29 Aug 09 weekly update & living in the now

I'm changing my weigh & measure to Sat mornings before I run or do other crazy weekend stunts. My body retains a couple pounds of water to recover from these activities and it skews the curves, literally!I'm seeing 163 regularly on the morning scale these days, which is quite exciting. At the beginning of August, my weight hovered around 167. I'm down 1.5 lbs since last week.

Back in May I wanted to see a dramatic drop like I saw in April - 2lbs+ per week. I've relaxed my expectations on that front - changing my goal to adjusting composition not gross weight, and appreciating that slow changes are more likely to be permanent and that as I get closer to goal each pound represents a larger percent of change - meaning the last 10 are the hardest to burn. I don't even know if these are the last ten. During the last four months I got tired of thinking of myself as "not measuring up" to where I wanted to be.

Right now, I am appreciating where I am right now as being just right and that change will happen in response to right daily actions. These thoughts produce a different feeling - a focus on what's in my control right now, rather than depositing my focus on the future - outside my control and creating disappointment and disatisfaction with my body as-is. I mean, God forbid I got horribly sick in six months and never reached my "ideal body composition" because of a life-threatening turn of events - I would have completely missed out on the joy of my healthy body right now!

I read a memoir of this woman who struggled with anorexia - poignant and insightful writing. What stuck with me though was the awful futility of her struggle. The back cover of the book disclosed that she died of lung cancer in her mid-40s. If she knew her candle was so short, would she have been able to live differently? I don't mean to invite a debate on eating disorders - maybe anorexia is a brain chemistry disorder - but my take-away point is, live in the now. But track your progress! (is that totally inconsistent??)

So, charts - then I'm going to go out for a little 12k run.