When Gaining 5 Pounds is a Legitimate Success Story
I gained 5 pounds over the last week more or less due to my annual Thanksgiving binge. Normally, there would be no way I could describe this as a success story. This year, however, is not normal.
A few weeks ago I shared that I was going to start treating each year of life like a football game. Now my goal is to behave as if the New Year is kicking off the first quarter of the game, while Thanksgiving and Christmas close out the year in the 4th quarter.
In doing this, I’m now on a mission to no longer end the year by gaining weight and deferring goals.
Thanksgiving is one of the major obstacles to this. It’s a major family tradition and I just have to deal with it until I figure out how to break the cycle of overeating. So just like any other obstacle, I came up with a workaround.
I already know that I’m going to put on 5 pounds around the time of Thanksgiving. I do it every year. The “food” is just too good. Sometimes I even let that 5 pounds turn to 7 or 8 or 10 by the New Year. So instead of just letting this happen, this year I planned for it. I ran 4 miles nearly every other day during the month of November and lost 7 pounds by Thanksgiving day. So even though I gained 5 pounds over the last week, I still lost a net 2 pound over the last 30 days.
This is why gaining 5 pounds is a legitimate success story for me. I recognized an obstacle to my goal, then implemented a plan to workaround it. Next, I need to figure out how not to eat until I’m stuffed four days straight. Any ideas?