It's been four months

It has been four months since I have had a new low on the scale. At first I was patient because weight loss in never linear.  I have been pleased that I have been maintaining within a ten pound range. 

But the truth is I don't want to maintain, I am not at maintenance weight. I want to keep on losing another 40+ pounds. 

These past 4 months were not wasted. I feel that I have been learning a lot. How to travel both for work and vacation and balance out my eating plan. I have been doing a lot of mental work to accept that I need to change old thoughts that don't serve me and contributed to my weight issues. 

I don't want to be a foodie anymore. I want to find other healthy ways to celebrate and commemorate important events in my life. I don't want to spend much time trying out new recipes or creating new dishes or eating at new places. I do better when my food choices are limited. I don't want to turn to food to buffer discomfort. I want to be okay with the fact that in order for the end result to change what I put into it needs to change also. I want to keep learning and growing and I want to accept things that aren't easy.

It's interesting to me that these are not universal at all. Other people may need to change other stuff in order to lose. There are plenty of thin people who can be foodies or cook a lot or bake or celebrate with lots of feasting. Currently this is not me.

Primed with this insight I am going to start tweaking things with more deliberation if I don't see a new scale low in 2 to 3 weeks.  We'll see what happens. It will be interesting no matter what.

post Europe

Well my vacation is over and the 4+ days of jet-lag have almost cleared out. I was super happy to see that I did not gain weight over my vacation even though there was quite a bit of carbs and wine over the 2+ weeks. 

In fact it seems that my weight range has shifted downwards by about 3#. 

I attribute that to being in a totally different food environment and my overall stress levels being lower and all the food being different on the micro level. Different water and different soils growing the food.  The same thing happened to me the last time I spent a couple of weeks in Europe. Of course my activity levels are also different. I tend to do lots of walking on vacation. Most days I walked until my feet were sore and I almost limped back to the apartment.

I feel so much more confident going forward with my eating and maintaining my weight loss. Although I probably will not make my goal of 100 pounds gone in a year I still feel good about my (slow) downward weight trend and my increasing health and comfort.

Now I am looking forward to the rest of the summer. Doing some fasting. Maybe doing a bit of carnivore for a couple of week or months. Or perhaps I will wait for cool weather to do that...
 

Europe, Keto and Food

Food on vacation has been going fairly well. 
I cannot find 100% chocolate any where and I really miss it. 
I have figured out bacon and eggs and olives and so much cheese at home in the apartment. 
There is lots of Indonesian and Suriname take-away. Both yummy and easy to avoid rice, bread and potatoes.
My blood glucose and ketone numbers have been good even with the occasional piece of bread, potatoes or spoon of rice or fruit. 
My scale isn't working but clothing feels normal.
Stress is way down.  
Italy next, but I am not fussed about it. I feel confident that I can handle it.
All is all vacation has been going well and I am looking forward to seeing the dogs and getting back to fasting times.