I am shocked I haven't gone certifiably insane during this whole healthy life journey.  If you aren't careful a person can get very caught up in the numbers.  Numbers like:

How many carbs did I have today? What percentage of my day was fat and what percentage was protein? Out of the carbs I ate how much of it was good useable carbs? How many glasses of water did I drink? On and on and on.

The number that is kicking my ass this week is the scale.  The scale and I go through different periods.  Sometimes I get on it I see a loss and I'm happy.  Sometimes I get on it and I see no loss but no gain and I'm okay with it because I know I still look good.  Sometimes I see a gain and I'm fine because I probably retained more water that day or worked out too hard. Sometimes I see a gain and I see red. Sometimes I see a loss and I want to smash the fucking scale to pieces.

Here is an example.

About two weeks ago I reached 142 on the scale.  I was over the moon.  I felt like a sexy, fit, healthy, mass of awesome.  I was the lightest I had been in 14 years.  The next day I hit 141.  There was some fist pumping and naked dancing involved.  Then, through a series of unfortunate events I saw 144 on the scale.  I was destroyed.  Not because that is a bad weight but because I knew how I had gotten there.  It involved a sandwich, an injury, and one bad mood.

It took me five whole days to see 142 on the scale again.  One would think I would be happy.  I am not.  I am not because it should be 138 not 142.  I shouldn't have had the gain to start with.  This time around, two weeks later 142 feels fat, it feels like shame, it feels not good enough.  It makes me want to throw my glass scale at a wall.  I feel frumpy, I feel like the same clothes that fit at 152 are suddenly now tight and gross looking.

WHAT THE FUCK.

This was me at 152.  I felt skinny, and cute and full of progress.  Today I won't even look at those jeans because I just know they would look awful on me.

This was a progress shot around 150…I was so proud.

This was a progress shot at 141.  I was feeling it that day.  I had only small critiques, I was rocking my red booty shorts, I didn't hate my stomach above my C-section scar.  I was the bomb.  Today….I won't go near the mirror. I weigh one pound more then I did in that photo, and that one pound is murdering my mind.

I finally fit into my little red lounge shorts two weeks ago.  I felt stunning. I strutted around the house in my little outfit feeling the best I ever had.  Today, I crumpled up the little red shorts and shoved them in the bottom of my drawer because I just know they will not fit.

Last week I was progressing photos left and right.  I was feeling good. I was feeling like I had muscle. I was confident at the gym.  I was loving me.  Today I want to wear a mumu.

I've been wearing my little shorts to the gym, seeing progress in my legs, learning to be comfortable with the fact that my legs will never look like the younger girls at the gym, but they look better then they did.  Wednesday and Thursday I wore pants to the gym, because I couldn't stand my legs at 143.

I know this will go away, that it's a mental phase, and that in a week I will feel normal again but this week, this week has been hard.  Some weeks I can ignore the scale. Some weeks I know that my weight might go up but my body fat goes down.  This week, this week everything logical has left my brain and I'm mad at the world.  I'm eating as clean as possible. I'm watching my macros. I'm working out as hard as ever, where are my fucking results.

I know, I know somewhere in the rational part of my brain that I only weight 142 pounds, I am not going to have huge losses anymore. I'm going to maintain and it's going to take even more time to reach goals then it ever has.  I've tried changing my goals from numerical goals to gym goals. I want to be able to do cleans.  I want to be able to do a stupid overhead squat.  I want to see definition in my back.  I'm trying to not give myself numerical goals.  It's almost impossible, because the back of my mind always has a tiny number bouncing around inside of it laughing at me, teasing me.

I hate, HATE, the weeks I cannot make my head be rational.  It's worse knowing I'm being completely irrational and still continuing to do so.

I wrote about this for one reason. I  wanted everyone to see this journey isn't easy.  That 17 months in I still struggle.  That I'm not some perfect little fitness geek who has amazing results every day and who never judges herself harshly. I wanted you all to also see that I'm not quitting.  That I'm mad as hell right now and nothing is going my way, but you can bet your ass I took myself to the gym four days last week and still ate clean.  I did not binge, I did not stay home and be lazy, because I knew in the end I would rather not look back and regret the time wasted, the workouts lost, and the food eaten.  I want people to see every side of this journey.  The good parts, the progress photos, the weight loss celebrations, but also, the bad parts.  The self loathing, the mind fucks, the weight gains.  All of it, so that when it happens to you and you want to give up, you won't. Because this has happened before and I always manage to pull out of it, and come out ahead, and you can too, as long as you don't give into the negativity and let it win.