Before I was a professional writer, I was an aspiring pre-blog-blogger/poet/writer on a site called Live Journal.

It was an outlet for the frustrations and victories of my teenage years/early 20s, a place to cryptically hide thoughts, not-so-cryptically hit on girls and talk smack to my boys.

I didn’t realize until I got older how beneficial putting my thoughts to digital pad and paper was — until I stopped doing it.

I’ve especially noticed this on Fat Dude on a Diet. I’ve written a lot about my struggles with weight loss, my battle against lethargy and laziness and the roller-coaster like nature of publicly finding success and failure, but I’ve always left out the rest of it.

It’s hard to overcome the stress of  work, family, of life, while finding time to eat right and exercise, pay the bills, save for retirement, start a family, etc. Much like my Livejournal before was a place to grow into the young adult I would  become, Fat Dude is very much a focused, refined version of what I have learned in life to this point and what I’m trying to become for the future.

I’ve let some of the other stuff weigh me down lately, and haven’t been treating myself as good as I should be. Nadia and I are temporarily using My Fitness Pal to count calories. Nadia and I also started a new walking routine, one that increased our time by 10 minutes and adds some pretty good inclines too. I’m just focusing on rebuilding the eating habits and the exercise habits, one day at a time.

I started to slip, and I don’t want that to happen.

I’m skipping the weigh-in for a few weeks, just to take some of the stress away. I’ll be posting menus and cooking as usual, and weigh ins will resume soon enough. I want to establish good habits, not turn myself away from them. I haven’t found success yet in staying consistent in a way that’s comfortable for me, but what’s important still is that I haven’t given up. I don’t plan to.