Okay, y'all, I had to laugh at myself today. I'm kind of all over the map.

The scale budged a bit this week - hurray! I worked out, sweated, posted, ate well, recorded assiduously. Things are ducky that way. This afternoon, though, I had a wave of irritation that turned into a series of semi-coherent thoughts that I then decided to share. Perhaps you can help me think.

I decided that my recent bout of 3FC ennui and weight loss losslessness is as much mental as physical... a mental plateau if you will. It has to do with keeping on, and keeping on, and then keeping on some more. I know that eating and exercising won’t stop because I’ll always need to be healthy. So why feel like I need to keep on keeping on? I will not always need to lose weight and I want to be done with that part. I’m still such a long way away from my goal and at the moment I guess I'm just tired. Perhaps instead I should feel triumphant because I can eat and exercise on autopilot when I have to, with the autopilot properly trained.

Should I really care about the weight loss part, or should I just do my thing of eating well and exercising and wait for the weight to take care of itself? Why can I not be patient and just wait for it to be done? Why must I always push, push, push, fret, frown, worry, celebrate, calculate and so on? I suppose it is because I hate being in between, hanging. Hang in there, keep going, and maybe in this lifetime you’ll reach your weight goal. Lovely.

For that matter, I must ask myself what I’m waiting for. I look worlds better. It’s not like I can ever go back to eating pizza and cheeseburgers and tons of sweets. I feel better. So why do I feel like I’m waiting? Perhaps that means I haven’t completed the mindset change that I need, or that I’m on the way or nearly there or just out in la la land. Who knows? I know I need to be in the realm of 140-150 and that I’m not there. That I know. But does it matter if I achieve it by this Christmas or next Christmas or in time for summer the following year? Does it matter if I reach 100 lbs lost by the end of this year? Or does it just matter that I keep choosing chicken over cheeseburgers? Have I reached the REAL goal and just not realized it?

If the meaning of this journey is totally revamping the way I think about body, food, and weight, then maybe I am not so far from my goal as my ticker would indicate.

It does matter that I reach a healthy weight, don't get me wrong; I am still overweight even if I feel quite a lot better than I did before about myself. A size 14-16 is hardly svelte. Not horrendous, exactly, but hardly svelte. And some days I am so focused on doing well at this that I feel like it usurps my attention in other areas of life that are also important. It is consuming. Humbug. End of tangent.

Wow, I wonder what happened to bring that on when I’ve been happy that the scale is actually moving and I’ll have losses to post this week. Small losses are still losses!

I must laugh at myself in another way. Wax philosophical about my REAL goal and all that, but.... right now I have an 80-lb chickie and have lost 84 lbs. When I get the next pound and an 85-lb chickie I believe I shall have to hug and kiss and celebrate that little chickie, cuddling it to my bosom and calling it Precious. Go figure.

What is it about pounds when the pounds are only an indicator? You KNOW it is about behavior at the the most visceral level, and you STILL worry about every ounce and when you'll see how much change and how long it'll take you to get into the next size.

Perhaps it is because our society cares about the bust and the booty, and not the behaviors.

Some days I think I understand, but today I don't.

Oh my gosh! This is SO ME RIGHT NOW. Oh how I WISH we could meet up at a nice long run or walk and talk about this together!!!

I have been thinking the exact same things.I mean my LIFE is totally different now. My FOOD is totally different. I am physically active everyday and my trainer insist that I am now an ATHLETE. I only drink water and I enjoy it! My goal has always been to be healthy and I would guess I have reached healthy. I want to get to healthy BMI and my goal weight of 150. I want to get there so bad that I totally discount how far I have come.

It's me now too! It must happen around this BMI. LOL! I have been thinking these exact thoughts, though they're not worded quite so eloquently in my head.

I haven't reached a healthy BMI, yet I feel so much healthier. I'm happy with my appearance. Everyone around me thinks I'm at goal. No one asks "how much more do you want to lose?" Not ever! And they used to. I could live a long time in my size 10's.

But at the same time, I'm not at a healthy weight, according to the numbers.

What is the meaning of this journey? That's a GREAT question! For me, it's to be healthy! Well, I have brought down my BP to well within normal and my resting HR is freakish 46!! My blood sugar was 86 thirty pounds ago, so surely it's still good. I have boundless energy, spin three times a week, lift three times a week and have no desire to give any of that up ever. My eating habits are solid.

But I still want to continue losing. Right now I'm struggling between putting effort into actual loss or just letting it happening, pseudo maintenance. Of course, if I'm being honest with myself I've been in pseudo maintenance mode for a while already.

Yup. Join me in to this group.... My weight loss is at a crawl. My BMI is 28. I feel pretty happy with where I am now....I have spent a lot of time thinking about how the "goal" really isn't that important, and that if I can sustain the new lifestyle I probably will not stay at a BMI of 28 forever, and probably two or three or five years into my new and changed lifestyle I'll find myself thin....

The only OTHER factor that is going on with me is that my life is in TOTAL FLUX right now, and has been for at least two weeks. I'm moving to a new city, but right now, I'm sort of semi-commuting between a completely empty new home and a half packed old home-- my kids are stressed, my schedule is batty, and I'm completely off schedule.

I have not been exercising normally, and while I've been careful about making healthy choices, I'm certainly not on my normal food routine either....

I REFUSE to let all this upheaval throw me off track-- but it has certainly opened my eyes to how thin the veneer of good habits really is, and how easily and quickly I could GO RIGHT BACK to the old habits-- 30 years worth of comfort eating and exercise slacking habits are RIGHT THERE, lurking just below the surface.

Still, I DO have new habits and I AM clinging to them with the knowledge that my life will be more on an even keel soon....

But I TOTALLY GET that subtle mindset shift, where every once in a while, I get this flash and I realize that there is no "goal"-- I've already reached my goal, which was to change permanently and completely the old horrible dysfunctional behaviors that eventually led me to morbid obesity and to replace them with habits that might eventually lead me to being thin....

Whew...maybe I'm not nuts, or at least not as nuts as I think I am. If "goal" is healthy behaviors and good health, we've made goal. We're maintainers (that is subtle-speak for fending off the destructive behaviors lurking just beneath the surface, ready to erupt at any moment) of a sort...

Now, about those pounds...

Guess we keep on keeping on.

Thanks ladies for articulating what is in my head right now.

Yeah, this is me, and why I've been so quiet lately, although I've been reading regularly. I say I'm maintaining, but really, I've been trying to peel off just a few more pounds, and it is going so incredibly slowly that I'm in a serious funk about it. I have been so seriously On Plan that I know it isn't a matter of slacking. I'm just fairly well into the normal range now, and every damn pound gets harder and harder to lose. I know I'm doing well, and I look pretty good, and these last few pounds I'm trying to lose are a combination of vanity -- and I think vanity is a perfectly valid reason to lose weight, assuming it's not going to harm your health -- and legitimately thinking the next 5-10 pounds will make a huge difference, and that, frankly, I don't want to be at the top of my intended maintenance range, but the bottom. I need that buffer while I figure out what calorie level I need to maintain, otherwise I am going to freak right out. I have lost SO much weight, and I feel the habits I needed to acquire have been pretty well established over the last two years, and yeah, that's probably what I should focus on, and let the rest of the weight come off in its own sweet time, but I'm not there emotionally yet, I feel like I'm still stuck in this holding pattern, and it's making me feel pretty negative and very tired with it all.

I still have quite a ways to go lb wise, but I really could relate to your post.

I get frustrated sometimes, I mean, I care about what I eat, take my lunch to work every day, skip eating out a lot. I skip drinking alcohol (maybe a glass or beer once a month). I exercise in some way every day. I take supplements. I have many very healthy behaviors. My check up showed good blood pressure and cholesterol. But I'm a size 16/18, a big gal. I'm not saying I'm perfect eating wise. I do feel like people still see me as someone out of control because of my size. If I talk about diet and exercise, sometimes I'll see that little "yeah, right" smile.

being large does not mean I don't care about, and don't actively work on, my health and looks, thank you very much.

end of rant

I hear you, dragonwoman (love your moniker)...you have come a long way already and like the rest of us, will keep on keepin' on to get the rest of the way.

Not to go on a tangent...but I would love to know your secret for wearing a 16/18. I'm the same height and am only now moving to the low end of 16 and high end of 14. Gosh, I wish I had a waist...

many crunches (sometimes with a weight ball), side bends, bridges, stuff like that helps me.

and I naturally carry a lot of weight in my thighs, hips, behind.

Some of that stuff is genetic, or whatever it is biologically that makes lbs go to certain places on our bodies. but exercises and weights are great for helping shape and tone. it really does make a difference.

I think women that are heavier tend to not want to do it for a bunch of reasons, they think it will make them look more masculine, and that it will slow down weight loss (adds to all that up and down on the scale that can come from muscle gain, etc., which can be a mental challenge), or else they just want to concentrate on the diet to lose the weight. It does increase my appetite to work out. That's something I have to deal with.

you know, it feels really good physically and mentally to work on my muscle tone. it makes me stronger, and healthier, and it makes me feel better about my body. it really has changed my shape too.

Yeah, it changes mine too, but my waist is invariably a size larger than the rest of me.