A is for Accountability

There's often talk about how useful an "accountability partner" is for accomplishing goals. Having a way to hold ourselves accountable to meeting our goals can keep us motivated or on track. It's easier to break a commitment that we make to ourselves when no one else knows about it but lately I've been finding it useful to stay on track when I also let others know about my goals. I plan on using this blog as a form of accountability for my weight loss. 

I'm going to weigh myself once a week, more than likely every Wednesday morning, and track my weight on this blog as a form of accountability to myself. Years ago I lost 40 pounds because every week I would weigh myself in front of my boyfriend and he would write down my weight. It became more difficult for me to make bad food decisions each week because I know that another person would see my progress that week. 

I have been weighing myself every week now for the past two months and I have been going up and down the same seven pounds. Two weeks ago I started to get more intentional about it and I have been at a complete standstill for the past two weeks. I call a friend to tell update them on my weigh in, and that has somewhat helped me, but I think it might help me even more if I publicly track my progress and keep it in a central location. Each week I plan on reporting it with a picture and keeping a running tally of my weigh ins on the top right hand corner of this blog.

Today I weighed myself and I weighted 291. I'm frustrated because I've only lost one pound this week and I would really like to get below 290-I've been trying for two months!- but I have to remind myself that 1 pound lost is better than gaining a pound.  I also am changing my weigh in from Sunday to Wednesday, so technically it hasn't even been a week since my last weigh in, so maybe losing one pound in four days is pretty good after all! I'll weigh in again next week!

I am participating in the BloggingA-Z challenge. You can find other blogs who are also participating here. 

My Health Journey

I'm ready to finally commit to making changes in my life to live a healthy lifestyle. Of course I have said that before to  myself time and again-in fact, I recently found my diary from 2005 where I sang the same ole tune except I was 55 pounds lighter-but somehow this time it  just feels different.  In a week I will be turning 45 years old and this birthday feels really significant to me in a way that I don't quit understand yet. I feel as if I am hitting a milestone in my life in many ways and I want to kickstart that milestone on a more healthy path.

This blog marks my commitment to myself that I will get it right this time. 

Last February when we went into quarantine over covid, I weighed a big whopping 311 pounds. I don't know how I managed to get that high, but I did. But the good news is that over the past year I have made many changes to my lifestyle and I am working my way towards a more consistent exercise routine. The bad news is that in one year I have only managed to lose 19 pounds. But at the end of the day, I have still lost weight.

The past seven months I have been battling the same ten pounds up and down. It's been beyond frustrating but starting on January 23 I have been more intentional about it all. But since then I have gone up and down the same seven pounds and have only lost 7 pounds in two months. I keep telling myself that seven pounds is better than nothing or better than gaining but I am ready to do what it takes to try to speed it up a bit in a healthy way. 

Tomorrow will mark the second week that I have not eaten any fast food or picked up any take out food. It's been an emotionally frustrating two weeks because I thought that when I stopped eating out of the house that I would miraculously start to lose weight quickly but it's not been the case. I don't understand why yet but I am sure that as long as I am consistent with the methods that I am using that I will eventually figure out what works and what helps or hinders my progress. 

The 127 in my blog title represents the number of pounds that I still have to lose in order to reach my target weight. And at this point I am not even sure if that should be my target weight but it's what I am aiming for right now but I will give myself permission to aim for more or less 165 pounds. The weight charts tell me that I should be less but I also know that my body frame is larger and in the past I've had muscle mass so I'll aim for 165 and when I get close I'll let myself decide when I am at my ideal weight based on how I feel in my body at that moment.

But this journey that I am on isn't just about losing weight, although the title of the blog seems to be all about that. I just want to be healthy-physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually and socially. I am a whole person and I just can't see myself getting physically healthy without improving all the other parts of my life as well. 

My goal is that once I hit 175 pounds that I would like to jet off to Hawaii for a getaway with my girlfriends to celebrate my accomplishment. I started this blog to keep me on track and to help me track my progress as I aim for that goal. So, I have 117 pounds left to go until I am rolling around on a beach in the Hawaiian paradise. 

This blog is mainly for me, so one day I can look back and acknowledge how far I have come. It hit me really hard the other day when I read my diary in 2005 and realized that I was still struggling with the same weight loss problems then and I still haven't fixed them. I just don't want to look back in another ten years and find that I am still in the same place so I made a commitment to document my progress here so I can look back one day and see that I finally hit the mark. And if it inspires one more person in the world who might come across the blog to also kickstart their health journey too, then all the better!