Update: Day 21 - 17 Pounds

Well, this morning marks the 21st day of my weight loss effort. I weighed in this morning on the previously mentioned digital scale and have lost 17.2 pounds since the first weigh in, using the steps also mentioned in my article below. Whoohoo! I can say it hasn't been a breeze every day, but it hasn't really been the hardest thing in the world either.

As I mentioned, I've been using TheDailyPlate to not only look up and track calories of everything I'm eating every day, but I'm also logging my calories burned from excercise and daily weigh-ins there. I've been told in the past that weighing in every day is not great because your weight can fluctuate and you can be disappointed if you go up in weight...kind of like watching your stocks every day -- there are good days and bad. There is a part of me, that agrees with this concept, because on the days I went up, my first thought was 'what the heck?' - but there is a good side to that too. On days when I went up, it almost served as a mini reminder to keep at it that day so that the next day I could try to be back down again. It's also kind of helpful to see that you have weight gain and loss patterns.

Although I'm not proud of a starting weight of 258.2 pounds, it is what it is....and as you can see in the chart below, my weight today is 241. This represents my weigh-ins every day for the past 21 days aside from the two days we were away at Winter Camp with the mid high kids. (click to view larger image)

I'm going to post some daily menus from my DailyPlate -- some people have asked what I'm eating..."sheesh, what did you eat to stay under 1500 calories, cardboard?" As you will see, I'm not eating cardboard...well, at least not since I gave up trying to eat those low-carb, low-cal tortillas which most definitely came from a packing plant somewhere. In fact, in the last week I've had pizza, meatballs (sorta) and some amazing Panko chicken. It's all about knowing what's in stuff for me, and how much I can have.

I'm looking forward to lots of little goals along the way to my big goal of 38 pounds. For example, I'd love to hit 20 pounds in 30 days, which is just 3 pounds away, and I think pretty doable unless something crazy happens this week. I also know the weight loss is going to start slowing down here before long because it comes off fast at first, when you're big like me.

Peace.