Tuesday

200.8 this morning.  Got rid of last week's 2-pound gain.

I've only lost 5-6 pounds in the last month (average over the past 7 months has been 9 pounds per month).  It still looks like I'll break through the 200 pound barrier in the next week. 

I wanna keep going to 185 (last weight I successfully maintained) and then to 169 (no longer overweight), but I'm going to be less rigorous about it.  I may start doing a lose-y, maintain-y thing where my eating life looks closer to maintenance and I settle into a workout schedule that I can do long-term.  I'm close to the point where as long as I'm moving downward, I'm OK with doing it slooowly. 

Thanks for all the supportive comments about Dude.  After the conversation we had last weekend, I find that I have no urge to go back online to check his status (at least so far).  I do trust that he's not meeting anyone else - he's spending all his free time with me!  He's completely new to online dating and honestly didn't know until I pointed it out to him.  There's no upside to me checking again.

We had a really nice weekend.  We went to a farmer's market in Saratoga Springs, then took a long nature walk.  Then checked out an Irish pub for the whole St Patrick's Day experience (his first in the US).  Later we grilled out burgers and had sweet potato medallions, bare burgers and mixed greens salad for dinner.  He stayed over.  Then Sunday he helped with construction work on my bathroom and we smoked a big hunk of salmon on the grill and had it with broccoli. I had EMT class last night, but we'll get together this evening for our first joint workout, then dinner prepared by him.  I have to keep on reminding myself (like, constantly) to focus on the moment and enjoy what's going on right now. 'Cause there's a lot to enjoy.

I started serious weight loss on Sept 1 at 264 pounds.  I've been eating about 1300 calories a day and working out 5 days a week for roughly 200-250 cals per workout.  Losing 63 pounds in 7 months has been a wonderful, empowering dream.  Random people from work are stopping me and telling me that I look great, which makes me feel good, but a little uncomfortable. Someone actually said that I'm getting thin and I don't need to lose any more, letting me know I'm pretty close to the goal. I can cross my legs for real and feel my hips when I'm laying down!

While I want to keep going with the losing, I also need to get used to not being invisible any more.  Get used to people looking at me again and how they look at me, and how people interact with me differently than a year ago.  The CDCC and E2E challenges and the support from you guys has completely made the difference in me being able to get this far!