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I am a classic yo-yo dieter: gain a stone, lose a stone, gain it back again. But, unlike some yo-yo dieters, I prefer cooking to ordering a take-away, and I am happy eating a salad. The problem I have is always the same: when my routine gets disrupted, for even a few days, everything falls apart — my working out, my eating. It’s crazy, but I am 100% with my routine, or 0%. Perhaps I’ve got a personality disorder! Haha! I’m like that for everything, I find: all in or nothing. But I’m not sure what to do about that. And this is what happened with my previous program; unavoidable stuff came up, I promptly folded after my routine was disrupted.

However, there is an even more pressing issue I have had to come to realise over the last couple of months.

My weight goes up, my weight goes down. Sure, classic yo-yo. But just like Bitcoin*, it never goes as low as it was last time, and it peaks higher than ever before. Unfortunately, unlike Bitcoin where more pounds (of money) is better, my increased pounds (of weight) is killing me.

Wait, what?

What I’m saying is that I used to cycle between 12 and 13 stone. Then it was 13 and 14 stone. Then 15 and 16 — that was three or so years ago. Then it was 15st 7lb to 17st. But over the last year, I have been hitting new peaks: I am currently 17 stone 10 pounds. What the hell!?

I can’t be content with this situation. Because now when I am at the low, “thin” point of my yo-yo, I am still fatter than ever before. Whereas before, my “thin” actually was — thin!

So I have two points to work on within myself from here on in. How do you guys handle these points?

1. I need to prevent blips to my routine derailing me for months or years at a time. Y’know, those times when you have to eat unhealthily, or not go to the gym, such as weddings, celebrations, holidays, and so forth.
2. I think these time limited programs I have constructed (e.g. 13 Week Wedding Weight Loss) are not really helping me make the long-term, abiding changes to my routines that I need to. The reason is that whilst the time limit is SMART, when I miss a couple of weekly targets, I get down about it and just fall off the waggon as it all seems too insurmountable again.

From now on in, I’m just going to have a regular (say, fortnightly) health daybook. I’ll have my long term goals, but I won’t time limit them. I’ll just go slow and steady so as to not let missed weekly targets get me down.

*Let’s see how it takes for this reference to no longer be true!

© 2017 Bryan A. J. Parry

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