I'm gonna screw it up tonight, by going to have Sushi. . . but:

I've been really strict on diet and exercise the past 11 days, and have dropped 8 1/2 lbs!

so:

2/18: 218 lbs
2/28: 209.4 lbs

yay me. . and back on diet plan tomorrow after pigging out tonight!

Exactly 1 month since I started back on plan (2/18), and as of this morning, 3/18, I'm down ~16 1/2 lbs.

2/18: 218 lbs
2/28: 209.4 lbs
 3/6:  206.4 lbs
3/11: 205.2 lbs
3/18: 201.6 lbs

so yay me.

Yay Bert.

I had a checkup in January and found out I was diabetic, on top of the high blood pressure I've been dealing with for years. The diabetes was a wake-up call (although I hit snooze on the alarm a few years ago when I was pre-diabetic. Dummy!). I started at 220 in January and I'm down to 190. I've already been taken off of two medications. I'd be five pounds lighter today, but I had to have my corned beef feast for Saint Patrick's Day, which lasted three days. I don't need to feast for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but I'll be damned if I skip my annual corned beef feast.

I was gaining three pounds a year for the past 25 years. I tried vaguely "watching what I eat" once in a while in years past, but half-assed didn't cut it. I thought it was going to be nearly impossible, but after the first couple weeks of strictly limiting my calories, I'm less hungry these days than I was before my diet. To bring comics into this a bit, Steven Grant mentioned in his old CBR column that he discovered the secret to losing weight - you need to always be a little bit hungry. For some reason that always stuck with me, and I know being constantly hungry isn't something I'm going to put up with long-term. I'm happy to report Grant was wrong.

My other block against dieting was that I was afraid I would lose muscle along with the fat. I'm not a body-builder, but I have a respectable amount of muscle mass. So far, I've been able to maintain, and I might have even gained a bit of muscle. I always used to think "How the heck can I not lose weight when I work out so hard? Is dieting really going to help? My body just wants to gain weight and there's nothing I can do about it." Based on my experience in the last couple months - I'm here to tell ya, diet beats exercise hands-down in terms of losing fat. I'm sure I would've been fat*er* if I never exercised, but the diet is a huge turn-around.

Great. I'm lost eating a lot of bread.

Veery.... sloooowly......losing: down to 195.8 today. I guess it's ~.75-1 pound a week, but it feels a lot slower

Still trying my best to stick to my healthy eating with daily exercise plan - at least thru my Birthday next Sat (where I'm gonna massively cheat, and have lots of cake)

this past week was extremely stressful, and all the Challah French Toast (and other assorted carbs), as well as the sodium from the soy sauce I had with Sushi in the week didn't help, so when I weighed in on Tues, I hadn't dropped even an ounce from the prior week.

So today, I weighed again, after giving the carbs/sugar/sodium time to get thru my system, and saw a nice ~4lb drop. Even if that is because I hadn't eaten or drank yet before weighing, and had just gotten out of a long hot soak after my 1:30 walk today.

so. . . . this week's update:

2/18: 218 lbs
2/28: 209.4 lbs
3/6: 206.4 lbs
3/11: 205.2 lbs
3/18: 201.6 lbs
3/25: 198.8 lbs
4/01: 196.2 lbs
4/08: 192.8 lbs
4/18: 189.0 lbs (so down ~29 lbs !)

I'm really proud of that, and am in within 5lbs of my "goal" of 185 lbs, and only 9 lbs from my stretch goal of 180 lbs.

How's everyone else doing?