A new goal for a new me

I consider myself to be a healthy person and I try to live a fairly healthy lifestyle. I exercise regularly and try to eat food that's good for me. It's been a few years since I've put conscious thought into my diet and exercise and I've seen good results. However, I've been slipping the last several months: unhealthy rebound eating after the wedding, followed by the holidays, followed by extreme overeating on the cruise all resulted in some weight gain. I've plateaued, but haven't been able to really lose it. I tried just going back to being healthy but that hasn't been enough, I need to do something extra.

I've been struggling for months trying to find a solution, a plan to kick start my weight loss. I wanted something practical and easy to stick with. I'm a person that loves to eat great food, and there is no way that I could give up eating anything entirely. Well, that's not entirely true. I can give up the junk, the overly processed stuff that has slowly crept back into my diet. Basically, I needed something that would motivate me to make good food choices, but also allow me the freedom to indulge. And of course, the easier something is, the more likely I'll stick to it. I didn't want too many rules.

I saw a few posts on a blog I read, Kottke. org, about a diet created by Steve Ward and aptly named The Steve Ward Diet. It's extremely simple:

"All that you need for my diet is graph paper, a ruler, and a pencil. The horizontal axis is time, one line per day. The vertical axis is weight in lbs. You plot your current weight on the left side of the paper. You plot your desired weight on a desired date towards the right side, making sure that you've left the correct number of lines in between (one per day). You draw a line from the current weight/date to the desired weight/date. Every morning you weigh yourself and plot the result. If the point is below the line, you eat whatever you want all day. If the point is above the line, you eat nothing but broccoli or some other low-calorie food."

The first time I read about it I thought it was neat and moved on. Then last week it hit me, this was definitely for me. I bought a scale and created an excel spreadsheet to chart my progress. I'm into my second week and have already seen results.


My goal is to lose eleven pounds in two months. I think it's doable, and if I have a huge success I might even go further to my "dream weight".

Here's why I'm excited about this method of dieting: it holds me responsible on a daily basis. If I just set an end goal then I can always say "well I'll just do better tomorrow to make up for it". But I have a goal for every single day. And sure, weight can fluctuate day to day for a variety of reasons, but I still think that looking at the scale every morning will influence my eating behavior that day. It's only only been a week, but I'm right on track. So far I've only been below the line and able to "eat normal" but I'm still trying to eat light wherever possible in anticipation of other days when I might have more reason to splurge. And I think that the closer I get to my goal, the harder it's going to be to lose those extra few pounds (which in truth I've been trying to lose for a few years). But I've made the goal, and damn it, I'm going to reach it.

So there you have it. After months of talking about it, I finally have a plan and a goal! And I'm very excited about it. I'm hoping that by talking about it here, that I'll be accountable to more than just myself.

Another nice outcome of this is that I finally know how much I weigh. The scale I had before was old and I always new it was off, but I didn't know how far off. I thought I was maybe ten pounds heavier than I actually was and that misconception has had me really bummed about my physical appearance for quite a while. But it turns out I'm not that fat! And even though I have several more pounds to go before I'm fully satisfied, I already feel skinny. I think I might even wear my bikini this weekend at the beach.