I’ve made an observation about weight loss. It’s not a mind-blowing new discovery in the area of weight loss, but it has been insightful.
I had a doctor’s visit today. I’m still under the weather and am 99.9% sure I will be having sinus surgery quite soon, so I still haven’t had the energy to put back into P90X just yet. When I do go back to P90X (and I will!), I am going to start back with week 5, which is where I left off. I had already lost some additional inches and body fat in those 5 weeks and have kept it off, so why start over yet again due to illness?
When I went to the doc’s office today and stepped on the scale, I already knew that I had lost weight (see my earlier post about that), but thought that it wasn’t much more than 8 lbs., so I looked all around, trying to avoid the scale at all costs. At the very last minute before my weight disappeared from the scale, I looked and was speechless. Since September 14, when I was last weighed at the doctor’s office, I have lost a little over 10 lbs.! So I have lost almost 11 lbs. in 18 days, less than 3 weeks time.
What am I doing? Nothing fancy, just wearing a pedometer and drinking 80 oz. of ice water every day. I am not watching what I am eating as far as ratios go (carbs, fat, protein, etc.). I am not dieting. I have actually had some soda here and there (okay, okay, I know I shouldn’t have, but I seem to have it under control now). I have ate out at restaurants and chose the meals that I wanted to have instead of what I “should” have eaten from the healthy side of the menu. I have kept track of my calories only because I want to make sure I am eating enough and I am definitely eating enough calories (between 1600 and 1800) for my body. I have not gotten in 10,000 steps every single day, but I do come close. The main thing that I have done is I have stopped obsessing about it because I am focusing on ME right now and getting back to normal health-wise.
I think the thing that surprises me the most is I am also losing body fat (I know this by keeping track of my body fat percentage), which means I am not losing muscle and I am at least maintaining the muscle that I have worked so hard for. THAT is an awesome feeling!
So what’s this insightful observation that I have made? That I have come full circle. This is exactly how I lost my weight after both pregnancies. I didn’t obsess over the scale; I didn’t obsess over every single morsel I put in my mouth; I didn’t obsess over having “too many” carbs or “too little” protein. I didn’t exhaust myself mentally worrying about every little detail. I was active and I ate normally and lost the baby weight both times.
Keeping things simple (expending more calories than you’re taking in) is what I am sticking with. It was my philosophy for almost 10 years, but somewhere along the way, in the past year or two, I have lost sight of that and let others influence my way of thinking that weight loss has to be so much harder than it actually is. Not anymore!
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