If you could bottle it, you'd make a billion dollars

So I can't really explain my recent enthusiasm or my recent results, except in terms of each other. Where the energy and the focus has been coming from is open to more debate. My best guess is that doing well while on vacation somewhat shocked me into a more deep down, instinctive confidence in myself and my ability to do this. Plus, I have more energy generally right now than I have had for a long time.

Which, as an aside... if Calories are a unit of energy, and we eat food to get energy, why is it that dieting causes a increase in energy level? Liz said yesterday that it was simply a matter that I had a lot less weight to carry around than I did before, and that may be part of it. But not all... I really feel just bouncy and upbeat most of the day.... like I want to start dancing or jogging in place just to burn off the extra energy or something.

Anyway, going back to the theory that my enthusiasm is generating my results and my results are generating my enthusiasm... today I'm down to just under 362. Two days left to go for the week, and I'm already past 6 lbs on the week!

On the down side, at some point i HAVE to slow down. I figure that right now, I have so much extra weight that the dangers in losing too fast are nothing compared to the dangers of carrying around the weight... and I just assumed I would slow way down after the first couple of weeks as my body got used to the new diet and rebelled against the effort. That clearly hasn't happened yet.

I don't know where, but somewhere down the road there'll come a time where it is just more unhealthy to lose five or six pounds a week than it is to carry that extra weight. If my strange and unprecedented (for me, that is) sharp decline hasn't begun to level out on its own by then, I'll have to rethink some of my strategies.

But for right now, I'm loving it!


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Liz and I found this particularly unflattering photo of me from last summer, to post as a "before" photo. We're at my parent's house, and Liz talked me into wearing her sunhat for a photo. The way I'm sitting really emphasizes my enormous gut, so it is slightly exaggerated (but not as much as I'd like to pretend). You see now why there aren't many photos of me from this period... I can barely stand to look at ones like this myself.