Starting weight: 250lbs
Goal weight: 185lbs
Current weight: 220.4lbs
Weight lost: 29.6lbs
*45.5% of the way to my goal!!!*
18 weeks to the wedding!!!

The last few weeks have not felt brilliant, but looking back, I have made it another 10% closer to my goal.  I have also consistently been losing around 1.5lbs a week, which doesn’t feel very impressive at the time, but I have lost over 6lbs since my last blog, which isn’t bad.

The last two weeks have been really rather wobbly.  Work and life have rather been getting in the way.  I had four days on call, leaving at 07.00 and getting home at 21.30, then nights the weekend after.  I also accidentally ended up trying to buy a house.  The fiance and I just went to ‘have a look at the development’, suddenly found an amazing house for £70,000 less than we expected to pay, and wound up trying to find a decent financial advisor to help me sort out a mortgage in under a month.  

Now the mortgage application is submitted, my heart skips every time my phone makes a noise, wondering if it brings good or bad news, and I have some kind of housebuyer’s bipolar - excited about the beautiful warm welcoming place I want to make my own and have a family in, and terrified that some errant admin mistake or bureaucratic delay will steal it out from under me.  The powerlessness and anxiety have not been conducive to much of anything lately.  Oh dear.

So much time attached to my phone waiting to fight the next fire, so easy to find reasons not to go to the gym (‘I’m waiting for a call’, ‘I can’t find my sports bra’, ‘It’s late and I’m tired’).  Then there were all the big meals while out visiting the soon-to-be inlaws to tell them the news, and taking them to view the show-house, all the treat food during long shifts at work.

Over the last few days I knew that I was starting to lose grip of the things that keep me on track - I wasn’t logging my calories daily and my twice-a-week gym plans had gone completely out of the window.  I’m proud that I doggedly persisted in walking my 10,000 steps a day (despite the famously soggy welsh weather), and I wasn’t eating ridiculous amounts of food, but I wasn’t really paying close attention.  Unsurprisingly, my weight loss stalled over the last week, but I’m mostly just relieved that it hasn’t particularly gone up.

Anyway, yesterday, I made a half-assed promise to go to the gym.  A few hours later, I remembered that the gym closes an hour earlier at the weekend, and I wouldn’t have enough time unless I went immediately.  I was hit by panic.  Suddenly, thinking that I might not be able to go, I was desperate to.  So, I went, and it was good.  I hadn’t become massively unconditioned over the course of two weeks, as I’d feared.  I even managed to push myself to work slightly heavier weights during my strength sessions.  I felt so damn good, so optimistic about my success, so in control, so silly for waiting so long to do something that makes me feel so happy and powerful.

So, today I am officially back on the wagon. Plotting some home workouts to keep my head in the game between gym visits.  Also wondering about which room in the new house will be my gym, and what I’ll put in it :)

As the holidays approach, I can’t help but wonder how close I will be to my goals at the various upcoming milestones, projections at 1.5lbs/wk lost would be:

  • New year (01/01/2016 - 7 weeks - 210lbs)
  • ONEderland (20/02/16 - 13 wks - 199.9lbs)
  • Wedding (19/03/2016 - 18 weeks - 193lbs)
  • No longer obese (23/04/16 - 23 weeks 184.9lbs)

I know that my fat loss will not be linear.  I have more than proven that I tend to take a meandering path, some of it on the wagon, some of it off.  However, I find these projections really motivating.  I’m a bit gutted that it doesn’t look realistic for me to be below my obese weight for the wedding, but sod it.  I looked amazing in the dress 20lbs ago, I will look even better in it after the next 20lbs come off.  So grateful that I got a corseted dress, and checked with the shop owner that it would still fit if I lost some weight.  Apparently, at my old size, I would have needed a ‘modesty panel’ fitted to cover up the exposed skin at the widest past of the lacing, so my aim is to no longer need that.

I am so damn excited about the idea of being ‘not obese’.  It will literally be the first time since the age of about ten that I won’t be severely overweight.  It may take a while, but it will so be worth it :)

Anyway, strategies rebooted, motivation and excitement renewed.  Just gotta keep building those healthy habits.

Much love to everyone on this journey with me, we've just gotta keep on chugging along :)