still going strong...

I feel a lot of pressure off since my last post. I'm still working on losing weight, but I've put the "goal" behind me for now. Or actually, just extended it for a while. Barb (the wonderful lady who weighs me in each Saturday morning) mentioned this morning maybe aim for the end of the year. That's a possibility. And maybe something more realistic.

(Time out for a sec... I have to say that I really enjoy my WW team. They're always so encouraging. And if you haven't done so, you should read my leader's comments on my last post. Very supportive. I thoroughly enjoyed the meeting today too.) Now back to my post...

I realized when I first started the 18 Pounds in 18 Weeks challenge in July it would be a hard one to accomplish. Let's face it—one pound a week can be a lot! But I'm all for setting goals. If I don't have a goal, I'll flounder. But I think this one was just too much for me. I just took it too seriously. And 18 weeks didn't seem like that long of a time. But it was FOUR AND A HALF MONTHS! What was I thinking!?

I lost this week!!

Yea!!!

It was only 4/10ths of a pound. But you know? I'm proud of it!

I had to admit that when I first heard that I'd lost the 4/10ths I was a bit disappointed. But let me explain why. I had weighed myself at home and, according to my weight before WI last Sat and my weight before WI this Sat, I was down 1.2 pounds.

I sat there in the meeting feeling sorry for myself. Man! I had only lost 4/10ths!

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME???!!!!

4/10ths is huge!

It hit me when I was sitting at lunch with my family today (our regular Saturday afternoon event). I sat there about to order and thought about ordering what ever I wanted and was even considering getting dessert. But as my eyes were perusing the menu and my mouth was watering at all of the fatty delectables, it hit me... I had just lost 4/10th of a pound! And if I ordered whatever my heart desired, that 4/10th would go down the crapper (literally). My whole week of struggle would be for nothing. So then I started to cherish that 4/10ths ... 4/10ths was really a great loss!

I'm so proud of it, I made a graphic in honor of it:

You know, something else happened this week that wasn't reflected on my WI that I should be darn proud of...

Okay, to start with, I have to confess to all of the junk I ate last weekend. I won't go into the gory details, but lets just say it wasn't pretty. The weekend ended with a Chocolate Stampede from Longhorn Steakhouse. Here's the description from their website: Two peaks of chocolate cake packed with six (yes, six) types of chocolate including chocolate mousse, fudge icing and chocolate shavings! Served with vanilla bean ice cream, fudge sauce and whipped cream. OMG! Was it rich! And probably 300 points! Here's a pic:

The whole weekend was pretty much like that.

I gained 4 pounds by Monday morning.

So technically, I didn't lose just 4/10ths of a pound, I lost 4.4 pounds right?!

I really did try, too. All week. Though I only exercised twice. Boo! No excuse for not exercising more. None at all!

But you know, I'm still in this for the long haul. I'm going to make it to 140 eventually. My next goal is still 100 pounds. I'm 5.6 pounds away from it. It might happen before the end of the year, it might not. But when it happens, it'll be great! I know it will.

By the way, check out my new "before and during" photo to the right. I'm looking so good, aren't I?

Oh, by the way, thanks for the encouragement, Katchi. I went out and bought Tosca Reno's Eat Clean Diet book. I was very excited to hear how much you'd lost from "eating clean". I'm not sure if this diet is right for me, but it does look interesting. I'm not usually into eating grains and nutty things, but since I started WW I've always wanted to eat ultra healthy. And this looks like a great start. I'm just reading through the book this weekend, but so far, it looks great. It's in line with my "eating healthy" practices that I've adopted so far—whole grain, low fat, high protein, high fiber, organic. I've also wanted to try the Maker's Diet by Paul Rubin. Both of these books seem to take you back to the traditional way of eating that we did before there were processed foods, when grains were the main staple of every diet. We'll see how it goes.

And thank you to everyone who has been such an encouragement to me via this blog and in my life. It is so awesome for me to hear how I could possibly be an inspiration to anyone. I'm so happy I could do that for you. Your comments just make me want to keep going.

I won't give up!

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