Charting my weight is showing me something that I’ve been hiding from: I’ve been inconsistent.
The first few weeks, weight loss was steady and the chart showed a nice, sweeping decline with the occasional slight rise. That’s what it should look like. But the last few weeks have jumped around like a frog on caffeine, and I’ve been frustrated about that. That Inner Walt voice has even said “why are you doing this?” and I’ve been tempted to say “screw it”.
Two things are going on, and they need to be corrected. One has to do with completing the tasks at hand, and the other with attitude.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a lot of stuff going on, particularly on weekends. Because of that, I haven’t been drinking enough water; now, I will say some of that was unavoidable because of circumstances, and I knew that not drinking enough water would produce the result of water retention. That’s how my body is. Not enough water? It’s going to hang on to every drop.
But there have also been a few days where I just haven’t wanted to make the effort. And it is an effort, make no mistake. I have a 24 ounce Cool Gear cup that I drink from, and I’ve discovered that the magic number of refills that seems to trigger water balance, for me, is 7-8. That’s 168 to 192 ounces of water in addition to any other sorts of drinks I might have, like coffee or a soft drink. This means I drink water pretty much constantly, but if that’s the amount of water my body needs, that’s what I have to give it. Slacking off on that will produce the exact result I’m getting: water retention, so I have no idea if I’m really losing weight; I’m probably not.
Along with that, I’ve been even more slack on supplements. I admit I really don’t like taking them, but they help me, both with energy and with blood sugar. I do better and feel better when I take them, but the actual physical act of taking them is what I don’t like, so I often shove that in the back of my mind. Oh, I forgot the probiotics with lunch. I tell myself to get them the next time I’m up, and so, I make it to dinner without that round of supplements. (Some are taken with meals.)
These things go hand in hand. Because if I don’t do things perfectly, I can’t expect results. I can’t let myself get frustrated and let that Inner Walt voice start eating at me if I’m not making the effort to do these things.
And that speaks to the second part: attitude.
It’s not only the whole Inner Walt thing; it’s the expectation of results without effort. Instead of “oh, I don’t feel like getting up and refilling my water”, I should be pushing myself to go do it, because otherwise, I slack and don’t complete the task. It’s like sitting around for half the day thinking “I’m cold”, but remaining uncomfortable and doing nothing about it.
I need to change that attitude. Even though it hurts to do specific tasks (like getting up out of my seat), I need to stop procrastinating and just do it. I’ll be ahead at the end of the day, and proud have having completed everything I promised myself I would, if I would make that one simple change.
Living each day perfectly is a tall order. By perfect I mean completing each goal — eat right, take supplements, get enough water. When I’ve done each of these things consistently, I can fairly expect the result of weight loss. If not, then I know I need to adjust something. But until I’ve done that on a consistent basis, I can’t expect weight loss, and I can’t adjust to see if changes will help. In other words, I’m sabotaging my own success.
It’s time for that to stop.
I originally wrote the above post on Wednesday; it’s Friday, now. With the exception of an accidentally higher choice of carbs in Wednesday evening’s meal, I did everything right on Wednesday and Thursday, and had a significant amount of water loss after both days.
Not enough, however, to show a weight loss for this week, so there’s no clever photo of a fish (or whatever) this week, but I’m in a good place about this. I’m within 1.5 pounds of my low, and I intend to keep working on perfect days in the hopes of showing a loss in the weeks to come.
This week has been a reminder that using the tools available to me will help me, and that I can’t expect good results without good effort.