13 weeks

No.  I'm not pregnant.  I'm sure some of you thought that from the post title though :)

About mid-January I signed up to participate in a health challenge through my work.  The challenge was based on percentage of weight loss.  It started the beginning of February and lasted for 13 weeks with our final weigh-in being yesterday.  We were divided up into teams of 4 people.  I was the only girl on my team (and the only one from my department who participated), with the 3 guys all starting out pretty well over 200 pounds.  One guy was from Texas and the other 2 live in Canada.  I thought for sure we'd rock it, but I lost more weight than everyone else on my team!!  I am pretty disappointed with the effort put forth by the guys on my team.  Oh, well.

Whoever was in charge of the health challenge (a guy from Canada) dropped the ball because we were supposed to have bi-weekly prizes for the team who did the best with each bi-weekly weigh-in.  We ended up only having a prize given out to the team who did the best for the first weigh-in, and an individual lady who lost 9% of her body weight by the first weigh-in (not sure how she did it, but good for her!).  Our weigh-ins were all based on the honor code, and we'd report our team weights every 2 weeks, always on a Monday.  Overall, the challenge didn't end up being what I hoped for or expected, but at least I'm happy with the way I came out of it.

I wasn't really sure I wanted to do the challenge, but somehow found myself sending the email to confirm I wanted to participate.  I figured there would never be a "good" time to go on a diet because there will always be a holiday in the midst that would challenge me with its delicious foods.  I hit 3 awesome holidays and at least 2 really important birthdays from the time the challenge started to the time it finished.  So, I signed up.  When the challenge first started out I remember thinking, "Why in the world did I sign up for this?"  I had been stable at the same weight for probably 6 years or more, always getting back down to the same weight with each baby.  I felt pretty stressed with so many things going on in my life, and I didn't feel ready to give up my food and my old habits.  I also thought that my starting weight really wasn't too bad, and if I could maintain that weight for the rest of my life I should be pretty happy.  I really didn't think I'd lose the 10 pounds I initially set my goal as, but I reached it by the end of March and decided I could lose another 5 pounds by the end of the health challenge.

I did it all on my own too.  I started out by just trying to eat less, and healthier foods.  I generally would eat oatmeal for breakfast, a half sandwich [on white Grandma Sycamore bread :)] for lunch, and eat dinner on a small plate instead of a regular one, and a few snacks in between.  I always ended up sneaking some sugar in there too.  I figured I could still eat pretty much what I wanted to, just not in the quantity I normally would and luckily it turned out okay for me to do that.  A HUGE thank you to my friend, April, who loaned me her Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred DVD because I would not have come out where I did without that awesome workout DVD!  I exercised 6 days a week, starting about 2 weeks into the challenge, and most days I did one (or sometimes two) of Jillian's workouts.  I lost the most my first weigh-in (4 pounds) and averaged 2 pounds per weigh-in (so one pound a week).  It was slow, but I was really pleased with my progress and felt that losing it slowly like that I'm more likely to keep it off.

I'm not sure I want to tell the internet world what my starting weight was and what I finished out at, but I will tell you that over the last 13 weeks I lost 16 pounds!!  That's 12% of my starting body weight.  It was really hard and challenging, but definitely worth it.

My goal now is going to be to maintain what I've accomplished, and I think that's going to be harder than actually losing the weight.  I'd love to stay at my current weight and continue exercising as much as I have been.  I feel SO much better and have so much more energy that what I started out at 13 weeks ago.  I'm pretty sure I weigh less now that I did when Darwin and I got married, although I don't remember for sure how much I weighed then.  I know I'm only about 10 pounds more that what I weighed as a junior in high school, and I'm pretty happy with that!  Sometimes now I wonder why I was ever so content being at the weight I've maintained for so long, but I really lacked the motivation to do anything about it.  I think it's good I forced myself to do this health challenge.  It's been great for me to become more aware of what I'm putting into my body on a daily basis.  I'm glad the girls are beginning to understand it's important to be healthy and that they sometimes get on the floor to exercise with me.  I love watching Savannah try to do arm crosses with me when I warm up to exercise and I love that Aurora quotes Jillian and tries to do some of the workouts with me.  I hope we can all maintain a healthier lifestyle from here on out :)

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm bragging or boasting about my accomplishment because I'm really not trying to, but I truly am so happy with what I've accomplished over the last few months and that I proved to myself I could do it.