Weigh Ins 4:30-32

Friends, it has been an interesting few weeks, but overall successful.  I finished my run of my evening show, I rehearsed and opened a kid's show, and got through an illness. My knee is still giving me problems, so exercise is severely limited.  I weighed in today at 482.6, which is almost 2 pounds in the last 3 weeks.  This is not great progress, but it is movement in the right direction, at just over half a pound a week.

My focus right now is on healthier eating in regards to my cardiovascular health.  I have new doctor who is going to help me stabilize my blood pressure, but I need to make sure I'm doing my part on the home front.  Losing weight is part of that, but reducing salt and other undesirable nutrients is first on the list.  My hope is that one will lead to the other, and that by reducing the things that give me trouble with blood pressure I will have overall better meals and start losing a bit more weight.

On the exercise front I have to be smart right now.  I need to give my knee at least this week to rest up and get healed and then start working in some moderate movement to keep up the strength.  Mindfulness and building better habits are going to be key moving forward and will set me up for better results through the year end.  I would love to be under 350 for the new year, and I think this is a very reachable goal.

Weigh In 4:29

The thing about yo-yos- what goes up must come down, and vice versa.  I completely erased last week's big gain with a big loss.  The stress and poor meal habits that come with tech week and opening a show took their toll, but a more normalized schedule got me back to exactly where I had been, 384.4. Though I am treading water over the past 2 weeks I still take that as a victory.  No I want to take this big week and tack on another for good measure.

Unfortunately, my ability to exercise outside of the show is now compromised.  Due to my fall and probably some overuse issues as well I have sprained my knee and have a contusion of the patellar tendon as well.  Rest and elevation are indicated as much as is earthly possible for the next month or so.    While it is disappointing to be laid up like that I want to take it as an opportunity to be very precise with my diet.  Once I have a better foundation there I can jump back into workouts when I am ready.

Weigh In 4:28

Oof.  Not a great week.  I came in at 388.2, which is a considerable backtrack.  The combination of tech, bad choices, and some other things definitely put me on the back foot, but there was some good this week too.  My clothes are fitting more loosely and considering how physically demanding the show can be I would like to think I gained a bit of muscle last week.  This is the time of year when football games, get togethers, family visits, and holidays start to conspire against me, so I need to be extra vigilant.  I have made some positive choices already this week, so here's hoping for a nice loss.

Weigh In 4:27

A little late once again, but tech week will do that to you.  I came in at 384.4 this past week, which is a solid loss.  All of the dancing and work we've been doing for the show has given me a bit of leeway the past week, but it is back to mindfulness now that the madness has calmed a bit.  I will of course post a weigh in this coming week, but I have no idea how things will look.  and I'm going to make the choice to be OK with that now.  It will make things much more enjoyable down the road.

Weigh in 4:26 - A Choice Is A Choice...Isn't It?

Halfway through the year.  I'd be lying if I were to say I am where I expected I would be.  This far into my weight loss in 2010 I had lost 112 pounds, which is an unbelievable number.  This time around I have lost just over 30.  I weighed in this morning at 385.6.  I am still learning not to compare the two.  I am on the right track and this time around I feel I am progressing in a much more sustainable way.  As energized and successful as I felt last time I can look back on it and see that I was not buying into the lifelong aspect of this journey.  So, smaller numbers, but slow and steady wins a race like this.

I planned to pen a post this weekend and I did not, but the points I was pondering then are still applicable (Alliteration over). The past couple weeks in my life I have been pointed to not just the power of choice, but the power of positive choice.  It may seem ridiculous, but I feel that one can make the same decision for two different reasons, and because one comes from a positive and one from a negative the results will be vastly different.  In my life the last few years I have made many fantastic choices for terrible reasons:  I eat healthy because I want to avoid health problems, I want to not be fat, I want to avoid being seen as something I do not want to be, I cannot do this because it will cause bad things to happen. Lately I have been trying to focus on positive choice: I eat healthy because it is a gift to my body, I want to achieve certain physical goals, I want to be seen as a collection of positive attributes, I can chose this because in the long run I will be happier.  Until recently I would have said this was "six of one, half dozen of the other".  And I would have been wrong.

This is a lesson I was first exposed to by Audrey Francis at school last summer, and continue to be faced with both artistically and personally.  Avoidance and negative choice is the surest way to create negative consequence.  Rather than working to avoid an undesirable outcome I should chose to work toward something positive.  Looking back it is no wonder I got burned out after spending so much time denying, avoiding, and making saying "I can't" several times a day.  If each meal becomes an opportunity to treat myself well rather than a pitfall to avoid then the habits I want to form will become much easier to live with, and I can create a personal culture of self-worth.  Ultimately I have to accept that I am worth healthy food, strength in my body, and pride in my career.  And self worth is something I have to learn.  Thank God I have so many opportunities to do something right for myself.

Weigh Ins 4:23-25

Well, that was an unplanned break. I didn't really have a good reason for it, I just put the blog low on my priority list.   The last couple weeks have been up and down and I am currently at 386.8.  I hit 30 pounds down last week and jumped up a bit this week, but I am doing the right things for the most part, including pretty strenuous rehearsals at the moment, so the results should come.  This week I definitely need to buckle down a bit on home cooking, so I will be investing time there and hopefully get a nice boost.  I saw a neat recipe on Food Network that I plan to adapt to be a bit healthier.  Things are pretty busy at the moment, so expect a more complete check in this weekend.

Weigh In 4:22

If consistency is the name of the game, then I have that in spades.  I lost another 1.2 pounds this week, taking me down to 386.4.  I am within shouting distance of losing 30 pounds overall, and that is no mean feat.  Are things moving more slowly than I would like?  Absolutely.  But a positive difference I feel this time over three years ago is that I am developing a lifestyle.  I am imperfect and I am allowing myself to be.  But the curve of progress is bending in the right direction.  I am fairly consistently losing about a pound a week.  And if I can do that with what is, lets be honest, very little effort then when I decide to pour it on a bit I can maybe get ahead of the pace.  This week was one of those times where I made steps to maybe gain a little momentum.

I met on Tuesday with a former theater colleague who is a personal trainer.  She and I crafted a game plan of some exercise I can and should do every day to build core strength, balance, and start to build up some muscle.  What effect this will have on the number on the scale is hard to say, but if I replace every pound of fat I lose with a pound of muscle I am ok with that for the time being, because eventually biology will catch up with me and I will start to use up some of that stored fuel.  I have a 1 pound baseline of progress that I have maintained for half a year.  As frustratingly slow as that is it is not all I can do, but rather a foundation to build on.  This week is the first of trying to attack this problem on two fronts.  Anybody familiar with military history knows that defense on two fronts is difficult, and I plan to take the advantage it gives.  Add in the bonus of having considerable movement in some of my rehearsals for my show and I am going to have some pretty good activity in my life.  I expect some good things in the coming month.