Unnecessary Stress

I am a planner. I suspect this is driven by anxiety and having a somewhat unpredictable emotional support/response from my mother as a child, but whatever the reason, I like to know what to expect. I try to plan things to the point that I overwhelm myself, and it doesn't help that I am not, by nature, a very organized person. I have been overwhelming myself with my art side hustle /"business" since my husband first convinced me to try selling my art last summer. I have an Etsy shop, 2 social media pages and also do in-person vendor events. I am finding myself struggling with where to focus what little time I have to paint/create and prepare for the upcoming season so I have the appropriate display items and enough inventory, no matter where I am selling. Not to mention,learning about taxes, insurance, and how to make my Etsy shop successful. Last week, as I found myself overwhelmed by it all, I realized that I tend to do this with my weightloss goals as well. In my last post I mentioned the idea of doing a year of month-long challenges and I started to plan out these challenges on paper and I quickly became overwhelmed by trying to time them in an appropriate order/month and I had too many at first, then I started to combine them and had too few and I just put my notebook away and became turned off by the idea altogether. Despite being motivated by challenges, the whole reason this keto lifestyle works for me is that I have kept it very uncomplicated. I don't track macros or calories, I simply eat things that are low carb and tasty and I continue to lose weight. Simple, and easy to stick to. When I start over-complicating things I just want to avoid challenging myself, especially when I'm already overwhelmed by my art business, there's not a lot of mental energy left for planning challenges. So I looked at my goals and it became clear that the focus was on a shift in habits; exercise more, skin care, make an effort to stop negative thoughts and replace then with positive/gratitude, stand more during work, etc. So instead of having multiple habits to try to plan at once, I am going to try and pick just a few for 2024 and if I find myself crushing those goals, I can add on at any point.That feels less overwhelming and will likely lead to better results. In the coming weeks, I will reflect on these and decide what to prioritize in the new year. My weight has dipped down to 150.0, but has mostly been fluctuating between 151-153. while I am excited to get into the 140's, I am happy to be at this place, as it took some time to arrive here. I am fully aware of how my body adjusts to new lower weights, lowering steadily for a few weeks, then holding for a month or two before it lowers again. I find the pattern fascinating, but really I think it's pretty normal. This pattern used to trip me up because I didn't understand it and thought I was doing something "wrong". Now I know that if I keep doing what I'm doing, my body will catch up with my actions, and stressing out, being impatient or making drastic changes isn't going to have a positive outcome, and in some cases, won't be sustainable long term. Slow and steady wins the race! So I may challenge myself from time to time, or experiment with different things, but as far as my diet goes, I am not planning any drastic changes in 2024, just more of the same. I would imagine by my 3 year "ketoversarry" in November 2024,I will be at my goal weight just by staying the course. What is my goal weight? Whatever weight my body sets itself at. There will come a time when my body stops losing weight with the way I am currently living/eating. Every body is different on its caloric needs and I am listening to my body. I never feel deprived and I have a good amount of energy. If I never lost another pound, I admit I would be a little disappointed, but I feel so much better at 152 than at 206, so it's a huge win either way. The overarching goal, I suppose, is to curb my self-created stress over things that don't need to be stressed about. This will fall into place in other areas of my life too, simply by being aware that I'm creating this so I also Hage the power to stop it. Life can be stressful enough without adding our own stress to it, right?