50 pounds! Half of 100

I am officially just under 160 pounds (under by .4) as of November 14th 2013.  That makes my total weight loss to date 51.4 pounds!  I can't believe how far I have come, and I am super excited to be under 160.  That is a HUGE accomplishment and sometimes I can't even fathom that I have made it this far!  Most of the time we are so focused on where we want to be that we lose sight of how far we have come.  In my case, I still think to myself "I still have 35 pounds to go!  I still have to lose 15 pounds before I enter into my "normal weight" range.  I can't wait until I get to 150 pounds!"  And on the cycle goes.  It has been a long 10 months and I can honestly say that this year has been the hardest year of my life.  Once Chloe was born and I started this journey, I encountered innumerable challenges and I battled my low self esteem the whole way.  I wanted to lose weight almost more than anything (the only thing topping that was my desire to be a good mother to my children and I didn't think I could do that unless I lost the weight since I was too tired and out of shape to do much of anything.)  I wasn't sure I could do it because every time I have tried to lose weight in the past, I stall and then quit.  I didn't feel good about myself, I thought I looked awful, I thought I was being a bad mom because I couldn't keep up with Lily, and I was just unhappy with myself and where I was. 

Whenever I lost weight in the beginning I would just think of how far I still had to go and although I was happy to have lost, I was overwhelmed with the task of losing so much weight, and I would often get discouraged with how far I still had to go.  When I am finished, I will have lost 85 pounds if you start counting at 211 when I started weight watchers, and I will have lost 102 pounds if you start counting from 227, right before Chloe was born (but I have been told that counting the pregnancy weight is cheating ;)

I can't believe that I actually have less weight to lose now than I have already lost.  While 35 pounds is still a lot to lose and I still have a long way to go, it seems more manageable and I know that the farther I go, the better it will seem.  I break it down in my mind by 10 pound increments.  Now that I have lost 10 pounds five times, I know what 10 pounds means and I feel like 10 pounds is achievable.  So instead of looking at 35 pounds, I will just look at what it takes to lose the next 10 pounds.  And my goal is to lose the next 10 pounds by the new year.  As of January 2nd I want to weigh 150.  (I am choosing January 2nd because the 2nd is a Thursday, and Thursday is always the first day of the week I drop, you never know how much of a difference that little bit of extra time will make.)

So here is to the past and looking forward to the future.