The Saga Continues: Week 20

Well, I've been away for a while, so I'll try to catch up with what's been happening in the last two weeks.

The week of July 4th I was visiting family, and attempting to stick (mostly) to my eating plan while also enjoying celebratory meals with family.  That involved ordering a dessert that was not too fattening, eating chili that I'd prepared, eating a meal that involved carefully measured mashed potatoes (which I love), eating pizza at a restaurant, and traveling for a long distance in a car while not eating fattening snack foods.  And of course there was the challenge of writing all of it down. 

I think I did pretty well with all those challenges, but I was glad when we got home so I could get back to my regular routine--with one exception: my husband's birthday party with cake and ice cream, which proved to be a bit more challenging than I had thought.  Fortunately, it was a small cake and we ate it quickly, but the experience left me with a reminder about bringing such foods into the house.  I'm not ready, it seems, to let a chocolate cake and premium ice cream sit around for days and days, uneaten, and it's hard to justify eating a big piece of cake and a cup of ice cream every day just to "get rid of it."

I didn't weigh myself while I was on vacation since I didn't have my scale that tells me my body fat percentage, but at the beginning of the second week, starting July 10, I did weigh in and found that despite all the irregularities, I had still lost 1.2 lbs over two weeks, which isn't bad, considering. And at the end of 19 weeks, I'd lost about 19 pounds, so that's a good number and a nice slow, steady pace.

The second week was fairly routine in comparison, although I didn't get as much exercise as I'd have liked, a factor that's becoming more and more important as my weight drops.  If I eat the same amount, I'll need to exercise more to keep losing weight, as the number of calories I burn exercising (or just moving around) will diminish along with my mass.  So far I haven't been able to step it up much, though, mostly because I'm having trouble finding the time in my day.  I need to work on that.

As I've been writing these blog posts, I've come to really appreciate the benefit of reporting my progress week after week.  Skipping a week felt wrong somehow; I was anxious to get back to it today.  I think it's very helpful to know that "someone" is waiting to see how things are going.  I know that at least one real person is reading them (my husband), but even if no one reads them, just the act of documenting my thoughts and feelings about the program inspires me to carry on with it.

This program is about behavior, after all, and only secondarily about weight loss, so talking about my behavior around food is essential to changing that behavior.

Someday maybe I'll put these blogs together in a book.  Who knows? Someone may find my insights and reports helpful.  See you next week.