This is not the kind of break I meant.

Hello, friend!

Welcome or welcome back to my weight loss adventure. If it’s your first time here, ummm – why? WHY DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT ME?! Har har. To catch y’all up (I’m Southern now), on August 1 of last year, I decided to lose some GD weight. And I did! I lost 60 pounds. If you ask me how, I’d say it was a potpourri of several strategies, i.e. I haven’t figured it all out and probably never will. Yay!

When we left off on July 1, I decided to take a break from weight loss. This was in part due to a then-unknown subconscious urge to consume my weight in plain Rip-L-Chips & Mr. Freezes (white or blue, if you please). Actually, it was mostly due to a level of frustration that was threatening my mental health and general joie de vivre. I was at the gym 3-4 times a week for 90 minutes each time doing weights for an hour and treadmill for 30. My glorious t-shirt sweat ring was deep and dramatic and a testament to how hard I was working. I was eating 1500-1800 calories a day – no sugar, white flour, processed foods or crap. And my weight wouldn’t budge. So, before I lost my sh*t and things got nasty and/or illegal, I gave myself some time off.

NOM NOM NOM

Last week, convincing myself I had gained back 59 of the 60 pounds, I yanked out the scale. Knowing I had overachieved at the Summer of Chips (and ice cream, pie, chocolate & fries to name a few), I steeled myself for the crappy news. And then… 5 pounds. That’s it! 5 ridiculous pounds after an entire summer of consuming like a whale eats krill. Imagine my delight! I celebrated with a bowl of Breyer’s maple walnut ice cream. I SO SMRT!

You know what was great about losing 60, now 55, pounds? You know, bedsides everything? I started wearing dresses. I have 4 now and I feel lovely and feminine in them.  This summer, I wore tank tops with spaghetti straps instead of big, loose t-shirts. Instead of swimming in the lake in my shorts and t-shirt, I wore an actual bathing suit. My shoulders got tanned for the first time in years. I worried less about weight capacity of campfire chairs. I got in the hammock for the first time since we bought it a thousand years ago in Mexico. Oh, the hammock was hanging up by the way. I didn’t just lay it on the floor and roll myself into a chimichanga.

So, it’s time to keep at it. I’m feeling it’s an ‘easing in’ this time. Our older son started his first full-time job last Tuesday and the younger one started high school. I was experiencing a large dose of sympathy anxiety for them both and it’ll take a couple of weeks for things to become routine. I do love that autumn is around the corner as it’s my favourite time of year and that magnificent smell outside seems to flip my brain from lounge mode to semi-upright mode. Okay, maybe even stumble-from-couch-to-bed mode.

Hey, thanks for being here. I like your face.

Love,

Lori

Pounds lost to date: 55