I’ve made it through the mental hurdle of beating the number of weeks I was on plan last year, before I bailed out.  I’ve made it through some mental head games I was playing with myself over recent weeks.  And now, here I am at Week 20.

I’m a slow loser.  I’ve been at this for over four months; I haven’t lost a tremendous amount of weight, and no one has noticed.  I’m not complaining.  I’d love to lose 100 pounds overnight, but that’s not realistic.  And right now, I’m all about being realistic.  Even if you calculate no more than the 17 pounds I have currently listed, that’s still roughly 4 pounds a month, and if I were to continue at that rate, I’d be nearly 50 pounds down in a year.  And I’d be thrilled with that.

In the long run, it’s just plain stupid to give up because of slow loss.  Even if it’s slow, it’s still loss.  Even if it’s slow, I feel a ton better physically than I did when I started.  Even if it’s slow, I’m fitting in smaller clothing, and moving easier.  And maybe the most important part: even if it’s slow, I’m glad to be doing something that’s benefiting my health, instead of feeling bad about myself and beating myself up for being too weak to stick with it.  Been there… for the better part of my adult life.

It’s quite freeing to be able to let go of the burden of failure.  I’m not failing, no matter how slowly things change, and in all honesty, it’s really not that slow.  I think sometimes we get so hung up on what we think should be happening, that we mentally choke and start sabotaging ourselves.  That sense of failure, that sense of making excuses because of this circumstance or that, raises its ugly head.  We become our worst enemy because we allow ourselves to judge our success by indicators that aren’t even the most important ones.

I’m glad, right now, because I’m currently in a place where I am accessing all of the indicators and not just one or two, and I am most definitely one that lets the number on the scale rule out everything else.  In part, I blame a society that stresses weight more than anything else, when the facts are that unless someone tells you their weight, you’d never know for sure.  If we can look at someone else, and see that they’re fit, healthy, strong, look good, fit in their clothes, and think we’d love to be in their exact spot, would knowing what they weigh change anything?  So why does it when we’re accessing our own levels of success?  It’s just one indicator among many, and shouldn’t be the derailer that it often is.

I’m happy with keeping that number away from myself, right now.  It’s working.