Weekly Update: After Week 11

Weigh-In Date/Weight/Total Pounds Lost:
4-19-2010/226/0
4-26-2010/223/3
5-3-2010/214/12
5-10-2010/212/14
5-17-2010/209/17
5-24-2010/210/16
5-31-2010/208/18
6-7-2010/205/21

6-14-2010/202/24

6-21-2010/198/28

6-28-2010/196/30

7-5-2010/194/32

WEEKLY UPDATE FOR MONDAY, JULY 5TH, 2010:
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Well my weight loss continues at a steady 2 pounds per week, and this week most of my actual "weight" loss came in the weekend, so I suspect that my losses will start slowing down now. I am mentally preparing myself for this, but it shouldn't be that hard because I can finally tell by looking in the mirror now. When I get closer to goal I will post before and after pics.

This past week was difficult because we were preparing for our Patriotic service on Sunday, which meant busy, busy, busy, plus I'm going on vacation this week and next, so I needed to get ahead in my work in order to relax. I can't relax on vacation if I think I'm coming back to a mountain of work when it's over.

The town of Jonesborough, TN (Tennessee's oldest town) has a celebration each year around the 4th of July called "Jonesborough Days" and at the last minute they hired me to bagpipe for them all day. It was a blast, though I worked like a dog and bagpiped intermittently for a full 10 hours! The cool thing is the last time I put on my full kilt outfit I had to lay on the bed, suck in my gut, and have my wife help me to get it all on because it was so tight. BUT THIS TIME, we had to take the belt in FIVE NOTCHES! At the end of the day I went to take my kilt off (keeping in mind the last time I wore it, it took two of us to get it on), and when I took the belt off, the kilt just fell off me!!!

While at the festival, I had several people who hadn't seen me in over a year, and they didn't recognize me until they heard my playing, and figuring there aren't many bagpipers in our area, they came to see if it was me after all. It was great having them all ask me for weight loss advice instead of patting my belly (yes this really used to happen to me a lot).

To top it all off, the local news was there filming the event and the crew followed me around for one of my sessions and I ended up on the 6pm and 11pm news slots, both playing in the background, and as a featured part of the segment. I had some people immediately text me and ask me what I did to lose the weight.

Bottom line: I am SOOOOO glad to not be the fat guy in the corner anymore, and though I've still got 30 some pounds to lose, I'm over halfway there, and while I would call myself seriously overweight still, I would NOT call myself an obese slob anymore!

Now the next two weeks will REALLY be a challenge:

We have our annual FunFest block party Wednesday night, which I am in charge of.

I will be at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games this weekend, and there aren't many readily available Low Carb options (I'm going prepared).

The week after that we're headed to Pigeon Forge (just down the road really) to go to a water park resort, Dollywood (we have season passes and they sell turkey legs), a Tennessee Smokies game, and then to Atlanta to see the first place Braves wreak havoc on the Brewers, and to visit the World of Coke Museum.