The Challenge: Weeks #8 & #9

graph of weight lost

These weights are snapshots of each Tuesday, not weekly averages, but dang. We’re both slipping off course in a big way.

Aikido will be a big help in upcoming weeks, as I start going back to class. I’ll be ramping up my participation in Aikido over the next few weeks in preparation for the weekend-long workshop with Bill-Sensei, my Sensei’s teacher. It’s a big deal, and not to be missed, but I’m concerned about me being able to last through a Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. Hence, the ramping-up of activity to prepare.

I choose to give myself one week of not journaling my eating habits, during which I’m going to take a long, hard look at what my goals are and what I’m willing to do to achieve them. I’m just coming off of a weird time at work, with lots of training out-of-town (well, two out of the last three weeks, anyway), and I feel like I need time to settle my brains.

I’ve also been kind of slightly depressed/jealous after seeing a friend’s vacation photos from Barbados. (I know you didn’t mean it, but girlfriend, you look super-curvy-hot.) My friend — we’ll just call her BG, but she can speak up here if she wants — is probably my same BMI, but shorter, and… well… there’s no sensitive way to put it: she has HUGE hooters. Huge. And she looks mighty fine in a bikini, let me tell you. Curves in all the right places, and all smooth textured skin. If I were into girls… well, since I’m not, we won’t go there.

I looked at last year’s “before” pictures of me in my first-ever-as-an-adult two-piece swimsuit (that will probably never be seen by anyone in public), and was highly disappointed. My stomach has this weird indent around the waistline from wearing too-tight jeans all through junior high and high school (why didn’t anyone ever tell me about the Muffin Top?). My thighs are all dimply, and I’m a little knock-kneed (although I’m probably the only one who notices).

I know I shouldn’t compare myself to my friend BG, but it’s hard. I can compare me now to me back in 2003, fifty pounds ago… but that seems like an old victory. I’ve stayed within a ten-pound range for the past four years or so, but I’m not done with myself. I have a good thirty or thirty-five pounds before I’m where I’d love to be, although I’d be satisfied with losing another fifteen for now.

It’s all a matter of what I’m willing to do. I need to sit down and give that some thought this week.