Minus Twenty

I'm falling so behind these days on the blog so it's time to fix that!  We're in our last few days of vacation before both Alyssa and Audrey start school, so life's been full of lots of busyness in prep for next week. I've been running around trying to check everything off the list from haircuts, yearly check ups to school shopping!  We're pretty much set so I'm feeling pretty good about that. :)

Over the past couple of weeks since I last updated, I've continued to stay on track with my weight loss plan and I'm excited to say that I've finally reached 20 pounds lost!!! It feels really good to say that and even more so when my family has started to notice a big difference.  Being told that I "look hot" by both my husband and my sister is a pretty good feeling, lol!  My sister came over this morning right as I was finishing my workout and was like, "you're butt totally looks smaller" and you look the best you have in years!"  It made me smile when she said that and I told her thanks and wait to til I get to my real goal! ;)

Me last week, at 18 lbs lost.

And just to compare, here's one of the first pics I took about 6 weeks ago when I got started working on being healthier...

I don't look pregnant anymore, thank goodness!!!

What I think is making the greatest impact on my weight loss is all the exercise.  From my morning aerobic workouts to my evening walks or elliptical times, all exercise is good exercise to me at this point.  There are days when I wake up feeling like I'm dragging, but just making the choice to exercise is what's been paying off big time!  My goal for this week has been to ramp up my morning workout from four to the entire five miles.  So far, so good!

Obviously food is another component in this whole weight loss journey that I've continued to work on as well.  I've decided that I want this to really be something I will stick to so I can actually succeed for the long haul, instead of just dropping of for lack of will power.  What that means is that there have been days where I've treated myself to a slice of pizza or a scoop of ice cream.  This is not a starve myself, eating plain chicken breasts for dinner every day "diet' but more of a lifestyle of eating smaller portions and limiting the junk. It also means small adjustments to eating the same stuff I used to eat, only minus a couple of things here and there.  For example, the other day I treated the girls to McDonald's and I ordered the chicken sandwich for myself. Instead of eating it exactly as it came, I took off several things I knew I could do without and added a side salad.  I was able to eat out but not feel the guilt of consuming some outrageous amount of callories doing so. It was sort of a happy medium!

I'm pretty excited about my progress with my weight loss, especially seeing the numbers go down consistently, week after week.  I'm losing about two pounds a week, which I think is pretty good!  I started looking ahead on my calender and figured that if I keep things up at this pace, I can be to my goal of 150 pounds by the beginning of November!  That is totally within sight so I'm gonna keep my eyes on the goal and keep on truckin'!

P.S.  I'm working on cleaning up my blog and added a weight loss tab to the top so I can keep those kinds of post in an easy to go to place. I also removed the recipes tab since it really wasn't essential.