Well.... as of yesterday, I finally achieved my final weight loss goal... When I started in February of 2014, I had two goals in mind. A smaller goal, which was to get myself to under 250, which I achieved back on June 4th of this year, and an ultimate goal, to lose 100 pounds total. As of yesterday, I am now at 223.6. A total weight loss of 104 pounds.
Having accomplished this, I am happy with where my weight is now. I will still be doing my exercise and trying to watch what I eat, but I will no longer be as strict as I have been about it. From this point forward, I want to just maintain where I am. I'm not gonna go back to any of my old habits, and, in fact, I've picked up some NEW habits in all this.
- Back when I first started, I was having anywhere from 3-5 cans of Pepsi A DAY. After about a year (around Feb/March of 2015) I started going down to allowing myself a maximum of 3 a day no matter what. Then, early this year, I took that down even further, going to only allowing myself 1 can a day (except on my cheat days where I would allow myself 2, or on days where I was super stressed. The caffeine helped.) In the last month or so though, I've now gone to the point where I no longer keep soda in the house AT ALL. The ONLY times I allow myself soda of any kind are during my cheat days, and, even then, I do not allow myself to bring it into the apartment. I only allow myself the soda while I'm at a restaurant. And even then, I allow myself a MAXIMUM of 2 glasses total, whereas before that, I could have up to 4 or 5 when I was out. So I've gone from 3-5 sodas a day to 1-2 GLASSES of soda a WEEK.
- Another habit I've learned along the way is how to actually understand when my body is full, and not overeat. One of the biggest things that proved to me I had learned it was when I was out at Olive Garden last year, at the Never Ending Pasta Bowl. I used to be able to go through 4 or 5 bowls of it with no problem. Now though, I have a maximum of 2 before my brain and body are like "nope, I'm full". That, for me, is a big thing.
- Next, is something that I didn't think was possible. Something that's happened just over the last three weeks. Typically when I went out somewhere, and I have something that has an excess of salt on it, such as Burger King's French Fries, Olive Garden's Breadsticks (yeah, it's seasoning salt but it' still results in the same thing), I would have NO PROBLEM eating them. As of late though, I've discovered that my body dislikes the excess salt now. Every time I've gone out to a place where excess salt is put on something, I have literally one or two bites, and my brain is like "I can't eat this", and I end up having to ask it to be remade without the salt on it. Even LIGHT salt seems to be too much for me now. So yeah, my body apparently dislikes the excess salt now.
- Now, on a non-food related note. For the longest time, I would go for walks, but they were usually just in the complex, on the treadmill in the exercise room there. I would do it for the exercise, because I could stop at any time and just walk back to my apartment. Most times I would do one, maybe two miles at most. But as of recent months, I've found myself not only walking longer, but actually going OUT to do it. It's come to the point where, as long as eather doesn't stop me, six days a week I walk from my apartment to my local Kroger and back. A 4.4 mile round trip. And I do that every day, regardless of my mood. I did it so much, that a actually wore a hole in the bottom of a pear of slip on shoes I wore all the time. Realizing that getting those same shoes again would only cause the same thing to happen, because they don't have good soles, I invested in some actual walking shoes, whicvh I wwear when I go out now.
I'm really quite proud of my accomplishments, and I'm glad I finally reached my goal.
