Well, I got back from vacation having gained about 8 pounds. This wasn't much of a surprise, seeing as how I pretty much decided to enjoy myself eating wise for the month. After all, you only get one honeymoon. Luckily, after that, I was pretty much sick and tired of feeling overly full all of the time, and I was ready to jump back on the bandwagon.

Of course with everything that was going on, such as my husband going in the hospital with kidney problems, I didn't really jump into dieting right away, but gave myself a couple of weeks to get back into the swing of things. I was sort of semi dieting in that I wasn't tracking what I ate, but I was eating more like I do when I diet.

I'm really back into the swing of things now, though. I mentioned in the First Place - second round journal that I was going to walk a marathon and now that I told everyone about it, I'm definitely not going to wimp out. *grin* So from now until the end of September, I'm going to be training for that. That's about 11 weeks from now. I'm getting started just a little bit late in the training schedule, but I've already seen a lot of improvement in the last few weeks. I went from an almost 22 minute mile on my long walk last week, to a less than 19 minute mile on my walk this week. I also managed to get in a 14-minute mile race walking this week. That might not sound terribly fast, but at this point my only goal for my first marathon is to get through it in a good 6-8 hours, and I definitely think that's doable. Heck, I could probably do it right now in less than 10 hours; I'd just be unable to walk for days.

We're also taking a good three months off from trying for pregnancy while my husband gets his low testosterone looked into. Even though I'm not happy about this, it will be nice to be able to focus solely on the training and dieting in the next few months. It seems that the ups and downs of my hormones and moods and the split focus has really hurt my health efforts in the past year.

So I've decided that, darn-it, I'm really going to lose the weight this time. I'm not going to a marathon weighing 190 lbs. And somehow I've managed to get back the resolve I had two years ago when I started this and lost the first 20 lbs. I've been completely on program for 10 days now, and I don't see any end in sight. Even today when I've been depressed and totally PMSy and pigged out on chocolate, I still stuck to my calorie limit. It feels great to have that resolve back, and since I know that pregnancy distraction thing isn't going to be back for a while, I know I'll be keeping it. (The first birth control pill comes tonight.) I'm not going to add another yo to the yo-yoing I've been doing for the past year!

I've also done two other things to help me along. First of all, I've adopted a plan to vary my calories each day so that I can keep my metabolism fooled. It still averages out to 1300-1400 calories, but I have some bigger days and some smaller days. I've also planned it so that my biggest day coincides with my long walk, since I definitely need to extra calories that day. This also gives me a day when I can make pizza or go out to eat so that I don't feel so deprived. I've been very happy with this way of eating so far. I've also started taking calcium supplements. I've been reading all of this new research that says that not getting enough calcium can make it really hard to metabolize fat and lose weight. Thinking back over the years that I've dieting, I've realized that the times when I was, say, eating a lot of yogurt and sugar-free pudding I was doing much better, whereas when I was only having one serving of dairy a day, usually milk with breakfast, I was always getting on these maddening plateaus no matter how much I exercised and how little I ate. This made me very frustrated and ultimately led me to fall off program. So now I'm trying to get more dairy and taking a supplement to make sure I get up there.

So far I've lost 5 pounds, down to 185 from 190. Two of those were after I got back and was semi-dieting and were probably water weight, the other three were in the past week and are making me feel much more optimistic about the future of this effort. Nothing makes it easier for me to stick to my program than success.

I'm splitting the time up into several smaller goals. The first is from July 5th to July 30th and my goal is to lose 9 pounds. I'm already 5 pounds down, so I think I'll make that one with room to spare. I'm giving myself 1 point for each day I stick to my calorie level, 1 point for each day I exercise up to 19 days, and 2 points for each pound I lose up to 9 pounds. This gives a total of 63 points, and I'm currently trying to think up some rewards for meeting certain point levels. So far I have 15 out of 15 points!

Well, I had my first slip up yesterday, which is pretty good considering the fact that it was day 17 of my first challenge, and I used to slip up at least once a week. We were doing cleaning and painting all day yesterday because my niece was coming to visit. Yesterday was supposed to be my low calorie day of the week. I was doing pretty well until the evening when we picked her up and went out to eat. We couldn't find the restaurant that we had wanted to go to, where I had already picked out something to eat that would have fit into the day. We ended up going somewhere else where there wasn't anything appetizing and healthy on the menu, and I was too starving after working all day to try to eat only a little of something. Then after that we got ice cream, and that didn't help either.

I'm counting the cleaning as exercise only because I definitely did not have the energy to do anything else after we were done. I was exhausted on the way back, and could barely keep my eyes open even when I was talking to someone. It was a lot of work, though, so I don't feel at all guilty about not doing anything more as exercising or eating too much. I'm just making today my low calorie day and going on with life.

I'm happy because I reached 182 Friday, which means I've lost another 3 lbs this last week and I'm back down to where I was before I left for my trip. My weight is up a few pounds right now, but I'm not worried since it took a few days last week for it to go back down after my high calorie and heavy exercise day on the weekend. I know I definitely did not eat enough yesterday or Saturday to actually gain weight.

All in all I'm feeling very happy about my progress, and I'm beginning to look forward to actually getting to a new low. What's more, I'm actually believing that it's going to happen.

My weigh-in was rather disappointing. I didn't really seem to lose anything in the last week and a half of the challenge, even though I was working pretty hard. I think I'm just up against that same plateau that I've been dealing with for so long. I'm going to have to work very hard to get past it.

I haven't been paying much attention to it all for the past week. We've been going going going non-stop with my niece and brother being here. We've been canoeing, to the fair, to the water park, and to a concert. All this means that I haven't been eating to lose, but I don't think I've been doing too badly. I've also been getting more nontraditional exercise than actual planned exercise. This isn't a bad thing, since I've been working some muscle groups that don't always get worked well. After we went canoeing, my arms and shoulders were sore for days! Unfortunately I missed my long walk this week, as my feet were all sunburned. I'm going to be doing it this weekend though! I kind of missed it last week. It's a nice 3-4 hours to myself to do some thinking, and I usually feel pretty good afterwards, even if am sore.

I haven't decided when my next weigh-in is going to be, but I am going to be back on plan. I'm thinking about reducing my calories and/or upping my exercise so that I can get past this plateau, but I haven't decided on that, yet, either.

I know I didn't lose a lot of weight this month, but I'm still really happy about it anyway. 182 had seemed to be my plateau point for a long time. I bounce around a lot, but I don't get below that point. Now that I'm a few pounds under that, I think I should be able to keep going strong so long as I don't let myself slack off. I don't think I'll reach my ultimate marathon weight loss goal, but I think I'll be happy with the results anyway.

These last 3 pounds have really made a big difference in how I feel. With my weekly mileage up over 30 miles now, I have gained a lot of muscle in my legs. I love the way they feel. I've always had big legs, they were never going to be skinny little things that looked good in a miniskirt, but now at least I feel that I am utilizing them closer to their full potential. I can also see a difference in how I look. Several people have commented to me that I must have lost some weight lately.

Basically, I feel great and I'm loving the marathon training. My long walk last weekend was 17.8 miles and I always feel so wonderful being able to say that I've accomplished something like that. That's why I feel like I'm finally having success now because I've combined an exercise goal with my weight loss goal. It's hard sometimes to feel that wonderful about getting down into the 170's, as most people weigh much less than that, not to mention the fact that I have weighed much less than that. But most people haven't walked 18 miles in a day, and I've never walked 18 miles in a day. It's something I always feel good about, no matter what mood I'm in.