Time to Take Stock

Periodically, it's imperative to stop, step back, and take stock of where I am in my weight loss efforts.  It has been 8 weeks that I've been logging my food and increasing my exercise.  In that time, I have lost 10 pounds.  that averages, what, 1 1/4 pounds per week.  Ok, that makes me feel a little better, and can you guess why?  I was being hard on myself, which, of course, I'm very good at.  I didn't think I was doing losing fast enough.  But in looking back, I am now aware that I am right on track with healthy weight loss.  It definitely wouldn't hurt to amp it up some, like tweaking my eating and starting to weight train at the gym and at home.  The point is, though, after 2 months of the effort, I thought I was doing a crappy job of it.  I didn't really realize that my efforts aren't crappy and are having an effect!  I'm happy about this!

I have to continually think forward, though, and what should be my question to myself at this point?  Where are the areas on this journey that can be improved.  I heard in a podcast Cut The Fat Weight Loss * that when a person is trying to lose weight, their diet is 95% of the solution.  And if we don't have a lot of time to devote to diet and exercise in our schedule, then what time we do have should be devoted to diet first.  This was a little aha moment for me, because up until now, I automatically thought that exercise should be the focus is there is little time, and I would burn off any extra calories.  But it makes sense that I should be putting extra time in the planning and the cooking of the right kinds of foods to eat, so there is less guess work and last minute decision making.  

So, the goal for this week is to do some tweaking of diet and exercise.  Specifically, is to plan out my menu so I can shop for the right things, and I'll add my kids brown bag lunches as well, so there is no guess work.  How nice that feeling would be!  In regards to exercise, I'm going to focus on resistance training, which I love!

Now, however, I am going to take a moment, though, to fully congratulate myself for losing 10 pounds!  I am definitely capable of doing it, and doing it to the end!  Who is with me?!?  

*I listen to health and weight loss podcasts for motivation and for reiteration of health information.  The more ingrained it is, the better!  Besides, I used to do a weight loss podcast back in 2007, so I enjoy that sort of media.