Even though I made a big deal about weight loss in my initial post, losing 20 lbs is not just about taking off the weight. It’s about whittling down my figure so I’m less of a rectangle and more of an hourglass. It’s about feeling proud to wear skirts, instead of just sad that my thighs are creating enough friction to light up a small town. It’s about wearing heels and feeling like a gorgeous Amazon instead of a bumbling ogre. It’s about my throat not getting that extra wrinkle it’s been threatening me with for the last few months. Most of all, it’s about setting up my body with a solid, healthy foundation for years to come. I want to be healthy, capable, and athletic, not just skinny. In fact, my body isn’t built to be what most people would ever think of as ‘skinny’, so let’s just take that word off the table right now. I’m curvaceous, and I intend to stay that way – just with a few inches off here and there, and buns of steel.

I’ve been a member of www.sparkpeople.com for a couple of years now. Even though I don’t use it as much as I should, I can’t sing its praises highly enough. It’s a fantastic social media outlet for people who are trying to lose weight and/or get in shape. It’s very focused on attaining goals by changing your life instead of crash dieting, and there are a lot of ways to interact with community, learn about healthy living, and keep track of different types of information. I haunt the message boards now and then, but by far the most useful tool that I’ve found is the Nutrition Tracker.

For instance, I know that at my height and weight, with my weight loss goal being 20 lbs by November 8th, that I should be losing a little over a pound a week. To do this, my calorie count needs to be between 1,200 and 1,550 a day (and the nutrition tracker also keeps track of whatever nutrition facts I’d like – in my case, I track fat, carbs, and protein, but I could track Iron or Calcium, etc.). Every time I eat anything during my day, I enter it into the Nutrition Tracker. Most of the foods I’ve ever eaten are in the calculator already, but every now and then I have to add a food manually. That’s fine, though, because after you add one manually, it’s in the system for anyone to use. If you think that a food you’ve tried has more or less calories, nutrients, etc. you can always look it up on Google just to verify that the amounts are correct on the Nutrition Tracker. To date, they always have been for me.

Even though I enter my intake daily, some days I end up eating a lot more than I’m supposed to. Like yesterday I ate a BLT club and french fries for dinner, adding over 1,000 extra calories to my day. From here on out, that’s a big no. When I’m out of calories, that’s that for the day unless it’s a very special occasion and I’m prepared to work it off with a long run or an extra Bikram class. And we all know I’m lazy, so it’ll probably be easier to just give up the food. Giving up BLTs shouldn’t be too hard, since I have IBS and most meat and a lot of refined flour products really destroy my tummy for days. Unfortunately, it’s one of those times when there’s a definite, painful line between what’s right and wrong, but being bad just feels SO GOOD! I’m going to have to work on it. Again. For the umpteenth time. But that’s what life’s all about – just fighting until you win (or die).

My fridge is already stocked with tons of organic fruits & veggies, organic free-range eggs, and some other assorted favorites. I try to go organic with as much as possible since I’m trying to cut down on the amount of chemicals I ingest (I also use all organic beauty and body products). I plan to have kids one day, and I’m trying to do my best to set them up with a fair chance at health from the starting line. Strangely enough, I’ve found that Costco stocks a lot of organic produce, so it’s actually ended up being cheaper for me to be healthy in a lot of cases. I’ve also recently started eating yogurt in the morning to up my protein intake and see if all of the stories about yogurt encouraging weight loss are correct. We’ll see. For now it’s nice because I don’t have to think of what to eat in the morning, just grab a yogurt. Anything to keep me away from the drive in window at Dunkin Donuts. I have a feeling those extra-large coffees with cream and sugar were a big part of my downfall this winter.

So there you have it – the ‘diet’, if you can call it that. Basically I’m going to be counting calories and eating less crap. The hardest part is going to be kicking the soda addiction. I was off it for a long time, but it keeps coming back around when I least expect it. That stuff is poison, I know it, and I know it doesn’t help with maintaining a healthy diet. Hopefully this time I can dump the habit for good.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you a little more about Bikram class. I went to one tonight and now I’m feeling completely relaxed and ready for some shut eye.