Today is Opening Day of Sugar Season: Halloween. The season goes from now through Easter; just about every occasion has something sweet tied to it. Candy on Halloween, pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, candy canes at Christmas, chocolates on Valentine’s Day, and chocolate bunnies on Easter.

Me? I’ll have very little of the seasonal sweets. I have a plan in place, and I intend to see it through.

I’m giving myself until the end of the year to break through this weight loss plateau. At the beginning of this week (Monday), I was 4.6 pounds heavier than I am, now, on Friday morning. I’ve got nearly 10 pounds to go before I’m in new weight loss territory, but if I keep doing what I did, this week, I believe I’ll get there.

What I did was simply return to the basics. For me, weight loss generally doesn’t happen unless I’m eating right (of course), getting enough rest, drinking enough water, taking supplements*, moving, and keeping track of what I’m doing.

I strayed too far away from these basics. Sometimes, I can lose weight and not have these things in place, but my success rate is much higher when I’m careful. Not that it’s a lot of fun to keep track of water intake or record everything that goes into my mouth, but keeping that discipline usually has a good result, which makes it worth it. Disciplining myself also gets my head in the right place, which is even more important.

I still face my biggest challenge, though: weekends. Tomorrow’s a good example; we’re participating in the annual chili cook-off, which is a big deal. We’ll be among 50 teams, and serving several thousand people who come for chili; we also taste other chili. Then, afterward, we usually head out for a beer and something to eat.

It’s occasions like this when I’m bad about not wanting to restrict myself. While I allow a higher range of carbs/calories on the weekends, I’ve been entirely too lax lately. If I’m going to be honest with myself, this mindset likely plays a big role of why I’m not progressing.

Tomorrow, I’ll have to make a point to restrict myself to small servings. Recording food will be a nightmare (everyone’s chili is different), but it still needs to be done; I know it’ll be inaccurate, but if I keep recording, then I’m more likely to keep the discipline necessary to mitigate the damages. My goal for the weekend is to minimize the gain so it doesn’t exceed what I worked hard to lose during the course of the week.

The purpose in returning to this disciplined approach is not only to return to weight loss mode, but to make sure that when I’m telling a doctor I’ve done everything possible, on my own, to take charge of my weight loss — that will actually be true. Overall, my visit with my doctor, last week, was a good one; while I’m still waiting to see the actual numbers of my labs, I’ve been told they’re within the proper lab ranges. (There’s always some dispute over whether lab ranges are appropriate, especially for those with complicated thyroid issues, like me.)

Despite that, I felt a little sheepish, complaining to my doc last week that I’d hit a plateau. I hadn’t done everything possible, and I knew it; I was secretly hoping for an easier solution than the hard work approach. There will always be part of me that wants things the fast and easy way, but last week’s doctor’s visit was a reality check.

For me, fast and easy does not exist. I need to accept that.

*A note on supplements: I don’t take any commercially targeted supplements that are advertised for weight loss. Instead, when I talk about “supplements”, it refers to vitamins and minerals that assist in metabolic and other physiological functions. These are things like chromium, fish oil, magnesium, ALA, taurine — and others. They do seem to support and help, at least for me.