Let’s start off by saying, yeah, it wasn’t a good week. I’m not sure if the delayed reaction effect I talked about last week had any role in it or not… but I frankly hope it doesn’t, if only because that means this upcoming week will be even worse than the last.
To be sure, I did not go to the Weight Watcher’s meeting yesterday so I don’t have an exact weight to report a gain or loss for. (I started the day off oversleeping, which was good in all respects except making it harder to get to the meeting. I could have still pushed and gone, but it would have been close and I wasn’t eager to go see just how much weight I gained.) But my Happy Fun Scale of Wild Inaccuracies is at least consistently showing its wild guesses are a few pounds above last week’s wild guesses. Considering that Labor day weekend was a rough one (diet wise at least, was good by other measures) and Friday went to hell in a hand basket, so only three out of sevens days were really on plan, and two of the days were spectacularly off plan.
What worries me the most actually wasn’t the three days for the Labor day weekend. Yes, calorie wise I probably had the bulk of my week’s weight gain there, but that was my conscious decision to allow myself to splurge at the ballpark on Saturday and on Labor day itself. Friday’s blow out, however, was mostly because I really just didn’t care what I ate.
Back in one of my ‘history lessons’ I discussed some of my self destructive eating habits. I am an emotional eater and while I’ve developed tools to deal with it and have gotten much better, there are days when I don’t give a <pick an explicative> about it. And in a nutshell, that was Friday… with some carry over into yesterday, although not as dramatically. Today I’m starting out tracking again… and here’s hoping it’ll last. 
To dig a little more into the big picture of things since this blog IS for my total fitness and not just weight loss, and to get a bit more personal than some of y’all may be comfortable with, as I may have mentioned before my wife had a seizure in late January and wasn’t legally allowed to drive in the state of Florida until July 25th. For those six months, I was the Total Errand Boy for the house; we’ve done a single car family before, but the single DRIVER family is a completely different ball of wax. There was no errand for the house that I wasn’t involved in, no shopping trip too large or too small. On top of all the other worries (what caused the seizure? will she have another one? why are we stuck with a high deductible insurance policy? how are we going to stretch out the medical expenses? etc.), it drained me more than I was realizing at the time. After all, when you don’t have a choice but to do something you often don’t realize how much it’s taking out of you, as I learned when my son was sick. In any case, I started Weight Watchers in the middle of it all, and it was on July 24th that I weighed in at 36 pounds down.
When my wife was able to drive again, I felt both a relief/release and I finally felt a more acute sense of burn out. I had already started the process of backing off of obligations that I didn’t HAVE to take on when I wasn’t sure what was going on for my wife, but even when she was driving again and the doctor was happy with her maintenance plan I kept wanting to back out of things. I just felt burned out and figured I needed a little time to recover. It hit me on Friday that I’m still feeling like that, and perhaps even more so… and it may not be healthy for me that the feeling’s lasted for two months now. As anyone who reads this blog can see, I’ve been happy to rationalize why I’ve chosen to not take the plan seriously for various odd reasons in the last two months, but since I have no net loss (and I’m sure a small net gain) to show for the last two months, well, something’s amiss. I shouldn’t still be feeling burned out.
So, yeah. I don’t have an appointment with the doc yet since this all hit me just on Friday, but I intend to set one up for sometime next week and we’ll see what his opinion is. I thought this burn out would just go away after a little bit, but if I can get some help to get through it then why not. I don’t know if anything he might give me would help with the weight loss itself or not, but I have to think that if I can care about it (and about taking care of myself) every day and not just most days that I’ll be better off. We’ll see. Wish me luck… most then ever since I started this blog, I have a feeling I may need it.
I think being aware of it is the first step. We do deserve rest and respite from the hard things in life at times but it's a difficult pattern to come out of once you're in it. Look at those kids of yers and remind yourself they need their dad. Give yourself that little kick in the tush and I bet you'll get going again in no time. Works every time for me, anyway.
Loves!
Tiny – I have been lucky to not worry about the weight loss aspect of what you are dealing with. But I have dealt/am dealing with the burnout feelings you are having. It is very hard to take care of yourself when feeling this way – much less work towards any sort of personal goal. My only advice to you is to keep in mind the reasons you set out on this journey to change your life. Let those be your motivation to try and get out of the rut. My daughter is my motivation to try and eliminate my burnout stress (mostly from work) because I want her to a) have a pleasant and joy filled childhood and b) don't want her mom to die young of a heart attack. Maybe going back and reading some of your early blogs will help remind you of the reasons for the goals at hand. Good luck, and I look forward to reading more of your musings.
Jen, where I think I may need outside help is I hit walls where I don't care about the reasons. That's NOT a true statement most of the time, but I can do a lot of caloric damage in the time frames that I just don't care. They were in large parts motivation for me starting in the first place, and I have lots of reasons to carry forth… I know that. Just sometimes, I don't care. *sigh* Some of the damage I do is when I give myself permission to go overboard for an occasion and perhaps I need to reconsider that behavior at least, such as when I was at the ballpark on the 4th (I had a LOT of popcorn there, and ballpark popcorn is far worse than anything I would make for myself at home, even in a microwave)… And it's not just about the eating. It's about backing out of obligations at “church”, not getting as much done as I expect out of myself at work (even if I am getting what needs to get done done), not pursuing extra training on the side as I promised myself I would, not getting things done around the house… luckily the gym has been something that I can fall into even when I'm off my game and feel better for, as it seems to let me be in my own little world longer, but since this has been going on a while and is affecting so many different things… yeah, I may need help.For your own sake, realize that you can't just eliminate stress without making other changes… I know you've made a HUGE positive move lately but that can also add stress… pay attention to yourself and take care of yourself, and if you need help too don't be afraid to ask for it. Either from us if we can provide it or other professionals as appropriate… we don't have to do everything alone. I need to remember that too.