The Valley, the Mountain, and the Wall

As of this morning I’m at 220.2 lbs, and starting to get nervous. For me, this early quick weight loss is something that I’m familiar with and not often a reason to get too excited. I make some relatively easy adjustments to my diet, some half hearted attempts at real exercise and 10 to 15 pounds just vanish. Now don’t get mad at me because I can drop 15 pounds fast. I’m still overweight, and when those easy pounds come off I’ll be standing at the bottom of the valley after a short downhill coast and looking up the mountain ahead of me.

I’ve been here before, the mountain requires real work, the mountain demands strict attention to diet, and the mountain insists on genuine lifestyle changes centered around exercise and activity. Getting to the valley was easy, I cut out soda, dropped to one slice of cheese and no mayo on the sandwiches, down to one late night desert per week, a brisk walk once or twice a week, and most of all water, drink lots and lots of water. This won’t get me to the top of the mountain though, if I stick with this plan only I will get to the bottom of the valley, hang out there for a while then turn back. Remarkably the hill I just came down to get to the valley is gone and I would be able to coast downhill to collect the 10 or 15 pounds I lost.

This time I wont be waiting till I get to the bottom of the valley to start making the necessary changes for the mountain, I’ll be starting now and hopefully I can carry some momentum up.

The Mountain Plan:

1. Scheduling meals has a huge impact, rather than two big meals a day with some mid day un-healthy snacking in between. I will be eating small healthy meals every three hours and monitoring the calories to stay at a calorie goal.

2. Exercise, this will be the biggest challenge, getting up from the desk and getting active, I mean really, I would benefit from just getting up from the desk and taking a leisurely stroll. But for the long term plan to work I will need to focus and get serious about meaningful exercise. For now this will consist of brisk walks at least 4 times a week that I will eventually ramp up to jogging and eventually running. I will also be incorporating some sit ups and the like, things that I can accomplish without a gym membership.

3. More water

Part of the plan for tackling the wall will be avoiding Fried Dough Burgers at Remy’s! That’ll be hard. 🙁

If you read my first post you know about the significance of the 200 pound mark on my way up the scale. Well it has equal significance on the way down the scale (up the mountain.) This is right about where the wall is, a tall, ugly, slippery wall that needs to be scaled if I hope to continue on this journey. I can’t see it from here, but I know it’s there, I’ve seen it, I stood in it’s shadow, I threw rock and insults at it, then I turned around and rolled back down the mountain to the couch. I don’t know what my plan for the wall is this time but I’ll come up with something to get past it and continue up.

Until next time, thanks for reading, if you have any tips or words of encouragement I’d love to hear them in the comments below.