The Truth Hurts

Sometimes I feel like I'm on a merry-go-round, with all my flipping and flopping in my approach to my body and health. For a week or more, I got really obsessed with my appearance, i.e. more so than usual. I was beginning to fall prey to the "I must be thinner to look good," instead of seeing the other reasons for losing weight.

There is a school of thought in the non-diet world that advocates not counting calories, and listening to your body. They say that your body will naturally go to its happy weight and that obsessing over calories just makes things worse. I agree to a certain degree with this philosophy, but not as much when it comes to me personally. For example, in the last 5 weeks, I've lost and then re-gained about 5 pounds. I did the, "I can eat whatever I want, I'm listening to my body." So in a way, I wasn't really true to their ideology, because I used this theory to give myself permission to overeat and eat less healthy than I should. I'm not sure why I am so adverse to just tracking what I eat and being accountable. It's not like I'm thinking of going on a 1200 calorie a day diet. I've done the research on basal metabolic rate. I know that because I weigh close to the big 3-0-0 that I need more calories than someone half that weight. I know that the amount of fat eaten should be less than 30% of my total intake. I know that I need to eat more veggies and fruits, and less fat. Especially since time and time again, I've proven to myself that too much fat, especially milk-fat, makes me sick.

I realize that regardless of how badly I want to look better, I REALLY want to feel better. I notice that I feel heavy, and that the extra weight makes me feel ugh. So it's not like I have to discount wanting to look good, but that can't be my best reason. My health and how I feel in my body, is vital. Looks fade with age and stress, but my body can feel good for a very long time if I take good care of it.

So after all this, what does this mean on a go-forward basis? It means that I'm going to start using fitday.com again to track my intake. It helps keep my a bit more accountable, and it helps me to be honest with myself. It's easy to go a week and weigh-in heavier and say, "well, it must be the sodium, or my period." It's another thing to be able to say, I ate within my target calories, likely 2200-2400, and I'm still losing at a healthy rate.

Let's stop the BS and get to work. Because I know, and I've always know that this is not my happy weight. It's not even close.