Monday Report

So I cheated last week. No, not with food. Well, ok, not much with food, but as I said before, giving in on occasion prevents going overboard and binging later. For the most part I've been doing great at eating better and eating smaller portions at all meals.

No, what I cheated on was my resolution to not step on the scale except for Monday due to the variable nature of weight fluctuation. If I take my weight at the same time and day every week, I'm more likely to get a representative trend of where my weight is. Well, on Friday I stepped on the scale and I was extremely happy. I had dropped to 184! Now that is fantastic. Seeing that led me to weight myself this weekend and I was upset to see I was at 188.5. Today at my normal time to weigh in, I stepped on the scale for the moment of truth. I was 186, which just proves that I should stick to my resolution of only weighing myself once a week.

So I'm currently 186, 36" waist, 36.5" stomach. As you can see I've only lost a pound and no change since last week on the tummy area. I'm not too worried because I can visibly see the progress at this point. Everything is tightening up, my arms are filling out a bit, the love handles are disappearing, my chest is beginning to have some definition and the gut is definitely shrinking, even if not measurably. Overall, I feel the best I've felt in ages and I feel good when I look in the mirror, and believe me, my bathroom mirror doesn't hide anything. The mirror is 68" wide and 36" tall. The thing is brutally honest and Dani and I both agree that it is quite the motivating partner in our workout routines.

If I continue to lose weight at this rate (1 lb/week) I'll only be 179 by August 19th, but I'll be happy with that. At this rate I'll hit my target on October 9th. I'm hoping that I'm hitting a plateau right now and that it'll come off a bit faster over the next few weeks but I'm not going to push it. I want to do this safely and slowly so that not only am I healthy but I can more easily keep the weight off. It's important that whatever I do to take the weight off be a full lifestyle change. I can never go back to eating the portion sizes that I used to and not exercising several times a week. I have to realize that I'm not a teenager with an insatiable metabolism any more. My goal is to be able to drop to 3 miles plus weights/3 times a week to maintain my target weight. During the winter holidays I'll try to ramp back up to 5 days a week just to keep ahead of the winter weight gain (as well as being smart at holiday dinners and parties).

At this point I'm very happy with my progress and now its just a matter of sticking with it. I did 6 days of excersize last week. I even did a session on Saturday. I was very motivated and tempted to hit the gym on Sunday but wanted to make sure I gave myself at least one full day of rest, whether I felt I needed it or not. I don't want to push myself too hard or too fast. "Slow but sure" is my guiding principle here.

Well that's all for today. I have to prep for my BYOBBQ party!

UPDATE: One other thing I should mention is that at 179 lbs I will have met the larger goal of moving to the "normal" range of BMI scores; 179 is a 24.9, "overweight" starts at 25. I am currently at 25.9 right now with 186. My target weight of 172 is a 24 BMI which is still the upper end of the "normal" BMI range, but I'm very comfortable with that weight. I think that weight is very healthy for my body type. I will of course be bringing all of this up with my doctor at my yearly physical in September.