When'd it get so hard?

Damn I am struggling. The good news is I'm not gaining, but the bad news is I am not losing anything either.

After reading some of my old posts, I am amazed at how awesome I did for such a long time there. I had it down. I knew what to do, and I just did it. There was no other option in my mind. I was driven by some pure crazy determination.

So what happened? I took some time off, gained a little (10lbs) over about 6 months. Then I decided to get rid of that 10lbs, which thankfully I did. And now I am stuck around 170, which is 20 lbs away from my original goal to lose 100 lbs, bringing me to 150.

I have 20 lbs to lose. Which since I already lost 80, shouldn't feel so overwhelming.

I know what I need to do. Trust me, I have read every diet book on the shelves, countless fitness magazines and through this blog, met so many people with great weight loss ideas. It is not a matter of not knowing what to do. It's just doing it.

Somehow it got hard again. (That's what she said...) I think the fact that I took time off, undoing all my newly learned good habits, took me back to square one. I have to make all those healthy habits into actual habits again.

Eating what others eat

When I went out of town last week, I was with my boyfriend and his friends/ family for about 5 days straight, which meant eating all the same meals/ snacks as everyone else. When I came back from the trip, I noticed I had lost weight. This kind of made it hit me that maybe if I eat more "normally" and cut out emotional eating (which I tend to do, especially when I am alone) that I will lose weight easily. Even eating out at fast food restaurants and ordering pizza and drinking alcohol had made me lose weight. Very interesting.

I have been working from home, writing and making websites for small companies, so I do tend to eat more when I am home alone. A few handfuls of this and nibbles of that equal way more calories than I should be eating.

Funny how other people (who don't have a "problem" with food, like I feel like I do sometimes...) just eat normally throughout the day and stay slim. And when I eat like that, I lose weight.

This is a lesson to myself. Eat to live. I should know this by now, but I need to wrap my feelings around the fact that food will not make any situation better. No emotional eating!

What just happened?

The scale said 168.4 today. Happy dance.

But I'm confused a little... what'd I eat yesterday? I mindlessly ate pretzels, M&M's, teddy grahams.

Ok, well now that I think about, I had a smoothie for breakfast. Not too much for lunch, kind of just snacked on above said junk food and then some venison jerky (which is insanely good, from a deer my boyfriend shot last week.. sorry to anyone who is anti-hunting ;)) Dinner was chicken (cooked in oil), sweet potato fries (baked) and asparagus. No after dinner snacking.

So I guess all in all, I ate ok, probably stayed within my points if I had been counting.

Maybe this eating better but not putting tons of pressure to not eat one single bad thing is working out. I like it.

Can't believe it's mid September

Wow, time is just flying by. I can't believe summer is pretty much over and we're already halfway into September. I am excited for fall, leaves changing color, wearing sweaters, pumpkins, apples.

I actually haven't weighed myself in awhile. Been busy, had to go out of town this past week, and haven't been thinking about dieting. But I did get on the scale today and was happy to see 170.6. It's gone down without trying too much and still having meals out and alcohol.

I plan on starting to eat healthy again. I think this time I am just going to eat healthy and not put so much pressure on myself. I won't eat ice cream every night or snack on bad stuff all day, but if I am dying for a cookie or whatever it is, I'll just have one.

I'm realizing that my all or nothing attitude is not doing me any favors, so by relaxing a bit, maybe it will just come together naturally.