So I’ve been thinking about weight loss stuff again over the past couple of days…
Yeah, it’s been a while! 😯
I don’t know … maybe it’s the 5 pounds less that I weighed in on the scale yesterday – mostly on account of being sick for the past week and a half, but this topic has been on my mind yet again and I think I want to talk about it. And this is going to seem odd because despite this big, old blog just recently passing 800,000 words, in the last couple of years I’ve kind of steered clear of talking about weight loss and dieting efforts – frankly, I think, because I did so much of it early on and it feels a little embarrassing to keep writing the same stuff over and over again.
It’s true that a lot of what I’m going to write is probably stuff I’ve said already, but who knows – maybe I’m finally in a better place to actually be able to do something about it.
In a way, there’s a lot to be learned in looking back at those failed attempts. One high level thing that I noticed just now is that for each time that I fell off the wagon, it was easy to cite some big thing that had just happened that threw us all for a loop – got married, got a puppy, got a house, dealing with pregnancy stuff – and the funny thing is, despite having the mother of all excuses to be thrown just down the hall from me, thankfully sleeping soundly at this very moment, I guess that almost-34-year-old Scott has learned that … there’s always going to be something to throw you off your game…
For the next few years it will be baby, or maybe even another baby, and then school, then teenagers, then high school … holy cow, how did this turn into a post that whipped through the next twenty years of my life in the better part of a sentence?! 😯
I think the takeaway from it all is just what I’ve said before – I need to find a way to maintain a healthy diet that fits with my day-to-day life because if big chunks of time were only sporadically available in my 20’s, I can tell already midway through that my 30’s aren’t looking any better and I don’t even want to think about the decades after that!
The funny thing is, despite my existence feeling kind of topsy-turvy right now with the introduction of a new human to care for, at the same time this is kind of perfect timing to start making some changes like this in my life for the better. My current work arrangements after the baby was born have had me working from home almost exclusively, which means that in both a bad way and a good way, the refrigerator is only a 15-second walk away from me at any point during my day.
What this should mean in the positive way is that instead of eating whatever I can scarf down in the car on the drive in for breakfast, there’s really no reason I shouldn’t be eating something simple and delicious like a quick omelette or some scrambled eggs and juice every single morning.
And for lunch, not having questionable cafeteria food within walking distance (and super good, 400-calorie cookies…) and tons more fast food options a quick drive away, there’s really no reason I shouldn’t be throwing together the types of lunches that I always avoided taking to work – sandwiches that would get soggy sitting in the fridge, pretty much anything not frozen for simplicity’s sake.
Snacks can be healthy stuff like fruits and vegetables that I don’t have to carefully portion out in the morning when I’m already running late.
My tea can … well, there’s really not much different about the tea because that’s where I actually started drinking it in the first place, but I can start that again, too!
And that’s all just food!!!
I’m not going to ramble here incessantly because just like the changes I want to make, I’ve been reading a lot of posts that remind me that it’s small, consistent changes over time that will really make the difference in the long haul, so that’s what I want to do. Long term, I’d love to see a slightly more photogenic me by Christmastime so that I don’t have to be as crop-happy when choosing which family photos to post as I have been lately; in the short term, while I’m still trying to get over this sick stuff, I think I’m going to start making some small tweaks here and there and we’ll see what happens.
I’m sure we’ll talk again soon! 😉