Diet Update – Week 7

16 pounds down and 76 more to go.

I’ve come to accept that this is going to take awhile, and that there will be a few bumps in the road (like that little bump up there when I gained a few pounds back on our college road trip).

I remember many times in the past when I could not stay with a food program, asking myself “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I do this?”

After all, I had made it though med school and a grueling residency, doing every 3rd night on call, with every other night during my fellow resident’s vacations. (These were the days before resident work rules). I had been on my feet for 36 hours at a time, then went home, slept and came back the next morning to start all over again. After residency, I made it through two pregnancies working full time till term, on call every other night the week before my first child was born.

If I could do that, why couldn’t I stay on a measly old diet?

I think it was because I had no choice in residency and pregnancy but to keep on going. Stopping was not an option, and I never even considered it. After all, you can’t walk out on a residency or a pregnancy and come back when you feel like it, can you?

But dieting – Dieting is another story. After all, if you go off it today, you can always restart tomorrow. My life, in fact, was an unending series of such tomorrows. Every day was the first day of the diet I had failed the day before. (Sounds like a T-shirt saying..)

Now, no matter what happens, I’m on the diet. I have no choice. The food shows up every morning, and I eat it. No going to the market, no running out of the good food and eating the bad instead. No second guessing what I ate or how much I ate. No having to go to meetings or back to a center to weight in and get more food. No having to supplement anything (although I do have an off-program glass of milk in the evening with my snack.) There is just the food. And for the most part, it’s good.

Most importantly, there is no guilt. I felt no remorse when I gained weight on the college trip – I knew I would. But I planned ahead that I would be back at the cottage after that, biking every day and eating healthy. (Which is rarely hard for me on vacations, because I find time to exercise and am just not that hungry.)

I’m no longer living in a dieting tomorrow. It’s today. Every day.

For some reason, I now feel, like residency and pregnancy, that I am on a path on which I have no choice but to stay. It has a clear end (March or April to reach my goal weight) and a clear plan that works. Stopping no longer feels like an option. Putting it off for tomorrow just isn’t a consideration anymore.

I have lot of thoughts about why this is, and what has changed in me. But those are still percolating and this post is long enough.

And a beautiful day and the West Side Bike Path beckon.

Nice to be back.