The goal - Lose 10 pounds in 8 weeks

In 8 weeks Dave and I will be attending our first wedding of the wedding "season."  I have a dress that I plan to wear - it's the black and white lace one that I modeled back in December when trying to figure out what I wear to Dave's brother's wedding.

 Remember it?

The dress is very form-fitting, so while I can still get into right now, it's a little snug.  When I reach up or bend over, it doesn't fall back into place like it should, and I have to pull it down.  I definitely don't want to be tugging down a dress all night.

After a horrible, stressful week full of snacking, little sleep, and absolutely no exercise, I'm happy to report that I only gained about 2.5 pounds based on my weigh-in yesterday morning, of which I've already lost 8/10ths as of this morning.  But 2.5 pounds is still a lot of work to lose....

So I've decided to start setting short-term goals for myself, and this time it's 10 pounds in 8 weeks.  That just a little more than one pound a week to lose, which seems totally reasonable and healthy.  Losing 10 pounds will mean that I'll look as good on May 8th as I did in that picture above and I'd be completely happy with that!

Last night was a great start - after a healthy and reasonable dinner Dave and I both exercised like crazy.  20 minutes on the recumbent bike, 200 leg lifts, 100 crunches, and then a 5 minute warm-up on the treadmill, 20 minutes of jogging, and then a 5 minute cool down which put me right at 2.5 miles!  And the great news is that it was some of the best running I've done in a long time!  I felt amazing!  If it hadn't been so late, I would have kept going.  What's a 5k? 3.1 miles? 3.2?  Either way, I was SO close last night.  Well.. if you count the distance I spent walking as well...

Tonight I have a new goal for my exercise - 2.5 miles of just jogging without counting the walking distance.  I want to see how close I am to being able to run a 5K, and my thinking is that I'm not actually that far away at all.  Once the weather starts getting nicer (and it's supposed to happen this week) I'm going to try to convince Dave to go to North Park with me and jog about the track there.  If he won't go (he's more a "walking" kind of guy) then I'll go by myself.  I'm definitely interested in trying to run outside, something I haven't done since before my knee injury, which was in 2002. 

I'm excited to finally feel motivated again, and to have a goal that should definitely be achievable!  I credit this beautiful spring weather! Woo hoo!