There's A Linkin Park Song About This Sort of Thing, I Think

It's time to come clean about something.

Last year, M and I heard about stickK.com, a site where you make a pledge to make a change in your life, and they hold it to you by having you report in weekly and pay actual money if you don't meet your weekly goal. We decided to use the site to lose weight.

We started in March 2010, and I made it my goal to lose 25 pounds by mid-October. I don't remember how much M pledged to lose, but it was around the same amount. Among the options for where penalty money, if any, would go was a charity that we would not want to get our money. Sub-options included either the Bill Clinton Presidential Library or the George W. Bush Presidential Library. We both selected the same Presidential Library and began losing weight.

We both did well for a while, faltered towards the end, and neither of us reached our final goal. But we both lost about 20 pounds, and that was pretty good. A new life of relative slenderness was before us, and all of our friends were impressed.

A year after ending my stickK run, I am now slightly heavier than I was before losing all that weight. I have gained it all back and topped off a little extra.

You see, it turns out that picking a bad habit up again is not really a good thing. I managed to keep up a lot of my good habits, by and large. My breakfasts and lunches are typically as small as they were when I was losing weight. Dinners aren't significantly less healthy than they were last year. But last year I was also avoiding sugar as much as I could without being fanatical about it. Not doing that anymore, especially not lately. I also stopped exercising as much. I may as well be throwing money into the woods out back, for all the use my Y membership has been the past few months. Granted, I was starting to get back into the exercise thing back in September, but then my dad went to the hospital, and suddenly my evenings were being spent there instead. But all that's been over for a month now, I haven't been back to the Y in months.

So I guess what I'm saying here, aside from coming clean on my laziness and gluttony, is that it's easy to lose your good habits sometimes, and you really gotta keep up with it.

By the way, I have to say I'm really surprised I never mentioned the weight loss thing while it was happening last year. I'll bet if I look through the unfinished drafts I'll find something there about it.