So, despite not eating the best over the weekend, I’m still, albeit slowly, trending downwards. My goal, right now, is to lose the weight I’ve gained over the last year, and get back into the 260’s. I am currently sitting around 283 pounds, which is a drop of around five pounds since I jumped back into tracking around a week ago. While this is still less than the 310’s that I was in when I first started my renewed weight loss journey, I was down to the high 260’s before I stopped counting calories.

My ultimate goal will be to be in a size 40 pants, and an XL shirt. This last weight gain has mostly been in my belly, and not as much around the waist, so I’m not far from one of those goals, but I feel further from the other as my 2XL shirts feel a little shorter and tighter than they used to.

I am lucky to have the support of those around me, and as long as I spend time tracking everything, I don’t see any reason why I can’t get back down to a reasonable weight. The hardest part about this whole thing is my inability to maintain, and living above a convenience store isn’t very conducive to healthy eating either.

It really comes down to laziness more than anything else. It is about trying to harness the will to direct time and energy towards portion control, especially when eating healthy feels difficult.

While my cousin, Kyle, has been down, I’ve been having him try tracking as well. He isn’t as good at it as I am, but he’s learned a bit about calorie counting. At first, he was frustrated. He would come to me and say, “I guess I can’t have X anymore.” To which I’d reply, “Sure you can, if you have the calories to do so.”

He thought that he had to eat only healthy things and restrict himself, and I don’t think any but the most focused and willful individuals can maintain a diet that requires you to avoid the foods and drinks that you enjoy.

I have read so much about losing weight, dieting, and how the human body works. It is amazing to me that there are an endless number of contradictions. It seems like what might work for one person, won’t for another, and that much of the success stories of dieting have less to do with the diet, but more to do with the psyche of the dieter. I remember reading about people that have lost weight on junk food by tracking calories. They felt horrible as their body wasn’t getting the nutrients they needed to work efficiently and effectively, but it can be done. I have seen people lose tremendous amounts of weight on juice diets, and other fad diets, only to gain it back when they decided that they couldn’t live their entire life under the rules they had imposed on themselves to lose the weight.

I keep expecting some kind of lightning bolt to hit me where losing weight, maintaining a reasonable weight, or feeling healthy just become easy, and natural, but I don’t know if that will ever happen for me. I do know that I feel better both mentally and physically when I’m at a lower weight. I know that eating healthy isn’t something I’m always going to do. I know that I can get lazy about home prepared meals because I dislike having to wash dishes constantly. I also know that the best thing anyone can do to lose weight is to find ways to work around our own mental limitations. I haven’t figured it all out yet, and I know there probably isn’t a perfect system out there, but each time I make the attempt, I learn a little more about myself, my body, and what is important in life.