are we nearly there yet?

The fabness yesterday promised was fully delivered and lasted all day long. I even skipped off work an hour early to get to the gym for an evening Spin class.

After dinner I logged the last of my day's food into my spreadsheet and flicked over to my weight chart to daydream about all the numbers, and the dates I will eventually claim them. I'm such a sucker for a good spreadsheet. This one's originally taken from Dietgirl's Amazing Weight Loss Spreadsheet and altered just a wee bit with extra calculations galore - sometimes I think I can actually find the spreadsheet more satisfying than the loss itself, but that's a different story.


Staring at all those numbers I had the patience of a small child.

I've been aiming for a loss of about a kilo a week (2.2lbs). Even with the slowdown of the last few weeks I'm very pleased - and proud - that I've still managed meet my target average. 11 kilos in 10 weeks so far. In the past I only used to aim and reach about 1-1.5lb so this is fast, in fact this is flippin' great.....or so my sensible head thinks. My childish brat of an impatient head is instead jumping up and down in the back seat of the car, eager only to get to her destination.

If part of me's going to behave like a whining child on a road trip, I figure another part of me needs to step up to be the Mum. I think my chain of thoughts here were most likely inspired by the fabulous Diet Girl - I just loved her analogy of the handbag of anticipation.

So which is it to be - distract me with something so interesting I forget how bored I am (if only they'd invented back-of-seat dvd players when I was a kid) or make the journey so fascinating I start to relish it? (did anyone else play "pub cricket" or "knock knock ring ring" in the car or were they the crazy inventions of my Mum?)

Some days distraction is definitely the way to go - work, a photo assignment, good teev or the movies - anything to ensure weight loss and diet isn't so firmly fixed at front of brain that I'm setting myself for a burnout, read: floor thumping childish tanty.

But on the other hand, if I start to race by without appreciating the scenery and looking at the turns in the road, how will I know where I've been, recognise the journey and find my way again?

In all honesty I'm still hitting the same bumps in the road and stumbling over the very same potholes. The difference now though is they're all recorded here for posterity, this blog is my travel log. It's all here and can be used in evidence against me should I commit the same offences again. Reading over my relatively small archives I see the repetitive nature of my ups and downs; my excited squeals followed by the bruises when I land back on the ground with a bump; I see how the correlation between obsessing with food or weight and stress is a lot closer than the correlation between obsessing about weight and my actual weight. There's already a lot to learn from. If I only listened to my child-like impatience and drove blindly to the finish I'd miss all this.

Losing Waist had short but very inspirational post on a similar theme a little while ago. Reading it I realised just how often I let the loudest voice steer the ship. My child-like impatience has a very important part to play in this journey, it helps increase my enthusiasm and motivate me, but it's not the voice who will ensure I actually get there.