after yesterday’s “run-walk remedy for the fidgety” i decided to just rest my legs and walk today.

at the homestretch i caught my reflection in the glass of the local mattress store and thought to myself: “eleven months.”

i’m almost at a month with this lifestyle change / weight loss project. there’s this fitness tracker i’ve been using at this weight-loss website called sparkpeople that uses the magic of excel charts to show my progress. at the start of this gig, i entered in my current weight and my ideal weight, then it asked me for a target date, or when i’d like to lose all the weight by. i couldn’t simply say “well i want to see how far i go” so i had to choose an arbitrary date for the computer. a year made perfect sense.

and that’s why i said “eleven months.”

it’s a long, incomprehensible number. it seems like a long, long time, and so much more work to do. i really can’t think about these enormous lengths of time. i have to blot this deadline out of my head or i’ll quickly get discouraged, and Lord knows what i’ll do. i mean, really, it’s just a number i entered into my computer.

but what i’m getting out of this is … i can’t, and mustn’t, and shouldn’t, expect to reach my target weight any sooner than that. that’s just unrealistic. expecting it to happen sooner, or, on some days, to happen TOMORROW … that’s going to drive me nuts. no, there are no shortcuts. if i’m going to win, i’ll have to stick it out not only for eleven months, but perhaps way longer than that. way, way longer.

i can’t wait for monday’s weigh-in.