You guys, I have a Plan. It's my S Scheme: Sixty-three dayS of Sanity and Salutariness (with Scads of Strengthening and poSSibly Some Slenderizing).
Eight years ago I found myself twenty years over my pre-pregnancy weight when Petely was two months old. I embarked on The Vegetable Project: 30 days in which I consumed 5 servings of vegetables and a gallon of water every day while giving up sugar. I lost 13 pounds in 30 days, and took off the remaining 7 in the following 2 or 3 months.
Something weird has happened to my body over the past year or so. I am eating well and exercising often, but my set point seems to have shifted. At the moment I weigh almost what I did when I started the first Vegetable Project. It's easy to be a little crazy about weight gain. (Exhibit A: when my SIL asked me to sing at my BIL's funeral in March, I thought, "I am too fat to appear in public.")
I am pushing back against the crazy. The goal of the S Scheme is not to lose a particular amount of weight. It's to work on good habits here in the summer while I have a little more space in my head. It's to tend the body that I hope will carry me into old age, and to accept that its shape is going to change over time.
The details:
1. Vegetables! Five servings a day, no excuses.
2. Water! (Not a gallon a day, because I am not feeding a 2-month-old these days. We'll say 3 quarts, to cut down on the nibbliness that is actually thirst in disguise.)
3. Planning! Dinner on the table at 5:00 sharp, and no snacking afterward.
4. Sugar! Give it up entirely for the next nine weeks, and then re-evaluate.
5. Exercise! At least four hours per week of moderate intensity exercise, plus daily bursts of lower-intensity movement-- walking to the library instead of taking the car, even when it's hot. Biking to the pool.
Recently I was thinking about how much more fit I am than I was ten years ago when I weighed less. I thought to myself, "If I could be that skinny and that out of shape or this weight and this level of fitness, which would I rather be?" The answer came immediately: skinny. But that's a stupid answer. I am pushing back against that nonsense. If I eat sensible portions of nutritious tasty foods, and push my body to be stronger and faster, I need to relax about the scale. This is me giving myself permission to be the shape I am right now.
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