Recovery from a Tail Spin

My exhusband said to me recently "you know, most of what I've learned about life I've learned from flying".  Being a pilot myself, I concur.  I just never thought of it that way, like he does.  I've wrestled with writing this post, mostly because I feel I've failed the whole mission.  I was in a tailspin, I crashed and burned.  Who wants to read about negativity?  Everyone wants the magic bullet, to win, to overcome, to succeed.  But this blog was for me, it was for accountability to me, how will I reach that goal of living in a smaller body unless I get real with myself.  I committed to putting it out there.  My cheering section - consisting of one son- called and wanted to know why I hadn't posted, how did I lose that weight, "you left your last post in suspense".  I had plans to write an insightful piece on this super cool theory I have on weight loss that is really different and off the wall, but first I need to address recovery from a tailspin first.

Many years ago a full spin in an aircraft was called a tailspin.  That is where the saying "being in a tailspin" came from.  A spin is a STALLED condition.  The airplane's wings are stalled and then the stall is aggravated by a sideways force called yaw.  Read, you are stalled and then blind sided.  How did the aircraft stall in the first place?  The pilot lost sight of the horizon for one reason or another.  Maybe he was in cloud and couldn't see the horizon, maybe he was distracted, maybe turbulence upset his craft.  So, the wings stalled, yaw affected the stalled condition and the aircraft began to spin.  The spin continues UNLESS the pilot does something radical.   And that is positive control input.  It is to apply FULL OPPOSITE rudder FIRST, and then break the stall by pushing forward on the control column.

I lost sight of my goal (the horizon), was affected by turbulence (stress, life events), stopped following my daily plans (managing the controls) and entered quite nicely into a tailspin.  The only recovery method is to apply FULL OPPOSITE correction to stop the spin (get it?, do the opposite of what you are doing), bring life back to neutral (the controls) and focus on the plan (horizon) again.  Unfortunately there IS altitude loss from this (in this case, weight gain).  But, one can correct their attitude, apply power and get back up there again.

What happened re the weight?  I went to the Y, still feeling thinner, and wanted to weigh myself.  That big doctor's office-like scale was gone and replaced by a cheap scale you stand on.  I got on, and yep, NO weight loss!!  I went out to check at the front desk and was told the scale finally broke, it had been failing.  That explains the mysterious weight loss. :(  I stil feel tighter knowing my muscle mass has increased.  I still need to talk about the blood pressure.... too much for one blog, so I'll get on that next entry.

When I say I lost sight of the goal, what happened is that I fell back into an old pattern of getting up, getting on the computer, wasting time, not writing down the 5 things I needed to do each day and getting them done.  They say it takes 30 days to break a habit and 90 to make a new one.  I guess I ran out of fuel.  I've topped up again, this time full tanks, and I'm taking off again into clearer skies.