Today, June 2, 2010, is my restart day.

I started off today by dreading my weigh-in.  Naturally.  I knew it wouldn’t be good news.  When I finally got myself down to the gym to weigh, though, I was surprised; the number wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  After all, I haven’t been a very good girl, lately.  I’ll be sharing that number, as well as my other stats, in another post.

In this post, I’m laying out how I’m approaching this journey.

Having already lost 140 pounds once, I learned some valuable information from that experience.  Here are some of the things I learned, and what I will take to heart this time, which I am determined to make my last time.

Acceptance.

I have to accept where I’m at, right now, right at this moment.  My current situation, whether it’s today or a year from now, was a result of my past, but my past keeps happening at every moment, and I am capable of changing.  What I am, today, is not what I am capable of being ten minutes from now, ten months, ten years.  Accepting myself and doing my best to remain objective will do me more good than bitching and carrying on about how fat I am.  That solves nothing, and just makes me feel bad.

Diligence.

Habits are formed by repetition.  I must be diligent about each day, about taking the care to do it right, and in the long run, diligence will show results, whether it’s in feeling better, a loss on the scale, the ability to walk further, the ability to walk away from something unhealthy.  Diligence creates strength, and the stronger I am, the more likely I am to succeed.

Diligence also means planning and record keeping.  For me, that means approaching weight loss as a scientific experiment, and a willingness to see what is working, and what isn’t.  No diet plan will work unless you’re willing to work the plan, and that means evolving as your body adapts.

Discipline.

Hand in hand with diligence, discipline will make me mentally strong.  With discipline, the constant internal fights decrease in volume.  The little voice that says sleep in! You don’t really need to exercise, now, when you can do it later in the day! doesn’t win. The reasoning that says just this once won’t hurt goes away, because with discipline, as with diligence, comes habit.

Honesty.

If I fudge on a serving of something so it appears I’m within my calories or carb count for the day, who am I kidding?  I have still put in more fuel than my body can use for that day.  If and when that happens, I have to be honest with myself, because lying to myself or anyone else does not change what I just put in my mouth, or the exercise intensity I backed off on, or the water I didn’t drink, or the vitamins I didn’t take.

That also includes being honest with myself about the reasons why I’m fat, and not making excuses.  Yes, I have metabolic issues, but they are not insurmountable, and they are not an excuse for having let myself slide. Making excuses is just a way of trying to get around the hard work involved in getting healthy.  Regardless of whatever problems are present in my body, I can either sit around and bitch about them, or do something about them.  I’m choosing to do something about them.

I can choose to better my situation, no matter what that situation is.

Hard Work.

There’s nothing easy about losing as much weight as I need to lose.  There’s no short cut for building the muscle I need to build.  It takes hard work, and most of us want to take the easiest route possible.  Believing that there’s some magic bullet, some pill that will help, some hormonal treatment that will magically just melt off the pounds — well, that’s just so much BS.

Ever notice how most of these miracle supplements come with the recommendation of a diet plan and regular exercise?  My goodness.  That negates the reason for the miracle pill, doesn’t it?  One popular diet has people taking a hormone and eating a 500 calorie a day diet.  500 calories!  My bet is that if you just ate 500 calories a day, that would produce the exact same weight loss with or without the hormone.  And honestly, there’s nothing even remotely healthy about eating 500 calories a day.  Get into enough of a calorie deficit for a long enough amount of time, and your body will act to protect itself and weight loss will come to a screeching halt.

Food As Fuel.

Understanding food’s actual role in fueling the body means being selective about what you choose to put into it.  I will be choosing “whole food” options as much as possible.  There may be times when this isn’t feasible, such as when dining out, but whenever possible, I will choose the whole food option.  This means staying away from “frankenfoods”, or highly processed foods, including foods designated as diet foods.  That also means cutting out diet sodas, artificial sweeteners, and the like.

This is the plan.  My base diet plan is low carb in nature, because my body seems to respond to it best.  I’ll be posting specific goals along with stats at a later time, but for now, this is the first step on the journey.