I have reached a milestone in my effort to lose some weight. This morning the bathroom scale read 199.8. Less than two hundred pounds. I honestly can’t remember when it was that I crossed two hundred going the other direction, but I think it was while I was still active with martial arts in the mid-1990s. It took me ten years to put fifty pounds on, and only seven months to take it back off.
The rate of loss has slowed considerably from the first couple of months when I was losing about ten pounds a month, but I was working out twice a week in extreme heat then too. I hope to lose another ten or fifteen pounds before I stop actively trying to lose weight. I also want to incorporate some regular physical exercise, which will impact my eating lifestyle.
I don’t feel that what I did was that difficult, mostly I eliminated snacking between meals and added some exercise to my weekly routine. I don’t consider what I’ve done to be a diet, either, rather it is a change in my eating lifestyle. I still enjoy a soda or a pizza out. Diets too often are an aberration in ones eating habits, something so far removed from the normal eating habit that once the desired weight is reached, a return to normal eating will only result in regaining weight. By eliminating snacks between meals, and trying to exercise more, I’ve built new habits - a new lifestyle - that will maintain my weight going forward as there is no diet to stop.