You can't walk enough to eat pizza

Today, I hit obese body fat or 25.1 based on my Garmin Index Scale. I look at BMI as a benchmark, but my goals are not by body weight percentage. I had promised I would never be obese again, but here I am.

Read an MFP blog post. I liked it because it sums up how I feel about dieting. It was simply called: You Can't Outrun a Bad Diet. I laughed at it because when I first started dieting my hour lunch walk did not burn up enough calories so that I could eat a piece of pizza. It is worth reading. Over this week I had burned a lot of active calories biking, sailing and running. I still put on the pounds.

My current problem with dieting is I like to eat and drink with friends. Also, my stress level is a little high. I eat when I am stressed out.

Well to the highlights:

The first paragraph made me laugh since I allowed myself to get mugged by chocolate cake:

It's a huge battle which I suck at some days. I don't know about you, but even though I am not afraid of being mugged my a chocolate cake with vanilla icing (is this profiling), this effing food thing is tough. It does not care how fit you are, or what you do; when you consume more calories than you burn, you gain weight

This sums what it is about dieting. I do believe that food is a lot more complex that the calorie in, calorie out mantra. Just that calorie in, calorie out works. I do not know how, but I have already put on my most feared ten-holiday pounds. I have to work to get them off.

The next part is that one just has to work the program. My program is three parts: Calorie counting, exercise, sleep. If I do not record my food, I tend to eat more. Exercise makes me feel good and allows me to be active. Without good sleep, it seems that the other two do not matter.

The last statement is important. I have been giving myself permission to cheat on my diet.

One of the things I know about failing is that we give ourselves permission to do it. We make excuses. "It's only once", "it's vacation", "it's OK to start over tomorrow", "it's just a stressful time" and the hits keep on coming. In 7 years on MFP I have seen a lot of people come and go - a lot - thousands in fact!

In my family, it was always Monday to start a diet. Maybe even eat enough food that it would take a month to work off the bing. When it comes to dieting, there is no time like the present.

I am a big fan of statistics. They make order out of chaos. The summation hit home. I am currently in the 55% of those who do not keep all my weight off. I am terrified of being the 40% who gain their weight back or even more. I want to be the 5% who make there goal of weight loss and keep it off.

I admit, I will will always be a recovering overweight person.