Saturday Weigh In

I made it another week without weighing myself until Saturday!  I'm really glad that I didn't micro manage my weight this week because I think I would have become very discouraged during the week and it could have derailed my progress.  It is very important for my mental well being for me to not weigh myself more than once a week, I just get too obsessed and emotional about the numbers on the scale.

This morning I weighed in at 152.0, down 1.2 pounds from last weeks 153.2.  Seeing a loss of only one pound at first can be discouraging, and if I had micro managed my weight all week I would have been really depressed at not seeing the scale budge, but being able to see the whole week in one shot instead of a few ounces at a time makes a much better difference each week.  Of course I want to lose weight fast, who doesn't, and secretly I was hoping that I would be at 150, but obviously that didn't happen.  But I'm fine with 1 pound a week, because in 10 weeks I will lose 10 pounds and I would rather be 142 and running the race than still at 155 or higher from bouncing back and forth.  And 10 weeks after the race I could be 132 if I'm losing 1 pound a week, and that is right around my goal weight.  20 weeks is about 5 months, which is a shorter amount of time than I spent struggling and gaining my weight back.  Weight loss is slow.  That's how it is supposed to be, and I have other things to worry about than weight not coming off as fast as I wish it would because, lets face it, it will never come off fast enough.  So I am happy with my progress and my 1.2 pound weight loss.  I haven't been starving, I've been eating roughly 1700-1900 calories a day (but I've been working out a lot too).  I haven't been starving myself or depriving myself.  This week I ate a slice of cheesecake, and some cookies and today I had an empanada even though it put me over my calorie goal by 71 calories.  So what?! My calories today are at 1,793, I got in a quick 33 minute bike ride, and one day of being over my calories (by a pretty minimal amount) isn't going to kill me.  Besides, I'm still projected to lose weight even though I'm over my calories.  Too often we get it into our heads that just because we are over on our calories by maybe 100 or so calories we think we have blown our "diets" when in fact, we will still lose weight, just slower.  The whole thought process is messed up, it's time to wake up and realize the truth.

Ok, my small rant is over.   My personal goal is to be running the race at 140 pounds, which is slightly more than 1 pound a week from here on out, which is totally doable.  Nothing extreme, not even 2 pounds a week (which I have never been able to sustain by the way).  I want to focus on realistic goals, and real life changes.  Something that will stick.

Today we went mountain biking and I definitely need more practice.  Matt loves mountain biking so he is more than happy to help.  I wanted to make a good impression the first time I went out and show how good I've been doing working out and making progress but I managed to fall off my bike into some bushes, and then rack myself as my bike unexpectedly shifted gears as I was getting ready to bike over a large tree root.  My bike stopped and my body kept moving.... Not a very good first impression lol.  But I did pretty good biking up the uphill portion and Matt said several times I was doing a really good job, so I guess I redeemed myself during the second half of the ride.  The ride was only 33 minutes long, we had to cut it short due to rain but despite my battle wounds I am excited to go again.

Scrapes from the bushes on my right leg

That's nothing compared to what Matt has come home with on his legs before.  I suppose this is the first of many scrapes to come.  One of the downsides of exercising outdoors.  But it is much more interesting to exercise outdoors!  I don't need music to keep me going, the changing terrain and elevation does that for me :-)