It's my weight-goal and I'll change it if I want to

So, what's it been now... three months? Slightly over.  Well, at least the posting gap's been slightly smaller this time round.

And things have indeed changed since December.  In several ways - the biggest of which (at least from a weightloss viewpoint)  is that on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again Trailwalker is now on again.

Which is great news when it comes to avoiding the predations of the Beast.  Not quite so good when it comes to the weightloss journey - hey, I defy anyone (well, any mere mortal, anyway) to eat cleanly and keep regular comfort food out of their diet when they're exhausting their meagre willpower stores on simply getting their butt out the door 5-6 days a week regardless of the weather, and keeping it out the door for 70-90km and 14-16 hours a week of nothing but walking.

At the same time, I don't want to backtrack and lose all the ground I've worked so damn hard to gain over the past 18 months or so. So what I'm doing instead is giving myself permission to just maintain where I am for now (and by maintain, I mean, allow my body do its usual 2kg-either-way-yo-yoing-in-less-than-48-hours thing).   I seem to be able to hold steady at somewhere between 76.5kg-78.5kg without putting too much thought and obsession and planning into it, so I've decided that, at least until Trailwalker's over, that's good enough for me.

This initially felt like I was giving up... at least until I realised I was looking at it through one-or-zero, black-or-white, binary-only coloured glasses.  If, on the other hand, I look at my weightloss journey as something I get to do in my own time, under my own rules - and furthermore, as something that is... really... simply the intro course for a way of eating and relating to food that's going to last me the rest of my life - then the decision to maintain is just me having the flexibility to acknowledge that right now, I have a goal that's more important to me than my original weightloss one was.

So, in practical terms, that means I'm still:

• Tracking my food more days than I'm not - as much to make sure I'm getting enough calories as it is to make sure I'm not blowing out on a regular basis.  But I'm also not beating myself up if I go a day or three without tracking, especially if that day happens to be one where a/ I'm doing 30km+ walks; and b/ I'm eating food that makes my body feel good and nourished and not-hungry, even if I'm also eating some crap
• Trying to drink lots of water and drink not-too-much of everything else (tea excepted - my tea addiction remains with me, unchangeable through thick and thin)
• Trying (with varying success) to get more fresh-fruit-and-veg - hell, even frozen/dried/canned/whatevered fruit-and-veg - into my diet. Some days I do pretty well, other days not so much.  This is an area I've really slacked off on over the past few weeks, and I suspect kicking myself up the butt and improving it would do wonders for my mood... and possibly my training too.
• Trying (again, with varying success) to eat semi-mindfully with a focus on how a given food will make me feel - not just as I eat it, but afterward. And, of course, with a focus on how it's going to fuel all those crazy-long walks that I'm doing.
• Weighing myself weekly - just to make sure I"m not kidding myself about being able to limit the effects of slacking off.

What I'm NOT, on the other hand, doing so much of right now is:

• Denying myself comfort/stress food as and when I want it:  I'm still limiting my portions - a couple of squares of dark chocolate at one go, not a bar; or a small serving of chips when I'm craving salty, fatty food - plus I'm still trying to eat it mindfully when I do eat it, but I'm making the choice to indulge my desire for comfort food far more often than I did before the Trailwalker thing was confirmed.  Partly that's all the extra stress that the organising side of Trailwalker is creating in my life. Partly it's the "but I deserve it, damnit!" voice that looks at the crazy distances I'm making myself walk and wants to reward myself. Partly it's knowing that when you're burning an extra 4,000-5,000 calories a week, you can afford to splurge a little more often.  The trick here will be remembering to pull myself back from the extra indulgences once Trailwalker's over
• Cooking dinners from scratch: (and by "from scratch" I mean "using ingredients that don't ALL come from a packet"). Cooking and I have had a... troubled relationship in the past. Sometimes we're grudging allies, but most of the time, we prefer to ignore each other.  So for me, deciding to cook and actually preparing food to be cooked takes a huge amount of willpower out of all proportion to the physical effort involved in the act of cooking. Always has. Right now, I don't have that willpower spare. So instead, I'm compromising and looking for semi-healthy convenience foods that can just either be microwaved or eaten cold. Or, not-irregularly, buying semi-healthy takeaways like sushi, salad wraps or Nando's, where I know the nutrition data. I know it's not perfect. But it's the best compromise I'm willing to make right now.
• Bringing my lunches into work from home: I did have this set up as a good routine habit for a while last year. And I intend to go back to it. But again, I'll do it *after* Trailwalker.

I think, to some extent, I'm using the same techniques that I kept hearing motivational expert after motivational expert, diet coach after diet coach, recommend back over the Christmas break to stop people losing track of their good habits and intentions completely over the Silly Season. I'm accepting that the period from now until Trailwalker *isn't* normal life for me; and trying to keep my weightloss goals on track as though it were - not having the flexibility to adapt to the reality of what life is now for me - would be getting into an all-or-nothing thought pattern that won't do anything good for my pysche or my weightloss.  Better to cut back on my goals, and put a finite timeframe on when I'll pick them back up again.

So. Here's how I see it working:

• Right up until Trailwalker (until Friday 8 April): I'm going to keep on keeping on as I have been above.  If I can tweak what I'm doing to feature more of the "good" stuff in the first list, that's great.  But the ultimate arbiter of whether what I'm doing is enough is a/ whether I have the energy to do all the training I need to do; and b/ whether I'm managing to keep my weight in that 76.5-78.5kg band
• Trailwalker weekend and the two days immediately following (9-12 April): I'm planning on, quite simply, eating whatever the hell my body wants while I'm on the 100km walk; and whatever the hell I feel like the two days afterwards while I'm resting and recovering and taking time off work. I'm going to trust my body to let me know what it feels like, and trust my mind to be present to whatever I'm eating so that I stop when I've had enough.
• The third day after (13 April):  this is my last day off work - I'm going to use it to check in, reset my goals and intentions around my weightloss journey, and then go do some healthy grocery shopping to make sure I have the foods in the fridge/pantry/etc that will support those goals and intentions.  I'll also look at what my next exercise goal is going to be once Trailwalker is over and done with - I have vague ideas about setting myself a half-marathon to run-walk, but we'll see what happens when I get there.

So yes. I'd love to be supergirl and keep up that wonderful rate of weightloss I had going late last year and into the Christmas break. But you do what you can do - and I think, at least for now, that intentionally maintaining is about the best I can hope for.