Fifteen short weeks ago, I never would have guessed that I would hit my goal so soon. I am so glad that I decided to give the calorie counting a good hard try, because it turns out that it works well for me and I really enjoy it. Not in a "I hate it, but I still do it" kind of way... but I actually kind of enjoy calorie counting. Probably because I love numbers, and (as of now) calorie counting is still fairly new to me.
Anyway, today I was down 1.5 pounds from last week, bringing me to 133--my "official" goal weight. My body fat was 22.7%, which is down 0.2%; and my waist remained steady at 25.75 inches. As of yesterday, I was at 133.5 pounds, so I wasn't sure if I was going to hit 133 this morning; but it was a very nice surprise to step on the scale and see that I actually did it!
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| June vs. November |
I keep thinking of the phrase "Just get it over with" that my friend Andrea discussed with me when she visited in January. I wrote a post about it, but basically, she said that we spend SO MUCH TIME of our lives fretting over losing weight (particularly when we've gained some back). It consumes our thoughts day after day--some of us for YEARS (I worried about it nearly my entire life). But Andrea said if we just get it over with (spend the weeks or months or couple of years it takes to lose the weight), then it's done--we don't have to constantly worry about losing it!
I spent all of 2014 feeling like a failure for gaining some weight back, and I felt an enormous pressure to take it off. I was very hard on myself. I tried to make peace with my new weight/size, but I never felt really good there. For the first half of 2015, I was trying to lose it, but not to the best of my ability. My weight went up and down, gradually climbing to the highest it'd been in five years (since I lost the weight in 2009-2010).
I'm not sure exactly what clicked for me when I started counting calories, but I became super motivated to get the weight off and get back to goal. It was like I put blinders on and just focused on the goal in front of me. In retrospect, I wish I had done this in 2014 right after gaining it! If I had just gotten it over with then (it took all of 15 weeks--not much time at all in the grand scheme of things), I could have saved myself from the mental torture that I put myself through for a year.
Getting back to my goal weight wasn't "easy", even though it may seem like it was, based on how quickly I got there... there were some days where I was SO TORN about whether to binge. I knew it would have made me feel better in that moment to binge (only to feel terrible about myself afterward), so it was really hard to make that decision not to. But, as of today, I am 113 days binge-free!
I'm the first to admit that losing weight does not equal happiness; but freeing up all that mental space that used to be consumed with guilt or feeling like a failure has done wonders for my happiness. I feel really, really good right now--not just with how I look, but with how I feel mentally as well.
I decided to reward myself by booking a trip with my SkyMiles... I'm going back to the Pacific Northwest in April! This time, I'm going to spend a few days in Seattle with my friend Laurel (who is a blog reader that I met when I went to Portland!). Ever since I went to Portland, I've been dreaming about visiting Seattle; and since the two cities are pretty close, I can do both in one trip. I'm going to do a 10K in Washington on April 10th, and I'm making that my goal race for a PR. It's nice to have a race to plan for! It makes me even more motivated to get faster (and maintain my goal weight).
So, now, the big question is... what's next? I clearly don't want to regain the weight, so I'm going to continue to count my calories. I'd like to maintain a weight below 135, so I'll have to experiment with my calories to find out what will make me maintain. I wasn't sure if I should continue to do Wednesday Weigh-ins, because I expect my weight to go up and down by a couple of pounds each week; but I think I will continue to post them. I won't do my body fat and waist measurement every week, since I don't expect that to change much, but I will continue to post my weight.
I know I should say this more often, but I want to express a huge thank you to those of you that have stuck with me through this never-ending journey of mine. I try to post about the good AND the bad, the ups AND the downs, to give a realistic picture of what weight loss and maintenance is like. I've had lots of crazy ideas, and set some silly goals, and changed my mind dozens of times about what I'm doing... but each thing I do is a learning experience. I've gotten SO MUCH SUPPORT from so many of you, and I can't thank you enough for that! Considering tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I just want to say a huge THANK YOU to all of you for the kindness and encouragement over the last four years.
That said, I hope everyone has a fantastic Thanksgiving tomorrow! I'm looking forward to doing the Turkey Trot with my brother, and then making dinner for my family.
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