Breaking up is hard to do

You may have noticed that I haven't blogged in nearly four months. That's because I started dating someone about five months ago and I didn't want to write about our relationship publicly because I knew it would make him uncomfortable. And, if you've been a longtime follower, you know I'm pretty open and honest in this blog.

We broke up yesterday. So I'm ready to start chronicling my weight-loss journey once again. I'm not going to get into a lot of details about the breakup, but I will say that it was somewhat unexpected and I am heartbroken.

The good news is that it hasn't quite been 24 hours since we ended it and I'm already looking for the bright side. Don't get me wrong. I cried a lot over the weekend and I'll probably cry some more at some point. But there might be a silver lining -- now I can refocus on reaching my weight-loss goal.

As of this past Friday (yes, I've still been weighing in weekly), I weighed 184.8 pounds. I thought I'd gained 5-10 pounds during the relationship, but a quick look back showed me that I weigh almost exactly what I did when I first met the person. That surprised me. And it doesn't really matter.

I've gained about 11 pounds in the past year. I have all sorts of excuses, but none are worth mentioning because they don't matter. What matters is that I'm dedicated to the healthy lifestyle changes I started in January 2010.

That brings me to the title of this post. Breaking up with someone I truly cared about isn't easy and could be a major pitfall in my journey. I'm hoping that by identifying this potential problem I can avoid it. Yesterday and today have gone well in terms of eating. And I even walked a couple of laps around the neighborhood when I got home today.

So I'm making a short-term goal: Track what I eat for the next three days and not go over my daily allotment of Weight Watchers points. I'm also hoping to do at least 30 minutes of physical activity each of those days. If I can keep myself from falling off the cliff through this weekend, I think I'll be able to make it through this emotionally difficult time.

Wish me luck!