Picture Time!

So I wanted to share a couple of pictures from the last few weeks.  The first one is from 11 days ago.  I am wearing a shirt that is still too small, but I am going to try on every ten pounds I lose to see changes with it.  I was at 235 pounds then.  The picture to the right was taken this morning and I weighed in at 228 pounds.  I think I look a bit smaller.

 

Here is a bit of a progression of my progress thus far.  I can see some small changes.

Dealing with Setbacks

Well, I have been struggling a bit the last week.  I have gained and lost the same three pounds and it is really annoying me.  I am okay with a simple plateau, but the constant fluctuation really gets to me.  Now the reason I am having issues is not a mystery.  I got off track on my eating and now I am paying the price.

Saturday, I was at a basketball tournament all day.  I pre-planned my meals, but when purchasing them at the grocery store I failed to do a quality check.  The salads were not okay and I ended up eating nothing more than a gluten-free cupcake (one of my athletes was celebrating a birthday).  The next day, I went out to breakfast and ate eggs, bacon, hash browns (evil white potatoes) and sourdough toast.  Way more than I need to eat for breakfast any day of the week.  For Sunday dinner I ate teriyaki chicken and rice (also a no-no).  Then on Monday, I ate a small blizzard and it was really good, but oh so bad for me.

I am back on track now.  Got my planned snacks/meals and am hitting the gym.  It takes time to recover from a misstep, but the important thing is to not give up.  Life happens and tomorrow is a new day.

Another Milestone Achieved

Today, I am officially out of the 230s!  In five weeks I have dropped nearly 18 pounds and it feels great.  I survived Valentine's Day, which is a single gal's most dreaded holiday.  Nothing worse than the oh so well meaning people that gaze upon you sorrowfully and say, "maybe next year you will have someone".  It is as if being single is a disease.

But enough of that nonsense, I am doing so well on my journey to health and that is great!

Achieving the Unthinkable

I didn't go to the gym for five days.  We had a snow storm and I couldn't make it off my street, much less to the gym.  Mind you, this epic snow storm brought a meager four inches to my area, but to us it might as well have been four feet.

So I didn't purposely skip the gym, but I that is the thing that really bothered me.  It was that I missed going to the gym.

I missed it.

I have never been upset about not being able to go to the gym.  In fact, there were many days I revealed in coming up with clever (or not so clever) reasons to avoid the gym.  This attitude change is something quite miraculous.  I like working out.  I like challenging myself.  It is one thing to go and get stronger, but to change how I think about it is something I didn't think was achievable so early on in my journey.  Five weeks in and I am down fourteen pounds and loving the gym.

What did you do that amazed yourself this week?

Managing Obstacles

Four weeks and fourteen pounds down!  It is great to see my weight dropping and it certainly helps me to keep motivated.  That being said this week has been very tough.  We had snow on Thursday, which threw the entire area into a state of panic.  My client lunch was cancelled and I didn't have a back up plan.  Adding to the issue, my boss bought the whole office pizza and that is not on my list of okay things to eat.  Thankfully, I caught a ride with a co-worker that went to pick up the pizza and grabbed a chicken salad from Subway.

Thanks to the snow, it took me three hours to get home and I only live ten miles from my job.  By the time I got home, I was stressed and wanted to eat some carbs.  I didn't, I ate my planned dinner and held out on temptation.  Sticking to a schedule is easy when everything goes according to plan.  It is when things start to go awry that you really have to remember what you are working towards.

Obstacles will always arise.  The key is to know that they are not insurmountable.  You can work through them or around them, but they don't have to derail your efforts.