Hi all,

I'm back with another thread of my musings! This is what happens when it gets late at night and my afternoon nap is keeping me up at all hours, haha.

I know everyone's journey is individual, but sometimes knowing that in theory doesn't make it easy to put into practice. For example, there are some gals on this forum with similar stats to mine in terms of height/starting weight, and in the same time period as me they have lost more weight. I was getting so frustrated! I'm hung up on the same 2-3 pound range, and have been for a month, and it's enough to make me scream.

But then I really started thinking about it, and I realized that hey, what those people are doing is working for them, and what I'm doing is WORKING FOR ME. I have lost a significant amount of weight, and I am continuing to drop, albeit slowly. I managed to go on vacation and maintain, and I am still learning what does and does not work for me. I'm making a lifestyle change, and I am going to have to accept that my body does not drop weight the same way that another person's does, and that my plan is going to have to accommodate that.

Plus, I have PCOS. Now, I don't see it as an excuse, but I am losing weight in spite of it. I know my hormones are fighting me on every pound, but I'm still losing. That's what I have to keep focusing on. It might only be half of what someone else has done, but it's still more weight than I've ever lost at one time in my life, and that is a big accomplishment.

This combined with my post earlier in the week about irrational scale worries has me thinking a lot about how I mentally approach weight loss, and how I am an individual in a learning process but at the same time I have to follow some of the basic rules in order to succeed at it, while ALSO making my own rules for my own personal journey. Whew! Glad I have a therapist to talk to about all this stuff - she says I'm a pontificator, lol.

You have done an awesome job so far! It does not matter how quickly we all get to our goal, the point is to get there eventually. You will do it on your time frame and no one else's.

Figures that after posting this last night, today was my WI day and I got on the scale and had my first WHOOSH in a month! Maybe all that typing burned some calories, or maybe it was just because I buckled down this week and really focused on making some tweaks to the plan and shaking my body up a little bit.

I have been so guilty of watching the speed of others' progress and it depresses me! In the past, it has derailed me. This time I guess I got over it. I've started averaging about 4 pounds a month, and though I hate that, it is what it is and the weight IS coming off. I've pushed really hard this summer with the exercise and have managed six pounds this past month. That's a good loss for me!

Congratulations for seeing the big picture! That is more half the battle, in my opinion. I've heard that weight loss is 80% diet and 20% exercise...I think it's also 100% mental.