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Eileen - Day #289 - Monday
 Daily intake goals::  < 35g carbs / < 1700 calories / > 64+ oz. water
Exercise yesterday::  1 hour DDR
Net carb grams yesterday:  18.7      Calories:  1297
Weight today:  237.4     Change:  +0.8    Total weight loss:  -47.8
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Yes, the scale showed a gain again, two days in a row.  No, I’m not freakin’.  As far as I’m concerned, I’ve still “broken through” the endless plateau.  I can feel the swelling in my knees and ankles.  I’ve been doing more difficult and faster DDR and it’s causing some edema.  No biggie, it’ll go down.

I’m still really psyched because I *am* breaking through.  I am.

Honestly, I have no choice.  I have to keep going forward because I’m never, ever going back to what I felt like when I weighed 285 lbs.  Ever.  I will keep eating low-carb and I will keep watching my calories and I will keep exercising.  I will not gain.  Eventually I will lose.

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Tonight while I was trying to keep up with the arrows on the game, I found myself doing the jumps and - for the first time ever - they were not a big deal.  I’m sitting here typing this but I have no idea how to explain what I mean.  Okay - in the game, the arrows crawl up the screen, and when they get to the top you’re supposed to step on the correct arrow (front, back, left, or right) at a precise moment, with the beat of the music.  If two arrows come up at the same time, then you’re supposed to use both feet to hit both arrows, and the only way you can do that, is to jump up and land both feet on the two arrows at the same time.

When I first started doing the DDR, I would try to jump but it was really hard.  With past knee injuries, and weighing so much, the jumping was really hard on my knees.  I did the best I could, but all my jumps were like -BAM- high-impact.  A couple times I came down wrong and re-injured my knees.  I’ve had to be a bit careful not to do it again.  But no matter what, anytime I tried to jump, I came down like a ton-of-bricks, so to speak. 

What I’m trying to say here, is that I came down differently than other people might.  Harder.  I’ve played against my son and when I watched him, his jumps weren’t -BAM- like mine, they were smooth movements with much less impact than what I’d been doing.  I studied how he did it, thinking that if I could just copy how he did it, then I could jump better, easier, without hurting my knees.  Without so much BAM.

I came to the conclusion that I just didn’t have the strength in my legs to move like that.  I could not move both feet off the ground at the same time without actually bending my knees and propelling myself into the air - even if all I was aiming for was just an inch into the air. 

Guess what - I did it!  Yesterday and then again tonight when I was doing the DDR Ultramix 1, I found myself moving from jump to jump - with no BAM!!  It’s so hard to explain how exciting this is for me!!!  I was also excited because for the first time I can actually do some of the harder routines, but for me to finally have the strength in my legs to move from jump to jump, I am so pumped!

If you’ve never seen or played DDR before and you’re totally lost, here are some videos (oh, and these people are much better at it than I am):
DDR Mom:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAN6JhrR0R0
DDR Mom & Daughter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ElxEM2cnKI

Then of course,  here’s me back in September.  I’m on the left.  Watch how we both jump, bending our knees and propelling ourselves like we’re gonna high-jump or something, around 0:21.  =D

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