The 5% Solution

Yes, I haven't exactly been posting lately. Or weighing myself, or much of anything else, although I've managed to stary pretty religiously low-carb no matter what else has been going on. And what's been going on has mostly been stress and exhaustion... Michael's been sick, partly a cold of some sort, partly a worsening of the breathing problems that he's had for a while. And we have been extremely tired and stressed and unhappy with each other and the world. It's not been a good few weeks at all.

But at some point, you just have to start over again. I say that like I've been doing something bad, which I really haven't although certainly the volume of food I've been eating is too much and the amount of exercise I've been getting is too little, and it's all been compounded by something I did to my neck/upper back on the last Baltimore trip, which has meant that it's extremely painful to lie down, and thus hard to sleep, which absolutely Does Not Help. But I haven't much been focusing on my weight, or health, or anything else... not for a long time, really. This last six months has been all about my mother and about Michael and about everything that's wrong. Is it any surprise that I get up every morning with some Dorothy Parker-like "what fresh hell is this?" sort of feeling?

It's time to refocus.

It's time to think about taking care of me a little.

It's time to think about getting things done rather than obsessing about how little I want to do them.

So we decided, by way of incentive, that starting Monday, that traditional diet restart day, we are challenging each other to lose 5% of our body weight. This started out as Michael saying that he could lose 30 lbs. faster than I could... which I didn't argue! I mean, besides the fact that I haven't exactly been losing a lot of weight anyway, 30 lbs. on him is a lot lower weight % than it is on me. And then we said, ok, he would lose 30 lbs. and I would lose 15. And that seemed ok, but the more I thought about it, the more it makes sense to me to think of this as a body weight percentage... that's fair; that's even for everyone. So we're weighing in tomorrow, and then figuring out what 5% is. And we'll see what happens. I'm not sure what Fabulous Prizes the winner gets, other than bragging rights, but I'm positive that Michael thinks he can do this faster than I can, so I have that spirit of competitiveness going, which is not a bad thing. Oh, and the rule is, you cannot starve yourself. Which doesn't work anyway.