I am also down 44 lbs total now. The big 5-0 is on the horizon. WOW. Just, wow. I’m so amazed and befuddled and proud of myself all at the same time. I just keep on going, and getting closer to my goal. I’m not perfect, but I’m doing well enough to keep improving, month after month. A new progress picture will be forthcoming very soon!

This week I did manage to incorporate three salads (I was striving for four, but alas!) into my lunch rotation. Additionally, M and I got inspired in the kitchen over the weekend and we ate a hearty side of kale with our Saturday evening meal. I’m satisfied with my nutritional progress this week. I still have lots of work to do in this area, but I’m finally starting to make small but positive changes. And I’m still completely soda-free.

Soon I’ll be hitting the six-month mark of my weight-loss journey—although in a way it’s been years in the making. Six months ago I don’t think I had any real concept of the many positive changes I would be enacting and experiencing as a result of my decision to do something about my weight. What will the next six months bring?

How about you? Have you made any big changes in the past six months? What would you like to accomplish in the next six months?

Weighing in at 160.5 lbs (a loss of 1.5 lbs) this morning, I was more than happy with my progress. I continue to steadily chip away at my extra weight, and next week I am hoping to break into the 150s! The losses each week aren’t necessarily stunningly mind-blowing, but they keep adding up. Sticking with my program over the past five and a half months is the number one thing I have done right. I couldn’t have done that without your help, and without the support of my boyfriend, M—thanks, you guys!

More Tiny Dietary Changes

This week I made a few more tiny changes to my diet. M researched marinades for me (and I tweeted about them) and we came up with a short list of two to try. So far we’ve made a lemony marinade, and it was spot on! I squeezed actual lemons to obtain the lemon juice for the recipe, and it made the flavor incredibly bright and zesty. The garlic in the recipe works to temper the sourness of the lemons, and the result is really tasty.

The reason we were marinating chicken in the first place? I have introduced four salads-as-meals per week into my food plan, and wanted to include chicken as the protein centerpiece!

My Salad Phobia, Overcome

You’d have to really know my past eating habits well to know what a major tiny change (is that an oxymoron?) this is for me. I’ve never been crazy about veggies, and I’ve long associated salads with suffering. For these reasons, I hadn’t seriously considered incorporating them into my food plan.

Then I read about Salad Club—one woman’s innovative effort to make it fun to eat healthy, low-cost lunches at work—and began to rethink my attitude. Couple that with M’s suggestion to marinate some chicken, and voila! I decided that I would eat big salads for four of my meals this week. The salads are replacing frozen meals, so this is a healthy step forward that I’m really proud of.

I bought the highest-quality ingredients that I could afford for my salads, and they didn’t disappoint. I really do believe I could taste the difference! Here’s what went into my most recent salad, and where it came from:

• fresh spinach (farmer’s market)
• romaine lettuce (organic, from Wheatsville, a local co-op)
• half of Roma tomato (organic, from Wheatsville)
• 1/3 cucumber (organic, from Wheatsville)
• .5 ounces walnuts (from Wheatsville)
• 2.5 ounces chicken breast (marinated in lemony marinade) (Buddy’s Chicken, from Wheatsville)

Does anyone else eat salads regularly? What are your favorite salad ingredients?

P.S. I’ve created a Facebook page for Tiny Glow! If you use Facebook, I’d love it if you added Tiny Glow over there :).

This past week was so much better than the previous week. I didn’t miss a single workout, and I stayed on-point with my calorie and nutrition goals. The consistency and effort definitely paid off. I’m so thrilled to be at the low end of the 160s for the first time in years . . . so close to opening my Large box of “skinny clothes”!

Today we’ve been experiencing a freak snow storm down here in Austin, Texas. Here’s a souvenir picture of my happy snow face:

This is a good moment to stop and appreciate my progress, because that coat used to be way too tight! Now it’s got plenty of room for me and I love it.

I really don’t know what hit me last week . . . sure, there were some technical difficulties afoot, but life didn’t throw me anything so horrendous that I absolutely had to go off-plan. Yet I threw my hands up, let my anxiety win, and took my eyes of the prize temporarily. Going soda-free (in particular, giving up my beloved Diet Dr. Pepper) really did a number on my body and my mind while all this was going on. The headache has finally passed but I do still find myself automatically craving my former mid-morning and -afternoon sodas at work. Those old reflexive habits take a while to pass, don’t they?

Back to the task at hand, though. The half-pound I lost this week puts me exactly halfway to my goal weight of 125 lbs. Incredibly, every pound I lose from here on out will be on the downhill side of this journey. I can’t quite wrap my mind around that yet.

This week I plan to remain soda-free, and am making a strong effort to eat Paleo-style at breakfast. The last two mornings I have had omelets with spinach and avocado in them, with a few strawberries on the side. I would like to think of some other easy, tasty options that fit the bill as well.

In the last two weeks I’ve lost more weight than I did in all of January. I’m down 38.5 lbs total as of today, which means I’m only half a pound away from being halfway to my goal weight, and less than 2 lbs away from my next mini-milestone. I’m especially looking forward to hitting that reward, because I’ll get to book a massage.

One important aspect of my personal fat-loss challenge is improving my nutrition. My goal for this week is to be entirely soda free! I rarely drink regular soda, but I have been a diet soda junkie ever since my first diet at age 14. In recent years, Diet Dr Pepper has been my drink of choice, and an important part of my work days. But not today! I am swigging water, and I had a cup of green tea, and then there will be more water-swigging and maybe even fancy-water-guzzling (Perrier!). My head feels a bit off, but I’m hanging in there.

My fitness goals for the week include: attending boot camp today, Wednesday, and Thursday; putting in 30 minutes on the elliptical on Tuesday and Friday; and coming up with a creative workout to do on my own in the gym on Saturday. Sunday, I rest!

Increasing the intensity of my workouts several times per week thanks to boot camp seems to have knocked my body out of complacency and back into weight loss mode. I’m looking forward to charting my progress as I continue with the program!

Let me pause for a moment to do a little happy dance . . . (twitches around the room to some Dead or Alive).

Okay! So, boot camp last night? I swear that hour lasted three times longer than 60 minutes! As I was plodding up and down several flights of parking-garage stairs for the third time, my brain kept informing me, “I’m pretty sure it’s the middle of the night by now and you should be at home all snuggly with M and the Bean!” Still, I kept on keeping on and completed the workout.

The coach was kind enough to scale a few elements down to my fitness level (I did fewer push-ups, for example), but otherwise I just kept up the best I could. And for the first time in my life, someone actually called me “pretty athletic.”

Say what?!

Um, I was the pasty-looking kid who got a stomach ache thinking about gym class back in my youth. My hand-eye coordination and balance (or lack thereof) are somewhat dreadful. But I worked hard at boot camp last night, and although it challenged the hell out of me and definitely highlighted some of my weaknesses (arms and abs), it also reminded me that I am tougher than I think.

If you are reasonably happy and fulfilled, if you are stimulated by and content with most aspects of your life and your health is good, you may be one of those people. You honestly just need to lose a few pounds—maybe cut back on the after-work drinks or the after-dinner treats. You don’t need some kind of major life overhaul.

As for me, I have been dodging a bullet that finally seems to have lodged in my heart today.

I experienced blank-eyed confusion, quickly followed by disappointment when I stepped on the scale this morning to find that I gained a pound over the past week. I stepped on one more time just to make sure.

Then I took a look at my weight-loss progress page, focusing in on the past month. In January, I’ve lost 3 lbs, as compared with 7 or 8 lbs in the previous months. I know I can do better.

I have not been lying here on Tiny Glow; what good could that do any of us? This month I stuck like glue to my 1700 calories per day budget, and I have broadened my workouts to include strength training and even a new walk-jog plan. I continue to exercise at least 5 or 6 days every week, generally for 30-40 minutes at a time. Currently, I can barely lift a water bottle with my right arm because it’s still aching from my modified push-ups on Saturday.

I guess I could use this as an excuse to say that nothing I do will ever be enough and just give up; but instead I’m going to try a little reasonable but tough love on myself. This morning I asked myself some uncomfortable questions:

• Have I really been trying to eat enough protein? (No.)
• How is my nutrition in general? Am I eating a variety of vegetables? (Not great. No.)
• Am I still relying on heavily processed foods for most of my meals and snacks? (Yes.)
• Is it time to reduce my caloric intake, or should I solely focus on my nutrition?
• Is it time to increase the time I spend exercising?
• Should I be increasing my exercise intensity?

I don’t have firm answers for the last three questions on that list, but they need to be addressed swiftly.

One more important question begs an honest answer:

• Have I really changed my life in the past few months?

I fall into the camp of people who not only need to lose weight; they also require something of a total life overhaul. And I still feel an unnatural attachment to sugary foods.

I am scared. I’m just as scared as I was when I first started following my original plan back in September. Back then, setting a limit on how much I could eat was terrifying to me on some level. It took a lot of mental work and planning, and it required dealing with a host of awkward, unwelcome emotions. I feel like the past few months laid out the groundwork for a life change, but weren’t the change itself.

I do realize that I lost over 30 lbs during that time, but a number of things remained unchanged: my reliance on processed and sugary foods; my avoidance of joining any groups or soliciting much outside help on my fitness efforts; my continued avoidance of studying for the GRE (while this may seem unrelated, it ties in with my desire to make certain life changes); my focus on body weight changes (the scale) rather than body fat changes, possibly to the detriment of my lean body mass.

I feel really shaky about things right now, but I am on the cusp of a new phase in my progress.  I signed up to try out a free Crossfit class on Saturday morning. I have been trying to decide upon a solid, whole-foods-based nutritional plan to adopt.  Once more unto the breach, dear friends!

• I lost 2 lbs over the past week.
• I hit my next milestone of 35 lbs lost.
• I am now no longer obese!!

I am so happy to say goodbye to Obese and hello to Overweight (but not for long!). In September when I started this weight-loss plan in all its haphazard glory, I truly was afraid to hope very much for anything. But obviously a part of me did still hold on to hope and did still have faith in myself, because day after day, I’ve kept going.

Once I lose another four pounds, I will be halfway to my goal weight. That’s amazing! I’m so happy and proud of myself for sticking with this.

On a more practical note: Thank goodness I hit my next milestone and reward, which is a new work outfit. My current work pants are all droopy on me and sometimes it’s way easier to own my weight loss when I’m wearing clothes that actually fit. I’m thinking I’ll try Old Navy or New York & Co so that I can afford new pants and a new top. I probably won’t make it to the mall until this weekend, but I’ll definitely post a pic of me in my new outfit after my shopping trip.

This week I have had so many ideas bouncing around my head about strength training, but as you can see in my previous post, for now I have pursued on a fairly simple, low-time-commitment plan. The important thing, I figure, is that I am sticking to it. I have not missed a single day of those workouts since I began on January 3. Barring illness, I plan to keep up the positive streak through the end of the month, at which point I’ll decide on some strength goals for February.

I am thinking about setting some protein goals for myself as well, now that I have become well-practiced in sticking to my calorie budget. SparkPeople sets a fairly broad suggested daily protein intake range for me, and I consistently eat on the very low end of that. I am considering setting a goal of eating 20g higher than the minimum suggested amount, 5 times per week.  What do you think? Do you have trouble getting in your protein? If not, do you have any calorie-friendly suggestions for sneaking in extra protein throughout my day? I have always gravitated toward sweets and carbs, so it’s not particularly surprising that this is a tricky aspect of my current diet.

While of course I would prefer seeing a smaller number on the scale when I step on it, I don’t feel really upset about this weigh-in. This may be because I know that I absolutely stuck to my calorie budget over the past five days; not only that, I even got in some extra exercise and am now doing a fitness challenge. I plan to handle this by staying consistent with my plan as usual and seeing what feedback the scale gives me next Tuesday. At that point, if my weight hasn’t changed, I may brainstorm a few ways to get things moving again.

Today’s weigh-in got me thinking about rewards. I reward myself with some kind of non-edible goody for each 5 lbs I lose. This has been a wonderful tool to keep me excited and motivated as I work to lose the 80 lbs I would like to shed. Currently, however, I’m wondering if this strategy will be as effective when I get closer to my goal weight in the 120s. It would not be surprising if the weight dropped off much more slowly at that point. Perhaps I should be rewarding my actions rather than my results when I start to approach goal-weight territory. What do you think? Should we reward ourselves for weight-loss milestones (such as losing 5 or 10 lbs) or for action milestones (for example, 14 consecutive days of staying on-plan)? I am very interested in hearing what other people think about this.

At any rate, I am still happy about my weight-loss progress overall and know that if my weight does get stuck here at 172 lbs, there are plenty of things I can try to unstick it.