WEEK 56 - In the Groove

Week 56 | February 1, 2013 | Weight 262.6 | Loss of 2.6 lbs | Total Lost: 48

I'm quite happy that I seem to be back on track.  I am trying my best to get out of the bad food habits that I formed over the holidays and I've been walking almost every day for 45 minutes.  I can't wait for spring so I can get back to running again like I was last summer.

My wife and I are planning our vacation this summer and we'll be doing our regular camping trip as well as spending a week in New York city.  Us frozen ass Canadians enjoy both a good beach and appreciate a giant city atmosphere, that and the fact that my wife has some sort of obsession with Manhattan that I still don't quite understand.

I've been preaching around the house that I'm not going to let us go overboard like we did last summer and after the vacation, back to strict diet and exercise.  Given I've been doing this a year now, I'm fairly confident in knowing the warning signs of what and how I fall off track and I think I'll be able to catch them before I do any serious damage.  (Christmas was quite damaging).

I'm about 15 pounds from the lightest I've been and I'll consider myself fully back on track once I reach that weight.  As for eating, I'm actually doing quite well on the weekdays but the weekends add several more hours of "awake time" than the weekdays so right now, late night evening snacking are my trouble spot that I'll need to work on.  I remember last year, we turned to fruit platters to help curb it so I may give that another try again.

WEEK 55 - On My Way

Week 55 | January 25, 2013 | Weight 265.2 | Loss of 2.2 lbs | Total Loss: 45.4

I am well on my way once again with my weight loss journey.  I can't believe it's been a year since I started hitting this hard.  There have been many lessons learned, a couple of stalls and one out right screw up but I'm happy to say that things are on their way once again.  I'm now about 10 pounds heavier than I was at the start of Christmas and I'm about 19 pounds heavier than my lightest weight last summer.   My short term goal is to get back to my lightest weight before the end of Spring and then stay on track right through the summer.

There were two major events that occurred last year that have caused me to fluctuate so much.  The first is summer vacation.  It was 2 weeks of not tracking anything, pretty much pig out on whatever we wanted.  I only gained a few pounds from this but the major problem was after the vacation, I just ended up maintaining my weight.  My desire to run and workout disappeared and I sort of just fluctuated within a 10 pound range right up till Christmas.  What's disheartening is that I pretty much didn't make good use of the last 6 months of last year with losing anything.

Then came December and everything went out the window.  I think we had maybe 11 home cooked meals the entire month and the first week of January.  I actually started to really feel like garbage at the end of that as well.  So here we are once again.  Happily I didn't gain back everything I lost last year so hopefully I can get back to my lightest weight in short order.  I won't say I regret everything that happened with my diet and exercise.  Not only did I get to eat a few things I really enjoy but I also learned some valuable lessons in that a couple times a year I can certainly indulge but I must do so in moderation.  A smorgasbord of a meal on a particular weekend is not a problem at all, as long as it's only a few times a year are not weekly or even daily (like this past Christmas season).

So let's get to this!  A total loss of 14 pounds over the past few weeks (yes I know most of which was sodium and water from Xmas) makes for a great head start.

Reboot

So, I fell off the wagon pretty hard and put on a bunch of pounds.  Happily I'm not starting over as my loss from 2012 was pretty big and the gain in the last few months has been disappointing.  That said, I've started again like all good rezzies.  As of today I am still down over 42 pounds from when I started this time a year ago and my goals are still the same.

That said, I've learned a lot over the past year.  One big lesson was to not be over ambitious with anything.  Weight Loss, blogging and everything else.  One tends to peter out fairly quickly and is probably a major factor in why many New Years Rezzies give up and fail after a month in.

I'm back on my diet and started walking again.  I don't think I can run like I did last year without becoming pretty winded so I'm starting up slowly.  I expect in a couple of months I'll be running 5k like I was last summer and be half way to my goal once again.

I don't expect I'll be blogging every couple of days like I did before.  That becomes tiring quickly so I'm going to try my best to post here once a week on my new weigh in day which is Fridays.  I wish you all the best of success and hope we can continue this journey together!