Yoyos

I've decided to confess something.  I am a weight yoyo-er.  Before 2011, I never broke the 10 lb mark in a weight loss effort.  From the gaining side, it was always just a few pounds a year.  I never got back to my pre-pregnancy weight after Clayton was born, so I guess that was sort of the beginning of the trend until 2011.

In May of 2011, BFF and I went on a grand vacation to Puerto Vallarta together.  I was reading Four Hour Body by Tim Ferris on recommendation from my mama.  I brought it along and BFF took a gander.  Together, we decided to give the Slow Carb Diet a shot.  TF does a great job of making eating to burn fat super SUPER simple.  Simple, until emotional eating and cravings and laziness show up.  I certainly didn't stick to the plan 100% every week and sometimes I just plain gave up for a while.  By March 2012, I was down 23 lbs and feeling and looking great.

Here we are November 2013 and I'm right back where I started in May 2011...at least as far as the scale is concerned.  I learned a TON about my body and about body chemistry and about nutrition in the year-ish I followed TF's program.  I also was introduced to Whole9.com and their Whole30 program and the Paleo way of life.  In March of this year, I successfully completed a Whole30 and, again, learned a whole lot.  Then the wedding cake and food tastings began, and wedding showers and birthdaymonth and the wedding and summer parties and post-wedding blues and budgeting challenges and emotional eating and cravings and laziness.  BFF encouraged me to look into Weight Watchers after a couple Whole30 false starts and a growing feeling of "I'm just going to be this weight forever, I just have to be okay with that."  It works, for sure.  I just am too flighty to do all of that tracking for the many weeks it would take to get to my goal weight.  And I'm not going to lie, I know that what I eat "because I can" aren't the best choices for my body and getting the scale to go down is only one metric...and a pretty useless one at that.  I know that I have to keep muscle in my body while burning fat or I'll wind up looking like my insides shrunk in the dryer and my skin stayed the same size.  Ick.  To keep muscle mass up, I need lots of protein and I discovered that pure protein is pretty hard on the ol' WW points system.

So, I've been struggling for the last few months.  I hate where the scale is and I hate that I gained back over 20 pounds in less than a year.  Eww.  I hate that the scale says that awful number I SWORE I'd never see again back in March 2012.

Clearly, the number on the scale and the size of my pants matter to me.  But all of this really, I promise, is about being healthy.  More specifically, it's about being healthy for baby growing.  Mark and I want kids and I am 35 years old.  I had a rough pregnancy with Clayton and adding 10 years to my body certainly isn't going to make that process any less painful.

After a weekend of soul searching and way more tears than this SSRI girl is accustomed to, motivation and resolve showed up this morning.  The baby brother coached me a bit yesterday, too.  Beginning this morning and for the remainder of this week I am eating clean.  I'm not sure if I'm officially doing a Whole30 or if its going to be more like 6-days on, 1-day off ala TF or some other arrangement.  I'll worry about that at the end of this week and I'll worry about next week when I get to the weekend.  For the next 6 days, whole foods are the only thing that will be entering my mouth.

Hopefully this won't be the beginning of another yoyo cycle.  As far as I'm concerned, one time on that ride is enough.