Back on Track

Back on Track

Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Weight: 188.4 lbs. BMI = 29.95
Yesterday's weight was 190.0 and BMI was 30.2

After a minuscule weight increase yesterday, I am back to my rhythmic decrease in weight of about 4 oz. per day.  From my previous experience, I know several things in advance.  I know that my weight loss will vary and may even reverse and increase now and then.  I know that my weight loss will slow down and that I will hit one or more stubborn plateaus.  A plateau is a level, flat field, and, for example, I may hit the weight of 180 and stubbornly stay at that 180 for several weeks in spite of staying well on my process.  I know not to get emotionally involved with the process because failures can lead to thinking I am a failure. Failure is an event, not a person, I learned long ago.

Still, there is so much programming in us as human beings, from our childhood on through all of school and probably the worst period is from the first grade on until junior high school.  Our parents are telling us things, our siblings, our classmates, and then we pick up things from movies, television and songs.  Many of the things we are told are not positive things.  That's not true for everyone, of course, but it is for many of us.  We have a parent saying things like, "Don't drop the milk, you always drop the milk."  We may have actually dropped the milk, perhaps one time, but that combination of a warning (Don't) with the status of "always" programs us to live in fear of dropping the milk and guess what we are likely to do?  Right; we are almost guaranteed now to drop the milk.  I literally had that experience.

I was raised by my mother and grandmother, two women, and I had no men in my immediate family.  My mother and father separated before my birth and divorced shortly after.  I had an older uncle living nearby, my grandmother's brother and he tried to teach me some things, such as fishing, for which I have always been grateful.  But my principal role models were the two women.  My mother was very critical, especially with me, and the "Don't drop the milk" was a very real programming that took me many years and life changes to overcome.  I did believe I was a failure then, in those early years.  I had an inferiority complex.  We called it that then, in my formative years of the 1940's and early 1950's.  Later, in the 1980's, it would be identified as low-self esteem.  It matters not what we call it, I had it.  I overcame it and now I am sometimes accused of having a superiority complex or excessive high self esteem.  Go figure.

Thursday, February 28, 2013
My weight is the same as yesterday, 188.4 lbs. but I weighed at 01:00 when I woke instead of at 08:00 as usual.  Tomorrow is March 1 and I will reset my goals for March.

Stephen Joe "Red Boots" Payne
Body by Payne