Last week: 394 lbs.

Start (Dec. 17): 470 lbs.

Total lost: 84 lbs.

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6:25 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2014

Dear journal:

A week ago I turned 45 years old and began a second round of the Take It Off weight-loss challenge at Fitness Revolution. I feel like it’s a new beginning, and I’m more focused on losing weight than I have been all summer.

That doesn’t mean losing weight hasn’t been on my mind over the past three months. I’ve been haunted by it. But every time I worked hard during the week — hiking, swimming and eating healthy — I’d always give in to emotional eating at least once a week, derailing all my sweaty work. I was stuck, bouncing between 388 and 404 pounds.

By last week I’d only lost 1 pound since ending the Take It Off course in the spring. I weighed 395 pounds on June 3 and 394 pounds on Sept. 9.

By the numbers, that’s not impressive. I’ve gone as far as saying it’s downright embarrassing, and I feel like I’ve let everybody down. But I never gave up. That’s one thing I won’t do.

While struggling with emotional eating and food addiction this summer, I learned a lot about myself. I studied the reasons why I overeat and the situations that lead to it, and I’ve tried to make lifestyle changes to adjust my behavior. While I feel in control at this particular moment, I know I am not. I’m a compulsive overeater, and I will always fight the urge.

With less than four months left of my 12-month Lake Placid Diet experiment, I still have plenty of work to do. I feel this is crunch time. Put up or shut up. Get down and dirty. No pain, no gain. I’m focused. I’m ready to tackle my demons. I’m ready for one final push.

Realistically, I’d like to get down to 370 pounds by the middle of December, putting me at 100 pounds lost in one year, but I’m shooting for weight-loss numbers closer to 150 pounds. All I can do is work hard at exercising and eating healthy, and the numbers will follow. I have to put faith in the effort.

Now’s the time to gather all the tools in my weight-loss toolbox: the exercise programs, time management skills, nutritional tips, support networks, mantras, motivational tricks, etc. Everything I’ve learned to this point will be used to get my weight down to a healthier amount by the end of the year.

Focus, focus, focus

It seems no matter how much I draw from experience, if I’m not in the right frame of mind to tackle a challenge this size, I’ll never succeed.

That realization came after a few conversations I had at the finish line of the Lake Placid Classic Half-Marathon/10k on Sept. 6. I was talking to several runners who had completed multiple Ironman triathlons, and they all shared stories about their weight-loss struggles. When one runner said he doesn’t lose weight unless he’s “anal about it,” that hit home, and I realized what had been missing all summer.

In the winter and spring — when I lost 75 pounds — I was obsessed about losing weight. I tracked my numbers almost daily, both in calorie intake and weight. I spent hours each week on my training plan for the Lake Placid Half-Marathon. At night, I visualized how I’d look and feel at various stages of my weight loss. I was anal retentive about it.

In the spring, my Windows phone was my biggest weight-loss tool, and it kept me focused. I created spread sheets and Word documents to track my progress, take notes in the middle of the night, write down mile-by-mile splits for the half-marathon and create meal plans and recipes. I religiously used the MyFitnessPal app to track my calories and nutrition. When I dropped the phone on the pavement in June, smashing the screen, I lost all my documents. I lost my obsession.

Now I’m recreating those documents on my new phone, updating them daily. It’s keeping me on track, like a horse with blinders focused on the finish line. The bumper sticker on my car says “Optimism can take you anywhere.” I’m really curious as to where these next four months will take me. I just have to stay focused.

Many so-called “experts” say people shouldn’t weigh themselves every day because they’ll get depressed about minor gains, but I say the opposite. If you’re not tracking your numbers, you could be heading in the wrong direction without knowing it. Weighing myself almost every day keeps me on track. I know there will be slight gains, even plateaus; that’s part of the process, especially with working out in the gym and gaining muscle. At the end of the week, however, the only real number I worry about is the one at weigh-in. If I’ve done my job, it should go down at least a little bit or stay the same.

For example, on Wednesday morning, after a Tuesday night workout at Fitness Revolution, my weight jumps down 2 to 5 pounds from the day before. But that’s not a real number. It’s most likely based on water loss from the exercise, even though I drink a lot of water to stay hydrated and eat a post-workout meal when I get home. On Thursday morning, after resting on Wednesday, I always gain a little weight, even though I don’t overeat. Then I go to the gym Thursday night, and there’s another jump down on Friday, a little lower than it was on Wednesday. On Saturday, it naturally bumps up a little.

That used to bother me, but now I realize it’s part of the process. Without tracking those numbers, I wouldn’t have made this discovery.

By the end of the week, if I’m truly behaving myself, I see the weight drop. This past week — even with its ups and down, I settled on a loss of 8 pounds, and I’m hoping for more next week.

One More Half-Marathon

I wasn’t ready to end my racing season the Saturday after Labor Day with the Lake Placid Classic 10k, and after completing the Sept. 6 event, I realized I have one more half-marathon in me before winter forces me to go indoors for exercise and escape the bitter cold.

My first thought was to enter a half-marathon in October, but that means traveling in order to find one that is walker-friendly. For me, that’s a race with a cutoff time of six hours or more. I whittled down my choices to two events: the Mount Desert Island Half-Marathon in Maine on Sunday, Oct. 19, which would be my first choice, or the Empire State Half-Marathon in Syracuse the same day. I emailed the race director in Syracuse with a registration question, twice, and never heard back. Frustrated, I decided Syracuse wasn’t for me.

Instead, I manufactured a third choice. With the independent spirit of an Adirondacker, I decided I didn’t want to travel for my next half-marathon. So I created a new event on Oct. 19 for myself: One More Half-Marathon, a do-it-yourself event. It’s really just another training day in Lake Placid with the promise to walk a half-marathon.

I’ll park at the tennis courts and follow the Lake Placid Half-Marathon course from June, starting at the Oval at 8 a.m. and finishing at the Oval before 2 p.m. I’ll carry my own food and water on my back and use public bathrooms.

There’s no entry fee, no support and no finisher’s medal — just 13.1 miles of cool mountain air to blow the stink out of my system before the snow flies.