New laptop

Weight: 199.0

I am writing to you from my brand, new laptop!

It was a Valentine's Day/birthday present from my spouse. To say I'm super stoked is a dramatic understatement. My desktop computer is about 10 years old. And I love my new laptop!

But the shopping experience, well, that was a marathon in itself.

We were gone from the house from 10:30 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. because we had to go to several stores quite a ways away to find it in stock for a Presidents Day sale. It was a perfect opportunity to try my diet in action.

I had a hearty, healthy breakfast before we left, and I packed two snacks for the trip. I also packed a tuna salad (sans mayo or dressing) on baby spinach for lunch. So while my spouse was eating fried food, I was chowing down on delicious and healthy food. And when I detected hunger, I had one of my snacks rather than waiting too long to eat and then making unhealthy food choices because I was too hungry.

When we got home, I was tired, but baked a chicken for dinner. With trussing, it only takes an hour to bake a whole chicken, and it's far more economical to buy a whole chicken rather than skinless, boneless chicken breasts.

I also rode my bicycle trainer this evening. I was tired, but I got 'er done.

All in all, it was a busy but very happy Valentine's Day.

Weigth loss strategies

I've been playing around with different strategies for weight loss to see what works best for me. Here is what I'm trying to do current:

1. I'm going to weigh every day. This will pretty much immediatley let me see what happens when I don't make the best food choices to reach my goal.

2. I'm trying to let go of the "should" statements. What happens is if I eat something that I shouldn't under the paleo diet guidelines, then I want to keep eating those foods because I think I'll never have them again. As "Dietgirl" wrote, I have to find some balance, because I'm not going to be perfect but I don't have to be out of control, either. Now, I still will have issues with gluten if I eat it, so that is one I have to be careful with.

3. Honoring my hunger. If I'm hungry, I need to eat something. It is when I let myself get too hungry that I often get myself in trouble.

Black and white

Current weight: 200.6

So I took pictures of myself last night to add to my weight-loss spreadsheet -- I'm telling you, it's really a work of art. In any case, it was a complete eye-opener.

When you used to be 270 pounds and your size 22 pants were getting tight, being 200 pounds and a size 14/16 feels skinny sometimes. And when I suck in my tummy, and thanks to certain undergarments, I can look pretty good, if I say so myself.

I've become complacent. It's very easy to maintain the weight I'm at. I can screw up once in a while, and clean up for a few days and I'm right back where I was. I often think that where I'm at is plenty good enough. I want to shout: "But I've lost 70 pounds from my highest weight! I'm at the weight I was in college! What more do you want from me?"

You would think that wanting to do triathlons alone would motivate me. After all, I *can* swim. I *can* my bike at this weight; I've ridden 55 miles in a day already. I *can* jog, if slowly and frequently causing injury.

Only, I know in the back of my mind, that I'm not going to be able to do triathlons as fast as I want to -- or even longer, hillier courses at all -- if I don't get rid of some of this weight. It wears on the body, having to haul extra pounds up hills or for longer distances.

I haul in buckets for the furnace, and they are 35 pounds each. The other day, I thought about trying to bike a hilly triathlon carrying that bucket on my back. It seemed impossible. Yet that is precisely what I would be doing.

But seeing that photo last night, of me in a tank top without sucking in my stomach ... I couldn't believe it! Where did all that belly come from? When did I get so fat? I thought I was relatively skinny now! But this was cold, hard evidence of my blubber.

I've long seen it on TV programs that overweight people truly don't realize how big they are. There is a LOT of truth in that. Our minds will convince ourselves that it's not really that bad. The image we see in the mirror is not like what others see. It's the exact opposite of women with eating disorders, who see themselves as fat no matter how thin they get.

How many times do we see a picture of ourselves and we're shocked at it? Or worse, have to see ourselves on video?

But I took my evidence of my blubber and imported it on my super awesome spreadsheet. It's next to a graph that shows my weight loss for January. I will have graphs that show my weight loss every month as I go along. I am looking forward to taking March's picture and then seeing the progress after several months.

And here's the positive to my spreadsheet: It tells me that I can absolutely meet my goal of weighing 175 by July 26. It tells me that's 165 days away, or an average loss of 0.2 pounds per day (1.4 pounds per week). I even have a graph that shows my current weight against the weight I have to lose so that I can tell if I'm on track.