These last five pounds made a lot more of a difference than I would have thought. It seemed like I was going to hit it only two weeks after 175, because after the 383 km riding weekend I was dropping almost a pound a day for a week! It leveled off though, and now I'm back on track around the same rate I was losing before.

Now I'm back down to about the weight I was at when I met the girls in Scarborough about ten years ago. This is where I was in 1995.

Here's another classic fat geo recreation:


I'll admit this one isn't exactly fair. I have an extra shirt button or two undone, which I didn't realize until after. Plus my abs are a little tighter because I'm holding my head up. Not to mention I'm on my back... my stomach doesn't look that flat, but compared to the other picture... I was actually shocked when I saw this pic!

Now I'm really actually feeling and looking smaller and lighter. My pants size has dropped from 36 to last week I bought a 32. Last time I wore a 32 was when I came back from Greece ten years ago. Kim's mom said they were so tight she could tell if I was cut or not! I also bought a medium shirt. Medium... and it fits great!

People seem to be surprised and supportive, especially ones I haven't seen in a while. I never realized that I was that big before, and I didn't even really understand how other people saw me until now. It was so gradual that it didn't seem like much. What's another five pounds? Especially when it's over the course of a year.

I'm surprised at how much your look changes people's perceptions of you. There was one girl I haven't seen since I started who I saw a little while ago. After the common "you're looking good... not like you didn't look good before..." she said something to the effect of "so with that new body you have a new attitude too." I don't know. Maybe I do to some extent, probably because of how active I've been, but I'm still the same person.

It's also made a huge difference with my cycling. Now I don't have issues climbing hills at all anymore. Often I'm able to power up fairly steep hills without slowing down much at all. I'm not afraid to climb, and I don't get upset when I see the hill I'm going down turn into an uphill. The corollary to that is I don't get as much speed going down hills. I don't know if I'll ever be able to top my max speed of 73 km/h in this province with these hills. My average speed has risen, so I'm not bothered by it at all.

I'm going to start running again soon. I'm thinking of starting after this weekend. My IT band should hopefully be rested by that point. I'm really starting to feel like I'm missing going to the gym. It's really upsetting me, and I'm afraid if this lasts any longer I'm going to have trouble getting back into it.

Last night Kate told me about a 5k run I think in October. She's going to do the 1k walk with her son. It's to raise money for cancer. I think I'm going to do it. Hopefully in a month I'll be able to run the 5k straight, but I'll have no problems doing it as a walk/run if I have to. At least it'll give me a short-term running goal.

The past week and a bit I've had some trouble keeping up with keeping my calorie intake much lower than my expenditure, so my loss has been leveling off. I'm starting to get a little tired of all the sacrifices I've made over the past while. I've had fries twice in the past week already. I've eaten processed cheese. It was okay to eat like that when I was riding my bike to work every other day, and then doing another 100k on the weekend, but with this damn knee issue it's hard to stop. I'm still keeping a calorie deficit, but I've only been averaging a 500 calorie deficit instead of the usual 1000. Next week I need to get back into the swing of things.

Long-term outlook is looking good. I've started to make modifications to my plans lately, now that I know better what I'm capable of and what I need to do. I'm still obviously holding out on the running part, but that's happening soon. Swimming... well I haven't been motivated for that yet. I'm thinking the fall/winter is the best time to start. The Goodlife with the pool is at Yonge and Bloor at the Manulife Centre. I think I'm going to go there maybe twice a week by subway and then take the subway to work. It'll take some extra time, but that could be a lot of fun.

I'm still planning on dropping to 140-145. I'm still on pace to do it by new year's. Most people still think it's taking things too far. They don't know what my body type really is like. None of them knew me when I was that size before. I agree that I'll probably be a little too skinny by that point. Maybe not my legs, but my upper body will be. I mean I can already see ribs.

The new plan is that once I lose all the body fat I want to lose (which should happen around 140), is that I'm going to bulk up a bit with muscle. Not a lot, because it really is detrimental to my performance. I just want to have a little size up top to get rid of the ribs. I can put on the size slowly by lifting weights and running a small calorie surplus that's high in protein. That way it won't be all chunk chunk, but it should come in with some definition.

Maybe I'll get up to around 150-160 pounds, but no higher than that. I don't want to be big, I want to look and feel good. I may by at the halfway point for losing weight, but I still have a lot of work I want to do. That's good, because I'm enjoying this way too much to reach my goal already!