Back to Basics, or How to Lose 10 Pounds in a Week

Hey y'all y'all! I know it's been a little while since I last posted, but hopefully you weren't thinking the worst for me. To the contrary, it's been a couple weeks of highs and lows, but the highs have totally won...

Last I wrote was a time when I was struggling with eating. In fact, a week ago today, I weighed in at 285. Super Red Zone. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. NO.

In case you don't know, I have created this so-called Red Zone for myself as a warning to unequivocally get back to business before I find myself back to 372 on the way to 400. Seriously. I say this because it has happened so many times before. I know it really could happen again if I don't remain vigilant about it – even if I don't lose more weight, I cannot gain it back. So when my weight goes beyond five pounds over the 100 pounds lost mark (272, by the way) – 277 – that means that I'd better freaking watch it, or else. Anything under 280, maybe. But once I saw the scale going up past that, I got totally freaked out and it didn't really take much for me to snap myself back into the right mindset again. Almost immediately I did a few things: I (mostly) stopped drinking diet soda and upped the water intake again; I started logging my food intake at MyFitnessPal again; I set my caloric intake goal to 2000; I continued planning and getting adequate exercise in all week; I tried to eat more fruits and veggies and less junk.

Mind you, it was nothing really drastic at all. Just back to basics. No starving, no deprivation. Like, at all. One day I went out to lunch with some co-workers for Indian buffet. No problem. Another evening I attended a Pub Run, a group activity where we runners meet at a local pub or brewery, run some distance, and then have beer and socialize. I ran just over three miles, had a few beers and a delicious soft pretzel. I fit stuff in and made concessions where I needed to in order to enjoy myself.

My pal Lizz and I celebrating our run with some delicious Flying Bison beers!

All of this not-much-effort yielded wonderful, satisfying results: This morning, a week later, the scale showed me at 275 again. I lost ten pounds this past week!

Before you get all up in arms about it, I seriously didn't do any starving. I didn't over exercise, either. I just adjusted my routine enough that it made a big difference in what my body was doing.

Also, my body has a history of this – gain weight very quickly, (sometimes) lose it just as quickly. When I am very determined and focused, this kind of thing can happen for whatever reason. I don't question it too much; I just enjoy it.

I am far from done. As you may know, I haven't lost any new weight since just before Thanksgiving. The morning of that holiday, I weighed in at 264, my lowest weight in many years. Since then, I've been fighting to at least stay in the low-mid 270s, and of course sometimes even that was a challenge. After so many months, though, I feel like I am really ready to stop dropping some meaningful poundage again, so it is my intention to keep this wave alive until... whenever. My immediate goal is to get firmly back to 272 to once again claim "I lost 100 pounds!"; then, I am determined to get to my Thanksgiving weight again and beyond.

It is just time to do it.

And we have summer closing in on us; I have more running plans, and tennis season will be here soon which means even more intense activity on a very regular basis for me and my partner. I know he will want to play at least every other day once the nets are up and the weather cooperates, and I am totally into it. Not to mention – woo, the weight should fall off me! (Him, too!)

Anyway, this recent loss has really gave me some confidence again, and I feel excited about the process. I think sometimes when you're at something like this for long enough, it's easy to feel kind of blah about it. I'm happy that I was able to more or less maintain my loss for more than several months, but... yeah. It's time to enter I guess what you could call Phase 2: The Next Hundred Pounds.

Phase 3, somewhere down the line, will be me deciding how much more weight I want to lose, if any. I talk about 150 pounds being goal weight, but it's a rather arbitrary number based on what I weighed as a much younger person. Phase 3 very well may end up being maintenance.

Either way, I am excited about the next few months and the next few years to see how my body transforms!