I won't keep you in suspense, I did make my goal. I actually surpassed it by 1.3 pounds. When it sinks in I'm sure I'll be very excited and joyous. For the moment all I feel is relieved, as if I didn't realize how much this impending deadline was stressing me out.
I know I haven't really updated since my birthday. A lot has been going on in my personal life. We did find a place to live, so that's one thing resolved at least, but I've been packing, down sizing our stuff and making arrangements with most of my time while being very annoyed about it :) The stress of it makes me just want to take a break from everthing - internet included. I've been reading books instead. Shout out and thank you to my DietBet friend Vegan Warrior for recommending the book The Four Agreements. I've been making my way slowly through it and it is showing me a different way to think about things. It's been challenging, but in a good way. My little spark of hope continues to grow.
As for the weight loss process of this challenge, I just watched portions and removed temptation from my immediate access. I stopped bringing snacks and sweets into the house. If I crave a cookie or soda, it's simply not there to eat and I've won a small victory by default. Those small victories added up quickly. We only went out to eat once so the lack of restaurant food saves lots of calories, too. I started cooking with whole unprocessed foods again instead of relying on convenience packaged or frozen things I made a bad habit of the past year or so. I'm not a bad cook so putting in the extra time and effort had a good payoff.
Physically, I don't really see much difference. When you are super obese it takes a lot of weight to really see much. When I have I lost weight in the past it would take over 30 pounds lost before I noticed significant changes. I lost just under 15, so I wasn't expecting anything, but my upper stomach doesn't stretch my shirts the way it used to and my acne has cleared up a lot. That makes me happy. I made the body shots in my profile public so if you want to be the judge feel free LOL (as of yet my final weigh in pictures haven't been approved but hopefully soon)
I am grateful for this challenge. It helped me get moving out of the dark slump I was in. I'm not out of the woods yet, but I'm in a better place than where I started and that's all I wanted. I do plan on doing another DietBet soon, so I'll update again when the time comes. Thanks to everyone for the lovely supportive comments on my blogs. It means a lot to me.