Wow....water......who knew?

This morning's weigh in was a milestone. I've hit the 25 pounds lost mark and I have less than 10 pounds to go in order to reach my initial goal weight. I lost 2 pounds this week and I think I may have finally broken that plateau I was stuck in for several weeks.

I had a good week as far as exercising. With the exception of Wednesday, I did some exercise every day. My eating was pretty good too and I finally managed to get rid of the urge to snack which had been plaguing me for the past week or so. The one thing that I really improved on this week was how much water I drink.

I've been saying for weeks that I needed to increase my water intake. I just couldn't seem to do it. On Thursday I put a piece of paper on the fridge to remind me to drink water and to keep track of how much I was drinking. Well, that must have done the trick because I've had at least 50 ounces of water each day since Friday and yesterday was around 80 ounces. And viola, lost 2 pounds. Ahhh, water. The plateau buster. :)

So Friday was bad for me (as you know from my pity party post), but after having a long talk with myself (is it bad when you are actually having a conversation in your head??? LOL!), I've come up with a plan.

I'm going to spend the next couple of months working towards my goal weight. It's kind of an arbitrary number, but it's based on weight charts, BMI charts, etc. for someone my height, so it's what I'm going with for now. It's also right around what I weighed before I had my second son, so it should be achievable.

Once I get there (or close to it), I am going to spend several months really focusing more on strength training and toning and less on aerobic exercise. I will still do some walking, etc. but it won't be my main concern. After a few months, I'm going to re-evaluate how I feel about how I look. If I'm still having a real problem with certain things, I am going to explore other options.

I did some pretty good soul searching this weekend and a couple of things really hit me. First, I am not 25 any more. I'm getting close to 40 and losing muscle tone is a natural part of getting older. Things do "sag" more as we age and after we've had kids. That is just a fact of life. If I want to fight that, I'm going to have to really work on strength training. Second, I may be expecting too much too soon. I've only been on this journey for about 4 months. I was overweight for over 10 years. My body got really used to being a certain size. I may need to be a little patient and wait to see how much things "snap back". I don't really know how elastic my skin is, so some of what I am unhappy with may fix itself given enough time. We'll just have to see.

So that's it. My super long post has finally come to an end. Looking at my calendar, I can already tell my week is going to be crazy and we are expecting rain & snow for the next several days. It may be a challenge to get my exercise in all week, but I am certainly going to try.

I hope you all have a great Monday!