Marvin's Journal (3rd time around!)

[Marvin]

Hello.....
Been lurking here awhile, then started the final journey toward my goal weight last Friday. As usual, I'm flushing a lot of water right now, so a quick jump down from 374.5 to 368 over 3 days. That's okay, since my ankles & feet were too swollen and it's already starting to feel better.

I did Atkins 3 years ago and dropped about 70 lbs over 5 months. Stopped eating this Way for no reason in particular (other than perhaps boredom, cheating and carb addiction restarted!). Started again about a year or so ago, and stopped after a month.

I am truly on my final journey toward my goal weight, and I'm not turning back. High blood pressure, sleep apnea, heel spurs, depression, and just not feeling good in general have had too much power in my life. It's turnaround time now.

One of the things that I am focusing on doing differently this time is to focus more effort on the following:

• Understanding my emotional reasons for eating
• Building mini-goals as well as the long-term goal
• Building incentives when meeting those goals, and enlisting my wife to help with those!
• Building more variety into my menus, and making use of more of the new recipes and foods available to me
• Sticking with the exercise long term (logging my minutes and celebrating mini-goals here too!!)
• Adding weight training, stretching and flexibility exercising to the program
• Adding a journal program (this one!) to help me keep accountable to at least one other person outside my family on a regular basis!

I plan on publishing my mini-goals for weight and exercise here as I go along, as an extra measure of accountability. I also hope to reflect on some of the above bullets, as a matter of fact, I'll address one today in a separate post.

Thanks in advance for your support, and I plan on jumping in on your journals as I develop a comfort level.

[Marvin]

Things are going well.

Yesterday's:
B: Egg, Bacon, Veggie & Cheese Fry-up
L: Taco Salad
D: Hot Salami-Pepperoni-Provolone sandwich on my Savory Psyllium Pancake "Bread"
Exercise: Walked 12 minutes at lunch time
Mowed, Bagged & Composted leaves; 60 minutes
Water: Plenty (judging by my bathroom trips)


Today's:
B: Eggs, Sausage
L: Broccoli, Cheese & Chicken Casserole
D: ??? Shrimp Scallops and Salad, I think
Exercise: Walked 10 minutes at lunch time
Will walk ~30 minutest tonight!
Water: Yes! And working on it.....

The big incentive that I am giving myself with the weight loss is to climb Long's Peak in Colorado. It's 14255 feet. It takes 15-16 hours to go up and come down. We've done some "beginner" hiking in the Rockies, but Long's Peak is the pinnacle that I'd like to make when I've made goal.