I’m now over 100 days into my journey and I’m truly beginning to feel that this is a true lifestyle change. Today when I caught myself actually counting out the number of pretzel sticks when I was grabbing a quick snack, that’s when I knew I had arrived. Especially when I realized that even though the label said 28 sticks was a serving size and I only counted out 14, yessirree-bob, that’s a major lifestyle difference.

So, what’s been your realization that your life has really changed and you’re not just dieting anymore?

I’m 90+ days into my journey and, by the scale, I have now lost 10% of my body weight. Woohoo! Still a long way to go, but I’m on my way!

Of course, when I found this out, I wanted to see what other milestones I could aim for. Well, that was a mistake. I’ve been trying to keep my eyes focused on just each day at a time, with short mini-goals. I confess, when I started seeing how really far I have to go, I was getting a bit depressed. To get out of the obese weight range. Yikes! I have to lose 80 pounds before I’m considered just overweight. Well, at least I only have to lose about 25 more pounds to stop being considered severely obese.

Charts, charts, charts. How depressing! I guess I’ll go drown my sorrow in carrot sticks.

Woo-hoo! It was my birthday this week. I went out to my favorite restaurant and ate my favorites (in moderation) and actually lost 2 pounds this week! That’s a total of 25 pounds since I began my journey.

Not much to say beyond that. It’s so wonderful to know I can have special occasion celebrations and still continue with my new lifestyle choices. Yippee!

This week I celebrated my birthday by achieving my first mini-goal. And, yes, it was a SV (scale victory), not an NSV and I’m very happy.

When I first started this weight loss journey, I had in mind to get down to 250 pounds by Christmas (which would put me 41 pounds down from my highest weight). But as I limped, lurched, and stumbled my way through my first few weeks, the idea of a half-year goal just seemed too far away. So, I did some math and charting and figured if I was to reach that goal, I would have to be down 23 pounds by my birthday, September 26.

Once I put that goal in my mind (and on my refrigerator), I felt so much less stress. That’s an achievable goal, something I can see in the near future.

This past Monday, when I stepped on the scale, I had achieved my first mini-goal.Yes!!!!

And, second success of the week, I actually celebrated my birthday with a lovely dinner out (treated by my parents at my favorite restaurant) and felt no guilt about it at all, because I made wise choices. This was a major mental break-through for me. I wasn’t treating this as a “cheat” meal. I wasn’t looking at it as, “Oh, well, it’s my birthday, throw the rules out the window” and then feeling guilty and miserable the next day.

Now, I did abandon the “diet” for the day. I deliberately planned for my birthday dinner and made the conscious choice BEFORE the day came that this would be a day of eating at my TDEE and not a deficit day. Wow! After eating at a deficit for 75 days, when I saw how much I could eat without a deficit, it was like a receiving a birthday present. To know that I could eat that much as a special treat and know I was not binging or breaking from my long-term lifestyle goals was such an eye-opener. I had very low-cal breakfast and lunch, to make sure I left enough “eat” room for the dinner celebration.

My parents took me to Stonewood Grill, my favorite steak restaurant! I was sad to see so few entries for their menu here on MFP. The day before my birthday, I went through the menu and picked my favorites and then did some comparisons to other similar selections on MFP. I made sure I would be armed with the right information before going, so I wouldn’t be distracted by lack-of-knowledge from my long-term goals. Now, they did have a wonderful “special” that day, which was not on the menu. But it was just a variation of one of the standard meals and didn’t take too much mental arithmetic to figure out that it was within the calorie range I had allotted myself. Ummmmmm, bone-in filet mignon. Delicious!

Of course, I did not allow for the complimentary chocolate cake they provide to all birthday people. Well, of course, I couldn’t NOT have it. I asked for three forks with it, so my parents could share. I had three bites. Yes, me, the fat old broad had only THREE bites of chocolate cake. Enough to get a wonderful taste and that’s all I wanted.

I confess, I have back-slid on one of my goals this week: weighing myself. I have been just weighing weekly, but since my birthday, I have been weighing daily. Just in case I did see a jump, I wanted to take appropriate steps. And, amazingly, I’m actually down in weight this week I know, I know. I can’t trust daily fluctuations, but it has made me feel like counting another small victory. I’m just crossing my fingers that my Monday weigh-in that weight has stayed off.

I’m sure these sound like silly little things to get excited over. But for me, these are major accomplishments, both in mentally, physically, and in terms of NSVs and SVs.

Now, on to my next goal: 40 pounds off by Christmas.