Weight Loss

I'll probably jinx myself writing this before the holidays, but I recently hit a weight loss goal I've been pursuing for about 3 years.

After I bought my house in Kirkland in March 2003, I went to update my driver's license. At the DMV, the lady took my old license, glanced over it and asked "is all this info accurate?" I nodded in agreement as she read off: "height 5' 5", brown eyes, dark brown hair, weight 130..." She must have seen me grimace at that last phrase, because she smiled and said she could just leave it unchanged.

In those few moments, I realized a) I weighed 130 in college, b) that was about 15 years ago, and c) at 145 pounds (at the time) I was one of those people who had put on one pound a year after college! This despite generally higher activity than the average person.

So I vowed to lose 10 pounds and have been working on it ever since. Last week, I tipped the scale at just under 135 for the second week in a row, so I consider this goal achieved. Now there is just the difficult problem of maintaining my new weight. :)

The interesting thing was that it took me about 1.5 years to lose half of my goal. I didn't really have a strategy for doing it other than eating better and exercising, but I had been doing that all along. Even during ironman training, my weight stayed at a very consistent 140-142 pounds, which was good since that meant I was approximately eating the right amount of food I was burning through exercise.

After my July break, I started up training again with a focus on speed. This let me drop another 2 or 3 pounds, and I consistently weighed in at 137-139 pounds. But those last few eluded me... until I got the laser focus of calorie counting. It didn't take many changes, just cutting out a few things from my diet and even then, goodies are OK in moderation.

I plan to take up a strength training program in January, so the irony is I might gain some weight and get right back to 140 pounds. Of course, if I do put on 5 pounds of lean muscle I won't mind. ;)