Starting weight (7/15/08):  279.8
Yesterday:  263.6  Today:  262.2
Change today:  -1.4   Loss-so-far: 17.6 lbs.

I was reading Sterling’s blog today and god, she is so inspiring!  She is a gifted writer AND she’s managed to lose over 100 lbs, so yeah, she’s now one of my heroes (heroines, I suppose I should say) and definitely one of my role models.  She exercises like 80 minutes each day - which is how she loses like 9 lbs in a week.  She puts it down to “discipline,” which is something that I severely lacked in my life… until last year.

Quitting smoking really changed the person that was me.  My whole adult life I had been a slave to my nicotine/cigarette addiction and it ruled me, ruled every aspect of my existence.  When I finally made the decision that I was going to stop smoking and never, ever smoke again, I put into practice a level of discipline that I never even knew I had.  And the only way I could do that was because I was determined.  Determination drove my discipline.

This year, when I made the decision to finally and forever take off the weight that has been with me since pre-adolescence, I applied that same determination.  I counted my calories, I didn’t cheat, I rode my bike, both inside and outside, and… well, the weight didn’t come off easily.  OMG, I never expected that losing weight would be harder than quitting smoking!  I thought quitting smoking was the hardest thing I’d ever done - I was wrong.  Staying “on the wagon” with food was and continues to be much harder than staying away from cigarettes.  I don’t even think about smoking anymore.  But geez, ya gotta eat.

Switching to carb-counting kick-started a new chapter in my weight loss adventure.  And then today I learned something from Gottaloose4 - she made a great point in her comment to my last blog entry, basically that ya gotta change something up now and again to kickstart the weight loss.  I hadn’t thought of it that way!  It works really well for me, that concept, because I get bored with one thing and so I LIKE change.

Today I celebrated a loss, finally.  I weighed in at a pound less than what I was back on August 19 - that would be 20 days ago.  TWENTY.  The person that I was a couple years ago would have thrown in the towel at such slow progress.   I am not going to waver in my discipline, however…

Because I have DETERMINATION.

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Starting weight (7/15/08):  279.8
Tuesday:  264.0  Today:  263.6
Change today:  -0.4   Loss-so-far: 16.2 lbs.

It’s very strange, this carb-counting diet.  It starts out with such a huge sudden loss that it gets ya all excited and happy - and then what it does from there is different for each person.  Well, I suppose that part is true of all diets, but not all of them have that huge drop at the beginning.  At least in my experience.

I’ve now had two total stalls right in a row - and I’m at the end of this one, I just know it.

I’m back in ketosis and I’ve been sticking to plan exactly and I’ve been getting exercise.  On Thursday I mowed the grass at the office (was out there for almost four hours!) and then today I got a new and different kind of exercise - well, new and different for me anyway!  I actually ordered a Dance Dance Revolution pad and disk!  The disk came in a few days ago but the pad arrived today.  It’s really fun (!!) and I actually did break a sweat, woohoo!  I’m not very good at it yet but I already improved a little (from getting E’s and D’s to I finally got a B!).  I’m still in Beginner mode, but I’m thinking I’ll get a lot better at it with practice.

This was something my son enjoys too.  He did the DDR with me today (at a harder level, lol) and broke a sweat too.  Yay!

He says when I get good enough to take on the “heavy” level (hardest), he’s gonna take a video of me and post it on YouTube, that it’s a way cool thing that his mom does DDR.

**Big grin**

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