Analogy and confession...

Hello everyone!  Many many apologies for my long absence - I was out of town for a few days, and then we had some computer difficulties here at home which have been stealing away my attention.  I have been trying unsuccessfully to upgrade my laptop from Vista to Windows 7 - after three attempts I am still unable to complete the upgrade, but of course I am going to try over and over again until it works, because the new operating system will be worth the effort.  Actually, I think this upgrade is sort of a metaphor for my weight loss efforts...while Vista is a usable operating system, lots of features don't work properly and it keeps crashing...and while I can function at 248 pounds I'm definitely not operating at top speed (and I keep crashing).  The upgrade process is confusing, complicated and lengthy, and my first few attempts didn't work, but I know the result will be such an improvement that I'm willing to keep trying until I get it figured out.

If I'm completely honest with myself, however, I could have found a way to write amongst the traveling and computer problems.  The truth is, I ate mindlessly through the holiday right up until a couple days ago.  And I wasn't feeling too good one day last week and missed my workout...and then didn't workout for several more days.  The guilt over this lapse has kept me from posting.  Sigh.  When will I learn?  Writing down my thoughts, feelings, struggles, successes - that's what keeps me honest, whether I write it publicly or privately.  As of this morning, my weight is the same as it was a few weeks ago, and I am thankful that although I haven't made any progress on the scale, I haven't gone backwards either.  In the past, I would have gained 5 or more pounds by now, which means that I must be learning to eat less while I'm overeating (does that even make sense?).  So that's something to be proud of.

This holiday season has definitely been a learning opportunity - I didn't plan ahead for anything, let my feelings of discouragement get the best of me, and once I started on the junk food I just kept eating (all or nothing thinking).  It seems like I'm the poster child for everything that you shouldn't do when trying to get to - or maintain - a healthy weight.  The best I can do at this point is pick myself up, dust myself off, learn from my mistakes, and try to install Windows 7 one more time...