Halfway Checkpoint!

The 20 week challenge is now at the halfway mark!

Today I weighed myself and my current weight is 308.6.  I have lost 5.4 lbs since the last checkpoint!  That's right on track with my goal of losing one pound a week.

Life has been rather busy lately, but my goals to cut out fast food, drink only water, exercise more, and follow my eating schedule have been successful.  Not perfect, but successful.

Cutting out fast food was difficult.  I'm not very good at planning, so I often forget to eat before I have to go somewhere and then I REALLY just want to stop and eat fast food.  I've been keeping some food in my car (peanuts, granola bars, fruit, jerky) for when this happens.  My mom has been my fast food accountability partner, so any time I want to get fast food I have to run it by her first (or guiltily confess after... which has happened once).  When I have made an exception and gotten fast food it's been because I really didn't have time to eat and I wouldn't be able to eat again for several hours.  One day I got a footlong sandwich at Subway and had half at lunch and half at dinner.  I think that's the first time I've EVER had a footlong and made it stretch into two meals.  Last night was another time I made an exception, I had been babysitting all afternoon and then had to leave for choir rehearsal without having eaten.  I called my mom and asked if I could get something from the dollar menu at McD's.  She said ok as long as I didn't eat double portions.  (It was good that she said that because I was thinking about getting 2 burgers... I bought only one instead).  Anyway, no fries or soft drink.  Interestingly, the burger wasn't great.  I probably wouldn't have noticed that before.

Only drinking water was the easiest transition.  I have really enjoy drinking more water and I haven't felt a huge loss with being unable to drink other stuff.  I have allowed myself to have something other than water if I was choosing to use that as my dessert for the day, but I've only done that a couple of times.

It's been a challenge to fit in exercise.  I have been exercising when I have the free time, but I haven't had a whole lot of free time lately.  I'm working on figuring that out.  I have really enjoyed using the exercise DVDs I have.  I purchased a Dancing with the Stars latin dance cardio DVD and I also have Mari Winsor's Pilates DVD.  My favorite is starting with some dance until my legs can't take it anymore and then stretching it out and relaxing with Pilates.   My goal for the next 10 weeks is to exercise 4-5 times a week.

My sister, Hannah, challenged me to cut out all junk food for the next checkpoint, so I'm starting that now.  For the past 10 weeks I have been letting myself have some chips or whatnot as a snack or as part of a meal, but until the next 10 weeks is over, I'm going to do my best to stay away from nutritionless junk.  I'm still going to allow myself to have one dessert a day, but I'll try to have just a piece of chocolate on some nights instead of a bowl of ice cream or a brownie.

The biggest challenge I'm going to have for the next five weeks is cutting down my meal portions.  I am going to challenge myself to have only one plate of food per meal.  That is going to be TOUGH!  I LOVE food, and I STRONGLY DISLIKE feeling hungry.  I know intellectually that I'm not going to starve if I get hungry between meals and snacks (hey... it's what normal people do), but when I start to get hungry my anxiety level rises and my mood turns sour.  So, by cutting back on meal portions, I'm ensuring I'll be getting hungry between meals and snacks; this is a good thing, but it will be difficult emotionally.

In addition to the 20 Week Challenge I'm also working on surrendering my spiritual life more fully to the Lord.  My friend, Jeanne, and I have decided to try to read through the entire Bible (chronologically in order of Biblical events) in 66 days.  That's one book per day, or 18 chapters a day.  I'm a little behind because I've been so busy, but I'm trekking on.