarily opposed to being on a traditional diet of cutting calories or certain foods etc. For me, it's about eating healthfully and to satiate. It's something I've been working on for a long, long time, but I don't diet anymore. I can't. It makes me crazy.

That's all for now. I'll report back in tomorrow after my weigh-in!