Last Thursday, I logged in at 2 lbs heavier than I was the week before.  While this is not the optimal outcome, it is understandable. Too much eating and too little exercise over a period of a week can lead to weight gain.

Day-to-day, though, is another story.

After last weeks weigh-in, I actually started to drop weight. I thought, “Great. Maybe Thursday was the anomaly and I’m back on track.” However, I weighed myself today and compared it to yesterday – a mere 24 hours – and the scale told me I had gained 3.5 lbs.  That’s a lot for one day.  I didn’t really change my eating habits that much. I did have a kinda heavy dinner. Yes. I had two small cookies.  I also ate a huge Gala apple and just a few slices of ham between two pieces of bread for lunch (no condiments) and some cinnamon grahams for snacking.  Nothing totally out of the ordinary. Except, maybe, the dinner.

Still this should not account for a gain of 3.5 lbs.  There is something else at work.  Either a screwed up scale or I need to go in for colon cleansing or something.

Maybe I should just stop weighing myself day-to-day.

I’ve been trying to count calories and lose weight and exercise regularly since the beginning of the year.  Let me take that back.  I’ve been trying for decades but I’ve been serious since the beginning of the year. Yet, here I find myself, slowly but surely, getting frustrated with the glacial pace of weight loss.  It seems that unless I can force myself to fast or exercise 3 hours a day or both that the weight just drops off one slow tenth after the other.

If that.

Then there is the stuff that gets in the way. Erratic work schedules, erratic eating habits, inertia, lack of motivation….

Wait!  Lack of motivation?  I should be gung ho, right?

The sad fact is that without serious progress my motivation wanes.  I don’t know what it is, to be honest.  Motivation about the weight loss thing (I used to try to call it weight reduction since I didn’t want to find my lost weight ever again) is only part of the whole picture. My motivation about a lot of stuff is at a low ebb and, try as I might, I can’t seem to get enthusiastic.  Maybe it’s this gloomy weather and the fact that even though it’s supposed to be warm it’s still cold (to me).

Old habits are hard to break…and that rule about doing something for 21 days or 30 days or however many days to internalize the new behavior?  Doesn’t seem to be working.

Last week sometime, I can’t remember when, I stopped being as diligent as I had been about counting calories and logging in what I ate.  I also got a little lax about going to the gym to do any amount of exercise.

I blame the gym thing on an erratic schedule that fluctuates from day to day.  I don’t have a 9 to 5 job and I can’t plan , it seems, from one day to the next when I’m going to have time. I know, at some level, this is an excuse.  I could get up at 5:30 in the morning and go (bed head hair and all) but I don’t.

The other thing is about eating.  I went out with friends for two meals in a row, which I should have never done… but, hey, I’m supposed to be living life , too.  I started eating crap…sandwiches, graham crackers, chocolate pudding cups.  Overeating, in general.  More to the point, I started dropping back into my bad habit of eating for the sake of eating – boredom, anger, frustration, anxiety.

Now, I’m having trouble getting back on track.

I’m trying to drink water to offset the hunger but it only makes me piss three times as much.  Yeah.  I know it’s exercise to get up off the chair, walk down the hall and into the bathroom.

In any case, I’ll try, again, tomorrow. I really need to get back on track.