You want to get skinny. You want to lose weight … that’s what I’ve been saying to myself for as long as I can remember! And now I’m on it. Before I embarked on my weight loss journey, I had to picture what I really meant by “getting skinny.” It was important to me to have an honest idea of what I had in mind so that I could set clear and achievable goals.
What does getting “skinny” mean to me? I’m not a naturally skinny body type. I don’t gain muscle, or gain and lose weight easily. I struggle to control my body fat percentage and I have to work really hard to lose weight. My goal? To drop the fat, get rid of the saggy parts, and have a firmer, healthier body. This means taking my time, to lose weight in a safe way that will allow me to keep the weight off for the long term. I have skinny role models – people like Scarlett Johansson or Jennifer Lopez. They have shape and wear it well! That’s what I’d like. Skinny means different things to different people. I’ll never by the skinny of magazines or Hollywood. To me “skinny” is feeling good in my skin, feeling attractive (for my age …), and perhaps, the most important, feeling healthy and pain-free.
Healthy really does trump skinny, so my overriding goal is to improve my health and reduce my pain level. I’m trying to keep all my plans consistent with that notion – health first. Knowing that I don’t lose weight easily and have a high BMI, I had to set realistic goals based on my own body type and some unique diet issues (more about that on a future blog). For my height and bone structure, the normal ideal weight is 118-154, overweight 155-185, obese 186-241, and morbidly obese 242+. When you see those numbers in a chart, it’s a little daunting … but I’m not discouraged. My initial goal is to at least make it to the “overweight” category before my trip. I just want to see that scale say something that begins with a 1!!
So, how am I doing on the skinny quest? It’s slower than I hoped. Much. But … no worries, I’m only 8 lbs behind on the schedule. I really did plan to lose 2 lbs/week. That hasn’t happened, but there is something to be said for the number going steadily down, right? Here’s what has happened:
Week 1 – 1.9
Week 2 – 3.1
Week 3 – 0.8
Week 4 – 1.2
Week 5 – 0.0
Week 6 – 1.8
Week 7 – 1.6
Week 8 – 0.6
Week 9 – no weigh in (travel)
Week 10 – 1.0
TOTAL LOSS to DATE: 12 lbs down.
Keeping in mind before I started the “117 pound journey,” I had already lost 15 pounds (November – March), the actual total since November is -27. Can’t complain about that!! And where am I in the timeline? Well, I have 12 months to lose 105 lbs. Unfortunately, that’s stretching my monthly to 8.75 lbs. I think that’s doable. Guess we’ll see!
Tomorrow is weigh-in day …