The Fuck It Phase

A couple weeks ago I opened MyFitnessPal for the first time in over six months. No more yo-yo. This time I want to be serious. I want to get more active and lose the weight I know is not healthy. But this time I want to keep it off.

Every year, I hit a point over the summer where I just stop trying. I can’t tie it to any one event. I just know that somehow I hit this fuck it phase and give up all the healthy habits I’d been practicing up to that point. It starts gradually. I stop logging food for a vacation and never pick it back up. Several weeks of on call make me stop kickboxing Saturdays. I blame the Win10 deployment for killing my morning yoga practice. If I’m being honest, it’s about so much more than a busy time at work. It’s about me finding excuses to fall back into unhealthy habits. That’s what needs to stop.

I started tracking with MFP September 18, 2015 at 166.4 lbs, the heaviest I’ve been since my pregnancy. Or at least the heaviest I know about since I wasn’t actively tracking my weight before that first weigh-in. I also hadn’t quit drinking yet. By January 2016, I was down to 156. Not the progress I wanted, but better than nothing. I can see the scale going up and down in my log entries. I remember the struggle all too well. Not eating so I’d have enough calories to drink, lying to my log because I couldn’t remember how many drinks I had, skipping lunch since I splurged on a donut for breakfast. Not my favorite phase.

Then came giving up booze in June of 2016, and the weight poured off. I was under 150 by the end of July, and I hit 141 that September. For a brief time, I thought I could see a 13-something on the scale. It never happened. I stayed in the 140s through most of 2017, but I’d already fallen out of my consistent logging practice. The MFP stats don’t lie. Let the fuck its begin.

I weighed in at 165 lbs. in January of 2018. I even joined a few Healthy Wage challenges trying to motivate myself. (Three of them to be exact.) My last logged weigh in before I recommitted to a healthier lifestyle was on April 25, 2018 at 149.5 lbs. If only I could’ve maintained that weight until the Healthy Wage rechecks in November and December, I could have earned my money back.

Now that I’m starting this journey again, I want to do it right. I want to find a way to get back to the habits I enjoyed, the ones that kept me healthy even if I didn’t enjoy them, and still find time for fun and relaxation too.

I think that’s part of how the fuck its begin. I feel so busy with all my daily tasks that I get overwhelmed and just give up. As I ease myself back into these routines, I’m trying to be much kinder to myself than I am when I fall out of the routine. Perhaps that’s the key: understanding, flexibility, and moderation. Here’s to another year trying to be the best version of myself, hopefully with more success fighting the fuck its.