Day 29

Yesterday's post was a little bit negative in nature, in part because I'm still peeved that my knee hasn't magically gotten better.  One positive fact that I was able to take from yesterday though, was that even without much exercise to maintain my fitness over the past two to three weeks, I was still able to pretty much run most of 8 miles.  I did slow down to a walk twice during the run (once to go up a steep hill, once to give my knee a rest).  Still, it's not something I would have even imagined doing two years ago.

One thing I have noticed over the last few days though has been a trend in my thinking about the diet.  A lot of my plans now start with, "once I cross 200 pounds."  It's become something of a mantra in my head for future planning.  On the one hand, it shouldn't be too hard since it's only 10 pounds or so away.  On the other hand it represents a change in my thinking as my diet has stagnated a bit in the last few weeks. 

One of my keys to success on these Challenges has been the fact that I don't "care" about my weight.  Obviously weight loss is the goal (and fat loss even more of the goal), but none of the actual diet goals or signposts are really weight based.  It makes something nice to post to Facebook, and put in the sidebar here, but not something that actually "matters" for the success or failure of the diet.  Now that seems to be changing a bit, and the fact that I haven't seen the weight loss through the first month of the new Challenge that I hoped, has put a weight goal into my head.  Success is now more and more based on that 200 pound threshold.

Once the knee gets better, and once my vacation is done, and I'm free to go back to my established patterns of diet and exercise I suspect that I'll be getting back to a point where it's points that matter not weight.  But as the last few weeks have made clear, weight does matter, I just didn't notice it when I was losing it so easily.

Food today:  egg and cheese sandwich with extra cheese for breakfast (400 calories), homemade burger and one potato's worth of fries (1200 calories), a roll and some cheese for dinner/snacking (400 calories).  No exercise today again as I was once more resting my knee.

Today's Results:
Daily Food Total:  2000
Exercise: 0
Points Earned:  1000
Total Points Earned:  34585
Points to go:  165415