I almost forgot that today’s a Monday.  Oops!

Eight weeks on plan.  I can hardly believe it.  And friends, I feel good.  I’m not jumping over tall buildings in a single bound or anything, but I have to say that yesterday, I really felt like I just knew I’m losing weight.  The physical (and empirical?) evidence was there; I was wearing some crops that I haven’t worn with any regularity since last year, when I lost weight.  But, more than that: when I put my hand on my stomach, I felt like there was less fat there.  I felt thinner.

No one has said anything about noticing weight loss, yet, but it doesn’t matter.  I’m feeling pretty good right now.  Nearly two months on plan, and things are going well.

I did give myself the gift of a three-day weekend; I had decided against it on my anniversary because I didn’t want 2 three-day weekends in a row.  And really, my only deviation from a regular weekday has been alcohol.

I also have to say that we attended a party yesterday in which people brought food in, like a potluck, and many of them bring food that’s on plan for me.  There’s never any big deal made about it; it just happens, and no one seems to care.  One friend brought a faux-tato salad that consisted of cauliflower, dill pickle relish (yum! I don’t like sweet relish, anyway!) and had bacon bits in it.  (Remember, I low carb, so this is perfect for me.)  My daughter brought a lovely dessert that was sugar-free.  My husband and I made sugar-free jello shots that everyone devoured, as well as four liters of sugar-free sangria that everyone demolished.  So many people make a fuss about not wanting to bring “diet” food to an event; well, this one proved that it’s totally okay, and even those who aren’t on a diet will decimate good food, “diet” or not.

The week ahead is my last planned week for a 4-day exercise plan.  As long as things work out as I want, I’ll swim four days this coming week, and increase to five starting next week.  Things are moving along well for me.  I’m optimistic and feeling good.

I admit I feel just a little bit better than I did, yesterday.  Water weight isn’t helping my mood at all, since it makes my joints hurt (especially my knees) and the weather’s been bad on top of it.  Still, it was no reason to give up working toward the goal.

Let me tell you — when I put on my jeans that had been loose a week or so ago, this morning, and realized that they weren’t fitting nearly as loosely, I realized that I must be carrying quite a bit of water weight.  It’s not unusual for me to carry up to 15 pounds or so, and it’s been much more extreme than that on occasion.  So maybe — just maybe — what I’ve been feeling the last couple days has everything to do with getting that water out of my system.  I’m ready to flush it out, and that’s literally what it’ll require!

Since I wrote quite a bit yesterday, there’s really no point in repeating it, except to say that this marks 7 weeks, and I’m hanging in there.  Right now, the Mississippi and I have too much in common (too much water!).  I’m sure, in a few days, I’ll feel a lot better.

The road toward health isn’t always an easy one.  To this point, my brain has been in the right place, but I hit a wall this weekend that left me feeling a lot of doubts, and because this blog is about being truthful with myself, it’s important that I record this here as well.  This isn’t an easy post, nor is it a particularly cheerful one, but it is absolutely part of the head games that must be dealt with in order to succeed.

I’m a little blue at the moment about weight loss.  I think it’s a number of things getting to me; hopes that I would have lost more by now (which is unreasonable, but who says emotions are reasonable?), the fact that my knees have hurt like hell all weekend, seeing a pic that was taken of me over the weekend.

I’ll get to feeling pretty good about myself, and then see a pic of how I really look and then just want to hide in a hole somewhere. I know I have to accept myself where I am at, at this moment, but man, it’s hard to look at pics like that and not just feel like a total fat slob outcast.  We had a group photo at an event, and there I was, trying to duck down and hide my body a little bit; a lot of good that did.  It made me look worse than if I’d stood up straight. 🙁  It’s also tough on me because I’ll be feeling like I look good, and my self confidence is up, and then *bam*, one photo blows all of that for me.

I also felt ponderous this weekend; probably in part to feeling like I overate, and partly because my knees hurt.  I had put in a really good week of exercise, which makes my knees hurt but I accept that’s part of the package; it has also been storming for the past few days, and that also makes my knees scream at me.  Nonetheless, when my knees hurt, I feel awful overall.  It gives me the perception that progress is an illusion. It makes me realize how fragile my mental state is in regards to working forward on my plan.

I’ve been tempted, lately, to go ahead and weigh myself, in hopes that the number will be good enough to make me feel better, but I’m also fragile enough right now that if it wasn’t a good number, I’d have a hard time working up any enthusiasm for staying on plan.  I dunno.  Maybe I should just bite the bullet and go ahead and do it, but I have this voice telling me not to.  I’m nearly seven weeks into this, and I don’t want to do anything that might trip me up.

I can honestly say that having a wedding anniversary didn’t help matters, either.  I have been mentally flogging myself for not being absolutely pure on the anniversary dinner itself or breakfast the next morning.   This is what gets to me; I become of two minds when this stuff happens.  I know that I didn’t do any damage at all to my plan.  I know that in order for carb and calorie cycling to work, I have to bring my carbs up to a certain level, which I’ve been not so great at doing on the weekends.  But I still feel like crap for eating carbs, and I’m letting too much crap get in my head.

Part of it started at dinner, when the side items weren’t as low carb friendly as I thought they might be; I got crab-stuffed catfish, and I knew there would be a little breading with the crab, and had planned for that.  I hadn’t planned on there being gravy on the green beans (wtf?) and brown sugar on the mashed sweet potatoes, although I should have figured that one.  I didn’t eat much of the green beans… frankly, they didn’t taste that good to me, anyway.  I scraped off all the brown sugar I could off the mashed sweet potatoes.  It was probably a 50 carb meal, with the biscuit.  But when the waiter told me they didn’t have the low carb cheesecake that I’d seen on their website and then acted like he didn’t understand why I’d give a crap about not wanting the extra sugar, my brain was filling in a little voice that wasn’t there: “hey lady, you’re as big as a house anyway, why the f*ck do you care about how much sugar you have?”  I was filling in a silent judgment that I imagined to be there.  Maybe it was; maybe it wasn’t.

That meal stuffed me, and I felt uncomfortable about over-eating.  I just don’t do that much anymore, and it feels really bad to me.  I left a lot of food on the plate, but I’ve worked hard at eating smaller portions and my stomach has shrunk to the point where I just don’t eat that much.  But I still felt horrible about perceived over-eating because I was uncomfortably stuffed.  The same was true for breakfast the next day, and part of that was because I’m cheap enough that I didn’t want to just eat eggs, bacon, and coffee and get popped $11 for it.  So I overate again.  I feel freaking horrible when I overeat.  I just do.  I feel like I’ve blown everything when I do that.  I don’t want my stomach to start expanding again.

There’s also another three day weekend coming up, and having an extra day to figure out what I’m going to do exercise and diet wise just stresses me out.  I know it shouldn’t, but it does.  I don’t want to become obsessed with this; I want to feel confident that I can get through event days (holidays, anniversaries, vacations) without adding stress.

Sigh. Such head games I play with myself.  It’s a low point, for sure, and I’m sure there will be more of them.  I need to admit these times to myself, because last time, I got to feeling this way but wouldn’t admit it, and instead, ended falling off the wagon instead of just working through them.  I’m not going to feel perfectly aligned with my goals every day.  Instead of backsliding, I need to do what I did to start this plan; fake it through if I must, but don’t deviate from the goal.

Don’t worry, friends. I’m picking myself up this morning.  Carbs, calories and portions are back to normal, and I feel a LOT better, just not being stuffed to the gills.  I just need to get this stuff out there and recognize that I’m feeling this way, and push through.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been six weeks since I started this effort.  Really, the time has gone by quickly, and I feel better every day.  I most definitely feel stronger.  Keeping my butt off the scales has also done a splendid job of keeping my brain in check, too.

This past weekend, I had an event to attend for business.  Anything that requires walking worries me; my knees are crap, I deal with a certain amount of pain just in walking, and over and above that, I’m a large person who tires easily, can’t keep up, and I just don’t know too many people for whom a coating of sweat is a good look. 😉  Body builders, maybe, but not me.  So, when I have a circumstance where I might not be in control of how much walking, standing, or moving around I do, I get nervous.

Saturday turned out to be a good day, though.  While I wasn’t on my feet just a whole lot at all, I could tell in my walking that my endurance has improved.  I think one of the things that really frustrated me in my last effort was that I felt like I was killing myself with exercise and getting nowhere at all with endurance.  This time around, it seems so much better, and I’m really at a loss as to why.  I’m not fighting exercise so hard anymore; in fact, I’ve been incorporating swimming laps into my water workouts, and it’s going… um… swimmingly.  😉  Swimming is the absolute ideal exercise for me and I’m thrilled that I’m getting back into it.

Summer is just around the corner, and while I know that I’ve got my work cut out for me this summer, I am going to keep reminding myself that by next year this time, if I stick to my guns and continue, I’m going to be in pretty awesome shape.  I don’t believe I will be near goal, but I will weigh significantly less than I do now, which helps everything.  It helps my health, my knees, my endurance, and most of all, my attitude.

Because the truth of the matter is — I miss moving. Pure and simple.  When I lost 140 pounds, I also lost myself at some point and quit fighting so hard, but one thing I remember very well is how easy it was for me to move.  I could walk for fair distances — miles, in fact.  I could hike. I could climb.  I wasn’t limited by weight.  I had crappy knees then, too, so while I’m sure they’ve deteriorated since then, every pound I lose makes walking and moving easier.  Heck, I could dance.  I love dancing!  But I don’t.  I’m not sure of myself.  I’m afraid I’ll hurt myself, and I don’t like living in fear.  I want to break free of the limitations I have placed on myself by staying at the weight I’ve been at.

Otherwise, I’m still feeling good.  Food hasn’t been an issue.  I could always stand to be more disciplined with water intake.  Exercise is going great.  I am feeling results, more than anything.

This morning was my weekly morning to try on my goal pants.  The report: they don’t fit any differently than last week.

At this point, I’m not concerned, because I’ve been extra good this week.  Plus, pants don’t measure every part of your body; I might have lost elsewhere.  So, the capris are still skin-tight.  I’m participating in a skinny pants challenge with friends, so I’ll be using them as my goal pants for that, as well.  Six weeks to make them look better.  I plan to rock that like nobody’s business.  😉

One thing I have been avoiding doing is taking photos, and it’s part of this challenge, so later today, I’ll be doing that.  I should have done this when I had to post that 334 number weeks ago; I may wish that I’d had a record of my highest weight on this journey, when I’m successful further on down the road.  Plus, it’s another way to measure; when my pants aren’t telling me I’ve lost, a photo might show me what I’m missing, and vice-versa.  I’ll post some pics here, too.

Have a great weekend!

As I’ve stated in previous posts, the method I’m using for gauging whether or not I’m progressing at losing weight isn’t by weighing, but by picking a “goal” pair of pants. My first goal pants are a pair of capri jeans that I purchased, hoping they’d fit when I purchased them, since I have two pairs of jeans by the same manufacturer that fit. Yeah, wrong. In fact, they are small enough in comparison that they are probably most of the way to being a size smaller than the jeans.

I’ve been trying them on each Friday.  Today, I got them buttoned and zipped.  Woohoo!  They are still a bit too much like sausage casings to want to wear them out of the house, but without a doubt, getting to this point with them means I have lost weight.  Granted, jeans being the way they are, I could probably wear them and they would relax and perhaps be suitable for wearing out after a couple of hours, but that’s not what my goal is.  I want them to be comfortable and fit well on the first wearing out of the dryer, not when they have relaxed.  I think by next week, or the week after, they should be at that point.  And that’s the point where I’ll make the decision as to whether I’ll weigh again.  I might not, since this is working so well for me.

At that point, I’ll pick the next pair of goal pants, although I have a pair in mind already; they’re a pair of capris I bought last year before going on a trip to Memphis.  When those fit, I know I will be close to the weight I managed to get down to last summer, before jumping off the bandwagon.  (No one falls.  They jump.  Deciding to go off an eating plan is a conscious decision.)

I know I’m rambling… but I have to say, again, that I’m really happy with how this has worked out.  I can tell that my clothes are fitting much better, and while I”m not a full size down by any means, I don’t feel so ponderously heavy and uncomfortable as I was, before.  While I don’t have a number that I can boast to my friends, I also don’t have a number that’s killing my expectations and making me doubt myself.

I’ve finished three weeks, and so far, everything is going well.  I have gotten all workouts in, eaten well, rested well, and I’m working on improving water intake.

And believe me, it hasn’t been easy; especially the workouts, since I’m working out in a pool, and I live in an area of the country that has gotten ransacked by seemingly nonstop severe thunderstorms.  Lightning?  No pool.  Still, I’ve managed to get in scheduled workouts, even when it’s meant going in on a Saturday morning. Go, me!

I haven’t made it into my goal pants, yet, but I continue to try them on once a week; on Fridays.  I can tell that I’m getting closer.  I can also tell that my body is reacting well to the change in food and exercise.  The best thing, though, is that my mind is reacting well to it, too; taking away the scale as a factor is probably one of the smarter things I’ve ever done, in regards to weight loss.

Soon, a month will have passed.  I’m glad I made the decision that Monday a few weeks ago to just do it and get on with the program.