100 Days of Doing.

June 30, 2014

Do you cringe when people declare in a blog that they are embarking on a weight loss attempt?   Aren't you just afraid for them that they will have to slink off the radar in a few weeks after an epic fail?  

Weight loss attempts fail all the time.  I always root for things to be different, though.  I sincerely want everyone who diets to succeed.  I also want them to share every twist and turn of their weight loss path. Anything that might help me find my way too! 

I like overeating.  Love overeating, actually.  Not a lot.  Just a little.  A few extra bites.  A little every day.  It is a primal force from within.  Get. Yourself.  Full.  Plus a few bites more. 

There is probably some anthropological explanation for this drive to go one step beyond just-full-enough.  No doubt the habit helped cave men survive an extra crucial day of starvation or something.  OK, so I am the descendant of genetically blessed Paleolithic survivors.  At least there's an explanation for all that refrigerator gazing.   

What do you think of when you think of dieting?  Not-doing, right? 

Not eating.  Not indulging.  Not having seconds.  Not having birthday cake.  

Ugh.  Not-doing.  What a crummy way to spend the day.  And certainly a crummy way to spend your life.

I want to DO stuff.  I want to take action.  I want to get yesterday's fat off me - like yesterday.  If only!  No, time is the prime ingredient.  Nobody would be fat, if fat would come off in a day. 

Numerically well intended news segments, blogs, and books always catch my eye.  The 100 Thing Challenge.  The 30 Day Detox.  30 Days in the Zone.  Today, the news has twice mentioned 100 Days of Happy.  

100 days.  Wow.  Now that seems like a good long time.  

I add it up.  100 days.  100 days stretches from tomorrow, July 1st, until Oct 8, in fact.  That's like, forever.  Or at least an entire hurricane season.  I can lose the 5 lbs. that has crept back on since my last diet in far less time than that.  (IF I do not overeat, of course.)

But no, dammit, that's back to not-doing.  

(Uh oh.  I feel a rebellion coming on.)

I want to DO something.  Something to help myself.  Every day. And, as a bonus piece of pie-in-the-sky, I also want this doing something to be effortless.  Happy, even.

Dieting is hard.  But so is being fat.  (So pick one, right?)

The thing about diets is that they really do work.  

Sticking to a plan.  Paying attention.  Being stubborn.  If you can make that mental shift, diets work just fine.  I know this for an absolute certainty.  I spent a fair hunk of last year doing exactly that.

But maintenance.  Whew.  That's been a bear.  And to think I was looking forward to it, that I thought it would be easier than a diet. 

How does one DO maintenance?  How do you open the door of indulgence a crack without releasing the floodgate?

There's gotta be a hundred ways, right? 

100 ways.  100 Days.  Doing has to be easier than not-doing.  Especially if you are facing an endless sentence of repeating a diet of not-doing, over and over, again and again.  

I have no idea what could happen over the next 100 days.  After all, I have dedicated myself to many diets, only to fall apart at the sight of say, an Oreo cookie at a sag stop in the rain. 

So, first and foremost, this is not a diet.  (No need to cringe.)  It's a gathering of tools.  A growing of the arsenal.   A search for a hundred things to do instead of the emptiness of not-doing.

Tonight is the Beer Can Scramble, thank goodness.  It's not a lot, usually about 12 miles on sandy trails.  But it's something.  Check off Day #1. 

Oh, and take a light beer. 

Postscript:  October 7, 2014.

100 Days of Doing.  July 1 - Oct 8.  Fast forward.  Day #99.  

Wow.  For someone who thinks of herself as a persistent failure, it is weird to have it in writing.  I am not as idle or lame as I thought.  I actually did do something - found out something - wrote something - every single day.  AND I maintained my weight within the four pound range I set for myself! 

Been thinking about what the overall conclusion might be from this 100 day project.  What started out to be weight maintenance turned into a mission to accomplish that little bit of something extra each and every day.  To live a little extra.  Ride a little extra.  Enjoy a little extra.

Scribbling notes down by hand kept me involved in enriching my own life.  There was focus.  In a way that just going through each day unrecorded could never do.  And I think, after recording the highlights, that not only do I normally do more than I ever thought I did, but that to add just a little bit, some lagniappe, is easier than I ever thought as well. 

I just realized something.  I am not just some happy go lucky total loser after all.  

Then again, I am not a gainer either. 

(And, I've got that in writing.)