Halfway Home

The half way point, 30lbs down, 30 more to go, perhaps a good time to reflect on how this is going.

I think in general, so far so good. There are some great milestones that I've passed and I'm actually starting to enjoy how my slimmer body feels. At the same time the diet is starting to wear on me a bit and I'll be glad when its over and I can transition to maintenance mode. As I write this I'm at 185lbs down from about 215lbs a little over 12 weeks ago. I'm now only over-weight rather than obese according to my BMI. I've dropped from a 36" waist back to 34" which means I've been able to pull out all my old pants and jeans that I grew out of. My belt (that I've worn for a number of years) has 5 notches. When I first got it I used the middle notch. At my max weight it was just fitting at the last notch, now I'm back to the middle notch again. I've turned back the clock on the last year and a half of post smoking weight gain, I'm back to where I was when I smoked a pack a day. From here on in every pound I lose will be stepping back in time. As I mentioned before I've been gaining weight slowly since I was about 17 when I weighed around 150lbs. I was 37 when I gave up smoking and weighted about 185, so 20 years was a 35lb gain or about 1.75 lbs/year. Well I lose around 1.75 lbs per week on average so each week of diet turns back the clock 1 year. Wow! a weight loss time machine.

I feel different now, physically I'm more comfortable. I don't care what anyone says, having 30lbs of fat hanging off your waist is uncomfortable. My clothes fit better, shirts aren't stretched over my stomach (even XL ones were before). You can still see a little bit of a belly pushing against the shirt but its not hanging over my belt. My attitude has changed, frankly now that I'm much closer to average size I feel that I don't stand out as much. Franky it is nice to not be the one of the fattest in the room. If half-way feels this good I can't wait until I'm done!

On the other hand, I can't wait until I'm done. I'm getting sick of the diet. Not the food itself, like I said before it is actually what I like to eat, I'm just eating less of it and without all the fat adders. No, I'm just a bit tired of the discipline. I'd love to scarf down a few glasses of wine or beer or have that Friday afternoon ice cream at work (a tradition at my office - ice cream Friday's). I know everyone says you should give yourself some treats every so often or take a day off, but for the most part that just pushes out the day when I can ramp back up to 2200 calories and eat more or less normally. So I'd rather "get it over with". I don't think I'm in any danger of giving up at this point, the results so far have just been too good.

Word of caution

Be careful of magical thinking. If you believe that at some point you will be "done" and able to scarf down a few glasses of wine and have ice cream, you're going to gain your weight back. I think if your program is so extreme that you feel frustrated and restricted by it, that you feel it's a temporary measure, you are going down the wrong road. You really ought to focus on creating a way of eating and an active lifestyle that will encourage your body to drop the extra weight while still letting you feel free. You will never stop eating and living that way, and you will never gain your weight back. Temporary measures yield temporary results. God, if anyone knows that, I know it--from sad experience!

Hope I haven't overstepped my bounds, but I've been blogging about this recently. Feel free to visit my blog, and also check out the blog of Kache Me If You Can (kache.extrapounds.com) and Step Inside If You Care (ashleyb.extrapounds.com). We've all approached this from a different tack, and are enjoying success.

Talk soon!

Carla xx

Thanks

Thanks for the comment Carla, I know exactly what you mean about temporary measures rather than real life changes. As you correctly point out there are more than one way to approach this problem. What I'm really trying to do is take control of my weight. As an engineer treating my weight like an simple quanity to be controlled comes easily. So right now I'm in "reduce" mode, once I get to my goal I'll switch to "maintain" mode. So the life change really isn't about particular diets or foods or exercises - those are all just means to an end - which is control of my weight. Deciding to exercise that control is the real change. So reduce mode is temporary and uncomfortable, but as long as I can keep doing it for the required amount of time that doesn't matter. Of course I could stretch it out longer and make it easier but I decided I'd rather get it over with as soon as I could. Of course I still reserve the right to gripe and complain about it along the way