#noexcuses Week 12

It truly is amazing how quickly time moves. 12 weeks already. Today is the 20th day since I decided to try to track my food every day for the last 50 days of this challenge. 20 days already. It feels like yesterday when I made that decision. Time seriously moves so fast.

So that's it. We're down to the last 30 days of the challenge. My official 12 week weigh in will be at Living Lean on Monday morning. I didn't put a specific number goal on this part of the challenge. I knew where I wanted to be at week 8 and I know where I'd like to be at week 16; but week 12 will be what it is. I am still "on track" to meet my A goal for week 16, but it may or may not happen and that's OK. I am very confident I will be below my B goal for week 16 so that's something.

You all know how I love my numbers. Today I was happy to see the scale go down for the 5th week in a row,  but at first was slightly disappointed that my losses have been so little for the past 2 weeks. I quickly got over that and started focusing on all the positives of late. My rate of weight loss may have decreased from the first 8 weeks, but I am still consistently losing and that is what matters. I decided to look back at my numbers from last year and found that in the 12 weeks from when the challenge started last year I had lost 15.4 pounds. Obviously I wasn't as focused after the first 8 weeks last year since the challenge had ended, but still. This year I have lost 19.2 pounds in 12 weeks. I started the challenge this year at a significantly lower weight than last year so not only did I lose more weight this year, but the percentage of weight lost was about 9.5% compared to 6.9% from last year. Those are numbers that definitely make me  happy.

I find myself getting so focused on seeing a particular number on the scale that I tend to forget everything else; and in turn almost feel disappointed when it's not yet that number. I know logically that the scale isn't going to be 8 pounds down in one day or even one week; but since I'm so focused on that number it's easy to feel disappointed every time I get on the scale and still don't see that number.

Anyway, I had one really cool and weird NSV this week so that was fun. I was on the treadmill and noticed something I had never noticed before. When on the treadmill I face the mirror in the bathroom (as long as the door to the bathroom is open). The mirror that we have in that bathroom has 3 panels. I noticed the other day that I can now see the reflection of my entire body in just the middle panel! Weird, right? Weird that I would notice that; but I am beyond certain that I was never able to see my entire body in one of those panels. When I was done running I decided to take a picture just to prove my point. I also just felt like I looked much smaller than I've been looking so that was a good day.

On to the last 4 weeks of the challenge. I'll be checking in again next week with my official numbers from the 12 week mark as well as my updated measurements.