I have some weight to lose :)

I just looked at my weight chart on fitday for the past year. If I were measuring earnings, I would be in great shape, because they have been on the rise, my friends! :)

Sadly, I'm measuring weight, and my graph looks like I'm climing a mountain. There are all these ups and downs, but they hover around the same places-ish, and then there are month long gaps when apparently I didn't update my weight, and at the end of the breaks, I'm up at least 15 lbs each time. Then I start doing the daily weigh ins and the number goes down a bit, but then another lag in the weigh ins, another 15 lb spike, and we do the dance all over again.

Wasn't it George Santayana who said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it?"

I need to study my past so I can learn from my past. I'll take on my pre-lap band past at another time, but for now, I'm going to focus on the past two years.

I was a model lap band student for a loooong time. I hit my lowest weight in August of last year. At the same time, I started getting really sick with my gallbladder issues. I couldn't work out, I was sedentary, I ended up eating whatever foods didn't make me sick, and they weren't always the healthy ones, and I started to gain.

I knew I was gaining, and I just tried to focus on getting well, and I knew that once I had my gallbladder removed and I healed, I could focus on losing weight again. Somehow during that time period, however, I lost some of the momentum on all the great habits I had adopted. I stopped working out regularly, I stopped following the lap band guidelines...three months later when I finally started up with fitday again, I had put on probably 15 lbs.

I injured my back falling down icy stairs, signed up with a personal trainer, injured it more, and ended up being very limited on my workout for months. I couldn't work out, but I needed to focus on the food. In an effort to find a new track to be on, since I had somehow landed off of mine, I joined WW. I followed WW for three months, and gained another 15 lbs (plus or minus other gains and losses along the way).

I've been off WW for months now, and I've had a hard time getting back to the place I was when I was so focuses and the stars were aligning - I was working out regularly, eating the way I was supposed to, and losing at a good, but healthy, clip.

Averaging the 1200 calories per day wasn't doing me any favors, and I think I really need to cut that back for now, at least until my body remembers how to lose weight again. I'm going to watch my nutrients very closely, and I can't imagine that if I get enough protein, carbs, and fats in every day for 600 or 800 calories, that filling in an extra 400-600 calories with extras is going to do my body any favors. I think that when they tell us to eat 1200 calories/day - it's based upon averages that tell us that we'll get in enough protein, carbs and fats/day if we consume 1200 calories. If we can do the same for less, why not?

I've been using my band again, and listening to it. I've been eating much more slowly, and it's taking me 30 minutes to get through dinner, the way it should. I'm not coating all my food with wetness to get it in faster, which was a bad habit I had developed along the way. I'm not choosing softer foods that give me less trouble either. All of those things work against the band.

Maybe I could use a fill, maybe not - I'm going to see how it goes with me listening to my band for a week or so. If I'm not having too much trouble dropping to 600-800 calories/day, then I think the thing must still be working, and it was me that was broken, not it.

I'm down another 3+ lbs today. I started my resurgence (again) this week with a decided 80 lbs to lose. I'm down 7. I have 73 to go. That's not so bad. :)

I'm sure to some people, that sounds like a lot, but to me, it sounds just fine. I know I can do it, and I'm hoping to do it by the arbitrary date of 8/12/10 as TJ predicts. :)