Day 365: 271 lbs

Today marks the end of one year of dieting. After one year, I have been both more successful than I expected, but less successful than I'd hoped.

Today I am 44 pounds lighter than I was when I started. That in itself is a pretty darn good accomplishment. But I first hit 271 pounds back on December 7th, 2005, so pretty much everything since then has been simply maintaining my weight. The lowest weight I hit was 262 pounds, and I've been in that vicinity a handful of times.

I've been more successful than I expected since I know from experience that I have a hard time taking off weight and keeping it off. It has been a long time since I've ended any one-year period 44 pounds lighter than I started it. So my reasonable expectation was that I probably wouldn't succeed much at this diet either. But I'd been hoping that I could lose a total of 120 pounds (bringing me to 195 pounds), and I'm still a long way away from that goal.

Some of the positive changes:

• A year ago, I was straining (literally) to fit into size-46 pants. Today I comfortably fit into size 44's. The difference between 44 and 46 is the difference between buying clothes off the rack at Target and mail ordering them.
• Lots of people have commented that I've lost weight.
• I'm not so averse to having my picture taken.
• I fit much better into a coach seat on an airplane. Still not comfortably, but much better.
• I can now wear an XL T-shirt without looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy. XXL T-shirts are very baggy. I have a whole drawer full of XL T-shirts I couldn't wear for a long time.
  

I credit this blog with helping me do as well as I have (even though I don't have any readers). The discipline of weighing myself every morning and posting it has helped make sure that I don't completely stop thinking about my diet--and the more time I spend thinking about losing weight, the more successful I am.

In fact, one of the big differences between this blog today and a year ago is that I often posted long entries multiple times a day about dieting and losing weight. Keeping the big goal (size 38 pants) in the front of my mind helps me maintain discipline. I tend to lose discipline when I start to get apathetic. Apathy is the enemy.

I definitely plan to continue this blog and keep logging my weight every day. I still hope to get down to 195 lbs, though in the near term breaking under 250 would be very satisfying. Maybe this one year landmark will help get me re-energized about losing weight.