Hi to everyone who has dropped in on this thread and passed on their congratulations!!!
Your kind words and encouragement mean a lot to me.
However, I feel like I owe you a kind of explanation, (or even apology???)
I wonder whether some of you might think I have "cheated" or "moved the goalposts", so I'd like to explain myself a little.
This time last year I decided that my goal weight was 61kg/135lbs, which I almost reached for about a minute. Then there was the football here in Europe, and I watched a lot of football on TV and drank beer... So I went back up to about 138lbs by mid-summer. I maintained my weight till Christmas, then kind of lost it, what with one thing and another, and by January 12th 2009, I was back up to 146lbs.
At some point in the spring, I changed my goal weight from 135lbs to 130lbs, as I had decided that I really would like to see the number 59 (my old goal weight in kilos) as I felt the psychological effect of seeing a number 5 at the beginning of my kilo weight would be tremendous!!!
However, I have just had a change in thinking due to having read a new book, "The Schwarzbein Principle II: The Transition" by Dr Diana Schwarzbein.
Reading this book, which goes into some detail about the hormones insulin, adrenaline and cortisol, I saw myself described. Since my late teens/early 20s, I have been what you could call an "adrenaline junkie". Rushing around, doing loads of stuff, getting a kick out of being on top of 20 jobs at once, never sitting down for longer than 5 minutes: that's me. However, I am now 45 and this way of life is no longer doing me any good.
I used to smoke, drink coffee like there was no tomorrow and drink beer pretty much every night.
When I became a mother, just over 12 years ago, I knew I wanted to change my habits and look after myself better. I have made good progress since then, but things could still be better.
In December 2001, I gave up cigarettes for good and have never looked back for a minute. By Easter 2003 I had unfortunately - giving up smoking does this to you sometimes - put on a lot of weight... My highest weight was 165lbs, which was a lot on my 5'5" frame. I managed to lose weight (on a very low-fat diet, but that is another story) and since 2004 maintained my weight more or less at about about 140lbs, going up and down a bit, but not that much.
My low-carb story started in May 2007 and I am now totally committed to this WOE as it suits my metabolism and tastes fine, but I have had a tendency to put the weight back on again, lose it again, and so on. The main reason is that I let myself get stressed out, which sometimes leads me into drinking beer, and then the weight goes back on.
Having read SPII, I now feel that the time has come for me to address the following issues:
The way I deal with stress, to stop being an adrenaline junkie, to stop dealing with stress by having alcohol, to stop relying on coffee and being busy to get this unhealthy adrenaline kick.
I have got my weight to 136.4lbs, which is perfectly acceptable! That translates into a BMI (for what it's worth) of 22.9 and I do look reasonably slim. I have decided that this weight is fine, and that, although I do not want it to go up again, my main priority is no longer getting to that "magic" 130lb mark, but to improve how I deal with stress and to wean myself off caffeine and to carry on with reducing my beer consumption.
Since January 12th 2009, I have drunk a heck of a lot less beer than I used to - just on about 40 occasions out of about 150 days (I don't have my diary here right now with the exact statistics), rather than every night which used to be the case. I am really pleased about this, but, as I say, I still feel the need to slow down and stop relying on coffee during the day.
Hence my decision to change my stats and abandon my "last five pounds" project...
I really hope that nobody feels I have "let the side down" in making this decision, but I really feel that it is the right thing for me to do. I have been able to maintain my weight for the last five years (only going up ten pounds every now and then, but then losing again) and I feel that this is not the issue any more, as I can do the maintenance thing: it's the reliance on caffeine during the day, the temptation to drink beer when I'm stressed, my tendency to rush around that I now want to deal with.
The Schwarzbein food plan is also low-carb, although not as low as Atkins induction. It allows me to eat pretty much the way I already was eating for the last two years, just with a few more carbs. So I am not "abandoning" the LC WOE or anything, I firmly believe that of the many WOE in our modern world, this has to be the healthiest, I am just shifting priorities away from focussing only on numbers, and am now going to try and improve other areas of my life.
I am reasonably confident that I will succeed as I have already made considerable improvements on various fronts!
Please wish me luck and feel free to pop into my journal!
amanda