First and foremost, I suppose I need to accept some credit where credit is due because although a couple of weeks ago I wrote about my weight loss going kind of slow, in reality I ended up losing 10 pounds during the month of April!
*hold for applause*
I guess it’s tough because I know that in the past when I’ve tried to lose weight, I tend to lose a bunch of water weight right off the bat and it’s a nice little drop, however this time it really has been slow and steady for the most part, which I know is how it’s supposed to go anyways, but I digress.
I think I’m both excited and nervous about May because while I’m generally feeling good about the new choices that I’m making, it’s still a question mark as to what the long term impact will look like … not that two months is long term…
Part of it is really because in all of my various attempts over the years, I’ve only ever been able to lose maybe 20 – 30 pounds, and usually I’ve stalled out closer to the 15-pound mark.
And I know that I don’t necessarily have to lose another 10 pounds this month – again, it’s a journey, not a destination.
Maybe it’s just that I’ll feel better about saying that “I’m working on losing weight” again once I get past my previous points of failure. It’s not that it doesn’t count until I clear those previous hurdles, yet sometimes it kind of feels like it.
It reminds me of a bit from comedian Tom Segura I heard a while ago where he talks about imagining explaining to people how he’s lost all kinds of weight without actually having lost it yet … as in the classic, “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle…” line and so forth.
I think because I’ve tried to do this so many times, it feels a little fake to celebrate these smaller milestones that I lost and then eventually gained back and then some. It actually makes me wish I had some sort of record that I could hold myself to as I progress to be able to say, “Now I’ve lost 25 pounds, and I weight what I used to weigh five years ago…” or something like that.
Or maybe I just need to stop thinking about it and go do something productive instead! 😛