It has been a really long time since I wrote about my weight. My last update was August 29, 2008. As usual, that is bad news. I weighed 257 pounds at my last weigh-in and I thought that was bad. Well, two days ago I was 264 pounds. Yikes!

What when wrong?

I’m clearly not fit to offer advice about how to lose weight, but I can definitely give you a good idea of what not to do. The first mistake I seem to make when my weight starts to get out of control is failing to pay attention. I stop getting on the scale and I don’t really think about my weight at all. Or maybe I tell myself that I’m probably just holding steady and I can afford to take a little time off. Of course this isn’t the case at all. It’s just a sorry attempt to make an excuse for my laziness.

Honestly, I think my problems come down to just being lazy. Not that I’m completely lazy, but it’s easy for me to get lazy about my weight and diet. I’ve been busy working a lot lately and when I start to get busy with work, the first thing I cut from my schedule is exercise. I also start making excuses for drinking an extra latte or maybe throwing in a pumpkin scone with that latte. These bad behaviors snowball and, before I know it, I’ve gained 7 pounds.

The sad thing is, I’ve been as low as 246 pounds this year and now I’m up almost to the weight (266) I was at when I started this blog back in September 2007. This got me thinking about what has gone wrong and about what I was doing right when I lost 20 pounds. I was doing best when I was having a little friendly competition with my family and we were all holding each other accountable. I was roughly following the Eating For Life plan and I was doing some walking, jogging, and occasional weight lifting.

I think my biggest struggle is with my diet. I tend to get lazy and eat too much and allow too much junk food into my diet. I think that regular walking should be enough to maintain a healthy weight if I could just cut down on the number of calories I consume and find some better sources of those calories.

I talked to my wife about this and we decided that we both want to lose some weight and we are going to work at holding each other accountable to exercise regularly and eat right. Look for more frequent updates for the rest of the year. My goal is to lose 20 pounds by the end of the year. I know that is a lot, but I think I have enough to lose and I’ve put on so much weight from empty calories and laziness lately that I should be able to quickly knock off some pounds.