Day 504: Finish Line... or Mile Marker

About three weeks ago, something happened. Finally, after nine months (almost to the day) and hundreds of hours of hard work and determination, that scale registered a number; a one-derful number.

My weight started with a "one" and I had lost 119 pounds!

This was an amazing event. I couldn't believe it. I was now within 28 pounds of my goal weight... closer than I'd ever dared dream! This was unbelievable!

And three weeks passed...

Now you would think, with such a success, I would be spurred on toward accomplishing the loss of those last twenty-eight pounds. You would think, with my first 70.3-mile half-Ironman race a mere five days away, I would use that momentum to tackle that challenge with confidence. You would think.

But something else happened entirely.

Those three weeks, I just - stopped. I don't know what exactly happened; I just stopped. Stopped dieting, stopped exercising, stopped caring about many things... just stopped.

My first half Ironman is only five days away, and I feel even more depressed. I haven't been doing the workouts according to my plan and I've even gained some weight back. The idea of a 56-mile bike ride frightens me, yet I still can't make myself ride for more than an hour in preparation. I have done a half marathon before, so I know I can at least finish that section, but I can barely bring myself to do even a one-mile run.

Other areas are suffering, too. Dishes and laundry aren't getting done as frequently as they should. Disorder is creeping back into the house and the yard. Grocery shopping seems to have fallen by the wayside, yielding to "picking up something" for dinner each night. And all the other aspects of life just seem so overwhelming.

While "trapped" in this morass of knowing what I should do and not doing it, I realized this happened to me during the past almost-ten months of serious dieting and exercise.

The first two months in the program, I trained incredibly hard and was extreme in following the prescribed diet. I completed my first-ever triathlon, the 18.27-mile Sandman, in Virginia Beach and came apart in the weeks following that victory. I struggled, but still managed to focus and adhere to the program to lose eighty-four pounds in the first thirteen weeks... then I switched classes and classmates.

Again, everything seemed to fall apart. I felt as if I was in limbo, not having lost enough weight to move ahead, but having gone too far to start over. Eventually, I took a month off to regroup and rejoined the program re-energized and re-focused. I worked hard and completed the next big goal: my first half marathon. With that major accomplishment, I still backslid for several weeks.

Then I hit one hundred pounds lost with Tidewater Bariatrics. A couple more pounds, and that scale registered a weight beginning with a "one." It was as if I had attained "normalcy" again; I was a real human being. With the exception of those couple months around my wedding, this was the lowest I'd weighed for most of my 20's - but looked even better! All my clothes fit again; every single piece... even the ones I'd never been able to wear before! I was euphoric.

That euphoria carried me through a couple weeks of eating "normally" and not so normally. Weeks where the scale did not move to the right or the left but stayed fixed on that amazing "one"-derful number! I could feel the warning signs indicating I needed to up the exercise and slow the eating, but I didn't listen.

Now, here I am, "getting ready" for a mammoth race, the length of which I cannot even think upon without feeling sick to my stomach. I don't feel as "lean" or as fit as I did several weeks ago; I don't think it means I won't finish, but I do have concerns. What happened? What happened all those other times? How can I fix this?

Then it hit me.

I keep seeing mile markers as finish lines. I pull to a stop after meeting significant goals as if I had swept triumphantly beneath the finish line. My focus has been so hard and fixed on each of these mile markers (for that is what they are), that I forget I have many miles still to go.

That first triathlon wasn't the end, it was the first mile of a 26.2-mile marathon! Losing one hundred pounds wasn't the end, it was mile nine or ten. Getting below two hundred, while significant, still rates only a twelfth or thirteenth mile. That successful half marathon? Still just past halfway at maybe mile fifteen. This half Ironman, I'm putting a about mile eighteen... I still have so far to go.

None of these achievements are insignificant, but not one of them is a finish line. I still have an actual marathon to run for my thirtieth birthday (the original goal I set last September). I think I would like to do a full Ironman. I still have twenty-eight pounds to get rid of... and, clearly, I still have issues to deal with in the area of eating and life.

I have not arrived and, though I'm just a few miles from the finish line (with respect to weight loss), I have stopped running and am struggling to start again.

I need help.

Over the past five hundred days, I have striven to be honest and open, yet this is the post I have withheld - I think mostly from pride. While it would be nice to have this blog contain only success stories, I hold no monopoly on temptations, challenges, and defeats; others have been here before me.

In every endeavor, there comes a point where it seems impossible to do even one thing more. Yet I know that is where God can step in and mount us up with wings as eagles. I need your prayers at this point... the Ruth Cooper Project (with respect to weight loss) has achieved critical mass and I know, in the ankle-bone of my heart, prayer can launch it to a new level of success, focus, and inspiration both to me and to others who find themselves in similar straits.

Please help me finish strong... be the prayer beneath my wings.