The horror, the horror: I stepped on the scale

Yesterday I did something that I haven’t done in a while. The horror, the horror: I stepped on the scale, and it was as bad as I thought. Last year, I had gotten down to about 179, but now I’m almost reverse of the numbers at 196. What happened in the interim?

A few things:

• I stopped tracking my food on SparkPeople, which helped me lose at least 20 pounds during my first six months there.
• I stopped running as regularly as I had been running. I found, and still find, excuses not to run. It’s raining. It’s too late in the day. It’s…blah blah blah.
• I stopped going to the gym for strength training.
• I started rationalizing that a milkshake/a trip to Pizza Hut/a little bit of alcohol once a week or every two weeks was all right. All those milkshakes, trips to Pizza Hut and little bits of alcohol begin to accumulate — right around the stomach area.

So what am I going to do about it?

• I am tracking my food on SparkPeople once again.
• I am beginning a regular running routine and getting up early so I have no excuse.
• I  am making a goal of going to the gym at least twice this coming week.
• I am not having anymore milkshakes, alcohol or trips to Pizza Hut. Whenever I go to Pizza Hut, I look around and see people who are more obese than myself and think how sad, but then realize I don’t have too far to go to be there. In fact, I have been there and literally am there, when I’m there with them.

As my wife says about the upcoming Bald Eagle Mountain Megatransect, I don’t need any more weight to climb up the mountain. She’s right. Now is the time to start jettisoning some of that weight.

This post is cross-posted at Just A (Running) Fool.