Contest Day Or Other

My internet is super wonky right now, and it's kind of a miracle I can even get this page to load. But that maybe tells you a little bit about me--internet finally working (sort of) after a day and a half, and do I go pay bills or order last-minute Christmas presents? Nope. I blog.
I want to respond to everyone's great comments about what they're proud of this week, but I don't know how much longer I'll be connected, so I'll let Holly do that. (You're welcome, Holly!) I am really impressed with everything you're doing though--even if you don't think you did anything right but survive the week. And way to go with all the losses! This has to be one of the hardest times of the year to lose weight, and it makes me happy to see so many of you actually doing it!

Oh, and my proudest moment of the week is finishing off my 12-week chart with every single day filled out. And I started my 2nd one. While I was on vacation. Woot!

I'll leave you with this article I found at at VitalJuiceDaily.com that lists 12 tips to keep yourself from quitting. It's a good'un, so go check it out.

Honk Honk

That's me, tooting my own horn.

(I guess this could be subtitled, "I Can't Think of Anything to Blog About, So I'm Going to Tell You How Great I Am Instead.")

Today marks 6 weeks of tracking my food. Everything I ate. Every day. 6 weeks. For me, that is huge. I think to this point my record is 3 weeks, maaaaaybe 3 1/2. But probably not. Today is also 3 weeks of drinking 100+ ounces of water everyday. And in 2 days, my 12-week chart will be 3/4ths of the way full. So yeah, I'm pretty awesome.

I will pause whilst you go hurl.

But that's really not my big deal this week. I am so grateful that the tracking and the water and the exercise feels commonplace and that, while I'm pretty pleased with myself about my consistency (usually me and consistency, well, we are not friends), it's almost so normal that it's almost no biggie. (I say "almost" because I'm trying to be better at giving myself credit for the good stuff I do.) No, my big deal this week is that I didn't quit.

I really wanted to. The combination of the scale jump and the abysmal running experience--along with a bunch of other junk going on--really did a number on my head. I would not have been surprised if my period had shown up this week, even though it's a week too soon, that's how bad my brain was. In fact, I was almost hoping for it because then I'd have some explanation other than "Crazy." But alas, it was just me.

Yesterday in particular was really hard. All day long I just wanted to stuff myself with whatever I could find. Yesterday just happened to also be the day I did my weekly grocery shopping. It's truly a miracle I didn't leave the store with nothing but a cart full of Oreos and Pop Tarts. I am so not kidding. But I didn't. Stuff on my list only, thank you (though I did buy a bag of really giant ziploc bags, because you never know when you might need a really giant ziploc bag, and around here if you don't buy something when you see it, you're not likely to ever get the chance again, so that was an impulse buy, though thankfully an inedible one). I spent the evening talking myself out of making cookies, a task made harder when a friend updated her Facebook status to read "is making cookies." Even Facebook was against me!

I didn't quit though. I even exercised 3 times yesterday. And after spending all week higher than last week's weigh-in, the scale was down 1 pound this morning. Still not caught up with last week's gain, but it's in the right direction, and I'm pleased.