50%

It’s been a while since I had a post about my weight loss progress, so here goes.

1/19/2014; 222.0 pounds / -9.8 / -25.0

1. More exercise –  I wish I could say the last two weeks have been “good” in the workout department, but they haven’t been.  I’ve logged just 3 workouts in 14 days, not my greatest achievement.  Some interesting things in my last handful of workouts, though–I’m up to running/jogging around 3 miles at a time with little-to-no resting, and I did a treadmill 5K in under 30 minutes.  Kind of weird to think that I’m capable of doing that, considering where this started in the beginning of December.
2. Healthier eating – This has been my only real saving grace over the last couple weeks, and the only reason I’ve been able to maintain steady healthy weight loss with less exercise.  When I hit the 20-pound mark, I celebrated with the fam at Texas Roadhouse with a big fat burger and cheese fries, and got full very fast.  Also felt a little garbagey afterwards, but it was worth it.  As of this morning I’m at the 25-pound mark, which gets me officially halfway to my total weight loss goal in this run.  
3. Better attitude about my self-image – I now consider myself down a pants size, but since I’m planning on losing more weight I’m not ready to go out and buy a new wardrobe.  I will need to do something about it soon, though, because I’m still wearing the bigger pants which are looking pretty baggy.  It’s an OK problem to have.
4. Stronger will to make better choices in life – Usually I talk about the “good” stuff that happens in each of these goals, but a couple of weeks ago I had a not so excellent display of will-power (in other words, an excellent display of my lack of will-power).  I have two major weaknesses: pizza and chocolate chip cookies.  I’ve mitigated the former by making pizza bagel bites a regular part of my diet, but I might need to re-think that strategy.  The cookies, however, are a problem.  You know those giant chocolate chip cookies you can get from Costco or BJ’s?  Delicious, right?  Well, a couple of weeks ago I ate 4 of them in about a 2-hour period, just because they were there.  They were delicious.  Anyway, I have to figure out how to mitigate that too.

Interestingly enough, when I lost almost 40 pounds in 2009, it took me 7.5 weeks to hit the 25 pound mark.  This time, it took me just less than 7, and I’ve done it with diet and exercise, which means I haven’t lost nearly as much muscle as I did before.   What is also interesting is that I’m now at what I referred to before as my “resting weight,” the sort of bounce-back weight after losing 37 pounds and subsequently gaining 10 back very quickly.  Pretty excited to be making continual progress–but I predicted my first plateau to be at 25 pounds, so hopefully I’ll be pushing through that this week.

Be well!