The Biggest Loser

Since January 1st, I have been actively trying to lose weight. I know many of you have had first hand knowledge of this process over the past six months; still I have refrained from blogging on it for fearing I would become Oprah about it. But that stops today as I am departing from the diet (for now at least) as I have officially lost 10% of my starting body weight on January 1st bringing my grand total to 19 pounds! If I flash back to my starting weight in October of 2009, I have lost 25 pounds, which as this blog is testimony to, I am very proud of.

How did I do it you ask? Well, I began with just straight up calorie counting ever decreasing my daily total, which for long stretches was 1,100/day. If you have never calorie counted, 1,100 is LOW and some debate if that is even healthy. Confession: for most of the year, I took the weekends off which was my saving grace. Mondays were often fraught with guilt, but I am sure I would’ve called the whole thing off in March had I not had that default.

Slowly, over time, I combined the calorie counting with exercising. And again, if you know me in real life (as opposed to blog life), you know I am not one to go to the gym but focused instead on power walking (I know, could I be more dorky). Gradually, I power walked longer and more often – at times 6-7 days a week. As well, I bought a pair of Shape-Ups (yes, I could be more dorky), which I think helped. Somewhere along the line I started wearing arm weights. I was even doing Yoga a few nights a week bringing me to a season of “two-a-days.”

Off an on for the last month, I went to SlimFast doing their 3-2-1 method. I should add there was a fairly consistent season where I was eating Special K for two meals a day. SlimFast was decent, but I will not miss them. There were two separate two-day periods where I ate only spinach, eggs and grapefruit juice. Not to go into too many unpleasant specifics, but this cleansed my system and wasn’t nearly as unbearable as I thought it would be.

All told, I will be shifting to maintenance through when I depart to Peru in mid-July. When I return, I will reassess my goals and decide if I want to go another round or not. One really big prompt was a six-month contest organized by my work, which because of I won $100 but today’s finale, felt really anti-climatic. I wasn’t in the winners’ group/click and was so far from their percentage loss (and also not really in their friend group) that I wasn’t in on the “celebrations.” Fair enough, $100 is $100 and 10% weight loss is 10% weight loss.

Sorry, no before and after shots – not my style.