Well, I'm currently three weeks into the second round of First Place. As you can see from the weight charts, I pretty much gained back all the weight I had lost the last time (which wasn't very much). I'm doing a lot better this time. So far, according to the start weight I took about a week before the program started at home, I'm down 9 pounds. That means I've already gotten down to below what I was when I ended last time! I've decided to only officially weigh once a month so that I don't have to obsess about it as much. (That's had limited success, but oh well.) My clothes are already feeling looser, and I'm feeling great.

I think I've been having more success this time because I was on birth control pills last month. I don't know if it's just in my head, but they seem to make it easier to lose weight. Now that I've been off them for 4 days or so, I seem to be having more trouble keeping my calorie level where it had been before. I'm still determined to stick with it, though. My unofficial start weight was 193 (unclothed, on my scale, several days before the start of the program). I'm currently at 184. My goal is to be 175 on April 1. That's a pretty reasonable 9 pounds a month.

It's even more important to me now that we're trying to get pregnant again this month. I think that weight loss and exercise will help me to get my cycles back to normal. I had some limited success in January. Even though I didn't lose any weight in January, I was exercising almost every day and I managed to get my cycle down to 5 weeks, when the last two had been 6 weeks long. I went to see my OB-GYN to talk about my weird cycles a few weeks ago and he said that even if I didn't have PCOS, losing some extra weight could still help my cycles regulate themselves.

I've been very encouraged by my success this last month, so I think I'll be able to keep pretty close to my diet, birth control pills or not. Plus my husband has been dieting with me (and has also lost 9 pounds), which makes things easier. Be praying for me!

According to my official weigh in, I haven't lost a whole lot this month, but my period started a few days ago, so I'm retaining a lot of water. I think I'm actually 3-4 lbs less than it says. According to my unofficial weigh in, I'm 181. That means I've lost 12 lbs total, but only 3 this month. I wasn't doing very well for the first part of the month, and then the last part of the month I started upping my exercise level a whole lot and it really started to come off fast. I just need to remember that and keep it up!

Well, I haven't lost ANY weight yet this month. This is endlessly frustrating because, unlike previous attempts where I've been cheating a lot, I have been working my butt off. Last week I walked 27 miles, and the two weeks before that were pretty similar. I have understandably been eating a bit more because of that, but I haven't been totally pigging out. I SHOULD be losing weight, but I'm not. I keep trying to tell myself all the things I always hear, especially the one about muscle weighing more than fat and weight loss stops for a while when people drastically increase their exercise level, but I'm still very frustrated about it. I wanted to be down to the 160's by the time we left for our trip and that is probably not going to happen.

On the other hand I can definitely see improvements and my husband keeps telling me I feel thinner, so I'm trying to focus on that. My legs are definitely a lot more muscular, and if I suck in my gut, there isn't a crease all across my tummy. Those are certainly good things.

I have also been having a lot of fun walking lately. Last week when I was on a 8.5 mile walk I said to myself, "hey, this is almost a third of a marathon…I could do a marathon." So I looked one around, and found this one. It's walker friendly and it's at the end of September, which gives me 5 months to train. So assuming nothing happens, (like, for example, pregnancy) I'll be doing a marathon, which is actually quite exciting and has me feeling better about a lot of things.

Of course this week I started working on powerwalking so that I could get my miles per hour rate increased, and I started injuring myself. First I got a mild sprain on my weak ankle (fell out of a tree when I was 17. It was a terrible sprain and took forever to heal). Then I went on a long walk and got some blisters on the back of my heels. My socks were all bloody afterwards. Ick. The crux of it is that I haven't gotten in very many miles this week, but at least I am having fun.

I think I've finally broken through my plateau! I was down to 179.5 yesterday, which is several pounds below my previous low weight. Yey! I just hope that it keeps up now. I did it by eating much less than usual for a few days, and it certainly seemed to do the trick. If I can get down another 6 pounds, I will be at my previous low, so I'll be trying to accomplish that by the time we go on vacation.

I actually think I'll do good with my weight during our vacation, because we're planning on doing a lot of walking around, but I'm not going to be too obsessive about it.