Two wonderful miles

I met Derek after he got out of work today, as per usual, but this time he took even longer than usual to get out or work so instead of meeting him half way, I met him at his work. Round trip, that's 2 miles and it felt wonderful. I got a bit winded while walking up the hill that's about 3/4 of the way there, but after that I was fine. I really do enjoy taking walks, it feels really great. And I love listening to my iPod on the way and rocking out to my favorite songs. It's kind of my favorite part of the day.

Over the past few days, I've been wondering why I've lost so much weight so fast. I'm officially down to 250, which is 5 pounds in only two weeks. It was then that I realized that on the fit tracker website, which told me to consume about 1850 calories a day, I had it listed that I live a sedentary lifestyle, which is sort of true. But now I walk! I walk probably around 5-6 miles a week on average. Which means I had to change my setting to "lightly active". Which upped my daily intake to 2190. I've been wondering why I've been losing weight when I often times go over that 1850 by about 100. It's because I was still 200 below what I was supposed to do. Oops. But now I know!

I have my new short term goal of hitting 225 by Christmas. I want to be able to go home and see my family and have a nice whole round number to tell them about. It sounds so much better to say "I've lost 25 pounds!" (or even 20) than to say "I've lost 17 pounds!" Plus, 25 pounds is about 2 pounds a week between now and then, so it fits the slow pace almost perfectly.

My new favorite snack is those 100 calorie packs, but in the interest of saving money, I've decided to pack my own 100 calorie packs. The smaller the packaging, the more the company charges, so Derek and I picked out some of our favorite snacks and bought some small ziplock bags and I will portion them out for us. That way, it's so much easy to avoid over indulging! The problem with just limiting yourself to 6 or 7 chips is that when the bag is open right there, it's so easy to just pop back in for 6 or 7 or 20 more. When they're rationed out like that, it really helps the urges.

Today, I've had 1650 calories so far. I've managed to stay under my fat goal of 49 grams, by only consuming 46 grams, but I'm still under in protein by 118 grams. I just don't like meat! But thanks to a suggestion by a friend of mine, Lauren, I've got some protein bars on the way. They definitely won't help me make it all the way to 164 grams a day, but it's an extra 8 or 9 grams, which is very helpful. I also made it under my carb goal by 3 whole grams. But yay anyways. I'm assuming I won't have anything else to eat except perhaps another bottle of water, so I know I'm way under my calorie goal, but I'm just not that hungry today.

Now that I own a scale, I've decided to place my goals for 25 pound incraments. At 225, I'm going to find myself a pair of ankle boots (I've already got my eyes on a wonderful pair that I'm in love with), at 200 I think I'm going to get myself a new cute dress, at 175 I'm not sure yet but at 150, I'm getting my next tattoo! What I get and where I get it greatly depends on how my body looks after this. If my skin is pretty taught and I'm toned enough to get one where my hip meets my thigh, I'm thinking there. If not, I'll contemplate other places such as my arm or back. Nothing is a better motivator than a new tattoo!

Have a wonderful night everyone! Stay healthy!