Weigh-in Week 24 - 6 Month Update

The Numbers

Starting Weight: 216.8
Weight Last Week: 208.8
Weight This Week: 207.2
Loss This Week: 1.6
Total Weight Loss: 9.6
Pounds Still to Go: 22.2
Trendline Estimate: 204.2

207.2.  That's more like it.  I am now the lightest I've been in 12 weeks.  With just losing 1.2 pounds a week for the next six weeks, I'll reach my latest goal of 200 pounds before my birthday.  That's pretty tight considering the trends in the graph, but doable.  I just have to watch out for any major slips and gains in weight, and then my weight will finally agree with what's on my Driver's License.

It's been 6 months now.  Six months!!  It doesn't really feel like that much time has passed.  And looking at my overall results, it doesn't seem that impressive to me.  But maybe my original goal was too much.  I was able to lose 10 pounds a month for 3 months during summer, when I had no school and no work, and I had 100% focus on losing weight.  This time I'm incorporating losing weight in a life where I'm a student and need energy to learn, study, and focus on exams, where I'm traveling to all the different pharmacy schools and going to all the events I can to do my proper research for applications, in the middle of a job search, and where I don't have as much control over the type of food I'm eating now that I'm at home again.

What has worked is making the excel sheet.  Being able to visualize the up and down trends, and being able to see that even despite that I'm losing weight overall has been a good method for self-motivation.  It's been good at keeping a feeling of failure from taking over and quitting.  That's probably the most important piece to any weight loss or weight maintenance plan.  As long as you can keep up the motivation and have some form of check in place to let you know when you're slipping, the weight will disappear.  It's taking me longer than I wanted, but it will happen.  And a few more months is nothing compared to the years I'll have with the weight off.

Before I wasn't sure how often I was going to post after I reached my target weight, but now I know I'm going to keep on doing this each week.  I'm going to need a method to ensure that I'll know it when I slip back into bad habits.  And not only that, I'll have to learn to adjust to maintaining weight, rather than losing weight.  That'll be an interesting tug-o-war to watch.

Let's hope that next week my total weight lost will finally pass 10 pounds!