Day #54 - Determination.
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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You are an inspiration to me! What a great post. And I agree totally about the determination. I’ve been talking about it all week, but calling in the *want to.* Ya gotta want it. You have to make a decision, the kind of quality decision that you are going to keep no matter what. NO MORE EXCUSES! Congrats on your pound. YOu are right! That is awesome. And I know the changing up is crucial, too. Yea for you!
Delita
http://3fatchicks.com/diet-blogs/delitaagain/
Oh you! I honestly just teared up, I so didn’t expect to read that when checking out your blog tonight. I’m all tears and smiles now. You are such an inspiration as well!
9 pounds a week I wish! That was for a bi-weekly weigh in, so 2 weeks. But still, I was proud of that.
“Determination drove my discipline” - what an awesome mantra. I love that. I’m going to repeat that to myself many times in the future. How inspiring.
PS- Fantastic on your celebration of that loss. I think a bigger celebration is in order for your determination! It’s beautiful that you continue doing great things regardless of scale feedback. That is the biggest accomplishment in my book. When I’ve run across stalls or slow losses I feel stronger continuing with my plan, because I know the old me would have quit too.
Cheers to the new us!