Figuring Out Balance

October 8, 2019
Total Pounds Lost: 34.8
Pounds Lost This Week: 1.9

This one is an oldie but goodie

I struggled this week. Struggled between not indulging, exercising, indulging, and then exercising like a maniac to make up for indulging. A precarious pendulum swinging from one extreme to the next without finding a healthy way to hover in the middle.

I'm trying to start good habits. I am. My friends who are fit work out 5-7 times per week, so 7 hours of exercise a week is my stretch goal. And once that becomes a real habit, my body will change. When I think back to my more fit days, I  exercised 3 days a week with 1 major hike on the weekend -- so that was 5 hours of exercise a week or more. Getting into the routine is tough. I've been doing it, but have resorted to napping when Max naps to recover. Because sister, I'm tired.

I know this sounds silly, but it's really hard for me to sacrifice Max's precious nap time to my own sleeping rather than writing. But if I'm ready to cry into my dinner or snapping at my family because I'm exhausted from adapting to exercise...it's not worth it. I'll never forget in college, I was whining to my Dad on the phone how tired I was, lamenting on how to get more energy, and if I should drink more coffee. To which he replied, "if you're tired, you should sleep."

I was thunderstruck at the simplicity. And then I took a nap. The same applies now, I gotta take care of myself. Besides, my mental clarity jumps by a thousand percent when I'm rested. The world seems brighter, goals more do-able.

There's another ironic twist here: each morning I plan out 'operation wear out the baby,' to make sure Max gets enough exercise to nap and sleep well at night.

Mission accomplished.

It seems so natural to inflict exercise to the point of exhaustion on my kid, but when I'm doing it for my own health, I'm #RESISTING. There's a reason they call it working out. It's work.

It's a lot of work.  Back to the topic I wandered away from in paragraph one, I  ate too much on Friday, and then went out on Sunday on a date with the hubs and ate too much again. They say the key to sticking to a new habit is to forgive oneself after a slip and get back on board, but it's hard not to beat myself up for the slips. Imagine how much more weight I would have lost this week if I hadn't indulged at all.

Sigh.

But I'm human, so I move on. Keep on chugging. I don't know if I'm working too hard and indulging too hard, but I'm experimenting, trying to find that nebulous plane of existence called 'balance.' I did manage to get up twice this week at 6AM and work out. I did exercise every single day and reached my stretch goal.

On another note, the mere amount of time I spend these days thinking about my body, eating healthy and exercising is overwhelming. Of course, I want it to be a priority, but fixating to the point of obsession isn't healthy, or helping me. It's one of the reasons I think this blog helped me so much in the past -- if I could get these racing thoughts about the process out of my head and down on paper, then they couldn't bother me anymore. Still holds true. So, again, thank you to this online community for reading and keeping me going with your comments and support.

As a final note to this chapter, I splurged on a wizz-bang FitBit. I've always been a detail-oriented person and seeing everything by my numbers helps me. I have a real measure of calories in vs. calories out and it matches up for what the scale reads. All this time in the past two years I've been blaming my non-weight loss on something else. Recently, I convinced myself that I may be flirting with insulin-resistance. That's why it's so hard.

Here are the hard numbers from this week:
Calories Out: 17,827 (Exercised every day for 45 minutes - hour)
Calories In: 11,505 (~1,643 calories consumed per day average)
6,322 Calorie Deficit Net
3500 Calories per pound of fat
1.8 pounds lost - by the numbers
1.9 pounds lost - by the scale

But, again, the numbers check out, so it's not insulin resistance. I just have to work it. And I'll keep on working.

If you want to join me on my fitness apps, I'm 'bonniehorvitz' on MyFitnessPal and 'Bonnie B' on FitBit. Hope to see you there.