Journey to a Smaller World

Well, guys, it's been a long, long adventure, but I think it's winding down. What adventure, you ask? Why, my weight loss journey! I have now lost about 58 lbs. Can you believe that? I can't sometimes, even though I don't have much choice but to believe it. Everyone keeps reminding me how different I look (mostly compliments, fortunately) and even if I thought they were all full of it, my clothes keep falling off to make the point. It feels very good. I've accomplished something the pessimist in me thought would never be possible.

Technically, according to those charts that tell you what you're supposed to weigh, I need to lose another ten pounds. But I think I'm done. I feel great where I'm at, and quite frankly, I don't want to see my face get any skinnier. Too skinny would just emphasize lines and wrinkles at this point. (I'd rather have a slightly fuller face and look younger!) Plus, my husband is the kind of man that likes curves so I think he'd prefer it if I stopped before I look like a beanpole.

A year and a half of losing weight has been a great learning experience. I've tried dieting several times over my life, even if you don't count those silly diets when I was a teenager trying to get rid of my "fat" hips and butt (which was really just womanly curviness). And always, always, I gained the weight back, if I managed to lose any in the first place. But this time obviously I've had some success, and I don't expect to gain it back (knock on wood) so I thought I'd share some of the things I did this time around that made a difference. You never know-- if ever you should find yourself on the same kind of journey, maybe some of these things will work for you too.

• At the beginning I made a list of all the reasons (shallow and not-so-shallow) that I wanted to lose weight. Specific ones. And I made sure I read that list several times every day for a while. It reminded me exactly why I was doing this.
• Keeping a food diary has been my number one ticket to success. This means that I do read a lot of labels and measure out my portions, but it was a real eye opener to find out what those portion sizes really were supposed to be. Have you ever actually counted out 50 goldfish crackers? It sounds like a huge amount, but it's really not. It's much easier to keep your calories down when you know exactly how much you're eating.
• I never told myself I COULDN'T eat something. This would just set me up for trouble, because then I would crave it like nothing else. Always I've been able to have at least a little bit of something that I wanted. My only rule was that I had to measure it out, and that I had to enter it into the food diary. That way I was making an informed choice to take in all those calories from that piece of cheesecake! (Which meant I went overboard less often.)
• Yes, I exercised like a crazy person. Training for the triathlon made a huge difference. It forced me to prioritize the exercise in my day and helped me keep at it even when I didn't feel like it. It's a lot easier to keep exercising when you know if you don't, you'll probably keel over and die during the upcoming race.
• I had to break that reading and eating habit. I've kind of been backsliding a bit, so I'll need to get strict about it again. But it really made a difference to not eat mindlessly. (Besides, it's impossible to put it down in a food diary if all you know is that you snacked on chips the whole time you were reading your novel. How many chips was that again??)
• I learned a couple of mantras to repeat in my head to help me stick to it. One was along the lines of "So I made a mistake, so what? Keep at it anyway!" The other was really, really important: "Extra food is either wasted in my tummy or wasted in the trash. Either way it's wasted." That helped me keep from eating too much just because I didn't want to throw food away.
• Above all, I tried to stay patient. I wasn't expecting to lose a ton of weight quickly. The weight loss was relatively slow, but I still got here. And it was probably better that it took longer. If I had made some super-drastic changes to my life so I could lose the weight quickly, I would have given up much sooner. Chances are I would have gained all the weight back, like I always did before. This way I stayed a lot closer to a normal way of eating, so I can keep it up for the rest of my life.

I think the most helpful advice I have for anyone else trying to lose weight is to not give up. Try several different things until you find what works for you. And in the meantime, be happy anyway! Skinniness doesn't equal automatic happiness, so learn to be happy during the journey. (Well, in my case, anti-depressants help out there quite a bit too!)