The First Day of the Rest of My Weight Loss

Today is the first day of the rest of my weight loss.   I'm kick-starting the final phase of my weight loss.  Lately I've been languishing, not losing weight, eating poorly and feeling sorry for myself about it all.  No more. I have the power to change.  It's up to me and the choices I make.  Below is a graph of my weight loss thus far - the purple dots are my weigh-ins, the red line is my goal line as set by sparkpeople.com and the y-axis is my weight in pounds (I took the liberty of editing out the numbers).  If you look closely at it, you'll notice a couple of things. 

1)There were individual weeks when I went up, but if you look at it the whole thing it's a pretty consistent downward slope.

2) The past several months I've not been making my goal line. 

3) My strongest months were December through March, perfect for this rebooting of my weight loss that is beginning this week.

I'm back from Thanksgiving with four full weeks before Christmas vacation.  I gained some over the last two weeks.  I'm not exactly sure how much, but I know I have to lose more than 10 pounds to make it to 100 pounds lost. This means I can't make it to 100 pounds lost by Christmas, which is sad, but acceptable.  If I lose a steady and safe two pounds a week, I should make it to my goal by January 17 (just in time to run my next 10K!).

I need to break that large goal down into smaller goals that I can track daily but will help me achieve the larger goal.
Here are my shorter-term goals:
Eat five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.
Drink 64 ounces of water a day.
Exercise (cardio) five to six times a week for 45 minutes.
Weight train at least twice a week, although three times is preferable.
Eat between 1300 and 1600 calories daily.

None of this is really very different from what I had been doing when I was on track with weight loss before, but I need to get back to the basics if I want to be successful. I feel prepared for the week. I have my meals made and my fruits and snacks ready to go.  Here goes nothing!