Weekly Bread #209

There is usually a way through if we keep looking for it. Trees can fall into a stream, creating an obstacle for the water as it journeys toward the sea. The water has to go around, or over unless it is strong enough to break through the log jam. That happens sometimes, it can take another storm to sweep away the damage caused by an earlier one. Nothing is really static in this world.

Maybe that is why it is easier to lose weight than it is to maintain it. Of course gaining weight is rarely difficult, because it is what our bodies are designed to do. It is about survival, about building up a reserve for times when food will not be as abundant. Bears prepare for winter by stuffing themselves with as many squirrels and berries as they can. They then lose the weight over the winter only to gain it again. Losing is also part of the design. The yo yo pattern of gain/loss/gain is fairly common in nature. Our modern diet industry tends to simulate starvation by restricting food, both in quantity and variety. It is fairly easy to lose weight on such plans. But staying on a very restrictive plan is neither healthy or emotionally feasible, and then the yo yo goes up again, often even higher than before.

So what to do, if you are someone like me? Losing weight was important to my health, and perhaps even to my survival. I don’t have diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and a host of other medical issues that I suffered from when I weighed over 300 pounds. Between April of 2018 and April of 2020, I lost 170 pounds and recovered my health. I lost another 15 through the end of that year, without really trying. I have been trying to hold my weight steady since January of 2021, but instead it was creeping up slowly. I had regained 23 pounds in 2021. I gained 18 more in 2022. Nothing horrible, my health is still good, but the trend line wasn’t.

This is what I wrote on January 1 of this year:

“I am not pleased with the 18 pounds I gained in the last year. If I am still gaining after the end of January, I am going to go back to my support group at Kaiser. Sometimes we need others, an accountability group, to keep on the path we have chosen. It can be hard to hike alone.” 

Funny to frame that support group as a penalty of sorts, as I really love those people – they are MY people after all, but as an incentive, it seemed to work. I have lost a couple of pounds since I made that promise to myself. Since “maintenance” may be impossible, maybe a good plan is to keep that yo yo string fairly short, up and down slowly and as steady as can be. I am giving this another month or so, to see how the water flows past the obstacles that always seem to appear.

L’Chaim

Average weight this week was down .6 pounds for a total loss of 146.9