To 50 lbs...and beyond!!

Life is great! It just is. I've now lost 58.4 lbs and had a 5 lb loss just this past week! Words can't express how excited I am as I approach the 250 lb. mark. Since I had my first baby back in 2000, I have been over 280 lbs. I gained almost 90 lbs in that one pregnancy alone. To finally be under that...feels amazing. At 272.2 lbs, I still have plenty of things I can't quite do and things I don't fit into...but it's infinitely better than 330!

This past week in my Jilly's Losers group, a few of us picked out personal goals that we wanted to accomplish for the week. Nathan and I chose to not have any soda for 7 days. I thought it would be extremely difficult and even painful haha...but it was a piece of cake! And I am pretty sure it contributed to my big weight loss this week. Do I think I'll be cutting soda out of my life completely? No. I must've had 3 Mt. Dews last night during our Super Bowl party...but now that I've learned the affect it seems to have on me, I'll sure be drinking less.

My group of Jilly's Losers is doing amazing. It seems we've all had a stressful couple of weeks, but as a whole we've lost more than 220 lbs! That's a whole overweight person! I wish I had thought of doing something like this sooner. It is by far the best motivational tool I have ever found and knowing that it's helping other people is just the best feeling in the world. We still have 3 months to go, so it's fun to see the way the results shuffle every week as everyone fights to get healthy and win the top prize. It's great to see the hard work everyone puts in and the optimism that just flows through that group and keeps everyone going.

I've changed up my workouts a bit. Instead of an hour of straight out cardio, I've now started trying intervals. Things like walking for 3 minutes then sprinting for 1. It gets my heart rate up faster and keeps it up while I'm walking. I sweat harder and seem to burn more calories. Though I can only seem to stand 40 minutes at this pace. I also took one day to swim laps for an hour. Holy crap was that hard. I don't know how I used to do it so effortlessly as a kid. I guess "kid" is the key word there. It really is a great workout and I felt it for days!

Now if only I could get my diet under complete control. I still struggle with getting enough protein and not having too many carbs. Even when I am under my calorie limit, I can't seem to find the right balance my body needs to steadily lose weight. Here's to hitting 60 lbs this week!