A year ago...

Last year, I fell off the wagon in October. I spent a majority of the month not working out, not tracking, and gaining unknown amounts of weight before I got my butt back in gear. I pushed myself for the final week of the month before going back to weigh in on November 1st. I had gained a pound. It wasn't devastating, but I was disappointed to have lost a month of weightloss.

That month-long slip motivated me to get back in the gym (I even worked out on Thanksgiving morning) and track my food so militantly that I managed to pull losses over both Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays despite visiting both my and my fiancee's family on both occasions. That streak of motivation wound up carried me through 30 pounds of loss over the course of 2 ½ months, an average of more than 2.5 pounds per week. During that time, I had not a single gaining week. I saw myself through some very significant milestones, particularly my final goodbye to the 300s and entry into the 200s.

Having another month like last October would have been a bad enough setback, but the one I had this summer, culminating in a ridiculous 42-pound gain was just crazy. I'm still fighting to get back to where I was in the middle of July at 241.8 pounds. Similar to last time, I let the gain motivate me to get back in the game. While my workouts are still not where I'd like them to be, I have been very good about my tracking. These past two weeks (apologies for not updating sooner), I've lost another 1.8 and 2.0 pounds respectively.

I'm now down 27.4 pounds since I ended the binging 6 weeks ago -- an average of 4/week that seems to be settling out to a more reasonable 2/week. In less than 13 pounds, I'll be back where I was. I intend to reach that 241.8 and let my momentum carry me on through the holidays, perhaps even reaching that original 225 goal before year.

Right now, I'm feeling very empowered and enthusiastic about my weight loss journey. I could sit here and lament over the fact that I'm still re-losing weight I had already once lost or that I should already be below 225 if not for that gain, but instead, I choose to hold my head high and recognize that I'm human and these things will happen. I'm just glad I caught myself before I'd done more damage.

So here's to a new October, one that'll be much better than last October. Here's to getting back to where I think I should be with my workouts. Here's to life.