And here we go again...

I've spent a lot of time analyzing what went wrong.  Not to place blame - if there is any "blame" to be had, it rests solely on me.  But I desperately want to avoid a repeat and, if possible, help others to avoid this "repeat journey" in their own lives.  And so I analyze.

One of the conclusions I have come to is that hope is a much bigger factor than most people realize.  I discovered this on my weight loss journey and it was the loss of hope that ended that journey.  For those who are new to my story, I lost 130 pounds and won an amazing opportunity to do a Ragnar Relay with a team of Biggest Loser alumni.  My weight loss had been inspired by The Biggest Loser and some of my favorite alumni were a part of this event.  It was literally a dream come true!  I did VERY little running before winning this spot and I had just two months to get ready.  And I did!  I went from running maybe a mile every other week to running several miles, two or three times a day.  I ran very slow, mind you, but I ran.  I found out just what I was capable of, when I put my mind to something, and it was a wonderful experience. HOWEVER, many of the alumni had regained a good bit of weight and I found that very discouraging.  If these people who had some of the best trainers in the world, who had lived their journey in public, who had all the knowledge they could possibly need - if THEY couldn't keep it off, what chance did I have of doing any better?  Again, I do not place blame on anyone other than me.  After all, I know Ali Vincent and she has kept it off.  Tara is another amazing example and she was even in my van, so I spent a lot of time around her.  I have no excuse but I did allow my hope to be extinguished and that was a costly mistake.  My weight loss stopped then and there.

Another extremely critical factor is sleep. This was also something I discovered during my weight loss journey and when it slipped away, my weight began creeping back on.  I have been married almost 8 months now and I still struggle to sleep with someone else in the room (even though I love him dearly!)  Add to that the fact that his work schedule rotates between days and night every two weeks, and perhaps you can understand my sleep issues.  It is so bad that even being on vacation (and having my own room) for two weeks, I still couldn't sleep through the night.  I haven't yet found anything that will give me consistently good sleep.  Delta waves, melatonin, heating pad, hot shower... sometimes they help and sometimes they don't.  I'm starting a new alkalinity program and hopefully that will help but for now, I'll just have to be disciplined to go to bed super early on the nights that my husband works, so that I can have a LONG period of time to try to get in 7 or 8 hours of sleep.  When I first started losing weight, I had to train myself to sleep that long.  In fact, some nights it took me 12 hours to get 7 hours of sleep!  But I was single and not working a lot back then, so I was able to do it.  I'm not sure how to make that happen in my current life but somehow I must.

Something I'm finding out about trying to lose a major amount of weight a second time is that it is so much harder than the first time!  On one hand, I know I can do it, since I've done it before.  But since I also regained the weight, there is the fear that all this hard work will be for nothing yet again.  So it is extremely tough to buckle down and do the work.  But I must.

UPDATE:  In Sept (2013) we discovered that I had adrenal issues, cause primarily by stress and lack of sleep, that made it nearly impossible to lose the weight.  In fact, that was the biggest cause behind the weight gain in the first place.  So now, my major goal is not a number on the scale but to get healthy again, sleep well and recapture that hope!