The big box next to my closet is finally filling up with clothes that are too big for me. More and more people are congratulating me and asking me how I am losing weight. All of my accessories are fitting differently – shoes, rings, coats, etc. My body even FEELS smaller when I touch it, as if it is not my own. It’s the craziest thing!
I am coming up on 3 solid months of tracking my calories, staying WITHIN recommended limits (90% of the time) and exercising as much as possible with the time constraints of a full-time working mother, and it’s paying off in spades! The scale says I am down about 29 pounds but I am due for another big drop, since I have been on this plateau for about a week. There are some clothes that I just barely started to wear and now they are getting a little big on me. It’s easier than ever to make better food choices and plan my meals without going over my limits.
Another key factor that has attributed to my success is journaling. I write every night and it takes me about an hour. That is one less hour that I have to snack, which often turned into binging before I began this project. Not only does it keep my fingers busy, but because I write about my emotions, it makes me feel better too! When I start to type out my thoughts, it’s as if I am literally moving them from my brain to the computer screen, freeing up space in my brain to think about something else or just relax. Even if no one ever reads these words, I will never regret the time and brainpower it took to put them into full sentences. Why would I care anyway? Everything I am doing to achieve my biggest dream of all time is worth its weight in gold!
Because, let me remind you – which will remind me as well, that I spent the last 25 years (give or take) PRAYING for a miracle to help me lose weight. I started dozens of plans, lost about 15-20 pounds and then quit again. I have only made it this far about 2 or 3 times and I gained the weight back fairly quickly after a few weeks. During each of those attempts, I paid someone or a business to help me lose weight. As soon as I stopped losing weight fast enough, which was usually slowed by a vacation or a few long weekend hiatuses, I would cancel the service and the weight would come right back on. It was a vicious cycle too. After I gained all the weight back, I would tell myself that the only way I would be successful would be if I joined another plan or paid for a personal trainer again.
Back then, I never would have imagined that I could do it all on my own. Look at me now! I am not going to weekly meetings, converting calories into some kind of code that only that diet plan can decipher or buying special foods and measuring devices that will somehow make my efforts more successful. Instead of planning my life around a diet, I am structuring this diet plan into my already busy life. Of course there are little tools, tips and tricks that I learned from all of those diets, like I already had a scale for measuring protein for instance, so I am not saying that those diets didn’t help me along the way, but 95% of the credit for my current success just goes to Moi! There are no two ways about it, either. I am KILLING it!
Today’s menu was similar to many days, but tasty enough for me! I ate my favorite two-egg breakfast in the morning, followed by a fruit and yogurt bowl for lunch and ending with a ready-made salad for supper. I mixed in some fun snacks, like I always do, which were granola bars, a protein shake and my nightly dessert which usually consists of a frozen fudge or yogurt bar with a healthy scoop of light cool whip on the side. Ice cream is my ultimate treat so the consistency and taste are similar enough to fool my mind, saving me 100s of unwanted calories!
As for exercise, today I met my favorite work out buddies at the Y for a Cardio Dance class. We were all into it today and were not afraid to hoot, holler and even sing along to our favorite tunes while we shook our booties. It’s really a sight if you have never seen a bunch of middle-aged women do a little shimmy-shimmy with their chests, or slap the floor in front of them and slowly bring their arms back up to their sides while swaying their hips back and forth. We would even make a young man sweat a little, if you know what I mean.
Tomorrow should be another successful day, since I picked up some more fruit and other groceries while my youngest daughter was at dance. I was out of my 45-calorie per slice bread, so now I have a fresh loaf ready for the morning. When I am picking out a loaf, I squeeze them slightly to find out which ones are the softest. Those appeal to me the most. I even found a “light” version of margarine which will save me about 25 calories a day, which is not something to sneeze at. (Oooo – that was a bad choice of a word during a pandemic, sorry.) Those 25 calories could mean the difference between having a few extra grapes or not!
At first, I couldn’t wait to start losing weight and 1 or 2 pounds here or there was not good enough. Now that I have moved into a whole new size of clothing (about 14-16), I am being more patient with myself. There are plenty of clothing items in my closet that I haven’t had a chance to wear yet. It’s so important that I give my body the time it needs to adjust to these new sizes, too. It doesn’t mean that I will stop or change what I am doing, but hopefully I will not get so upset when the scale starts acting up again, because I know it will. (Look at me – making it sound like the scale actually chooses to spit up high numbers, when it’s just a scientific reflection of your body’s weight at that moment in time. Oh and did you miss the second pandemic reference? I am on a ROLL!)
