Lose 10 pounds (5 more times).

Since I last posted, I’ve gradually dropped another 16 pounds, for a total of 26 so far.

Total to lose: 69 lbs

• 6.9 lbs (10% of what I want to lose) REACHED at 3 weeks (7-17-09)
• 10 lbs (roughly the weight of a women’s 10-pin bowling ball) REACHED at 1 month (7-24-09)
• 13.8 lbs (20% of what I want to lose) PASSED at 9 weeks (8-28-09)
• 15 lbs (goodbye to the 180s) and 17.25 lbs (25% of what I want to lose) PASSED approx. Week 12 (9-18-09)
• 19.4 lbs (10% of my starting weight: very important milestone, according to health experts) PASSED approx. Week 12 (9-18-09)
• NO WEIGH-INs while coping with illness and recovery; meds-related loss of appetite meant I had to be careful not to lose too much, too fast, but lack of activity risked causing gain; decided to aim for maintaining
• 20 lbs (2 bowling balls’ worth) and 20.7 lbs (30% of what I want to lose) PASSED sometime between Weeks 12 and 12-08-09 (middle of Week 30…or maybe I ought to have suspended counting weeks while I was ill)
• 25 lbs (goodbye to the 170s) EXCEEDED 12-08-09 (26 lbs.)

• 27.6 lbs (40% of what I want to lose)
• 29.1 lbs (15% of my starting weight)
• 30 lbs (3rd time I’ll have achieved this goal)

No recent pic to post right now, but I’m headed for a party tonight and will try to have one taken of me in one of the pretty new tops I treated myself to for the holiday season. A neighbour did comment earlier today that he could see the lost weight in my face.

Forgot to update this goal last week, when I hit my first mini-goal: 10% of the weight I want to lose (7 pounds) lost.

I was plenty happy about that.

Then this week, despite a couple of minor indulgences in the previous 7 days, my weigh-in brought a delightful surprise: 3 more pounds gone, bringing me to my first 10-pound marker.

I was so pleased that I treated myself to a new dress.

^{OK, two new dresses.}

^{OK, two new dresses and a tank top/jacket combo.}

^{OK, all that and two pairs of earrings.}

Now I only need to accomplish this mini-goal 6 more times.

And I have another mini-goal between now and the 20-pound mark (which is a significant milestone, because it also represents 10% of my starting weight – and thus, according to experts, a considerable reduction in my risks for diseases like diabetes): at 14 pounds, I’ll have lost 20% of the total I want to lose.

This week was unusual in its 3-pound drop, so I expect that reaching the next mini-goal will take at least 2 more weeks.

...but I can’t find the entry. I might be remembering having written about the issue in a comment on someone else’s post – or on the profile I created when “I signed up at sparkpeople.com”: http://www.43things.com/people/progress/tinkmcd/13146079 two weeks ago.

Whatever the reason, I’m going to repeat the info briefly here, to bring this goal up to date and give further entries the proper context.

As of June 26, all but 3 of the 37 pounds I’d lost last year had found me again. Most of the regaining happened over the winter, after I lost my job and fell into a profound depression. Several months of inactivity (to the point of near-paralysis) combined with anxiety-fuelled “comfort eating” that was nutritionally way out of balance took a predictable toll.

On top of that, I now understand that because of the way I lost those 37 pounds – from having a badly inflamed intestine that couldn’t properly absorb the nutrients in the food I was eating – my metabolism was primed to pack on the pounds again once I resumed eating normally. The body doesn’t know the difference between being sick and enduring a famine, so when weight is “starved” off, the body begins storing as much fat as possible, against the next time there’s no food.

Joining sparkpeople and recommitting myself to improving my health in this way has already helped.

As of this morning, I’ve lost the first 6 pounds toward this mini-goal of 10 pounds down. Another pound, and I’ll have lost a tenth of what I want to lose.

The first biggish milestone will be having lost 10% of my body weight, or roughly 20 pounds.

To get all the way there, I’ll need to achieve this mini-goal a total of 7 times.

Go me!

...I lost 37 pounds! (Actually, I lost more than that. But during my recovery from surgery, some of it crept back on because I was watching what I ate from the standpoint of sticking with the post-op dietary restrictions, but not from a weight-loss standpoint.)

It’s not a diet I’d recommend, of course. Still, I’ve come out of it nearly halfway to my goal weight.

Not only am I feeling better now than I did when I was ill, my energy level (at least in spurts) is higher than it’s been in years. And no wonder, considering that I’m no longer carrying around the approximate equivalent of four bowling balls.

I’d put my gym membership on medical hold while I was recovering from the surgery. Given that next week is the start of a new month, I’m going to reactivate it and book a session with my trainer to see what I can safely do about increasing my activity level again. Now that my feet are better, I can add treadmill time (with my Spanish lessons on my mp3 player) to my workout.

Current weight: 160
Goal weight: 120
Four bowling balls’ worth to go! (That means achieving this subgoal four times.)

Despite birthday celebrations and various other minor indulgences last week, Monday’s weigh-in found me another pound lighter.

So I’ve now lost 12 pounds in total. I’m more than halfway to my first big milestone – 10% of my starting weight. When I complete this sub-goal, I’ll be just a pound away from hitting that milestone as well.

For this sub-goal (started August 16 – my birthday), I’ve lost 2; 8 to go.

OK, so far I’ve lost 11 pounds since July 3 (1.8 pounds per week, well within the healthiest weight-loss rate of between 1 and 2 pounds per week).

Achieving this goal will mean I’ve lost 10% of what I weighed when I started—and more than 23% of what I hope to have lost altogether by this time next year.

Highest weight: 210
Current weight: 199
Current goal: 120

1. Continue following Weight Watchers Online, and participating actively on the message boards there (which, by the way, led me here)
2. Join gym with pool and start swimming and/or aquafit regularly.