Once More to the Dieting Breach

Look. When you’ve been blogging every weekday for as long as I have, you’re forced to face certain realities about yourself. One such reality is that I have a hard time sticking to a long-term healthy approach to eating. True, some of this is complicated by the whole pandemic thing that’s been going on, along with all the trappings 2020 brought with it. I eat more when I’m stressed, and I’m sure I’m not the only one to fall into that category. It’s also true that while my weight isn’t where I’d like it to be now, a good chunk of that is because I shifted my goalposts a while ago.

At peak Bryce Weight, I was over 240. I brought that down to the 215 range, and it bounced around there for a good five or seven years until 2016, when I decided to get serious about bringing it down. At that point, I focused on healthy eating and more exercise, and I brought my weight more to the 190 range, which was 5 pounds under the official “overweight” mark for my height. A couple years later, I made another push, and I got down to 175 for a little bit. Since then, it’s bounced around between 180 and 190. If I’d told 240 pound me that I was 185.6 this morning, he’d be ecstatic and very proud of me.

What I mean to say is that I’m now at a weight that I’m comfortable with, but at the same time, I’m not satisfied with it either. The pandemic hit and I went up to over 190, getting dangerously close to 195 at times. So I focused on it again and brought it back to around 182. Since then, it’s crept back up again. During the pandemic, it’s like if I’m not paying enough attention to it, I just revert back to eating in a way I don’t want to eat, longterm.

Which is why I’m focusing on it once again, and doing so publicly. I’ve found the best way for me to commit to something is to make a big deal of it. To shout it from the rooftops and set up a system of public accountability for myself. If I tell you all that I’m going to be checking in each week with an update on how the process is going, then I’m much, much likelier to actually make progress on this than if I sit back and make a private determination.

On a big scale, I’ve been successful with my weight management. I’ve kept it to a level that’s below “overweight” consistently for years now, and I’ve been able to generally keep a handle on it during the pandemic as well. This new push is really about resetting back down to a better level for me, paying particular attention to the fact that as I get older, keeping the weight off will only become more difficult. My hope is that I can get to the point where I’m bouncing between 175 and 180 instead of 185 and 190. It’s not a huge difference, but it would give me some extra wiggle room for things like holiday dinners . . .

In any case, I’ll be chiming in with weekly Friday updates again for the next while. We’ll see how it goes. I started on Sunday at 188.6 (after having a really big meal Saturday). This morning I was down to 185.6. I don’t expect it to continue to go that quickly (the first little bit of the diet is always the easiest), but I do hope it won’t take forever. For the record, I’m going with my strengths: eating the same thing every day for every meal. That way I know exactly how many calories I’m eating, and I don’t have to think about it at all. For now, I’m going to be at around 1800 calories a day. I might go a bit lower, depending on how things progress.

Wish me luck, and thanks for your support.

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