159 miles down, plus a day at the races

Another week down, another 5 training walks and 26 miles in the books, for a total of 159.2 miles walked in total so far.  To put that in perspective if I walked 159 miles from Toronto I would have walked all the way to Bothwell, Ontario, a 2 and a half hour drive along the way to London.  Never heard of Bothwell, have you?  Neither have I.  But I do know that it is 159 miles from Toronto. 

All this walking is having a good effect - - I am down 2.1 pounds from last week.  This brings me back into overweight territory from obese, a huge improvement from where I re-started at the beginning of June.  I am 10.7 pounds down from my re-start, and on the way to my previous low.  Ever so slowly, of course, but that's the way these things work. 

In an interesting testament to the depression and work stress that I had been going through at my old job, my weight now, 7 weeks after recommitting to working out and eating properly, is right back to around what I was a year ago at this time. 

I can look at this in a couple of ways.  I can get all depressed about all the time I have lost and wasted over the past year just to end up in the same place that I was a year ago.  Or I can take the fact that I am fighting my way back as a positive thing.  All of my good habits that I have developed over the past couple of years, and my increasing levels of fitness are allowing me to take back control of my weight even though I let it get out of control.  I refuse to give up all the progress that I have made over the past 2 and a half years, even though I have slipped back behind some of the goals I had achieved.  And it is happening slowly, to be sure, but I am winning back those goals one by one again. 

Since I recommitted myself to working out and eating well 7 weeks ago I have broken into the light-heavyweight class, and, this week, I made it back into the overweight category (from being obese).  Next on the list is to break the 200 pound mark again, and then it will be to break 190 pounds.  From that, it will be just a hop and a skip to my previous low weight.

I know that a huge percentage of people gain the weight back within a year after they lose a large amount of weight.  I certainly did the first time I lost weight - - within a couple of years I was well on my way to my new highest weight of all time. 

This time, I like to focus on the fact that when my weight started creeping back up once my job situation resolved itself I took back control over my eating.  7 weeks in, I am feeling almost back to my old healthy self, and I love it.  It is still one day at a time, but those days get easier and easier. 

On a completely unrelated point, a couple of weekends ago the Nerd and I went to the races, which was the genesis of the hat post a couple of posts back.  Due to popular demand, here are some pictures from the event:

We were in the last row of our section, so the Very Large Hat did not block anyone's view, thank goodness.  It was very windy at the race, so the hat did go airborne once, I have to admit.  That being said, it was the perfect hat for the event, and overall we both had a great time.