Week 9

This has been a little bit of a hard week for me. The 8 week challenge that I participated in ended last week and the new one doesn't start until this week. I had a week between and got to make my own menu plan. This was exciting to me and I felt that I was very successful in this. However, I then got discouraged when the winners of the challenge were announced.

I felt that I worked hard. I stuck to the plan, even on most of my indulgence meals, I found myself looking at what I was eating or ordering. I knew if I was eating close to plan or not. The woman who won the challenge as having the biggest transformation lost 12 pounds. Because the challenge didn't take measurements, the winner was chosen looking at the before and after pictures. I was very disappointed because I had lost 26 pounds on this challenge and if she could have seen the measurements, she would have seen that I lost an overall 15 1/2 inches. She also chose somebody who had a fairly normal body weight to begin with, which made me wonder if I had even been considered as being in the running.

My husband didn't understand my disappointment. He told me, "Why are you discouraged? Why don't you just go step on the scale and look in the mirror?" A wise friend told me to not look at the extrinsic motivation. She said, "the woman who won may have needed to have that extrinsic motivation more than you." How true. When I started the challenge, I told my sister that I wasn't doing it for the prizes, I was doing it for my health and my boys. Hello, see the motivations that I listed in my first blog post!

My motivators for losing weight:
1 - I want to be able to play with my 2 little boys. I want to be able to run with them, keep up with them.
2 - Because I was older when I had them, I will be in my late 40s when they graduate. I want to be here as they get married and have children of their own. I want to be able to be healthy enough that I can play with my grandchildren. This is funny saying this as my boys are currently 4 and 1, but this is something that I think about.
3 - I have always been the "fat" sister. Looking back, I was so NOT fat when I was younger, but because I was taller and bigger than my sisters, I felt like the fat one. When I was working out at the gym with a trainer, one of my sisters told me, "If you ever get skinnier than me, I will kill myself." Since then, I have had the desire to be the skinny sister for once. Not so that my sister would "kill" herself, but so I can be "so there!"
4 - This is a vain motivator, but it is there. All the cute clothes are too small for me. I want to be able to buy cute clothes. I want to be able to shop in the "normal" section of a clothing store.

In the beginning of February I joined a group at my work that is working to lose weight. As part of that, I weighed in, and took my body fat and BMI. Here is the difference during the month of February and March. I have to remember that I am seeing results. I am doing it for me. I cannot let the lack of extrinsic motivators discourage me.
My BMI went down 2.2!
My Body Fat % went down 1.9!

Booyeah! I need to remember this!

Weight: 238 (down 1 pound, but a pound is a pound!)

Chest: 43"

Waist: 43"

Hips: 52"

Thigh: 26 1/2"

Calf: 17 1/2"

Bicep: 15 1/2"

Forearm: 11 1/2"

 

I didn't have a ton of changes this week. I think it was because my body was just so exhausted and my workouts were not as intense as they have been. I need to remember to not push myself so hard and to allow my body time to rest and recover. This weight took years to get this high and it will not come off in 1 month.