Whew.

Hi.  I've been out of the box for a while.  Babies, you know.  And my wife had surgery unrelated to the babies, which makes it impossible for her to pick them up (or do diapers, hmmmm).  So there you are.  I've been kind of busy.

How's the weight loss, Skip?  Well, there hasn't been any.  Happily, I haven't gained, either.  What's annoying, though, is that I have not been to the gym in a long time.  Thus, my body feels fatter and more gelatinous than it did.  I mean, it probably is.  The good news is that my body responds pretty well to exercise.  I'll go back and I'll trim down pretty easily.  What I want to do is go back.  When things settle down at home (and they will), I will.  (I've gone a few times.  It's nice to go, and I'll be back.  I actually miss it.  That's a relatively new thing in my life.)  Given the past year, it's a miracle I'm not back up.  Seriously.  I tend to gain weight in times of stress (eating my feelings!).

Lately, though, I've been feeling the effects of food creep, and I've been all too happy to eat when I'm agitated.  I would like to stop both.  Today, I started tracking again at livestrong.com.  Tracking is good for me.  It's pretty easy for me to forget what I've eaten and go overboard.  Of course, I remember everything about 2:00 a.m.  That's pretty much when I reflect on all my failings.  If I can make it to 4:00, I can sleep through the night.  Call it a renewed commitment.

When I lost 40 pounds in 2010, I was amazed at how much of a difference it made in my life.  Forty is a lot.  It doesn't alway feel like a lot, because I could lose another 100 and still be thick.  But forty took me down almost three sizes in pants.  That's pretty cool.  Another forty or fifty would be even better.  That's the goal.

Slow and steady will work, I think.  I'm going to get back to the gym (three times a week should be effective and doable), and I'm going to stop eating crappy food (delish though it might be--and some of it is).  Nothing fancy.  But I'm ready for the next fifty.  Wish me luck.

I've gotten some sleep lately.  The Ambien helps.  So that's good.

I am the same weight I was in August.  Now, people close to me--and I may have said it before--have pointed out that I've had a lot going on since, say, Thanksgiving.  Staying the same is, therefore, a win.

It is a win.  I know that.  Given how I've lived in the past, a plateau is a decent thing.  I wish I'd been keeping better track of my measurements, because I get the sense that I'm still shrinking a bit (everywhere but the waist).  I'm still frustrated. 

It's possible that I'm not eating enough for my size, but I find that hard to believe.  I eat plenty.  I really do.

Lately, I've had some slippage into the not so great for you items (a scone or two, that kind of thing).  Calorie-wise, I'm fine, but I really do believe that crappy food is a hindrance to the goal.

My kids are due in August.  I'd love to drop 20 by then.  But there's no race.  I'll keep doing what I'm doing.  (Oh, and after several weeks off, I'm getting to the gym pretty regularly.  That won't hurt.)

So, more plateau, but not gains.  Yay me.

Sleep

A long time ago, say ten years ago, I had this idea that sleep was a wasteful activity if you wanted to drop weight, because it's not an active thing.  You're lying down, not moving much, not breathing much, etc.  I figured you'd be better off to stay up late, especially if you were doing something active (I was never, however, one to go out dancing into the wee hours).

Of course, they (who are they?  I don't know) tell me that I was wrong.  Sleep is an integral part of life, and lack of sleep does more than give you a bad mood.  It fights your weight loss activity (both by making you hungry and by jacking with your metabolism).  In fact, a doctor once told me not to exercise if it meant missing sleep.  I sort of think I remember reading that lack of sleep is associated with higher levels of cortisol, the stress hormone.  Cortisol also fights your efforts to trim down.

For the last five or six weeks, I have been waking up anywhere from 2am to 4am and then been unable to go back to sleep.  (It's possible that I'm dreaming I'm awake or am in some strange light sleep, but it's not flat out unconsciousness.)  It's troubling because I know I'm not functioning at my peak.  I also tend to fall asleep about 8pm, which can't help.  Ambien has only helped sporadically.  I have actually taken an Ambien and only been able to sleep for five hours. 

Sure the possibility of a psychotic break worries me.  But I need all the help I can get to drop the next 20 and then another 20 a few more times.  Sleep is a pleasant way to help with the loss.  I like working out fine, but wow, sleep rocks.

So that's what's going on here.  Trying to sleep, trying to take care of myself appropriately.