Quick

Forgot to post yesterday, but the diet marches along. Down to 196 yesterday morning, which is 1.6 for the week and 77 total.

I feel like I'm in a sort of grey zone of diet loss, right now. I passed a lot of milestones and markers in the last few weeks, all at once: I got past the big 200, and made that third 10% goal, and I'm officially thinner than I've been since Matt and I started dating, and I can't shop at Lane Bryant anymore...

The next milestone isn't until the next 10% goal, so it's nearly twenty pounds away, which at the current rate won't be until sometime in October. I just bought new clothes, so that won't be necessary again until it's time for fall and winter things. August and September are kind of stretching out before me as an endless grey monotony.

I need to come up with a goal that can be met in a shorter time, something to pin my sights on. Maybe I should take up the sit-up challenge.

Inspirational

The last couple of weeks, I've been getting a lot of compliments on my weight loss. Probably because I've been wearing my new clothes that actually show it off. Several people have asked me what I was doing, to which I usually respond with the truth: Weight Watchers and going to the gym three days a week.

Monday, one of my co-workers came into my office and said, "You have inspired me! I joined Weight Watchers over the weekend."

I was unprepared for my reaction, which was proud and... proprietary. As if this woman's weight loss belonged to me, somehow.

I'll have to try to rein that in. Her triumphs should be hers, not mine. And if she falls off the wagon or gives up, I don't want to own that, too. But it was still nice to chat for a while about recipes and stuff.

Today's weigh-in: 197.6, which is down 1.2 pounds, for a total loss that's officially over 75 pounds. Go, me!

Third Time's the Charm?

Well... I did it. The scale read 198.8 this morning, which both drops me below 200 and meets my third 10% goal. (That's 1.6 pounds for the week, and 74.2 pounds lost total, but that doesn't sound nearly as awesome as the other two.)

I feel so awesome, I could dance. And sing.

Now I get to shop for a new camera, and figure out what I want for my fourth 10% goal reward. Any ideas?

Photographic Evidence

So I'm not quite to my third 10% goal yet -- I'm about a pound and a half away, but that's close enough that I don't think you could tell the difference on casual examination.

Also, it's been just about exactly a year since the picture was taken that I'm using for my "before" shot (it was another few months before I actually went on the diet, so I haven't been on the diet for a full year). And we had another picnic. So... Time for a progress picture. Why not?

Here's the before:


And here's the now:


That's what almost 75 pounds looks like.

I confess to being in love with this picture. I'm not just thinner, I'm... (despite the Ugliest Shoes In The World and having another 50-60 pounds left to go) actually... kind of hot.

Huhn.

Size...

I took the day off today. Spent my morning running errands -- dropped the kids off at daycare, went to the gym, went to the doctor for a blood draw, got dinner prepped, that kind of stuff.

And then I went to lunch with my husband and some friends, and after lunch, I went clothes shopping with three girlfriends, which was an absolute blast. I haven't tried on clothes with numbered sizes for a while, but I was fairly sure I'd be about a 16.

Except I wasn't. Four stores we went to, and in all four stores, I fit neatly into a Large or a 14. At Lane Bryant, the size 14/16 stuff was all just a little too big for me -- I bought a loose shirt anyway, but the form-fitting dresses I'd hoped to snag for my high school reunion were Right Out.

Apparently, without realizing it, I skipped over 16 entirely and am now looking at the downward side of 14. And it's just about time for me to stop shopping at Lane Bryant and return to the "normal" sized stores.

Wow.

Stupid Scale

So after not losing any weight last week, this week I'm down to 200.4 -- that's 4.6 pounds in one week (72.6 since I started). I'm not buying it. I really think the scale is getting flaky.

(It's that, or the fact that I tightened up control on my evening snacks -- I didn't eat anything after the kids were in bed beyond my usual diet soda and 0-point ice cream bar, and if I didn't make my minimum points for the day, then I just didn't make my minimum points.)

200.4 is a pound and a half from my third 10% mini-goal, though. Also, "under 200" is the goal that my doctor set me, when I saw him back in February and he was being impressed with the 30-odd pounds I'd lost up to that point. Given the flakiness of my scale, I'm not betting on getting to goal next week, but it's definitely coming soon.

I already changed my goal on the Weight Watchers site (once you make goal, you can't change it again, which is stupid, but now that I know, I make sure to change it when I get down to the last few pounds). And I've started researching fancy SLR cameras, which is what I'd promised myself for getting below 200.

And now I need to think up a reward for the next 10% goal, which is 179. Which, by the by, will be the thinnest I've been since grad school.

I was 190-ish the summer after my first year, and I was so horrified that I went on a diet/exercise spree, walking on my parents' treadmill every single morning and drastically cutting my calories. It lasted about six weeks, during which I got down to 175, but then the problems with my feet completely wiped out my ability to use the treadmill (or even walk at all, for a few days), and the diet fell apart shortly thereafter. I'd speculate I was back up to 190 before I got back to school in the fall.

That was 1994. I'm approaching a weight I haven't been for fifteen years.

Cool.

Holding Pattern

No loss again this week. Stuck at 205.

I'm not quite as irritable about it as the last one, because I have some idea of what happened, I think. Or at least, there are several factors at play.

Item one is that it's probably a partial bounce-back from when I was sick the week before.

Item two is that my daughter has been taking swimming lessons, which has resulted in us having dinner on-the-go -- namely, a sandwich. Which, since my sandwiches are about 4 points each, leaves me with rather a lot of points at the end of the day, so I've been having late evening snacks to make up the difference. Eating late in the day is bad for weight loss.

Item three is my current position on the menstrual roller coaster.

So there's that.

On the other hand, I can't say I'm happy about it, either. I'd bought new (smaller) clothes this week and was feeling pretty good about them. I'd made some changes to my routine at the gym and my Wii Fit workout that (I felt) stepped things up a little. I thought I'd have at least a pound to show, this week.

And the kid is still in swim lessons this week, and Saturday is the Fourth of July, which we will be celebrating with a cook-out with my family, so... Next week doesn't look terribly promising, either. And the week after that is the Summer Bash...

Bleh and bleh and bleh. I would really, really like to drop below 200 in the next three weeks, in time for my high school reunion. Though I acknowledge the stupidity of that -- no one who will be there has seen me since graduation, so I will still look fat to them (I was 135 when they last saw me, after all) and it's not like the difference between 205 and 199 will actually be visible, even to me. It's strictly psychological.

Bleh.