I weighed in at 125. One hundred twenty-five pounds!! That means that I have now lost 128 pounds--and I am less than HALF my starting weight :)
When I was a teenager, and young adult, I always envisioned my goal weight to be 125. It just sounded like the perfect number. As I got older (and heavier) I realized that it just wasn't realistic. When I was losing the weight in 2009-2010, I was aiming first for 185, and then 160. Eventually 150. When I hit 149, I was ecstatic, because I had never before seen the 140's. The next big milestone was the 130's--I'm pretty sure my jaw hit the floor the day I saw 139. When I reached that weight, I imagined how awesome it would be to hit not just 129, but 126.5, to say that I was "half my size".
In late 2010, I saw 127.5 on the scale one day, but that was the closest I ever got to being half my size. I had a broken jaw at the time, and was living off of smoothies, so it was short-lived. As soon as the wires came off my jaw, I gained back 10 pounds immediately. My weight stayed mostly between 140-150 for 2011 and 2012. In the fall of 2012, I reached 156, and was horrified--so I joined Weight Watchers, and gave the PointsPlus plan a try. I set a new goal weight of 133, and surprisingly, I actually reached that goal on 12-12-12.
I maintained that weight for about a year, and then I turned into a big anxious mess, and gained 27 pounds back from emotional eating. I tried doing Weight Watchers, but I just was not losing like I had before. I was miserable, even though I tried my best to be happy at that size.
In August 2015, I switched gears from Weight Watchers to calorie counting. And the weight started melting off, faster than it had with Weight Watchers. I still have no idea how it came off so easily! I took a much less strict approach, where I didn't have a calorie target for the day, and that helped me tremendously. I learned to be kinder to myself, and that eating more than usual one day didn't mean I'd failed. I learned to balance my calories out.
On November 25, just 15 weeks after I started calorie counting, I had dropped those 27 pounds and was back at my goal weight of 133! For these last 10 weeks of maintenance, I haven't really been doing anything differently than I did to lose the weight. I've been eating a little more than I was when I was actively trying to lose, but as I said, I don't have a calorie target. I've been paying a lot of attention to my body's cues, and even if I don't always obey them, I'm much more aware of my hunger and satiety.
Anyway, back to today's weigh in... I somehow dropped three pounds this week, after weighing in at 128 for the last three weeks in a row. My calories were a little less than usual, an average of 1,703 per day. I decided to take my measurements (full body, not just waist) and body fat percentage today, too, since I'm now 8 pounds under my goal. My body fat is 19%, which I'm thrilled with. My waist is now 24.75"--my waist has never been this small! I compared today's measurements with my starting measurements:
Kind of crazy, right?! When I used to measure my abdomen, it was very obvious where I needed to put the tape measure, because it was the largest circumference of my body--but today, I was just kind of looking in the mirror like, "Where do I put the tape measure?"
I did great with all three goals this week:
I got in 7,000+ steps all 7 days; remained binge-free; and I tried two new recipes. One was for peanut butter bars, for my birthday dessert (I chose this instead of cake):
I wish I could say they were amazing, but were a little bland--I would have liked more peanut butter flavor. They gave me a bad stomachache, too, so I won't be making them again. You know I love chocolate and peanut butter, so for me to not enjoy these was kind of shocking.
The other recipe I tried was for One Pot Chili Mac & Cheese, which was delicious! Especially with sour cream stirred in. (The recipe said four servings, but I doubled the recipe and got 11 generous servings out of it. I also used ground turkey breast instead of beef, just because we like turkey better.) The whole family loved this.
I followed the 80/20 running plan all week, and learned that I am just not cut out to run every day. Yesterday, I was experiencing all the classic symptoms of overtraining. So, I have to scale it back. I'm going to follow the previous plan I was doing, because it still fits into the 80/20 ratio of easy running to hard running (and it was working so well!); it's just less mileage overall. I'll write more about all that later. Anyway, here is a recap of this week's runs:
Clearly, I am super excited about this week's weigh-in. I never intended to get to 125, but it somehow happened, so I'm not complaining. Hopefully this will help me hit my 10K goal in April!
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