I was doing SO WELL!
I was steadily losing weight. My energy levels were up, my fitness levels were great, and my digestion! Well, I won’t go into the details, but it was great.
Then Came Christmas.
The Christmas cookies. The Panettone. The mulled wine. The port wine! The red wine! The white wine! THE CHAMPAGNE!
My normal rule of only having an alcoholic drink on the weekends went out the window.
That’s not to say I drank to excess, but I had more frequent glasses of wine than usual.
And it wasn’t just the tasty booze. Chico spoiled me rotten with littleneck clams and hake on Christmas eve. New Year’s Eve was yet another culinary treat.
Everything was too tasty to have just one helping!
So Naturally…
The numbers stopped moving downward on the scale. They halted and hovered. Then they crept back up slightly.
While I kept up my regular exercise, it wasn’t enough to counteract the excesses of the table.
And so I fell back into bad habits. My blood sugar started spiking and dipping as it had always done before.
All the hard work I had put into levelling out my blood sugar and fighting hanger, lost!
CURSES AND DAMNATION!
Struggling to Get Back to It
And so here we are in January, and I’m struggling to get back into the habits I had fought so hard to build before the holidays.
The funny part is, I felt so much better before indulging over the holidays.
I notice it especially in my mood, my energy levels and my digestive health. Overindulging in carbohydrates, sugar and alcohol has thrown my system out of whack.
But the addictive nature of these foods makes it hard to break the cycle.
A Little Willpower & A Lot of Help
It’s time for a little force of will and a lot of moral support.
Part of the willpower is removing temptations. Like the Bug’s leftover birthday cake, the panettone lingering in the bread bin, the opened bottle of wine in the fridge, the Christmas treats…
I may face pushback from other members of the family, but they’ll get over it. They’ve had plenty!
The other side of the willpower coin is taking the time to plan. Now that we’re back to our normal routine, I have to remember to plan appropriately for meals.
That means making sure the fridge and pantry are stocked with healthy options.
The help and moral support mostly comes from my Chico who is pretty much the only other adult I see on a regular basis these days.
But encouragement from family and friends, and from those of you who read this blog is a big help.
Not About the Number
In the end, though, this effort I’m making isn’t so much about the number on the scale.
(Though that number is definitely a factor, I can’t lie. Numbers mean a lot.)
The biggest motivation behind my desire to lose weight is to avoid the persistent back problems I’ve had.
Since dropping 5kg and increasing my overall fitness and strength, I haven’t had a single crisis with my lower back.
That’s huge. I used to have them nearly every month, and I had a particularly bad one in the fall that left me nearly immobile for a whole day.
(Joining the kids on the trampoline might have had something to do with that…)
So while it is nice to see numbers trending downwards on the scale, and measurements shrinking, the biggest reward is being pain-free and being able to hop up the stairs two at a time from the basement to the top floor without being winded.
So I’m ready to hold onto that thought, and get back into the business of taking care of myself.
Because if I don’t take care of myself, how will I take care of my boys?
