One piece at a time

Growing up, I was obsessed with this one up and coming artist who got his big break by playing a space coyote on The Simpsons. His name…was Johnny Cash. Have you heard of him? Anyway, while ol’ JC had plenty of classic hits, one of my favorites is the song “One Piece at a Time.” The song is a story of an auto worker who steals a car part every day for years. Thanks to the advancement of the automobile, by the time he had all the parts for said automobile, it was one weird looking jalopey. But hey? It ran! 

What does this have to do with weight loss, you ask? Hang tight, I’m getting there. 

This week was the first time in a loooooooong time that I actually tracked what I ate. For the past two year or so, I have tried anything to lose weight from eating almost completely vegan to joinging classes to halfway training for a half marathon. I did everything BUT track my points. You know, the way I lost 100 pounds. 

My issue was that I was overloading myself with an insane amount of things that have worked for other people instead of what worked for me. You see, after I lost 100 pounds, I tried to keep the momentum going by trying other things instead of being patient and let the process work. Before I knew it, I was completely bogged down with trying to do way too much when in fact all I needeed to do was listen to myself. That’s when I decided to take a sabbatical of sorts from weighing in and just caring. I knew that that one added stressor on top of my incredibly stressful summer would have put me over the edge (and trust me, I was already there.)

So this past week, I kept it simple: I tracked most of my points, I talked myself through the multiple work dinners I went to, I ate when I was hungry and didn’t when I wasn’t, and I ran because the weather was awesome yesterday.  

I focused on me this week. 

I have a lot of emotional scarring from the past year and I needed some healing. While I still have some work to do on that front, I needed to get back to the simple things that taught me to love myself and my health when I started five years ago. I feel like losing 6.6 pounds this week is just an awesome byproduct of that time, love and tenderness. 

Eventually, I will join a gym, maybe the join the running club that meets by my office, and maybe even join the Seattle Curling Club. But for now, I’m going to just take it all in one piece at a time.   

 

2 thoughts on “One piece at a time

  1. GREAT plan, Nathan! Isn’t it amazing how those things that got us success via WW are the things that work (hmmm……)? I stopped logging a few months ago and have seen the related change on the scale. More power to you – you’ve got this – one piece at a time!

  2. I hope you can stick to this, my friend!! Your 6.6 pound loss is EPIC – and totally a reflection of the work you put in. I tried rejoining WW a few months ago… and it has lost it’s magic for me. I just didn’t buy into it, which SUCKS because it works, and I know that. You totally have to be in the right headspace for it to work. Keep it up!!

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