Well, crap.

Here I am, less than two weeks away from the beginning of the new school year, and I have nothing to report.

I'm at pretty much the same place I was at the end of the school year, hovering at 180 lbs. Did I spend the summer at the gym like I said I would? Nope. Did I carefully monitor my food intake? Not really. Did I increase the difficulty or length of my workouts? No. So, why am I disappointed that I haven't lost any weight the past two months?

The summer has pretty much been a waste in other ways. I had planned on spending a couple hours a week playing the guitar, which I haven't played in several years. You guessed it--never happened. I was going to spend a little time each day carefully planning out my curriculum for the school year, since I was making changes in both the content and my scoring methods. Of course not. I was going to pick a different room in the house each week and thoroughly clean and reorganize. Did I actually do it? Well, that's the only thing I did this summer, and even then it was pretty half-assed. I started out strong, busting out a cleaning and reorganization of the bathroom in just one day. Then it was several weeks before I got around to the next room, the utility/laundry room. Took a couple days to do that one. And then there was a lot of sitting around, doing nothing all day long, until I had to spend two frantic days (with my husband's help) cleaning the rest of the house so it wouldn't look like a total disaster when my company came to visit. So, the house got cleaned and somewhat reorganized, but not to the level I had originally intended.

And now it's all over. We'll be out of town for the weekend, and then I've only got a day before I have to report to school for a week of inservice. So my summer vacation is over. I have nothing really to show for it.

I'm very tired and frustrated. If I come up with these plans and can't follow through with them, what's the point of coming up with the plans in the first place? I know that "no one can do it for me" and I have to take the initiative, but I've tried all this time and can't make myself do what needs to be done. So, is there any hope?

I need to go back to the beginning. I need to make some changes. First, I need to go back to morning workouts on a regular basis. I've gradually drifted away from hitting the gym in the morning, and that can't be the case. So, that's the first change. Next, I need to go back to a full hour of cardio. I've eased up on myself and often only do 30 or 45 minutes of cardio. I also need to increase the difficulty of my cardio. They say (whoever "they" are) that your body gets used to doing the same thing over and over again, so the 30-45 minutes of cardio at the same resistance level and the same pace has gradually gotten less and less effective. I also need to go back to including weight lifting on a regular basis. To increase the amount of calories burned, I need to increase the mass of muscle available to burn those calories. And lastly, I need to rigorously follow some kind of eating plan. It's too easy to destroy whatever progress I've made by overeating. I've always eaten a large amount of food at a sitting, and that hasn't really changed, even as we've made some progress over the past few years with the exercising. I need to train myself to eat less.

It's all well and good for me to say all these things that I need to do. It's another thing entirely for me to actually do all of this. I haven't managed to accomplish anything yet. I simply don't know if I'll be able to do this or not.