I got my MOJO back!

I admit it:  I had not been motivated to stick to a healthy eating plan for nearly a month.  On a few days I would eat pizza for dinner following by warm brownies or chocolate bundt cake topped by vanilla ice cream.  YUM!  I took 10 days off from exercising after the L.A. Marathon, but had since only exercised about half of the time I wanted to.  I was in a rut.

Then I went to a Weight Watchers meeting where the leader talked about going shopping in his own closet.  He talked about having clothes with the tags still on them!  I was thinking, "Has he been looking in my closet?"  I have so many goal outfits that I don't need to buy clothes for years to come.  Heck, some of the fashions have been there so long they might be out of style.  :-)  However, there are plenty outfits that I really want to be able to wear!

The next thing that happened was me watching the Biggest Loser last night.  There is (well now, there WAS) a contestant named Courtney on there from Valporaiso, IN.  She has lost a total of 204 pounds.  Two-hundred, four pounds.  That is a whole person!  What's more, she lost the first 100 pounds on her own at home despite the fact that her family owns a Dairy Queen!  Are you kidding me?  She has such an amazing attitude and has come so far that I was completely inspired by her last night.  She said we can reach our goals by just taking it one day at a time.  Her amazing progress is proof positive of this fact.

So I got up this morning with a plan to go to the gym and run on the treadmill.  However, something made me decide to run outside on the Lakefront instead.  I also decided I would comfortably jog the whole way, but not pressure myself to go at a certain pace.  It was my first outside training run in a long time and I just needed to see where I am.  I am SO glad I decided to run outside.  I did 3 miles which now serves as my baseline as I run on the Lakefront from now until next winter.

One of the problems I have is not recognizing the value in taking small steps toward my overall goal.  I feel like I have to lose 5 or 10 pounds a week or train 5 days a week to get results.  However, if I consistently lose a pounds a week, that would be over 50 pounds in a year.  There are people who lose as much as I weigh by being HONEST and CONSISTENT, even if they are not running marathons.  They walk, take in fewer calories than they expend and have fantastic results.  So I have a new attitude in that I will try to be honest and consistent and not pressure myself to lose X number of pounds a week.  I won't have an all or nothing attitude but just stay the course so that one day I will look up and have reached my goal.