Reps.

Repetition.  Repetitiveness.  Repetitious...

With exercise and good habits, it's a good thing.

With failure, not so much.

I looked over my post from last January 1st and debated just copying and pasting it here today.  Even the numbers are virtually identical.

(Well, except that mention of my 40th birthday.)

((THAT came and went a year and a half ago...))

My self-discipline and motivation HAVE improved in some areas of my life over the last several months, but unfortunately, not in the eating/exercise category.

And I'm so tired of this.  Tired of trying, succeeding for a while, and then falling back into old eating and lack-of-exercise habits and finding myself having gained a fair portion of the weight back again in FAR too short a time.  I'm so tired of this cycle and I can't even imagine how tired everyone around me is of hearing about it while seeing I'm not really doing anything about it.

The Man and I decided over Christmas that both of us really need to lose some weight and that we need to somehow figure out a way to work together at it.  We went to bed two nights in a row with growling stomachs and struggled to fall asleep despite the gnawing feeling.

The next day, he came home from town with a package of four Oh Henry chocolate bars.  ::sigh::  While there are still three of those bars sitting in the freezer a week later, I don't think I've managed to achieve that empty feeling again since then.

The reality is, for those of us not blessed with high metabolisms, controlling our weight will always be a struggle.  There will never come a time when we can quit thinking about it.  There's no "set it and forget it" switch on this thing.  And I guess that's what I find so discouraging ~ knowing this is something I will forever HAVE to work at, no matter if and when I achieve my goal weight.

I have tried and succeeded with several diets and eating plans in the past, the most effective being the "Woman of Moderation" study that inspired this blog in the first place.  There were no dietary restrictions, per sé, and no exercise requirements, and I lost a significant amount of weight.  Of course, you have three 24-hr periods per week where you eat NOTHING...

I have tried to go back to that plan, modifying it slightly to be a little less daunting.  I swapped the numbers of "normal" and fasting days, but even doing that, I struggled to maintain two fasting days a week.  Maybe I just didn't try hard enough.  I have a hard time not having lunch when I'm working.  When I'm at home all day, it's not so bad, but I just couldn't do it while I was working last tax season.  And since that seasonal job will begin again within the next two weeks, I'm tempted not to bother trying to re-start that eating plan again.

I just want to simply train myself to eat less, but I am really not sure how to do that, exactly.  When there's no written plan or checklist to follow or calculations to make, I find it's just a little too nebulous a concept.  And yet recording everything, weighing and measuring everything, counting points... there's no way I'm sticking to that kind of a plan for the rest of my life either.  That's unrealistic.

MODERATION really is the key, even in coming up with a plan.  Wish me luck.