The Journey Celebrates the Two Year Mark

(Edit... This post should've gone up on the 24th...)

This post has been two years in the making... It was two years ago today that I stopped drinking sugar soda in an attempt to get my ballooning weight under control.

I had an 1,800 calorie a day soda habit that was making me look more and more like Jabba the Hutt. It was time for a change! You can read my first post in the Journey here and then go forward from there. And with a few exceptions I have not had a sugar soda in those two years. And I still crave it on a daily basis.

I dropped a decent amount of weight just by cutting out the soda. I shed 30 pounds in 11 months. Then I really kicked it up a notch and joined the gym and lost another 25 pounds in two months.  And then we went on the trip of a lifetime to Hawaii. It was great being in a tropical paradise, but it was even better that I was in the best shape that I had been in a long time. But then on the second to last day there my feet got severely sun burnt and I could barely walk (read about that here...). It took me a month to recover and by then I had lost all momentum & motivation.

At my lowest I was at 315 pounds while in Hawaii. I then crept all the way back up to 335 before refocusing. As of this morning I'm at 326 pounds. I'm currently back at the gym 4 to 5 times a week and keeping an eye on my calorie intake. We are going to Oregon in mid May for a family reunion and my goal is to be 311 pounds by then. My sister-in-law is getting married in mid July and I want to be 295 at that point.

I've pretty much wasted the last 10 months. I have no intentions of wasting the next ten. If I can lose 2 pounds a week I will finish the year off at 251 pounds, which will put my total weight loss at 120 pounds. If I can do 2.5 pounds a week I could be at 231 by the end of the year. By this day next year I want to be 221, which would be 150 pounds lost in three years.

But even if I stay stuck where I'm at I've still have won a battle... How? If I hadn't done something when I did I would be well over 450 pounds today. I would've been doomed.