Week 25: Reassess

Sunday’s weigh-in was an exercise in frustration.  I didn’t gain any weight, but I didn’t lose any, either.  It marked the 6th week of my second plateau, and I will admit, I was frustrated enough that I shed a few tears.  And even though I know why I’m getting nowhere on the scales, it doesn’t make it any easier on an emotional level.  Despite a few days of consuming more calories that I should, I’ve been working hard, so the lack of progress for a sixth week in a row was heart-breaking.

Fortunately, I have good friends.

One of those friends has been on her own fitness journey for quite some time, and she has been invaluable to my own journey in both guidance, support and endless inspiration.  This particular friend knew I was upset after reading last week’s blog post, and she started up a G-chat conversation with me immediately after reading it.  Five exchanges in she sent me this question:

“If you never lost another pound . . . could you be happy?”

And everything came to a screeching halt.  Wait, what?  I read the question over two more times, just to make sure I’d read right.  See, this friend doesn’t ask me stuff like that just for the hell of it, because she knows that even the mere process of thinking about that kind of thing can really upset me.   Asking that question was her way of telling me that I was overlooking something, and that I needed to step back and see the bigger picture.  So instead of answering with what might have been a reflexive “no”, I made myself stop and seriously consider that question.  It was a few minutes later before I finally typed:

“Yeah, I think I could be.”

And after I came to that realization, I could finally see what it was I was missing.  I had reached the point in the journey where it was time to reassess my goals and priorities.   And having done that, I’ve come to the somewhat surprising conclusion that weight loss is no longer the main focus of this journey.  Being lighter would make my running goals easier to reach, but they certainly are not impossible the way I am now, either.  So, while I will still be counting calories to make sure I don’t gain any weight back, I’m not focusing on those scales quite so much anymore.  Instead I’ll be focusing more on my running and shaving minutes off my average mile times, because I still dream about running that marathon.

And I suspect that at some point in this process the weight will start to come off again whether or not I’m worrying about it.   I’m just making a conscious decision to not worry about it anymore.