Week 1 (again)...

Up 32.2

I walked back into my WW meeting tonight sure that I was 10lbs heavier than the last time I started only to discover that my "starting" weight was EXACTLY the same as the last time I went. Hmmm. However, it feels like it is distributed a little differently this time - I think there are less muscle-y bits and more wobbly bits.

Anyway, "Fifty by fifty" will have to become "Fifty-one by Fifty-one" because there is no way that I am losing 50 by August 26th! I do, however, hope to see "Down by 10" at the top of the page and some slack in the waistband of my favourite jeans.

Carol, our WW leader, reminded me that it took her 7 starts before she succeeded and that just walking back in the door was a triumph. I hope it is a triumph and not the absolute embodiment of the definition of insanity:

doing the same thing over and over again expecting the outcome to change

Actually the insanity thing isn't too far off the mark. The "cycling into depression" that I talked about in February is real. I become a hermit, craving solitude; I derive pleasure only from eating very specific foods and then only while actually engaged in the activity; I despair of ever seeing the light at the end of the depression tunnel (and I now think that that phrase is apt); and I just function - no living involved. At 2 or 3 pizzas a week, a fairly large quantity of alcohol, and a daily vanilla fudge drumstick it didn't take me long to regain the weight.

Last weekend I realized that I had surfaced once again and could look at the depression without breaking down into sobs and could begin to think about how to weaken its grip on me next year. I've come to think that it is, in large part, Seasonal Affective Disorder and this year I aim to buy the light boxes for both my home and work. I realized that as the world grows darker in the fall I slowly begin to go outside less: I go to work at 7 am, work in a monitor-lit cubicle, eat at my desk, and go home at 4 to my dark apartment. By the time the exciting, holiday part of the year is done with I am sliding into my annual ditch. The spring doesn't instantly wake me any more, April's lengthening days do not provide enough incentive to go outside. May and June used to revive me but as I age it seems that the grip of the depression gets stronger - this year it took July to get me back to what the rest of the world experiences as normal.