Day 23: Reality Check

I am glad to be writing today, even though its a Saturday.  I am trying not to write the identical post to my last one that expressed frustration at the slow pace of progress. Numerically today means nothing, but it’s the end of the third week. It’s also step on the scale day at Weight Watchers. I gained a half pound. Not bad for an entirely indulgent week, but a tough slap in the face overall.

Yesterday at Yoga, I finally got the guts to take a photo of myself. I have been wanting to do this since day one. I want a “before” picture to remind me of where I came from, when these 100 days are over. It was hard because, not only does it make me feel vulnerable, but it’s a weird thing to do in yoga – people don’t like it when other people bring cellphones or cameras in there. The room was dark and so the photo looks incredibly ominous. It kind of fits.

Historically, I am really good at losing weight when I focus on it, so I am pretty frustrated at this point. Either my metabolism has slowed down, in my 30s or I am truly building muscle to replace the fat. Pound for pound. You might be thinking “muscle weighs more than fat” right now, but that is a myth. Ultimately, I feel stronger and have more energy, so I just need to remind myself what is really the point of doing this.

I have 10 days left before I need to add in the next phase of this project. It’s going to be time to start archiving; pulling out the old boxes and auditing everything (including clothing, better do that last).  Yikes. I barely feel like I have gotten far enough into recovery. I am certainly not bored.

This final 10 days are also going to be the busiest yet. I need to prepare for our Halloween party  and a trip to the east coast to a wedding. Both of these events have major challenges built into them. Parties are places where I indulge (see previous post). Traveling could very well reverse all progress to date. I can easily imagine gaining 5lbs while eating out all the time and being a continent away from my hot yoga classes. I also need to get my phone in shape to post short updates to this blog while traveling. I am sure I will have a lot to say.

A friend of mine, when hearing about this project said, “I think you are going to need more than 100 days to get through all that. 33.3 days for each phase just doesn’t seem like enough time.” Now I see what she means. Time to turn things up to 11 and do some really hard work this week. And it may turn out that I need to overlap phases a bit, to keep recovering while I start archiving, to keep archiving while I am experimenting and so on.

All in all, check in’s are a great thing, as is the dose of reality. Without measurement, time can just slide by without much fanfare or progress.