I am at 11 months post op and weigh 179.6 lbs. My total weight loss to date is 66.4 lbs. I have averaged a weight loss of approximately 6 lbs per month.

I am currently purchasing size 14 pants (my 16’s are getting baggy) and L shirts (I am between a L and XL depending on the shirt). I am 5’5” tall.

Last month I wrote that I was going to be doing the Paleo eating challenge for the month of Feburary at my gym (Crossfit). I credit that for this month’s weight loss which was 6.2 lbs (I had only lost 2.8 for the month of January). The diet eliminates all grains, dairy, sugar, and beans from your diet. This wasn’t too much of stretch for me since I had given up most grains and sugars after my surgery 11 months ago. I didn’t eat/drink enough dairy to miss it that much and while I enjoy beans again I didn’t eat enough of them to really miss them either. I did miss the alcohol thoughJ. As part of the challenge we were to also drink half our body weight in ounces of water. I never made it (that would have been 12 cups of water a day!) but I drank more water during the challenge then I normally do.

I liked the challenge because it gave me some focus this past month (I was also teamed up with someone from the gym who was very nice and kept me motivated). I cooked a lot more (new recipes) this month then I normally do (my husband cooks most of the time) and ate a lot more fresh fruit and veggies. I had a few slip ups (minor) mostly because I wasn’t prepared in certain situations. The girl I was partnered with lost 10 lbs. I am supposed to get my after measurements taken today so I’ll see if I lost any inches.

The challenge is over and I plan to keep grains and sugar out but I will most likely add small amounts of cheese and beans (i.e. chili and hummus) back in.

I also upped my exercise this month. We were required to do a minimum of three workouts at the Crossfit gym during the challenge (which was what I was doing anyway) and you got extra challenge points for extra workouts. I have been averaging two extra workouts a week this month for a total of five days of working out.

I reached my personal goal during the challenge of getting into the 170’s so I am happy. My next goal is to get to 176 by my 1 year post-op anniversary, which is at the end of March. That would put me at 70 lbs lost for the year (with only 30 lbs to go to my goal).

My paleo challenge got me thinking about other challenges. I did a random internet search for anyone else who had done a paleo challenge for 30 days and ran across a TED talk featuring Matt Cutts (some random person who works for Google) - http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days.html . He has been working on trying something new for 30 days. He hasn’t done Paleo but he has done a lot of other things. This got me thinking that this would be a fun challenge for myself this year. So in the spirit of trying something new each month for 30 days I signed up to do yoga in March (I am counting my Paleo diet as something new for February). I choose yoga because I have never done it and our local studio was running a 30 days for $30 which seemed like a reasonable price. I started making a list of other challenge ideas for myself. Some of them include watching 30 documentaries in a month, reading four nonfiction books within a 30 day period (one a week), no TV, try 30 new recipes in my Vitamix, etc. I’ll report back on the yoga next month.

Hope everyone is have a good start to the new year. I’ll check back in next month!