18 Day Challenge (Day 13)

With just 5 days to go, I am only 1.4 lbs away from hitting my goal of 60 lbs lost before my beach vacation! Technically, I am leaving for vacation on Thursday evening, but I don't consider the official start of vacation until Saturday.

This week, I felt like I really overcame some of my normal triggers (read psychoses) that often lead me down a very slippery slope into bingeing. As you may or may not know, I weigh in on Fridays and Mondays (Monday is the official weekly weigh in day). When I weighed in this Friday, I was only down .4 lbs. This really pissed me off because I had been unusually hungry all week, but stayed the course. So, the hunger, plus the .4 lbs, plus the fact that it was a holiday weekend, could have easily tsunamied into 3+ days of stuffing my face with anything and everything I wanted because what difference would it make anyway...in the past.

I was really glad to have made this little challenge for myself because it helped me stay focused. I just kept thinking, "If you do this, you will not hit your goal. And, more importantly, you'll go into vacation feeling like $hit about yourself and will likely use that as an excuse to eat with reckless abandon the entire vacation, potentially undoing weeks OR MORE of hard work." And that was that. I didn't talk myself into (or out of, sometimes, I don't really know which way it is working) using the holiday or the hunger or the scale as an excuse to binge. I added a little extra protein and veggies over the weekend, which helped with the hunger, and I stuck to the plan and ended up feeling really good about myself for doing so...even before I weighed myself this morning.

Of course the fact that the scale showed a 3.2 loss for the week certainly helped me stay positive!

Last week completed a full 3-months of Medifast for me. In those 12 weeks, I have lost exactly 50 lbs, an average of 4.16 lbs per week. Now, I know the naysayers (and I know they are out there) are thinking that I'm losing weight too quickly and not learning how to eat normally and blah blah blah. Well, to them I say, I AM learning. I am learning that I don't NEED food to comfort, celebrate, soothe, relax, etc. I am (re)learning how great it feels to be healthier and feel better about myself.

Do I know that the hardest part of this whole journey is yet to come, AFTER I hit my goal weight, and start the process of transitioning off Medifast and learning to maintain? YES, I do. And, I am ready for the challenge when the time comes.

Weight Loss
Pre-Medifast: 8.6 lbs
Medifast Month 1: 25 lbs (13.6, 3.2, 4, 4.2)
Medifast Month 2: 6.8 lbs (2.4, 3.2, 6, +4.8)
Medifast Month 3: 18.2 lbs (9.4, 1.8, 3.8, 3.2)
Medifast Total (12 weeks): 50 lbs
Total in 2011: 58.6 lbs