6 Month Update

It's been 6 months since I renewed my commitment to losing weight through a healthy diet and exercise plan. In 26 weeks, I've lost a total of 18 pounds. It's not really where I wanted to be at this point. But I have to keep reminding myself that I'm 18 pounds less than when I started, and that's no small accomplishment.

My overall goals when I started were to lose 51 pounds, walk 20 miles per week, and add strength training and cross training to my exercise regimen. I've made progress toward some goals, but not toward others. I had hoped to be at least halfway toward my weight goal by this point, and to be honest, I really wanted to be nearly done by now. I've struggled to hit my walking mileage goal, and I've had almost no success with the strength and cross training.

So what happened? Aside from the usual struggles to maintain a healthy eating plan (which meant trying to limit my tendency to eat things that are bad for me) and to add forms of exercise I don't particularly enjoy, what I didn't count on were a couple of things that were outside of my control. The first is that I got sick twice in a period of 6 weeks during the winter months, which inhibited my ability to exercise as much as I wanted. The second is that real life, quite frankly, got in the way. I've been going through some struggles with my job, and then through a crazy sequence of events last month, I was offered a new position (working for the same company) that will be a much better fit for me. It's a great turn of events, but the stress involved in deciding on a career change has distracted me, and I haven't been as disciplined about the diet and exercise as I would need to be to meet what were, in retrospect, some pretty aggressive goals.

Still, I'm happy to be where I am right now, especially considering everything else that's been going on. The catalyst for me to get back on the wagon with the diet was a report from the doctor that my high cholesterol had returned. I don't know yet whether those numbers have come down, and I'm not sure that I'm ready to find out.

So what's next? I want to keep plowing ahead. I've had recent glimpses of success, and I know that it's possible to at least get back to my lowest weight of the past few years (I'm about 5 pounds away right now). Beyond that, I'm not sure. I think that my best bet is to set smaller interim goals. For example, in the next 4 weeks, I'd like to lose 4 pounds. Maybe short term goals will help me to focus on the here and now more than the indefinite future. We'll see next month whether it works or not.