When I started the Loving Yourself Thin Series, I mentioned that I would be doing the exercises right along with you. I did, and because of that, I’ve gotten back on track with my own weight loss progress and fitness goals. That’s right; even though I had excellent progress with my Ban on Refined Sugar Experiment and the Six Week Body Makeover experiment, I did go through a lull in my motivation after that, and just wasn’t making progress.

A major focus of the Loving Yourself Thin exercises is to ramp yourself up with some natural motivation to take care of your health, body, and fitness by loving yourself exactly as you are now. So, this is what I’ve been doing, and there were a couple of exercises that were turning points for me in my personal progress, and that gave me natural motivation to get back on track:

• What Do You Really Want From Food?
• Forgive Yourself for Past Weight Loss Failures
• Criticizing Yourself For Overeating Won’t Help You Lose Weight
• Forgive Yourself for Gaining Weight

I am convinced that in order to not only lose weight, but also to keep it off, I must remain conscious of why I want to eat when I’m not hungry (What Do You Really Want From Food?) and continue to abstain from criticizing myself (Criticizing Yourself For Overeating Won’t Help You Lose Weight). Another large part of my progress has been forgiving myself for regaining approx. 30 lbs that I had previously lost (lost 43.5 pounds in 2004 – kept off for over a year). I have been stuck in regretting the weight regain, however when it comes down to it, I cannot do anything about the past; my power lies only in the present moment.

By doing the Loving Yourself Thin exercises, I have moved past these roadblocks and have gotten back on track with my clean eating and regular exercise. As of this Monday, October 29, these are my stats:

• Weight: 159.5
• Inches: 291.75
• BMI: 26.5
• BF %: 37.2

To track my progress, here are some before pictures of me (taken on Sunday, October 28, 2007), which have a funny/revealing story to them: if you look at the one on the left, you really can’t tell that my pants don’t fit because my fleece is covering that up. However, in the picture on the right (below), you can clearly see that I cannot even zip up my pants! I think this is pretty funny because I’ve used my fleeces or sweatshirts as cover-ups before, to cover up the fact that my pants don’t quite fit. Have you ever done this?

At least I’m getting a laugh out of this instead of criticizing myself for it, since those sweatshirts can cover up the fact that you do have some weight to lose. However, I am taking healthy action now, and that’s all that I can ask of myself. 😉

I also have some other weight loss before pictures that were taken at the same time that I might share with you later, after I’ve made some more progress. As far as my goals, here are my current ones:

• Get back into my pants so they fit comfortably.
• Increase my muscle tone and strength.
• To live with high energy and clarity of thought.
• Goal weight of 125, which could change once I get there – I am more interested in being fit than in being skinny.

Next Monday I will have an update for you on my weight loss progress and I will also give you the details on how I will accomplish my weight loss and fitness goals. I hope that you have also received natural motivation from doing the exercises in my Loving Yourself Thin series, or if you haven’t done them yet, that you do!

Thanks to John for asking me how I was doing with my personal weight loss and fitness progress, and to Easton for suggesting that I share more of my progress here at Fearless Fat Loss. You can get an update on John’s weight loss progress every Monday.