February 1st and where am I?

Nowhere, that's where. This is really frustrating, despite all of my very good efforts in January, I am down all of one lousy pound from what I weighed in at the beginning of the month. One. Pound. I don't even know if I can even count that as a real loss either as a pound is within the range of normal fluctuation anyway. I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out what I could be doing wrong. I mean, expecting a ten pound loss might have been too ambitious, but five pounds would have been nice. I would have been very happy with five. This is exactly the reason why people like me give up on their weight loss efforts. You work at it hard, you sacrifice, you change your whole life and there is no progress. Can you really blame anyone for becoming frustrated or feeling hopeless about something that seems to just go nowhere, despite everything?

Anyway, I'm not giving up. Despite the lack of scale movement, I feel healthy and more fit and (most importantly) happy. Well, happy enough as long as I don't think about the number on the scale too much. So I think it's important to keep working on it. One thing that I have decided however is that I absolutely must do something on the weekend. It doesn't have to be something on both Saturday AND Sunday, but at some point during each weekend I must do some kind of cardio work, whether that is running or good walking or even just some time on an elliptical or a bike somewhere. I've had too many slug-like weekends and it's not helping my cause, nor does it help my attitude or my resolve. I'll also be less tempted to cheat if I'm experiencing an active weekend (and weekends are the times when cheating is most tempting to me).

This weekend ended up being relatively active (well, better than most of my weekends have been anyway) and it's amazing how much better I feel. I feel content and that I've earned the couch time that I will now enjoy this evening. I didn't even really do that much. Just about two miles of running yesterday, two plus miles of running today, with about another half a mile of walking at the end and some riding late this afternoon. Not really too big a deal, but it is enough that I feel satisfied and that I've really followed through much better than I had in previous weeks.

So, I don't really know what's going to happen in February. The only thing that I do know is that I can't count on anything. I am not going to adjust my goals and the steps I'm taking towards those goals now though, except to add the new weekend rule. I'll continue with the trainer two times a week, run a minimum of three times a week, and continue the riding (of course). Jenny Craig food for breakfast and dinner and be mindful of lunches -- actually, I should probably try and tweak lunch more, that's probably an area that has some room for more improvement. I have to remember to take the vitamins as well.

That's it, plain & simple. No real progress, experiencing fading enthusiasm for the whole thing, but I'm not giving up.