My Journey to Lose 20 Pounds – Week 5

Week 5 of my weight loss journey – primarily using calorie counting… trying to drop 20 pounds in around 4 months time.

Well on my way now!!!! Was a frustrating last two weeks on the scale, but illness and that awful time of month always mess with the weigh in… plus, I can say I was doing OK on my intake… but far from great, and less than OK on my activity, so I can’t blame anyone but me.

But this week:

Original side photo:

This weeks side photo:

Not a huge difference, but hopefully when I hit the 10 lb mark, it will show a little more.

Anyway… I did it!!! IT!!! I got out of my doomed 202-209 pound “happy place”. Most of us, at least us older us’es, are very familiar with our personal bodies “happy places”… that weight range that we bounce around in for ages and while we don’t exceed it without vastly increased indulgences, we struggle to get out the bottom end of the spectrum, even with hard work and dedication. It’s a plateau that our bodies refuse to budge past under normal conditions and seem content to remain at.

I was NOT content!

Hoping to see the other side of the 200’s by my next post. I don’t care if it’s 199.9, I NEED this for me.

I will say, I did slightly better on my food indulgences last week… for the first time, I may actually see a weekly average of below 1500 calories come Sunday when the Fitbit week ends.

Not my best week ever, and I definitely didn’t stay in the 1200-1500 range each day, but had one nice low day to offset the worst days and did reasonably well.

If you are a Fitbit app user, you will understand the pink / blue… my goal is set to lose 1 lb per week… the app compares its estimate of the calories you burned in a day with the calories you consumed… if you are in the blue range, you could have eaten more and still met the goal… green means you are right on track and pink means you went over. On no occasion did I consume more than burnt, so that’s good… but far too much pink for my liking. However, I will say, my Fitbit is an older Charge 5, with low battery life, so every 2 days or so it needs to charge, and sometimes gets forgotten on the charger. The 1555 calorie day is likely actually green or blue, but since I wasn’t wearing my device for a large chunk of that day, it didn’t register much for calories burned.

A new Fitbit is on my wishlist for when I get back ahead again and can splurge, or for when my mother in law asks me what I want for Christmas – whichever comes first.

Oddly, it seems I can eat too little or too much, but struggle most with the “just right”.

Also, as most Fitbit users understand too well… it seems like some days I’m active and running around all day and feel like I’ve been as active as a person could possibly be, but get 0 credit, while other days I do the dishes for 30 minutes and end up with 40 minutes of “active minutes”. I know it bases a lot of it on heart rate and find it funny how some days my heart seems idle no matter what I do and other days its in the calorie burning zone for doing next to nothing… I know it’s never 100% accurate, but as long as I am doing my best, and consuming less than I burn, and seeing small drops on the scale, I figure it’s at least a starting place to measure.

Anyway – thanks again for your words of encouragement on this journey.

My kids are back in school, so I will be starting some additional blog content beyond the mundane weight loss journey soon… subscribe and check back to see more.

If anyone else is on a weight loss journey, or wants to be, and would like a friend to do it with, shoot me some comments or reach out. I would love a partner in this quest for a better self.

If anyone wants to contribute to the elliptical machine I desperately want, but cannot afford, feel free to send donations to [email protected] on Paypal or Venmo – @Caroline-Miller-12296 (Can’t blame me for trying, right????)

Stay tuned for week 6 results and onward!