LiveJournal, Facebook, and on this site… I’ve literally lost count of the number of times I’ve made posts like this one:

It’s the issue that has most vexed me throughout my adult life. Since the start of my very first serious effort almost exactly 20 years ago to reach and maintain a healthy weight, I’ve lost, gained, and then repeated the cycle for over hundreds of pounds. There are lots of reasons for this recurring pattern, but when being brutally honest with myself, most of them are truly just excuses. It doesn’t matter how long the healthy part a particular portion of the cycle lasts, it never stops being work or becomes second nature. Eventually, I tire of the effort and default back to eating unhealthily and not exercising enough.

Nonetheless, the good news is that since that Facebook post from last year, I’ve managed to lose precisely 40 pounds, dropping from 241.6 to 201.6. What makes that number even more amazing is my end-of-year attempt to pause the weight loss and simply go into maintenance mode was a disaster that resulted in my regaining 15 pounds, which in turn necessitated spending the first three months of this year simply working them back off. Currently, my motivation remains solid, and tt appears that reaching my goal of 190 lb should happen before the end of the summer. If successful, it will mark the third different time I’ve lost over 50 pounds in the last 20 years.

While there’s literally no doubt in my mind that it will happen, maintaining without significant weight fluctuation will be the serious challenge. I’m already giving thought to how to best attempt it this time around, because it’s always been easier to work my body back into healthy shape. In fact, I’m good at it. However, maintaining my ideal weight… Ugh. It seems like the act of increasing the caloric intake or reducing the exercise intensity puts a serious dent in the motivation. Something has to be different about my mindset or approach this time around — just what exactly is currently unclear.

As the effort to reach my goal and to resolve that dilemma in advance continues, some other thoughts and things related to a full year spent on this effort:

• Given the number of trips on this roller coaster, it seemed odd that changing the kitty litter recently made me mindful of what 40 pounds equates to. (This thought is something already experienced in some form or another over the years.) Because we have three cats — two of them above-average sized — we go through a 35-pound bag of litter each week. Picking up an unopened bag last week made me realize just how much harder my heart needs to work when lugging that much extra weight. It also made me realize how much it can hurt my back. 
• Today also marks the last day of the dry planned month mentioned in previous posts. The confluence truly was a coincidence. To be 100% honest, this dry month is actually only four full weeks.Because February is also only four weeks, Sally and I decided that our dry month was in fact February — we just started several weeks late.
• Hitting the 40-pound mark today was also a happy coincidence, resulting from losing 3.6 lb over the past two weeks. I applied no extraordinary effort during this time, out of the desire to not get fixated on otherwise meaningless interim goals. However, I also made it a point to not skip any exercise or to allow myself any kind of extra caloric intake during that time. That’s coming to a temporary halt this weekend, and there will be no fretting over any of the (temporary) increase in weight resulting from taking a complete break from the routine for 48 hours.
• One of the things missing from the past two weeks: a meal or a whole day of not worrying about my caloric intake. Typically, there’s at least one of these every couple weeks. I feel as a special shout-out needs to go to my friend Tommie, who is with me at those meals, or on those days, far more often than not. I’m not blaming him in the least for that — it’s all on me. Ironically, I’m almost certainly being the bad influence on him.
• Amazingly, I’ve been successful over the past four months without regular public accountability posts. In all the years of doing this, it’s the first time the weight has come down without them. In the past, the lack of such posts usually meant the cessation of regular exercise and/or eating properly. Having said that, when the time to transition to maintenance mode arrives, it seems that a return of those posts will be essential (they’ve never been incorporated into a maintenance mode before.)