#68 Weigh 130 pounds: half-way there!

I actually hit this mark a few days ago!  And was ecstatic!  ...and too busy to write a blog post.  But here I am at 3am Monday morning, and rather than fight to fall asleep any longer, I'm being productive.  :)  Right now it feels great!  We'll see how it feels later today..haha

So!  For those of you just tuning in, I hit a high of 160 at the end of July, set a goal to weigh 130, and now I'm a little more than half-way there!  This post was supposed to be written at 145 (I was going to write every 5 pounds to stay motivated), and, well, I actually weigh 143.  Sa-weet!  130 is a semi-arbitrary number.  What I'm actually going to do is have my body fat tested at BYU's bod pod when I hit that mark and see if I want to stay there or lose a little more.  My less-arbitrary goal is 22% body fat, which is the upper boundary of the "lean" category for women.  I think body fat percentage is a much better indicator of health than BMI.

                

Now I've lost 17 pounds and over 11 inches!  Woo hoo!  It feels great.  I already exercised regularly before this, so that has stayed constant.  I started doing a program called Take Shape for Life (you use 5 MediFast meal replacements/day and 1 meat and veggie meal you cook yourself, and it comes with a health coach, textbook, and workbook to help you gain healthy habits), which has been working great for me.  This week I had a super proud moment when I put on the jeans I bought at the beginning of the semester and could pull them out several inches in front of me.  So I put on my belt...and even cinched to its tightest hole it wouldn't keep my pants up! haha  So I had the opportunity to use the leather puncher I inherited from my grandpa, and poked a new hole in it!  It worked fabulously.  I thought of Grandpa smiling in heaven at that (even though I never met him).

Look at that shiny new hole!

I've also started reading a book called "A Course in WeightLoss: 21 spiritual lessons for surrendering your weight forever" by Marianne Williamson.  That's been really good because it combats the distorted thoughts and emotional damage that instigate compulsive eating.  So it's a great companion to TSFL to get a whole person approach.  I've realized that I overeat (or rather, overate) for a variety of reasons: because I'm bored on long car rides, because I'm doing a menial task like grading and I want to motivate myself through it, because I'm lonely, because I want to celebrate, because every social event ever always has delicious food, and because it tastes so dang good!  I'm a bored eater, an emotional eater, and a social eater.  haha, that's a lot against me!  But this book is changing my perspective.  In regard to emotional eating, she basically says that's a form of idolatry, because we're ascribing attributes of God to something other than God.  "Only God has the power to comfort, nurture, and sustain me," she says, and we need to realize that "food cannot nurture (us) emotionally, and that God, and only God, can."  That was revolutionary to me.  Another powerful thing she said (and I've only read the first 18 pages) is that overeating is an act of self-hate.  It is violence toward self.  That caught my attention!  Here I am thinking I'm being gentle with myself or nice to myself, treating myself kindly by giving myself treats when I'm sad or celebrating... but it's not true!  That is not an act of self-love!  So, it's kind of a paradigm-shift, reading this book.

So, in summary, I feel great.  TSFL takes off the pounds.  Drinking tons of water is making my skin super soft.  Exercising gives me energy and relieves stress.  Marianne Williamson's book is changing my perspective.  God is giving me strength.  And my clothes don't fit! haha and I have no money to buy new clothes, but it's all good cuz I can make them work!  :)

And, per usual, here's a little "fitspiration" for us all:

Just today I was telling someone that my goal is to be "strong," not "sexy"...he said I could have both. :)