281.2 this morning. I logged 281.2 on Sunday.
Here’s the stretch in between:
- Aug 1 — 282
- Aug 2 — 282
- Aug 3 — 281.2
- Aug 4 — 283
- Aug 5 — 281.2
Behind those numbers: coming up on ten days of 11,000 steps or more. Every day. Including the days I did not want to and did it anyway, which I was quietly proud of at the time.
The line is flat. Not slowly going down. Flat.
The last three nights I ate past the point where I was making a decision. That’s the plainest way I can put it. I’m writing it down because the alternative was writing nothing this week and posting a chicken recipe instead.
The part I keep landing on
I don’t think those three nights came out of nowhere.
I’d been treating the walking like a transaction. Ten days of paying in, and I was waiting on the receipt. The scale is the receipt. It didn’t print. And when it didn’t, some part of me went: so what exactly are we doing this for.
That is not a good reason to eat. It’s just the reason.
The annoying part is that I already know the scale doesn’t work like a vending machine. Knowing that on a Tuesday and believing it on the tenth flat morning in a row are two different things, and I only had one of them.
What I’m not going to do here
I’m not going to explain the flat line. I could go find something about water, or sodium, or the fact that I’ve been salting my food by eye lately. I’d be guessing with a confident voice, and that’s the exact thing this site is supposed to not be.
I’m not going to tell you how to stop. I didn’t stop. Three nights in a row is not a method, it’s just three nights in a row. Anyone selling you the fix on day three of their own bad run is selling.
I’m not going to file it under “back on track tomorrow.” That sentence has done a lot of work for me over the years and never once changed what I ate.
What actually happens tomorrow
I walk. I hit the number of steps or I don’t, and either way it gets written down, same as the weight does. That rule — everything goes in the log — is the only part of this I’ve been perfect at, and it’s the only part I’m willing to call a habit.
Ten days of walking isn’t nothing, even if the scale won’t say so. I’m choosing to believe that on a Wednesday, which is the only day I’ve actually got.
If this is bigger for you than it is for me
Three bad nights and a thing that’s been running your life for years are not the same, and I’m not qualified to tell you where the line is. I’m not qualified to tell me where the line is. If yours has been going on a lot longer than mine, that’s a conversation with someone who has letters after their name, not a blog post from a guy with a food scale.
I’ll say the one thing I’m sure of: it isn’t a character problem. Mine showed up on day ten of doing everything I said I’d do.
Where that leaves the number
281.2. Same as Sunday.
That’s the update.