keep on keeping on

It amazes me, the way once you decide to do something, magically you can do it. You can decide to hit the check out now! button on zappos dot com and find yourself with a brand new pair of very shiny boots the next day.

Or decide to cram an entire chocolate chip cookie into your face and find yourself feeling slightly sick and filled with undirected hate (except you know exactly where that hate is directed, and ooh it burns) or bitter resignation.

Or you can pour yourself a bowl of Kashi Go Lean and slice a banana and pour some vanilla soy milk over the whole deal, and declare it Good and Filling. And then you've found yourself on a road that is Good and Filling, and you weigh yourself three times a day because Kashi Go Lean can't lie. I have Gone Lean. Where's the Leaness, people?

You can also find yourself losing patience, but then decide that maybe what you've really lost is your mind.

So I've been at it for two days, and I feel different and good, but what difference does two days make, really, in the grand scheme of things. Enough of a difference, for now, I think. But I keep waiting for someone to notice the glow of righteousness and goodness that surrounds me. I want someone to come bounding up to me, telling me "I just had to shake your hand, because I noticed that you are just super awesome!" I want to be sainted. Maybe not.

I have not yet done an appreciable amount of formal exercise, though every time I walk anywhere or take the stairs, I am very proud of myself. As if I have been previously roaming the world in a fatty cart instead of, you know, walking or taking the stairs every day. But it's the consciousness of it, that I think is important. Being aware that movement and moving is something I need to keep doing -- and being aware that it's something I have to keep pushing it.

One thing I will say about these past few months of backsliding, is that I never abandoned the habit I picked up, back when I was good at this weight loss thing (having an anxiety disorder is super-helpful in that regard) of taking the bus that left me a fifteen minute uphill walk to work. Even though the downhill walk on my way home could hardly be called a chore, I am still proud of every goddamn morning and every goddamn evening spent waddling that stupid hill. Maybe someday I'll jog it! That was a funny joke I made up.

Anyway, I think I can keep on with the keeping on. And maybe settle down with the weighing in. And maybe have a bowl of Kashi for dinner.

setbacks

I knew it before I got on the scale – I felt it in my clothes, and in my body, and I had been avoiding stepping up for exactly that reason – I was not interested in the concrete evidence. It's the same reason that sometimes, it takes me right up to the due date to pay a bill – I know what's in my checking account, to the penny, but sometimes, I just don't want to look at that balance, and watch myself deduct from that balance, because the numbers, they're not the prettiest numbers you're ever going to see. Working in academia, it doesn't pay the Big Dollars. Eating Snickers, though – it makes for the big ass.

And I knew that, and so the number I saw, when I jumped up there, naked, first thing in the morning, was not entirely a surprise, but it still wasn't, as you can imagine, pleasant. It was actually deeply, deeply unpleasant. So was kicking the scale with a bare foot. Because ow.

Ow all around, really.

But it's finally real. All this diet planning, exercise thinking about, grocery shopping stuff was playacting, because I really didn't know what kind of shape I was in, and I really hadn't realized how bad it had gotten. It wasn't real, that sense that I have to buckle down.

I'm buckling down, now. I hope this is the last time I get to say that. I hope that future setbacks – because there's always a future setback – will be temporary, minor, easily recoverable from. I hope that I don't ever have to see that number, ever again.