TL;DR (Yeah, I know that's supposed to be at the bottom. I've always thought that was backwards) - This is a problem I actively struggle with most days - don't forget it's ok to be proud of what you've done even if you've stumbled along the way or (as in my case most days) fear doing so will somehow stop your momentum. I just want to remind everyone it's ok to be proud of what you've done, even if that's as much for me as anyone else.
So here's my (ETA: apparently long and mostly boring) story as it were and how I've screwed this part up at every single step of the last 6 months. October 15th of last year, I went to the doctor and I was 264lbs (I'm a 5' 10" male and I'd say well in excess of 35% body fat at that point). I don't know how it happened, but there I was listening to the doctor give me a lecture about how all the numbers that should be low are high and all the numbers that should be high are low. I left with a small pharmacy and a depressingly detailed and scary lecture about the phrase "morbidly obese". I decided right then and there I wanted to be 225lbs by October 15th, 2019. I figured that was doable, so I started trying.
Now while I'll be happy to profess I am fairly to extensively knowledgeable about my fair share of topics, I immediately got an incredibly stark education and how utterly ignorant I was about anything remotely related to nutrition or health. Seriously, if public school included a test about general health knowledge to graduate, my level of knowledge should result in whoever took the test being immediately sent back to middle school for a repeat. In 2-3 weeks, I learned a whole lot about carbs, calories, and the like.
As they say, a little knowledge goes a long way... by January 5th, I hit 229lbs, which meant I was likely to hit my 12 month goal in all of 3 months... and honestly, it freaked me out. I figured I did something wrong or was hurting my health with bad practices. My brain kept saying "you'll never keep it off fat boy". Since I was supposed to see my doctor again the 21st of that month, I thought I'd stick with it and ask her if what I was doing was ok. Long story short, I walked into the office at 223lbs but a nervous wreck (I figured all my bad numbers would still be bad, plus more bad numbers for stuff that used to be ok). After some blood work I found out I was, to use my doctor's words, "crushing it". All my numbers were great. THEN I got obsessed with this term 'obese' written on my chart, which was 100% technically true. I then set a goal of 205lbs by October 15th, 2019. Why 205lbs? Because I've figured out I seem to normally wear about 3-4lbs of clothes, so when I go to the doctor again (next month), if I'm 205 + 3-4lbs of clothes, that makes me merely "fat" (my own negative term for me), not "obese".
This morning I got on the scale and I'm 207.2lbs. I normally drop, then go back up for 3-4 days, then drop again, and that was a weird drop from the 208.7 of the day before. So it's about 50-50 shot as to whether or not I make my 205lbs goal by my doctor's appointment and I feel a bit... defeated. Never mind that my ACTUAL goal is 205lbs by October Freakin' 15th, which clearly shouldn't be an issue. Now I've reset my goal to 185lbs by October 15th. I keep moving my own goal posts for no good reason. I also can't help but notice 185lbs is a good 11lbs short of 'normal', which means that new goal technically isn't good enough.
At lunch today I think I had a bit of a revelation which has led to this post (which in retrospect, reads a bit more like a humble-brag than I meant). It's ok to be both proud and satisfied with what you've done AND still strive to do better in the future. What we've accomplished so far is respectable work worthy of some pride. There's no reason to think more about where you haven't gotten yet than to think of where you've been. "Keep up the good work" means you've been doing good work already. Be proud of it!
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from loseit - Lose the Fat http://bit.ly/2XiwkQN
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