I think, looking back over this past year, I can begin to piece together my downfall. I started Paleo January 3rd and by May I had quite losing weight despite having plenty still to lose. This was very disappointing to me. I was eating next to nothing and spending quite a bit of time thinking about my dietary preparations and yet getting nowhere. I continued on through June and by mid July I was still at a standstill. This is when I decided to add in exercise. Naturally I went overboard and hurt myself. I continued on into August with exercising until I could no longer push forward. This was a tough blow because I had pinned my hopes of kick starting weight loss with exercise. I forged on through September and mid October and managed to maintain my weight but not lose any. I went on a mini vacation in mid October and started off trying to be Paleo but ended it off the wagon and it's been a struggle since then. I started picking up extra shifts at work while still going to my parent's place to help them. Some of my hours at work were night shifts and during all this I quit preparing meals in advance. I basically quit cooking too. I just feel tired and don't feel like spending time in the kitchen after putting in extra hours. I lost motivation. I just quit. It's really quite hard to realize this and put it down in writing but it's the truth.
So, let me make a list for this new year so that I can reclaim myself, my health.
- Start cooking again! (A good place to start is with the Paleo Plan meal calendars. I still have my printouts from when I started that a year ago. Do this and don't think about coming up with recipes. It's like auto pilot. All I have to do is cook what they tell me and eat it.)
- Be true to Paleo! (No sneaking non paleo food items. Cold turkey like I did a year ago.)
- Slowly introduce exercise! (Start with going to the pool on my days off. Eventually start a C25K.)
- Only talk about my "crazy diet" here! (This may seem a little odd but I hate the scrutiny and stupid ass questions I get from people that I really don't give a shit about. These are the people who I know aren't asking me because they want to make a change in their life. These are the assholes who every time they see me eating something, come up and stick their nose in my plate and then proceed to ask me if "bagels are paleo, you mean no spaghetti, how about whole wheat bread, french fries...that's a potato they're a vegetable". They just keep rattling off grain based foods the whole time they quiz me. Why? I really don't know other than they are jerks. So, I really only care to talk about this with like minded people and maybe my close family and friends (Some of whom I am going to have to gently inform that I don't like being made a spectacle of in front of non paleo people when we all sit down to eat. Please do not worry about what I'm going to eat, I'll figure it out and no one will probably even notice that I'm not eating grains, legumes, or dairy.)
- Blog more and update Facebook! I think being more active within the online Paleo community will help. Forging ahead on my own is sometimes lonely and I have only myself to rely on. So if I don't plan ahead then the whole show grinds to a halt. I'll still only have myself to rely on but at least I'll have people to talk to about it.
