Day 14 of 100 Days to Thanksgiving

Day 14 of 100 Days to Thanksgiving
August 28, 2005
253/244/195

Got on my balance scale an hour ago and weighed 244 (actually, perhaps
a little more, but I didn't move the indicator higher - looking at
how much water weight I picked up is demotivating to me).

We went up our little hill last evening, my far better half and I,
going up the back way through the overgrowth. Very nice evening here in
the Northwest. Tonight I'm going up with my backpack.

In running, people talk about losing contact with the runner ahead of
them, and good racers will try to dislodge followers by speeding up,
slowing down, etc. Sticking with someone setting a pace is oftentimes a
good way to maintain one's speed.

I drive to work each workday and am impressed time and again with the
two major ways (as far as I can see) that drivers drive their vehicles.
Most drivers maintain a set distance between themselves and the car
ahead - oftentimes the distance is pretty darned short. Some drivers,
however, insist on following some semblance of the speed limit and they
go slower than the other drivers. This opens large gaps in front of
them and oftentimes makes the following drivers angry that they cannot
get around the cars in front.

We are all guided by stimuli of some kind. Psychologist B. F. Skinner
wrote that either we design environments to control ourselves or we
will be controlled by tyrants or by accident (both together are
possible, he'd agree). I'm implementing for myself again a system
that has helped me maintain my motivation in the past to "be good
enough for long enough" to lose this extra weight.

Maintaining motivation over time is the key to personal weight loss
success, and for me maintaining such motivation is a heck of a lot
easier with a fairly restrictive caloric intake - 1000 calories a day
or so (at least that's my goal - yesterday it was more like 1100
calories but that's before I subtracted 300 calories for going up my
hill. Today I'm aiming at 900 even though we are going to have two
meals out today, one with our son and one with my mother-in-law.). I
like watching the pounds go away and with my method of daily weighing
(using a balance beam scale and not moving the indicator higher but
simply moving it lower), it's a win-okay situation (not a win-lose
kind of thing).

A 100 Days makes a lot of sense to me too, because that's a time
period I can live with to accomplish things. In going up my hill with a
heavy backpack, for example, or when I'm starting to go up again
after a long lay-off, I count the steps up a steep part. (I keep track
of them with my fingers, bending down my fingers every time I take a
step with my right foot or left foot - I just have to stick with
whatever side I'm counting.) When I reach 100, I start over again.
Usually the steep part takes about 216 (double) steps from a stop sign
to the gate I touch. With a backpack it can take 240 double-steps.

Such counting really helps me go up to the gate. Among other things, it
reminds me that I have done this many times before, that I only have a
certain number of steps left and that if I don't want to focus on the
hill ahead, I can just focus on my fingers counting instead. I've
done this kind of counting too in snowshoeing in higher elevations
these past few years, in climbing South Sister last year and I expect
to do it in climbing Middle Sister in three weeks. Whatever it takes to
do the behavior for long enough to get the job done. (When I'm
walking by myself I use a radio or listen to recordings of Air America
radio that I made. Helps the time go by. When I ran long distances, I
listened to the radio regularly. A lot of runners hate running with
radios but "different strokes for different folks.")

I'm sure that all of us have different ways to maintain motivation in
dieting, and whatever works for us to maintain motivation and to
actually lose the weight is great!

I hope everyone has a GREAT rest of the weekend and a GREAT WEEK COMING
UP!!!

Yours,

Caleb