192

Happy Mid-August to everyone! For those of us in Minnesota, I hope you are all enjoying the nicer summer weather we've had this week.

Today is the end of week 22 of my Atkins diet, and I weighted in at 192 this morning, which is a total lost of 31 lbs. The past month was not a huge amount of "loss" because of a 5-day vacation in Maine (and who isn't going to eat great food on vacation, not to mention great seafood in Maine!) but even with that trip, it's still going pretty well (over 1 lb/week average). Yesterday was particularly fun because we went and did some clothes shopping, and I bought 3 new pairs of skinnier jeans (not to be confused with "skinny fit" jeans as my build is not designed to wear those no matter how much weight I lose!). Just to give you some perspective, last winter (before I started this) I finally had to break down and buy two pairs of jeans and a pair of black pants in bigger sizes because I couldn't fit into the clothes I had anymore. The jeans I bought yesterday are 4 sizes smaller than those, and still actually had some breathing room. I'm going to give my larger-sized clothes to charity this week so that I don't have anything to fall back on (not that I have any intention or thought that I'm ever going to slip to that level again). My goal is still 180 by the end of the year - even if I go at the 1 lb/week pace, that is still easily doable (and if I don't quite make it, no big deal, I WILL make it by next year!).

I'm also entering my final two weeks of summer semester for grad school - it's hard to believe that I'm already done with 2 1/2 months of this 14-month program, it's going fast! I get a WHOLE WEEK off between summer and fall, at which point both Erin and I will be in classes, so you may not see us much in the fall (hopefully we'll get a few breaks!) My fall semester looks to be pretty full, as I'll not only be taking the 8 credits of the program classes, but a 3-credit elective. Eleven credits plus work, plus activities...well it's going to be full. But I'm looking forward to it.

Back to studying...