36-Month Pictures

 

 

See my Trim Healthy Mama Before & After Photos page to view all before and after photos of my THM journey.

 

STATS

	10/23/15	10/23/16	10/23/17	10/23/18
Weight	220	157.6	139.6	136.2
Bust	47.75″	40.5″	38.5″	38.25″
Waist	47″	37.25″	35″	33.5″
Hips	51.5″	40″	38″	38.5″

See my Trim Healthy Mama Stats page to see all monthly measurements of my THM journey.

 

What I’m Thinking

Another year has flown by.  Obviously, I’m a little tardy in getting these pictures posted.   One of the biggest things for me to share about this year is that my weight and numbers have looked so good for the last two years that my doctor didn’t even both to do a lipid panel (cholesterol, LDL, HDL, triglycerides) or fasting blood sugar this year at my annual physical.

I have lost a few pounds in the last year, but am largely in maintenance mode.  Maintenance mode typically involves a 10-pound range that weight swings around in on a daily basis.  Mine is no exception.  My target is 135 and some days I’m up around 138-ish, other days I can be in the 132 neighborhood.  Lots of factors influence daily weights (salt intake, hormones, off-plan foods, crossovers, etc.).  As for how I arrived at 135 as my target, all I can offer is that it is where my body seemed to settle on its own.  How do I know it was settling and not just a stall?  Simple, it is where my body was comfortable as well as my mind.  Yes, I could probably torture myself and take off another 10-15 pounds, if I were so inclined.  Am I?  No.  I like how I look, am satisfied with the size and fit of my clothes, and it’s just not worth having to hyper-focus on every little thing I eat.  I’m not a fan of counting anything (see my 10 Tips #6 for what I think about counting), and that’s what I would probably have to do to drop any more weight.  And worse, I’d have to keep counting for the rest of my life to keep those 10-15 pounds off, so why would I want to do that to myself?

On a similar note, I have a theory that humans naturally put on a few pounds during the winter months and shed a few in the warmer months.  I have not done any research into this theory (I just don’t have the time) and don’t have enough history of myself in maintenance mode to say for certain of myself even, but last winter in the November, December, January, February stretch I plateaued.  I was even pretty sure 139 was going to be my maintenance number during that time period.  Then in March the scale started heading down again on its own without significant changes on my part (the biggest change was running outdoors instead of indoors).  At my lowest over the summer I saw 131.4.  Granted, it was only one time but most of the summer I was in the 132-134 range.  Fall and winter so far have been more in the 134-138 area.  We’ll see what happens come spring.  Even if this theory pans out for me, that doesn’t mean everyone has that pattern in their lives.

The last noteworthy thing for this post is that I am in the early stages of writing a book about my weight loss experience.  It is not specifically about THM but about things I’ve learned about weight loss, and particularly the mental aspects of it, that make it such a stressful thing for people.  Some things will be brought in from this blog and expanded and there will be new thoughts I think will help others as well.  It is terrifying for me to take the step of putting such a thing together because of the risk of criticism, but the idea has been tugging at me for several months as people ask me about my journey and I have so much to tell them that it can’t possibly fit into a few conversations.  I’ll post updates on my progress with that here and will probably be looking for launch team readers at some point so keep an eye out for that here and at my Facebook page.