Motivation, Past and Present

Today we had a combined family celebration of both Canadian Thanksgiving and my father's birthday. We had a wonderful buffet brunch and there was so much exquisite food I had to pick and choose which delicacies I really wanted because I was not physically able to eat everything I wanted to try, even if I stuck to very small portions.

Because it was Thanksgiving brunch, I made certain to have some turkey and stuffing. The other "must haves" on my personal menu were from the seafood station -- oysters, herring rollmops, maple-glazed cedar plank salmon -- things I rarely get to have except at fancy restaurants. I also chose items from the chafing dishes in the centre of the room: peameal bacon (which Americans call "Canadian bacon") and polish sausage, along with less standard fare like brussels sprouts, chicken curry, roast potatoes, and a pierogie. I skipped the eggs benedict to leave room for dessert. Or should I say desserts, plural, since there were so many to choose from at the dessert table. I had to completely bypass the salads, bread, cheese, and charcuterie, as well as the stations where they made crepes, waffles, and omelettes to order -- even though they all contained mouth-watering offerings that given unlimited opportunity I would have loved to try.

Thank goodness my stomach is too small to physically handle a larger amount of food or I certainly would have indulged myself even more than I did!

By the time I was done, I figure I had a 1300+ calorie meal. But with an additional 400 calories combined for breakfast and dinner (breakfast was a protein bar; dinner was a salad with plenty of lettuce, a few cherry tomatoes, a couple of crackers for some crunch, and a low-calorie dressing) I have still done all right today.

Factor in my usual Sunday-morning Step class and the damage -- if any -- should be minimal.

I spent the rest of the afternoon compiling a photo gallery on Facebook of my weight loss progress, all the way from my Day 1 "fat photo" to my "knee socks at the gym" double portrait with Dan the Man from a couple of days ago. This was so that my mom could visualize the whole process, since she had asked me today whether I had made sure to take plenty of photos along the way.

It took me a long time to put that all together.

Apparently I have collected these photos in a few different places at different times. Then, so I could make sure I put the photos in order and write accurate captions, I had to double-check the dates of the photos with my summary spreadsheet of dates, weights, and sizes.

Yes, I have such a thing.

Did you know you can export data from the weight tracker on SparkPeople and open it up as a spreadsheet? Over the year it took me to lose the weight, I kept a master copy that I constantly updated so I knew how much weight I was losing per month, and with my own notes and calculations I also knew how my clothing sizes were changing and what my BMI was at the end of each month.

Maybe that's a bit obsessive, but it certainly kept me motivated.

Hey, some people create vision collages; I created a spreadsheet instead.

It worked for me!