Ahhhh, the blog post I’ve admittedly been rather anxious to write…
…because…
…yours truly has lost a total of 8.8 pounds in the last week!!! 😀
Now I know that this rate isn’t going to keep up forever … or at least maybe it’s not … it would certainly be awesome if it did, but nonetheless I’m pretty damned excited about this as a reward for my first week’s effort! The early boost of encouragement has definitely helped to push me through some of the tough spots so far, anyways.
I’ll write up a separate post about what I’ve been eating later, but there have of course been some challenges with cravings and whatnot. My mouth still occasionally waters for my favorite sub from Firehouse that I was previously getting on a weekly basis – the Smokehouse Beef & Cheddar Brisket, which can run anywhere from 890 to a whopping 1500 calories depending on whether I got a medium or a large … in one meal, before I even bought chips to go with it!!!
I’ve also been yearning for pizza a bit – Domino’s, in particular, whose slices can range anywhere from 225 – 475 calories a piece … as much as I can almost taste their garlic buttery crust in my mouth, I keep trying to tell myself that it’s just not worth the calories, at least for right now.
Thankfully, my analytical side can easily see that either of those ranges are pretty ridiculous when you’re only averaging 1,100 calories a day total, so I’ve been trying to weigh that logic along with dropping about a pound a day as incentive to stay the course so far.
For the most part, though, the meals I’ve been eating are pretty good and realistically the volume of food is still considerable – it’s just that instead of being a pile of bread dough and some processed meat, it’s a pile of broccoli or celery alongside a fresh-cooked protein. I’ve definitely been cooking a lot more, which takes some getting used to but I’m slowly finding my groove. I’m looking forward to over time building up a nice repertoire of menus so that there’s more of a variety to choose from, but so far I’m just taking it one day at a time.
Distractions also seem to be helping a lot, whether it’s focusing on writing a new blog post when I’m hungry or making myself do the dishes or laundry, or even just getting lost in a TV show but without the bag of chips at my side to slowly graze out of until I reach the bottom. Sometimes I think that my appetite is starting to subside, but other times I really have to work at it.
Still, it’s only been a week, so I know that I can’t really expect too much all at once. 😉
I think week #2 is going to present some new challenges – tomorrow is my and Sara’s anniversary, so we’re going out to dinner, but we picked a restaurant that specifically caters to smaller portions. And then on Monday we’re hitting up Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party over at Disney World, but I actually think that as long as I plan well and take it easy before we get there, I should be ok as long as I can take it easy in the candy shop! A single counter service meal for dinner isn’t going to kill me, and there are probably some halfway decent options to pick from there if I really think about it…
All in all, I’m obviously ecstatic about my results so far – I was really expecting maybe 3-4 pounds with water weight, not upwards of 10 pounds! So it’s very encouraging to think that even if/when it dwindles down to 1-2 pounds per week, I could still be down 30+ pounds by Christmastime, which would be absolutely fantastic.
Mind you, even the notion of dropping into the 250s as soon as this weekend after being 270 a week ago is equally satisfying!
Onward and downward! 