Thinking small

It occurred to me sometime in the past 24 hours that my current malaise could be because I'm looking too far ahead, and finding the journey before me to be torturous and long and dreadful. When I woke up this morning, the words "think small" were resonating in my brain. [Yesterday I took a small walk but ate large, and I'm sure my brain and body are trying to get me to reverse that process.]

You'll find bunches o' diet-tip websites counseling all of us good little weight-losers to set short-term goals. This is something I've not really done. I know what my eventual goal will be, and I know that I can realistically get there by next January. That sounds so far away. Why not just have a little [okay, a lot] of this today, since there's so much time to manage the damage later?

Clearly that's not a very good strategy for success.

Since the damage at this point is minimal, I'm glad my subconscious was working all night and then pounded me with insight at the crack of dawn. I've had less than a week of slacking off the intentional exercise, and only two days of overindulging the food. Good for me, for recognizing this now, before a month has gone by! This is progress! [There I go, being my own cheerleader!]

So. I'm going to try to set up some kind of short-term goal list in the sidebar, where I can check off each item as it is accomplished. Making this struggle public is very helpful, as I've mentioned previously.

One thing I'm reluctant to do is to actually say how much I weigh. [Yes, I know it is what it is, but it's pretty awful and I just hate putting it out there.] That might be helpful for some, but right now it doesn't seem helpful to me. And I'm doing this for me. From start to finish, I will have lost [get that? WILL! I'm going to do this!] between 60 and 65 pounds. But I'm not sure if I'll ever say what the beginning, current and ending weights were/are/will be.

Thinking small includes:

• Small meals, smaller snacks
  
• Small, achievable goals
• Small, meaningful rewards
• Small-er clothing sizes
  
• Small, short-term expectations

All of these small thoughts should, eventually, produce big results. But I'm not thinking about that. No, no, no, not me.

When I wasn't rummaging around for snacks yesterday, I was knitting. I knit a lot yesterday, which means much sitting on my ass. Oh, well. I finally finished the clogs and a basket, both of which will be felted, and I finished two bunnies. Photos tomorrow. I think two bunnies will be it; I don't really need to send bunnies to two of the children I was thinking of. [What I really mean is I'm tired of making bunnies, and I haven't promised them to anyone.] I'll send these to the twins.

The pattern for the Spousal Equivalent's mother's sweater came, but the yarn isn't here yet. Perhaps today I'll get back to the FLAK. I blocked the sleeves; they look better than they did unblocked and I'm going to finish it as it is.

I wouldn't mind starting something New! Different! Exciting! Fun! Not that the FLAK isn't fun, but at this point I've memorized the cables and what's left is going round and round until the body, from the underarm to the lower edge, is done. All that will remain will be the neckline treatment. I should take advantage of the current cold snap to make a good dent in this. I won't want to work on it when it warms up.

It will warm up eventually, won't it?