#noexcuses Week 11

We are already at 11 weeks; can you even believe it?!?! 

75 days are done and only 37 more to go. 

This also marks the first time I've lost 4 weeks in a row since
the challenge started so I should be really happy.

I have now tracked for 12 days in a row so I feel good about that. I realized when I made that post about there being 50 days remaining in the challenge I was wrong. From that day there were really only 49. The Monday of the final weigh in would be day 50. My goal was to track for 50 days in a row because I truly don't think I've ever done that. Even though May 6th is day 50 and I will be weighing in before I eat anything that day; I am still going to stick to my goal of tracking for 50 days in a row. That means that even though the challenge is technically over, I will be tracking on that Monday. 

Let's talk about week 11, shall we? Week 11 was a very interesting week for me. It was a horrible mental week so it wasn't fun at all. I struggled a ton this week with eating for no reason. Like I said above, I've been tracking for the past 12 days so I tracked everything I ate (as accurately as I could), but I really struggled with feelings of guilt all week. After Saturday I not only tracked, but kept my calories within my net calorie goal so there was no real reason to feel guilty about my choices. The problem was that there were several days this week that I was snacking just to snack. I wasn't even actually hungry but I kept snacking. That is where the guilt came in to play. Old habits and all. It's frustrating to have come as far as I have come and to still have to fight the same demons I had to fight 65+ pounds ago. The tracking did keep it in check so that was good. And because I kept tracking even through a mentally challenging week I was able to see a loss on the scale this morning so I should be feeling really good about my week today; but I'm not. I mean, the fact that I did lose weight shows me (for the billionth time) that calories in/calories out is what matters when trying to lose weight. 

I added up my calorie deficit for the week and it amounted to what should be just under a pound lost. The scale this morning showed me a 0.8 pound loss. So I had a tough week but I was able to keep it in check enough to lose weight. I am happy about that; I just want to be even better. I want to not be the type of person who wants to eat just to eat. I don't think I'm ever going to be that person though so I need to just move on from that and be satisfied when I win the battle enough to still lose weight. Every tenth of a pound adds up. I mean, there are 39 Saturdays left in 2019 and if I only lost 0.8 every week I would still be down another 31.2 pounds. It wouldn't get me to my goal weight this year,  but I already said I didn't care about that. Now I need to go back to actually believing that. It's amazing how quickly things shift. When I wrote this post on January 4th I truly believed that I no longer cared when I reached my goal weight. So what has happened since then?

Well, in the process of feeling so good and positive I started realizing that if I could keep that momentum going I actually could reach my goal weight this calendar year; without having to lose much more than 1 pound per week. This easily shifted my mindset to actually want to hit that number this year. Which in turn put more pressure on myself to be "perfect" so I can reach that goal. Sigh. I know that the minute I start focusing on how fast I'm losing the weight I inevitably become too crazy about it and am unhappy in this process. What's interesting is I think I'm getting better at seeing the difference between long term and short term goals though. Last year when I wanted to hit 195 before our Disney trip I was able to do that because it was only 55 days away. This year, when I wanted to hit 188 for the 8 week mark of the challenge, I was able to do that because it was only 8 weeks. 

I haven't talked about my goal weight on this blog yet. Up to this point I've kept saying that I don't have a goal weight and that's still partly true. I don't know what number on the scale I am going to want to try to maintain; but I do have a number that I want to hit at least once. When I hit that number I will have a better idea of what I want to do. That elusive number is 150.6 and I want to hit that number because that will be 100 pounds lost from my absolute highest weight I ever recorded. What's amazing is that I actually believe that I can and will hit that number. It may not happen in 2019, but I know I am going to hit it. The reason why that is amazing? Because I never believed that before. Go back and read this post from September 2012. In that post I talk about how I never believed that 150 pounds was a realistic weight for me to maintain. This was also the post where I talked about how my doctor at the time said she thought a healthy weight range for me would be 145-160 and I was ecstatic because I felt like 160 was way more attainable than 150. I am still not confident I can maintain 150 pounds, but I no longer feel like that's not a possibility. I'm even starting to wonder if I'll be able to hit a number even lower than that. Only time will tell for that. For now my focus is getting to my next benchmark of 175 pounds.