HYC #2: the right reasons

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Tuesday! One of my fellow teachers, in her infinite cruel kindness, just gave me two custard mini-muffin things, which are super-delicious, but I consider it an accomplishment that I only ate one, and stuck the other in the drawer for an unspecified later time.

I'm excited to say that TOM must be officially gone, because the scale has finally started to move in the proper direction again. This morning's number was exciting... so exciting I'm afraid to report it, for fear of jinxing it. I'm just hoping I can see it again (or one of its lesser compatriots) on Saturday morning for weigh-in. I was lying in bed this morning looking at my desk calendar, where I use an intricate system of checks and x-es that indicate all kinds of things (most of which I've changed so many times I can't even remember) to record whether I ate well and exercised on a given day. I realized, looking at it, that I was looking at progress.

I realized that without knowing exactly how it happened, I had been accountable to myself every single day so far during March. Every morning, usually on the bus, I write my mantra/affirmation 8 times, and I make a point to flip through and at least glance at the previous days to remind myself how long I've been working towards this. Today was the twentieth straight day of affirming my passionate desire for health and fitness, and although the task itself is monotonous, it's a wonderful habit I'm glad I've developed--the daily reminder I've always needed to keep myself on track.

So this morning, as I stared at the messy success indicated by checks and circles and x-es, I started wondering why it had been so easy this time... why I've managed to, in March alone, lose almost 1/5 of the total weight it took me over a year to lose before. What was different this time? And then I realized... what changed was that I wasn't just doing it to lose weight anymore.

Don't get me wrong... losing weight was important to me this month. I've belly-ached more than once about whether or not I would reach my March Madness goal. But when trying to lose weight was my only motivation, it was easy to get side-tracked. It was easy to binge on chocolate one day and promise to make it up with phantom "extra exercise" that never happened the next day. And when I was feeling low, I even started to doubt whether I wanted to lose my weight. I deceived myself that food would comfort me, and that that would be enough. But, of course, it never was, and in the long run I would only feel worse. In conclusion, when all I thought about was losing weight, it was 300% more difficult to achieve just that.

But this month wasn't just about losing weight. This month was about figuring out what I needed to do for myself, finding what worked, and building habits. This month I didn't try to eat less... I just tried really hard to eat the right things, including things I'd avoided up until now, like slimy mushrooms and fish at 7am. I listened to my stomach, and I was never hungry. I started the Couch to 5k running program, which thankfully really really worked for me. And now that I enjoy my workouts, I was able to force myself to do them no matter what--even when I "just didn't feel like it." I'm even excited about exercise! I crave it on my days off.

And I think the single biggest factor in my success this month was that I finally discovered the world of weight loss and health blogs! I've always journalled, on a semi-regular basis, and I've tried writing about my weight loss efforts, with varying degrees of success. But it isn't the writing over the past three weeks that's helped me... it's the reading. Nighttime snacking is much easier to combat now--there's hundreds of inspirational stories out there from people a million times more successful, witty, and well-informed than I'll ever be! Being able to read about other people's trials and tribulations with Couch to 5k and tried-and-true craving-fighting strategies has been the biggest help. Especially because I live literally on the other side of the world from my family, and in a country where skinny is the norm and I'm having to get a few summer shirts tailor-made, it's just so nice to know that I'm not really alone! So thank you if you're reading this... I'm sure I've stalked your blog when the chocolate was calling my name, and you've inspired me.

So by just doing the right things for the past three weeks, they've became habits. Suddenly, my affirmation has come true--I do what healthy and thin people do. And it feels great. Not great like the way chocolate cake tastes, or the way an extra hour of sleep at the expense of my workout feels. It feels great to have finally figured out both how to do what's best for me. I'm sure I'll face plenty more roadblocks (probably sooner rather than later, now that I've made this triumphant post). But I feel like I've finally started to change my lifestyle and habits, rather than just my diet, so I've built the foundation.