Interesting to read the phrases of my past self talking about consistency, change, and health. As 2016 progressed I kept on top of my activity and food, until mid June, when I took a lovely weekend trip, then got into the habit of trying new places, and in particular new restaurants, and then the summer bled away in a haze of new and exciting menus, dishes, and time with my lovely spouse.
All this newness, and a mindset of "try it now, before the menu changes with the season" coupled with intense interpersonal work dynamics led to weight gain. In fact. I was 296# at a subspecialist appt in early 2017, and after a pretty extensive work up, was told that nothing was wrong, but that if I didn't lose weight I was headed toward irreversible consequences.
So, I grieved, I bargained, I tried to "fix it" with a whole30, or going vegan, or something hard, that I could do for a time, then forget. The spouse kept me away from that rabbit hole though, and instead, just like I wrote in 2016, I logged what I ate. In fact, for about a month all I did was log, without restricting, or counting macros, or attending to the total.
It was after a month, and the partial decoupling of the emotional response to the total, that I set my limits, which was eating at a caloric level that would eventually put me under 200#, without exercise. I have a streak on MFP of 276 days as of today, and have lost between 45 and 48#.
I've been a little harder on myself in the last month, and haven't charted a loss in that time, but, with a household injury, a long family visit and the holidays, I haven't really gained weight, and the numbers suggest that I'm eating between a small deficit and maintenance, which will mean that I will start 2018 lighter than I stated 2017, and this will be the first time in a decade that I have flipped my trend line from gaining to losing.
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