This dieting stuff is tough!
Or rather, this weight maintenance thing is tough!
Yeah I know. Calories in, calories out and all that stuff. But sometimes it just doesn’t seem that cut and dry. At least not for me. But then again, for me things are never simple. I always seem to have to take a path no one else has to take.
I suppose I could spend my time measuring and counting and adding and subtracting, but is that any practical way to live for the rest of one’s life? Maybe it is for some.
I guess you can say that I have been unofficially measuring and adding and subtracting by simply trying to keep a mental log of food and exercise.
It all worked well for a while but then I got yet another of my pesky and all too frequent sinus infections. This round required me swallowing an extra large horse pill of an antibiotic blend, and in order not to rip my insides apart it also required me to eat something pretty substantial in order to buffer it.
As any truly fat person knows, all you need is an excuse as to why it is you are eating like a fiend and you are off to the races! And I had several excuses.
I was sick again so I needed comfort food. I needed to eat to take my pills. I could eat junk because I was too sick to food shop and cook. You know the drill.
So yeah. Fast food and drink a plenty these last few weeks. I am a bloated hound.
I have been exercising when I can. I’ve been doing a few more days of land based exercise rather than my beloved swimming figuring the last thing my infected shnoz needs is more filthy pool water flowing through it.
So while I am keeping my body moving, it isn’t moving in any substantially fat burning way. That of course is an issue when you have a body that wants nothing more than to turn every calories you consume into a fat cell.
And while I am on the subject let me brag a little about my swimming. When I first started I was happy to swim 15 laps in 20 minutes. That was HUGE for me and it really had an effect on how I felt and looked. It was easy for me to devote a mere 20 minutes to swimming and I felt so great about it, it really kept me motivated.
Well here it is about 9 months since I started swimming and I am now up to 60 laps (count ‘em!) which take me a little over an hour to do. Although I have never officially measured our pool, I guesstimate it to be about 25 yards long. That estimate is based on the fact that many commercial pools use 25 yards as a standard length, and I have swam in pools known to be 25 meters in length and laps there didn’t seem substantially longer to swim. Oh, and thanks to my MIO heart rate monitor, I can see that I am burning over 1000 calories a swimming workout too. Wow!
Staying motivated to devote an hour to swimming isn’t as easy as it was when I was swimming only 20 minutes….and boy can it get boring out there going back and forth and back and forth….but I can’t deny the amazing physical benefits that it is affording me.
Yet of course in the nothing being easy column, doing a tremendous amount of exercise to keep your weight regulated also poses the massive problem of “What happens if you can no longer exercise like that?” That issue has plagued me before so I am very attuned to it.
So I take it one day, one meal, one workout at a time. Trying to be as focused as possible.
This week I FINALLY get to see a specialist regarding my oh so many sinus issues so my fingers are crossed that I may get some answers and preventative measures so horse pills can become an infrequent part of my daily regimen.
As far as eating goes, I just need to remember the techniques honed during my weight loss and keep close watch on that scale not allowing myself for a minute to think any gain is acceptable. But a quick look at the calendar shows that eating season is really only a few weeks away. But I’ll worry about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.
The Fat of Now 