Day 119 Thoughts Of Maintenance Already

Folks I have to say, I had an awesome day today. I took Lauren to her first Division I college basketball game. My friend Wayne had some free tickets through his job and he invited Lauren and I to go with his daughter Maddie and himself to go watch the Razorbacks play an exhibition game at Bud Walton Arena. It is one of the best college basketball arenas in the nation. The girls immediately loved it when we walked in as it is an architectual masterpiece in, at least in my mind. We had a blast watching the game. Lauren took great interest in the game, and she is apparently a natural born cheerleader because she modified almost all of her football cheers she learned this year to fit for the Razorback basketball team! And she was a pro at calling the Hogs by the end of the night, it made me so proud!

I was also proud of myself for having navigated a day that was not one of my usual structured days with good choices in food and quantities to keep me at my preferred 1500 calories or below level. I had lunch with the girls I used to work with at my old law firm. We had a great time catching up at the local Cuban restaurant. This place has wonderful healthy choices for their lunch menu. I had a charbroiled chicken breast, a small potato with stuffed with just a slight bit of guac, and maybe a quarter cup of yellow rice for lunch. The chicken breast was like 6 ounces, so I halfed it and took the rest for left overs. The rice I eventually wound up throwing most of it out. I did eat the potato but my research showed it to be like 70 calories, so that was a nice discovery. I knew we were going to be leaving from my office to go up to Fayetteville, so I saved my left overs to eat right before we left. My thought process was I eat before we leave and two goals are met. I have eaten and it was food I know the calorie values for already, so I don't get tempted by the drive thru stop that was likely on the way or the game food, which is always yummy! And secondly, I saved some money, because drive thru or game food is not usually all that cheap! I figured if Lauren was hungry, I could feed her at one of the two places for fairly cheap and I would be tied over till we got home tonight. It was a well planned out and well executed plan!! I pulled it off to a tee!! So all told, I had a total of 1395 calories after a waaay outside my routine day! I love those days! It gives me hope for the future!

Continuing along that vein, I have had maintenance on my mind a lot here lately. I never planned to take the weight off this quickly in my planning stages. I suspect that at some point I will slow down, but nevertheless, I am waaaay ahead of my schedule at this point. So as I am learning that planning is the key in this journey, I have began to try to formulate some plan for what I want to do weight maintenance wise when I get to that weight I feel is the right one. I have thought about dialing down the exercise some to weight maintenance levels, I have debated about upping my daily calorie allowance for weight maintenance levels, I have thought about how often I want to weigh in so I can moderate my weight. all these things need to be thought out BEFORE you get to where yu are going. Every time in the past, I only was focused on getting to a weight, once I got there, it was Ollie Ollie Oxen Free baby! I began the terrible eating habits all over again because I had gotten to my end goal without a maintenance plan. So I am stemming the tide now by trying to plan ahead and be ready to employ a maintenance plan. I do know this, any plan is better than none. In life and work, I have come to find the first plan in something like this is never the best plan. Inevitably you will change it when you begin the debugging process. I have yet to ever get a plan right the first time, so I don't suspect the maintenance plan I come up with will be the final one this time, but I think the important thing is, I AM PLANNING AHEAD FOR MAINTENANCE! Do you know what else my planning ahead for maintenance means? I have presupposed my success in weight loss! That is a great feeling and like I have said so many times before, the future vision is the key to success. Not the two days from now vision, but the 2 weeks, 2 months, and 2 years from now vision. It helps keep me moving forward every day. One of the things I like to do when I am walking is think how much better I feel and look right this moment, and then start envisioning this walk and how i will have changed by January, then again in April and then how good I will look and feel walking down the aisle at my graduation! I was so disappointed in my picture for my Associates Degree graduation. I though the big ol' robe woudl kinda hide my obesity some, but it did not. I will be so much happier to see this picture I am betting!

I have been sitting on an NSV for a week now. Not sure how I have left it out of all my posts to date as I was so super uber excited about it when it happened. Kathy and I had to take a trip to the new resale shop in Fort Smith last week for a very special trip to me. I finally admitted that my XXL shirts were making me look ridiculous as they were all just too big on me. So we went to Savers and bough me 4 XL shirts and a pair of size 36 jeans!!!!! I have never been excited about clothes shopping before, but this was a super special trip for me! I will always remember that day for years to come. I thought so much about the fact that from this point forward, I can shop for shirts so much easier! I have been having trouble in the recent past with finding the bigger shirts in styles I like. Now I can buy those shirts I see that are fashionable but don't go above a XL!! Glory to God, Hallelujah!! Woo!!