{"id":2159,"date":"2019-01-01T14:26:59","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T19:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=2159"},"modified":"2019-01-01T14:26:59","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T19:26:59","slug":"never-weight-q4-18-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=2159","title":{"rendered":"Never Weight \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Q4-18 Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a fairly arbitrary goal for losing weight in 2018: about 2 pounds per month, or 24 for the year. It sounded do-able without being drastic. The first half of the year didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go so well, and I ended up cutting the price of the course in response. Then I got serious, and lost a lot of weight in the third quarter<\/a>, mostly by doing what I should have been doing all along: tracking what I ate.<\/p>\n

This quarter featured many food-centric holidays: Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Potatomas, as well as my birthday. So I eased up on the diet and the pressure to lose weight. However, it also marked the beginning of the curling season, so overall things weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t too bad. In the end I lost 8 lbs<\/strong> this quarter, which is a marked decrease in the rate from last quarter, but still better than the 2-lbs-per-month pace I was targeting for the year. It means that even though all the progress was crammed into the last half, I did manage to meet (exceed!) my 2018 goal, losing just over 30 lbs in total<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clich\u00c3\u00a9 to say, but this has been a good thing. I have more physical<\/em> energy, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m more flexible for curling. My heartrate hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t improved meaningfully since the update last quarter (~2 bpm, which is less than the week-to-week variance in FitBit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s graph), but that improvement was still a big one and puts me in a much healthier range. My snoring is mostly gone, though I’m still not getting enough sleep (but that’s not a function of poor sleep — I think the sleep I am getting is good, I just need to get better about turning off the world and just going to bed in the first place). <\/p>\n

One downside is why I emphasized physical energy above: a big mindset change was not letting myself eat because I wanted to use food as substitutes for emotions or because I was bored, etc. But that means that sometimes when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m stressed, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m adding to my mental burden as I fight the old habit of eating through the stress. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve noticed it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s made hitting peak productivity a little harder when writing. <\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure yet what the ultimate goal for 2019 should be. In my last update I said the next goal would be to get to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153overweight\u00e2\u20ac\u009d BMI range (from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153obese\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) by June, but even at my slower \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I can have a few<\/em> Halloween-sized chocolate bars\u00e2\u20ac\u009d pace of Q4, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m already halfway there and on track to hit that point by April. <\/p>\n

Getting to a weight that starts with a 1 would have been unfathomable a few years ago, but I know I probably shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop there. I just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what to target for the year: 2 lbs\/mo again? Maybe take it a month at a time and not set a goal for the year? <\/p>\n

I know one thing to make explicit is to not backslide<\/em>: many people who lose weight do go back and put it on again, so I’m going to be conscious of that even as I don’t feel as much pressure to lose so much so quickly anymore.<\/p>\n

2019 Goals:<\/strong><\/p>\n