Day 58

As of yesterday morning I am officially down 38 pounds and my waist is 5 inches smaller. Yay me! Now only I can see these changes but I think when I get to the first major goal of 50 pounds people will notice, or that's what I'm telling myself.
I haven't told many friends what I'm doing and I really am keeping this blog more for my own self motivation than any real expectation that anyone gives a rats ass about me losing weight. We all have at least one negative friend and since I know she will never read this (if it's not about her it doesn't exist) I am going to vent my frustrations out about her here.
She is big like me, and has been for most of her adult life and last week when I told her what I was doing about it, she came up with all the classic counter arguments that I did when I didn't really want to lose weight.
Nutrisystem costs money for the food, some of the food may not be to your liking, you will be hungry. All of this is to a certain point true. I do spend a couple hundred dollars a month on the food, but then so does anyone who eats every day of the month. If you don't love a food item you can return it (and here we went into a 5 minute discussion about how hard it is to get to the post office to return things and where I wanted to pull my hair out in frustration). And yes, going from 3,000+ calories a day to 1,600 will make you hungry. There is no denying it or getting around it. You are on a DIET. Diets take willpower and persistence in order to work and my first week on Nutrisystem was hard cause I was going from one lifestyle where the daily average was probably around 2,800 calories a day to 1,600 and it sucked! But after a few weeks my body has adjusted and I get the pleasure to see the scale go down little by little every day, letting me know that what I'm doing is working.
My friend then told me that she was going to do it the easy way and get the lap band. Now I don't really have anything against it if you have sincerely tried diets and all of them have failed (I have failed on weight watchers). But I doubt that she's aware that the lap band is anything but an easy fix. You have to go on a liquid diet before the surgery to lose weight, then continue to be on a liquid diet for up to 6 weeks after the surgery before you can eat solids and then for the rest of your life you are limited to what you can eat and how much. What I like about Nutrisystem is that if I want to cheat I can and will not be violently ill because of it, or threaten my body by over doing it by possibly stretching out my stomach.
Her final complaint to me was that Nutrisystem would tamper with her social life. Yes, it will. If your social life consists of going to out dinner 4 nights out of the week with family or friends where you consume 1,600 - 2,800 calories in one sitting, then any diet will hamper your social life. Since starting my diet I have turned down going out to dinner a few times cause the restaurants didn't have a diet selection and I am still too new to my diet to feel comfortable by splurging on calories/pounds that I just recently lost. So instead of torturing myself by sitting at a restaurant drinking water and craving all the food around me that I can't have, I stayed home, ate sensibly and asked that when my husband came home from dinner with our friends to stress how horrible the chicken tikka masala was and how I wasn't missing anything, and so far I haven't.

Day 51 and down 35 pounds

Since starting a diet on July 5th I am officially down 35 pounds. When I take myself out of the day to day drudgery of the diet I am shocked by how quickly I have lost so much weight. It did not take me 51 days to gain 35 pounds, but several years of eating too much every day to turn extra ounces into pounds, so the fact that I'm dropping so quickly is inspiring me to continue on happily.
Right now I am focusing my weight loss in terms of ten pound increments which will hopefully help me with the remaining 5 pounds in the series that I'm currently in.
A couple weeks ago I bought one new pair of pants a size smaller. Today I'm wearing those pants and they are a bit too big. This is great and I'm doing the happy dance. My goal tonight is to go home and start pulling pants that are the size that I was in July, try each on and depending on how big they are put them in a pile to donate, then find pants that I haven't been able to fit in and try those on. I am also trying not to look at fashion right now because I feel that it would be a waste of money to spend several hundred on clothing that will be too big come another 3 months.
And finally a year ago I bought a beautiful gray linen jacket from Macy's but could never wear it, even unbuttoned, that is till yesterday when I tried it on and it fit perfectly, and wore it buttoned all day comfortably. No one at work has said anything about any physical changes (I can barely tell changes and it's my body) but my mom thinks that that's because people are afraid to mention anything in case they're wrong and think that they might hurt my feelings, which I find funny cause I know I'm fat and I am fine with someone letting me know that I'm not as fat as I was almost 2 months ago.

A Before & After

A week ago we got a bee up our butts to redo the spare bedroom so here is a really messy before pic (to help show off how much nicer the room looks now):

And this one, not as messy

And after 11 hours of painting, curtains and a new hardwood lamenent floor installed, here are some pretty pics of the spare bedroom:

Day 44

Boy did I screw up last night. I don't know what came over me but I was cooking dinner for the husband and the thought of eating Nutrisystem made me so sad so I said screw it and ate a dinner without looking at the calories till afterwards. 900 calories were consumed. I feel guilty and I put myself back on Nutrisystem this morning and ready to go again, but I am afraid that the overwhelming depression I had when throwing the three cheese Buitoni pasta into the boiling water will happen again. For as decent as the Nutrisystem food is, there is simply no comparison to real pasta. Real cheese. Real meat.
This morning the scale had gone up a pound. I don't know if it's because I'm starting to retain water or last nights dinner, maybe a combination of the two. All I know that I need to rein myself in or there could be more nights like last night and the small amount of progress I've made over the past 6 weeks could vanish very quickly.

Day 42

I was really getting discouraged by yesterday afternoon as my weight had stayed the same for 9 days and was thinking why put myself through this since it isn't doing anything, but this morning there was a change and I had dropped two pounds by 6:00am (since I couldn't sleep I weighed myself every two hours starting at midnight to watch the slow drop).
What has me a bit nervous right now is the amount of exercise I had to do to get the pounds off and how they might creep back by tomorrow morning.
My wonderful husband and I painted our spare bedroom which I use as my office for etsy. What I didn't know was that prepping and painting would take 11 hours to complete. I know we're not natural painters and we're both perfectionists but by 5:00pm I really didn't care if there were two small smudges of the blue paint on the white ceiling, but the great man that I married knew that once I had taken a shower and had a bit of energy, I would care, so we trudged on for another hour. The final result is wonderful and I will be showing before and after pics once the new flooring comes in on Sat (there is no way we're handy enough to attempt that so we've hired people to install).
According to Nutrisystem's exercise counter I spent over 5,000 calories painting. I don't believe that for a second, so I imputed 2,000, with my food intake for Sat near 1400 calories.
As of this morning I am 17 pounds from my first major goal. Two weeks ago I thought that it would be simple to be at this goal by the end of the month, but as my body has adjusted to the reduced amount of calories I'm taking in, I don't think that this is now feasible, so I have moved this goal date to 10/5, which will be the three month anniversary of me starting Nutrisystem.
I am hoping to reach my goal before that but I fear that I will need to drastically up working out and physical exercise in order to continue to lose weight.

Day 39

Discouraged. I have been the same weight for one week now. I have been exceptional on my calorie intake and have not gone above 1600. I worked out by moving all of the furniture out of the spare bedroom so we can paint tomorrow as well as did laps twice this week in our pool. If anything I should be down another 2, even 3 pounds, but nothing??? How is that possible?
I can only assume that I am at my first plateau and in a week or so will continue to lose more weight, but it's not fair when I have been true to a diet to see it do nothing, especially when the first 5 weeks had constant stellar results.
The only good that I can see is that I measured and I have lost three inches from my waist since I started. A few close friends that know what I'm doing are telling me that my face is thinner and while I appreciate the encouragement, I can't see any change and really think that they're just being good friends rather than truth tellers.
I can't quit and I won't but I can't imagine that the easy part is over already when there is a lot more to lose.

Day 35

I was shocked. Shocked! On Saturday we had our annual movie night at our house and I knew that I was not going to be good. I made amends with the fact that I would be drinking and eating whatever I wanted. What I didn't expect was that my stomach in the past 5 weeks would shrink so I was only able to eat half of my cheeseburger and pasta before I was too sick to continue.
I know I was near 2,700 calories for the day (3 sangrias + 6 ounces of chicken appetizer + my sister's dessert + 12" turkey subway sandwich for lunch), but we busted butt to clean, hose, sweep and in general make the backyard as pretty as we could for the party, which totalled near 1,800 calories of cleaning.
And what was even more surprising to me was what happened yesterday. 1480 calories and that was me making myself to eat. While there are minuscule changes happening to my body that only I can see, today my pants are lose and I know that in a matter of weeks I will have to start shopping for a smaller size or risk having pants pooling around my ankles as I walk. Ah, champagne problems...

One Month and 32 Pounds Lighter

I started Nutrisystem July 5th and as of this morning the scale is saying that I am down 32 pounds. What's more important is that I am seeing little signs of loss.
Yesterday a pair of house shorts (cause no one needs to see me in public in shorts) that I normally wear have a snap front. Before the snap would pop open all the time and yesterday I didn't have that problem at all, in fact they were lose enough that in a few weeks I doubt I will be able to wear them at all (yeah!!!).
I am also noticing that my stomach is getting a little smaller. I realize that only I can see the changes right now and that no one will notice anything for another month at least but I am pleased that for one month I have mainly been able to stick with my goals and I am shocked by how quickly 32 pounds went.
Since losing another 32 pounds in a month is not possible unless I go extreme (and that will never happen), my goal for the next month will be to continue doing what I'm doing. Throw the gym in more and hopefully in the next few weeks lose another 20 pounds.
Starting Sept 1 I hope to be at a personal goal (19 pounds will get me there) and from then on I will be focusing on ten pound increments which should get me to my goal by my 40th birthday in April.

Day 27

Tomorrow will be my fourth week of me being on nutrisystem. During this month there are several things that I have done differently from previous weight loss attempts (besides eating most of the nutrisystem food). I have logged everything that I eat, instead of just guessing like I used to do. This month I actually looked up every item so I was fully aware of each calorie I was intaking. I also have not exceeded 2,000 calories on any day (I did come dangerously close one day) . I have maintained my water intake which I usually near a half gallon a day. I have greatly reduced my diet coke addiction to one small can a day and have even skipped a day or two.
One thing that I have been failing on is exercise. Every weekend we still go on walks with the dogs or gardening in the backyard or cleaning up the house. Besides basic house maintenance during the week (dishes, laundry, etc.) we really don't exercise anymore and that has to change. Since starting to lose weight I have created a few goals and I hope to hit my first significant milestone by September 1, which means that if I want to insure that make it, I will need to start going to the gym at least two days a week.
Areas of my body are sort of like mirages, like is this area of my stomach smaller or am I just imaging that it is. It's hard to be certain if what feels like change really is. It could just be wishful thinking. Today I am wearing a shirt that I haven't worn to work in almost a year because it's a button up and puckers, but as I sit here typing this there is minimal puckering happening.
So for this next month, my goal is to not be as obsessive about the scale (yesterday I think I weighed myself at least 6 times; not good) and weigh once a day. To stick with 1,600 calories a day, to actually go into the gym and work out at least once a week plus weekends, and to try to forget that I'm actually dieting and just start thinking about other things like designs for jewelry and new techniques that I want to work on and put in my shop.