Rulon and The Biggest Loser and Something About Struggling.

No shock to anyone here, I'm sure, but The Biggest Loser made me cry last night.

Specifically the part where Rulon (the Olympic wrestler who just hit his 100 pound weight-loss mark) yelled out while he was on the treadmill, "I'm not going to gain my weight back!"

I am glad my husband chose that 20 minute window to go out and run because that exclamation touched me so deeply and on such a personal level that I just cried like a baby.

That is a fear of mine every day.

Especially since the scale has been creeping up on me since Christmas. The higher the scale, the more bitter I get, the more lost and out of control I begin to feel. First 2 and 3 pounds, then 5, now 7.

I've been on the roller coaster for so long that gaining the weight back has always been a certainty. I've never stayed this on top of it for this long, I have always worked out just long enough to get it off but then have gotten lazy and it has always, always come back.

For the first time in my life, I broke the cycle.

For 2 years now the cycle has been broken but this is *that* point. The point I always eventually face, it is here and it is trying to get me again.

Now I find myself frantically searching high and low for motivation, in every corner, under every rug ("Hello, motivation? Are you there????")

It is a daily struggle, even minute by minute. Because even when I invoke the "Don't even bring it in the house" rule, a food holiday appears as if out of nowhere and there it all is, back in my home.

There is nothing in the world worse than the prospect of being where I once was. The lack of energy, the lack of confidence, the simultaneous feeling that everyone in the world is looking at me and sinking feeling that no one in the world is looking at me.

I was so alone and so unhappy it permeated everything about me.

It started out this way last time. Just a couple of pounds here and there and then, *gasp* a new decade. And not a lower decade, either. And then another. And they came quickly.

I know what Rulon meant and all of the tasty brownies in the world cannot make me go back to that place, it can't.

I WILL NOT GAIN THIS WEIGHT BACK.

OK?

I WILL NOT.

So far this week I am making good on my promise to myself. I have one day off from working out and the rest of my workout days are all planned out. I am channeling my inner Rulon and Tara Costa's "Just for Today" mantra which makes my daily choices a little less daunting if I say, "just for today..."

I wish I could sit here in Starbucks drinking my water and say that maintenance is easy. And for some people, it is.

I'm just not one of them.