Just. Breathe.

Twelve weeks. Three months. Eighty-six days so far on this journey. Feels like a milestone of sorts. Let's see... In only one of those weeks did I show a gain. And only twice stayed the same. I've stayed focused for the most part; those moments of really wanting to binge on something (Cheetos!) have been rare, and I'm usually able to make do with a few bites instead of 3 servings We've saved a small fortune by not eating out. Between running, walking, and using the elliptical, I've logged somewhere around 100 miles. That's about 9 a week. I drank enough water to float the ark. I finished a 5K in under 40 minutes and ran the entire distance. I now fit into three more pairs of pants I had stuck back in my closet. And I'm buying a size smaller shirt. As of today's weigh in, I've lost 15.1 pounds. I have 47 pounds to go. I think I really needed to take time to write this out for myself. While I'd love to say I've lost 30 pounds, that...

Today my 16-year-old daughter and I participated in the Make-a-Wish Foundation's Race for Wishes 5K in Irving, Texas. If you've been around the blog very long, you know that we did the C25K program last summer but never actually participated in a race. I've done walking 5Ks before, but this was the first year with running as the goal. We've been training pretty hard for the last 3 weeks or so. Earlier this week we ran 3 miles in our neighborhood, so we felt we had a pretty good shot at running the whole thing. Here were my goals: Run the entire thing Do it in under 40 minutes Don't get hurt Don't die This race had chip timers - I'd not had that before because I always signed up to walk. They're cool little straps you put on your shoe lace. That's how  individuals can still get specific times even in large crowds; you have a "gun time" - start of race - and "chip time," which registers when YOU actually cross the startin...

I tried an experiment. I've been stuck for a couple weeks, so I changed a few things last week to try to jump start weight loss again. I've also contended for the last few months that the day I weigh in matters, but I couldn't really prove it. I'm sure that scientifically it all evens out. But when discouragement sets in, the result can't be good. Yesterday (Monday, my usual weigh in day) I dutifully got on the scale in the morning. After being stuck for two weeks, I was down .4 pound. (There's a decimal point in front of that four.) That annoyed me a little. Just the day before, the scale had shown a much greater loss, so I decided to try something. Sundays are challenging -- I'm not home for a good portion of the day, getting my water in is difficult, and it is usually a rest day from working out. I try not to eat poorly, but if there's going to be a restaurant in my week, it's likely to be on Sunday afternoon. So my theory was that the numb...

Hello, plateau. I was really hoping to pass you up on this journey, but no, you just jumped right out there in front of the weight loss train, and here we sit. If I'm being totally honest, it's probably not a plateau so much as a rest stop. I ate Chinese food on Saturday night. Chinese buffet. There's just no escaping payment for that. So if I'd behave myself, I would fly right by this number on the scale and get on down the road. It's not just a numbers/physical plateau, though. I've been here enough times to know that this is the first of several known points where I just get tired of messing with it -- tired of cooking, planning, thinking about food. It's not always that I eat crap, but I take shortcuts that I know do not work. I spend a couple of weeks in this same place on the scale, and then either fight my way out of it, or give up completely. Guess which way I'm planning to go? And in that spirit, today I achieved a first: I ran a full...

I'm late posting this. It was not an attempt to skip it completely, although the thought occurred to me. But that would just be cheating myself. I gained 4/10ths of a pound. Takes my total loss to 12.5 pounds. I know that isn't much, but it feels like a lot. So I wanted to get measurements done to see if I'd be encouraged by that. It's only been a month, so I wasn't at all sure what to expect. I know some of my clothes fit better, and I bought a couple of shirts that were a size smaller than I'd been wearing. Overall, not bad. Waist down 1/2 inch, hips down an inch, and a few other losses overall. I keep reminding myself this is not a sprint, it's a marathon, and gains are inevitable. Less than 1/2 pound, especially considering the weekend I had, is nothing to be defeated by. I know all this. But I'm at that stage/weight where my body fights really, really hard to hang onto every ounce. I've been at this weight so many times, and this is wher...