Tiny Glow

My name is Hilary. Some of you have read my previous (soon-t0-be-retired) blog, and some of you haven’t. If you’re just meeting me, it’s only fair to warn you that I am a veteran “weight-loss” blogger who has often let the blogging overtake the supposed weight loss behind the blog. I do love to write, and I am a perfectionist, so you can see how one thing might lead to another and before I know what’s happening I find myself obsessing about my posts and my blog rather than working on my weight.

I won’t say “it’s different this time” because I have no idea what the future holds. But it’s started out differently. That I can state with certainty.

I haven’t promised to eat all my fruits and veggies. Or exercise every day. Or join a boot camp. Or be the best weight-loss blogger ever.

I still eat a lot of what you might call junk. After all, some of my meals come frozen in little containers; in other words, a lot of it isn’t “real food.” But coming from a former daily intake of well over 2,500 calories that partially consisted of candy bars, I consider my current diet real progress. I am learning to eat a bit less food; specifically, I am sticking to a calorie budget of 1700 per day. One day, I may add additional guidelines to my food plan, and whittle down the processed foods. But I’ve found from past trial and error that a radical departure from my familiar foods proscribed at the same time as a big drop in calories equals tears and quitting on my part.

I have been doing my not-too-fancy, not-so-perfect plan for almost a month and a half now. I haven’t quit. I have had some mentally tough days, but I have been able to cope. I have lost 12.5 lbs since I began on September 15. Although I don’t have a strict workout policy, I have worked up to exercising for 30 minutes at a time, about 5 days per week. I have dealt with stress injuries. I have taken unplanned rest days. But overall, I am doing so much more than I was six weeks ago.

I’m not out of the woods (are we ever?) but I’m proud of the solid start I have made. The holidays are coming up, and will be an interesting challenge, but with online support here and on SparkPeople (the free site where I track my calories), I have a good deal of cautious hope that I will enter 2010 with my weight-loss efforts relatively unscathed.

We’ll see! At any rate, I am letting go of my self-hosted blog with its monthly fees and getting back to basics here on Wordpress.com. I don’t need to spend money on an ultra-spiffy blog and invest in pipe dreams of internet popularity; I do need to focus on sticking to my plan and staying reasonably accountable. Please visit often and feel free to add me on Twitter and SparkPeople if you’d like! My About page goes into more detail about yours truly, and my Progress/Rewards page is regularly updated with my weekly weigh-in results. (Tomorrow is weigh day, FYI!)