Weight Loss Means Learning to Stick the Landing

I joined an online weight program exactly 2 months ago on a Monday night. I didn’t realize the importance of sign up day at the time, but I still look back on it as a fortuitous grab. My calories for the week reboot on Tuesday. My weeklies restack and my activity points bank empties on a day when I regularly go to the gym and replenish. Four days a week I’ve got this eating on a plan thing on lock. I’m on point, on track on my game. Come Friday I’m usually looking and feeling pretty good with a whole stack of unused calories in front of me. Untouched. Just sitting there like a great big weight loss present ready to be opened. And then I head into the weekend and throw my calories around like glitter.

I’m not the kind of person that weighs in once a week as advised. I’ve already confessed my obsession with the number on the scale or in my case the potential number. Eight times out of eight I’ve gone into the weekend looking like I might put up a pretty big number on Tuesday and eight times out of eight I’ve managed to eat it.

1.5 pound deduction for a slight bobble with a wine glass.

When I was a freshman in high school my gym teacher had a rule. Everyone has to do something. She was cool with whatever (our school’s curriculum was designed by hippies), but you had to master something. She suggested I try running but my asthma inflamed lungs seized up and I folded like a wet taco. She suggested I try volleyball but if I see a ball coming towards my head my instincts tell me to duck and cover. That’s the kind of instinct that can get you pummeled in the locker room.

One day she led me over to the gymnastics corner and stood me next to the uneven bars. She said if I could learn three tricks on any apparatus I’d earn a ribbon and an A.  I asked the girl who was practicing which she liked better. The beam or the bars. “Bars, ” she said. “I’d rather not walk the straight line.” She tried really hard to help me fly on those bars but lack of confidence weighted me to the ground  as if I had extra gravity.  Looking back I’ve always been grateful for her patience but it was her sureness about the straight line that has stuck with me.  Truthfully, I’d rather not walk the straight line either.

I do well in chaos. I thrive on a challenge. I like the deep end of the pool – it’s really the only place I know well enough to feel like I’m on sure footing. I manage and plan every crumb that goes on my plate for four out of seven days but then I intentionally gamble on a high points, double twist meal.

There’s a level of difficulty here that I haven’t seemed to master but it seems clear it’s in the timing. I can see the prize, I’ve practiced the routine and I’ve got all the coaching a person could want. It’s time to chalk up and start thinking like a winner.