Two Years Later

Well, it was two years ago yesterday that started blogging about my weight loss and fitness journey (again)! I'm very happy that I am more or less still at it, which is definitely a record for me – even if I haven't really lost any more weight since late last year. Still, I have managed to maintain the majority of the 100+ pounds I lost, and I'm very happy about that; even better is that I am still living an active lifestyle filled with running, tennis, and more. Things have definitely changed a lot for the better. Perhaps best of all is the feeling that I never, ever want to go back to where I was two years ago. I simply cannot.

I feel like this is a good time to reset and rethink what is important to me and what my goals are. Back then, here were a few things I talked about (in blue), and where I'm at now (in ).

• I am hoping to avoid having to take medications for things like high blood pressure and dia-beet-us. I want to stop feeling tired all the time.
I am no medications except birth control. I have normal readings on bloodwork and blood pressure. When I am tired, it's usually for a good reason.

• I will be checking in with my doctor on a more regular basis, and I will take his advice.
I have done this, and will continue to do so. My last appointment recently went very well!

• I will continue to take all my vitamins every day.
I don't do this as regularly as I once was, though I took vitamin C every day during the winter and spring to try to avoid colds – I don't know if that's what did it, but something worked!

• I will continue to drink lots and lots of water every day.
I usually drink at least 8 glasses each day. My diet soda habit did creep back in, though – thinking about nipping that again.

• I will continue going to the gym regularly and build strength and endurance.
Not the gym, but exercise has been a regular part of my life since I wrote this two years ago. I run and walk year-round and play tennis when the weather allows (May through October or so). Other stuff catch as catch can, like yoga and strength training.

• I will continue working on being happy and being a good person.
This might be my biggest challenge in some ways! I got a big pep talk from my partner about this today and I'm still trying to make this a thing in my life. 

• If I mess up, I will pick myself up and try again, and never stop trying.
This has been, hands down, the most important piece. I have never stopped trying. I always get back up. There is no other option!

Last evening when we were playing tennis, I kept noticing my shadow and thinking about how big it looked and how that made me unhappy – that here I was, months later, still wearing the same clothes that I did playing tennis last season, not having made any progress. Still seeing a shadow that, to me, looked like someone built like a truck. (This is one of those awful things I say to myself – "You're built like a truck!" Not very nice, I know. I should stop it.) Then, taking that and looking at it like, Oh hey, you're still able to wear the same clothes you wore last summer! I don't think I could always count on that in the past, you know? As in, I'd get too big for stuff?

I want to get too small for the clothes I have now. I've been comfortably wearing three pairs of dress pants and a few pairs of jeans since last year. When I dipped into the 260s, those were starting to get too big and I remember being so excited to grow out of them... until I wasn't anymore.

Right now I'm really just looking at 20 pounds I definitely want to lose, so that I am back down to the lowest weight I've been on this leg of the journey. In the big picture, 20 pounds is really nothing. Easy. Then another 10, and so on.

By the end of the summer, I want all those pants to be falling off me. I want to be able to wear my tennis outfit from Tory Burch and the couple of cute tennis skirts I have more comfortably. I don't care how many pounds that is... in the simplest terms:

I want to HAVE to buy new pants because all 

the ones I wear now are too big.