Yeah, it doesn’t count yet. I’ll get on the scale tomorrow morning and be 162 or something around there. But it was still encouraging to see that I’d finally reached my goal without directly having finished an 85-mile bike ride immediately before (I was down to 157.5 last Saturday, but only because I ate sparingly and drank too little water for the nearly 8 hours I was on the road). But, like I said, it doesn’t count. I don’t count it until I’ve been at a weight for three straight days.
Back in February, when I started this, I set a goal of 160 pounds (I was 192 at the time). I didn’t set a time-frame. I just resolved to establish better eating habits and to exercise more efficiently. I did a ten-day detox to start it off, then adjusted my diet thereafter to bring down my weight more gradually. I wasn’t overly concerned or obsessive about it. I just ate and exercised and dropped a pound or two here and there. I’d lost 11 pounds during the initial detox, so on February 21st, I was down to 181. The detox seemed to kickstart my system, and rather than saying “hooray, I’ve lost my weight, now I can start eating again,” I was feeling great too. So I just adjusted my diet to something less radical. I’d drink two green smoothies a day rather than three. And not the same smoothies I was drinking for the detox. I was using almond or soy milk instead of water, and lately I’ve even been adding plain yogurt. And now that I’ve started baking bread, I’ll have one thick slice with peanut butter and honey every day when I get home from work.
And I only do that on weekdays. Get up and eat a good oatmeal breakfast (I add cranberries, walnuts, ground flax seed, and a banana), make two smoothies for lunch and dinner, then snack throughout the day on unsalted nuts, fruit, and vegetables. On weekends, I eat regular meals.
So this morning, there it was. 159.5. Sure, it doesn’t count yet. But it’s the first day. And tomorrow it’ll be up again. And after a weekend of full meals, I’ll wake up Monday morning at 162, but by the end of the week, I’ll probably have the three days straight, and then it’ll count.