Sun's Out, Guns Out

Back in the day, circa 2002, I generally used to run and work out in beaters or tank-tops and shorts.  It probably goes back to high school when my sports uniforms were sleeveless and pretty much everyone wore wifebeaters for anything remotely exercise-related.  They’re comfortable and don’t involve a lot of excess material like t-shirts.  At some point around senior year of college, it became clear to me that sleeveless and/or shorts were no longer quite so desirable an option for my arms and thighs at the time.  I’d still wear that stuff in the summer for the beach and what not, but not while doing anything with so much movement.  Then again, I wasn’t doing an overabundance of exercise of any kind at that time. 

I’m a good 25 pounds below what I was junior year of college when I was still rocking beaters with reckless abandon, but this past Saturday was the first time in years that I worked out in one in years.  It’s really not a huge feat and there are plenty of people of all body types that go sleeveless all the time, but it was still sort of a nice feeling to go back to something I hadn’t done since mid-college.  Admittedly, I don’t think my arms are as firm as they were the last time I was at this weight.  Around Memorial Day it occurred to me that some of the arm softness may not be fat but instead a bit of extra skin, which was disconcerting but not entirely unexpected given the amount of weight I gained.  But I still felt totally OK with it and am always happy to overcome any lingering self-consciousness I might have. 

Disclaimer:  I will NOT be rocking bare arms for kickboxing anytime in the immediate future.  These pythons are not quite ready for rapid-fire punching while fully exposed.

I had a pretty decent WW week and have about 7 weeklies left on the table.  I’m getting more antsy to bust past the 100 mark since I’ve been dancing around it forevskis.  Last week I lost back 1.2 of my 3.4 pound gain from the week before, although I didn’t WI until Wednesday since I forgot/purposely avoided the scale Tuesday morning after the holiday weekend.  So I’m not sure that I did fantastically enough this week to get rid of the remaining 2.2 AND lose the extra 0.4 needed to hit a hundy, but we’ll see how it goes.  As usual I have no particular reason to be in a hurry other than sheer impatience.

1 step forward, 3.4 steps back

After losing 3.4 pounds last week, bringing me to -99.6 pounds lost (ohsofuckingclose), I gained 3.4 this past week.  I actually didn't even realize it was the exact same gain/loss until I just checked my tracker, but either way I continue to drift just shy of the one zero zero mark.  Not like I have any real rush to get there, I just want to get past that bitch already.

I have realized way too many times throughout this process/journey/whatever you'd like to call it that I sometimes let one bad week, or even day or weekend, make me feel inadequate and unsuccessful and overall cranky.  The logical part of me knows that one week does not undo 130 other weeks (or whatever it's been now) and that I don't look any different and I haven't unraveled all of the good habits I've acquired and instilled over the past 2.5+ years.  And yet there are moments during the week following a gain, or just following a particularly high point day, when it feels that way and I'm back at square one.

The only positive to this is that I usually get frustrated enough with those silly feelings that I'm more determined the following week to prove to myself that I can still do this, and rock the shit out of WW, and it helps me get back on track.  I'm not an emotional eater so fortunately I don't let that self-pity snowball too badly into more destruction.  And I get my ass to the gym no matter what.  But I wish I didn't have those stupidly negative thoughts in the first place because I don't like letting my WLJ become such a front-and-center part of my life, for good or bad.

I think this past week was more frustrating than usual because I didn't have any exciting events or particularly delicious meals to blame my gain on.  I just sort of overate throughout the week and had already plunged into the red by Thursday.  I feel like once I go down that road so early in the week, it's very difficult to recover from it.  But on the bright side, I did hit the gym for 2 classes on Saturday morning and went to kickboxing on Monday, so I can appreciate the fact that I at least stick with my gym routine no matter.

Enough whining.  A better week ahead hopefully, even with the holiday weekend.  AND it's almost fall which is enough in itself to put a smile on my face.