It's been a week or so since I've been able to sit down and write. I have developed the habit of meeting with a friend on Saturday mornings. We sit down together and physically (pen and paper) write down goals for the coming week. It has been helpful for me. It helps set the tone for the upcoming week. It also helps me look back and realize the things I was able to accomplish in the previous week.
I continue to battle my weight. I have reached a point where the cardio I'm doing (walking dogs) is not intense enough to maintain my weight or help me lose weight. After Brian lost his job, well, really before that, I lost some of the previous discipline I had regarding food.
The simple reason is that Brian is not home every night. This means that there isn't always an adult with me at the end of dinner. If there is an adult with me, then it is easy to close the kitchen. I can put away leftovers, load the dishwasher, etc. If there isn't, then I have to leave the leftovers out for when Brian gets home. I am alone fielding the multiple requests from each child, trying to negotiate terms with one or two of them about their amount of screen time, or signing homework slips or the like.
The stress wears on me. And in the best circumstances, when the stress hits, I can take a quiet time or write something or do some deep breathing.
If I have no one around who can run interference, then it becomes tricky to set a physical boundary between me and the food.
Back when I started this journey, I set a rule for myself that I stopped eating at 8 PM. Over the past couple of months, I relaxed the rule and then struggled to set that boundary again. The picture I have in my head is of a herd of sheep being let out of their pen. I'm positive, though I've not experienced it firsthand, that herding all the sheep back into the pen is not easy.
Similarly, it has been tough to set that boundary for myself again.
I've also reached a point where the dog walking is not strenuous enough activity. I am racking up the steps on a regular basis, but my heart rate isn't getting into the right zone. I've been threatening to start strength training for several weeks. As usual, I've been overthinking it. It's tough to have to to start over again.
Meanwhile, I've also decided to stop weighing myself. I had developed the habit of weighing myself every morning. It was not serving me well.
I've written about that number before. It's a fixed point in time. It is a snapshot of where you are, but it's really only one of several factors when discussing health. So instead of obsessing over one of those factors, I'm going to focus on my measurements. I am going to ask a friend to help me take my measurements. I am also going to mark my watch band and take pictures of myself. I will then set all of that aside for a month. After 30 days, I will pull the scale out, but I will also check my measurements, see how my watch is fitting and look at my before and after pictures.
There's no point, when I am just coming out of a major depressive episode, to measure something that will end up weighing me down and possibly dump me back into the morass. I won't lie, it's going to be difficult. Breaking old habits and trying to develop new ones is exhausting. Our brains are malleable things, capable of a great many things.
We all have pathways in our brains. Each pathway represents a learned behavior. Some of them are more important than we realize. Take going to the bathroom. It's seldom that we stop and consider all the steps involved in doing that. Our brains figure out how to do simple things like that and then it becomes second nature. It becomes a deep pathway in our brain, like a well-worn path in a forest preserve.
The problem becomes when that pathway is no longer good. Think about a path in the forest preserve that gets flooded. If we try to take the same path we've always taken, we'll drown. We need to find a new path, but it will mean getting through underbrush, fighting off brambles, etc. It's not for everyone. Quite frankly, most would probably just turn around and go back. But when you know what's at the end of the trail, it can be enough to propel you through all of the yuck.
For me, I'm not looking for a specific number, clothing size, etc. I'm looking to be fit. I want to be more muscular. I want my resting heart rate to be lower. I want less body fat.
I will continue to meet with my friend every week. I'm going to try to make small, manageable goals. I am optimistic that even if I don't transform into the person I've always wanted to be by next month, God will have shown me what the goal should be instead.
(I apologize if this post is rambling. Usually, I write them all in one sitting. I'm trying to write everyday so I started yesterday, but got too tired to continue. I don't feel like it flowed as well as usual. On the flip side, I did write yesterday and today, so I'm counting it as a win.)
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