And I realized, not for the first time, that I'm not very good at enduring to the end. But I also realized that it was easy for me to do "one-a-day goals" such as walking or translating. Because that's exactly what they are -- an activity that you do once a day, and then they're done and it's over until the sun rises again. It's not an ongoing thing. Dieting, on the other hand, is an ongoing thing. "Constance vigilance!" as Mad-Eye Moody would roar. You have to watch yourself every second of every minute of every day. Dieting is like trying to climb up the down escalator -- once you stop, even for a short time, you're whisked backwards, sometimes even beyond where you started. Okay, in my case, often. Almost always, in fact.
I almost never do anything continuously. I love to read, but I get up every so often. Sometimes I have to, such as when it's lunchtime, and sometimes I just want to stand up and stretch, or wander around the house for a few minutes before sitting down again. Sometimes reading makes me think of something I want to look up on the internet, so I go to the computer. The same with writing. I'll write for a while, but then I'll stop and do something else. If I don't know how to transition from one paragraph to the other, or how to phrase a certain sentence, I might stop and play a little internet game, or read an article online, or something like that. I suppose it's my natural-born attention deficit disorder, because I've always been like that. I get things done, and on time, but I can't work on the same thing for hours at a stretch without a break. Like rush-hour traffic, I stop and start and stop and start, but I do get there in the end.
So am I doomed never to be able to lose weight, because I can't focus all my attention on "being good" all the time and I let myself lapse every so often? I don't know. I hope not. But maybe the good that I do will overpower the lapses enough for a few grams of weight to creep off each week, and not come back, until at last, it's gone. Maybe.
Well, as the Germans say, "Hope dies last of all."