12 lbs in the last 30 days

[PHOTOS: a typical salad for lunch (spinach, carrot, onion, crasins, bell peppers, spices, mustard, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, ...), A close up of the albacore - not pieces, but the kind we get is a whole chunk - it's the best I've found and I buy it exclusively!]

This isn't the Biggest Looser, so for me to loose 12 lbs in 30 days - it's a little faster than I'd like. I have been trying to cut back on my quantity of food as my weight passed over my 'warning' line early this year - or maybe even late last year. (A more healthy weight loss rate would be up to 2 lbs per week - at my weight.)

Now to have 12 lbs and still able to lose another 5 with out much concern - I was caring some extra weight that can't be contributed to 'increased strength' - iow lean body mass. So the weight loss is welcomed and I'm trying to to keep it off and see another 5 lbs go with it.

My normal eating is a protein drink (house drink: soy milk, water, ginger, cayenne pepper, Cinnamon, spinach, protein powder, ground flax seed, almond, and sometimes apple, pear and carrots when I use the VitaMix). Lunches will often be salads with tuna for protein and dinners will be with the family and not always as nutritionally balanced. I usually drink 24 oz of water while doing my weight routine and will drink another 50-70 during the rest of the day.

I've not been getting the intense aerobic exercise that I used to - which is one of the reasons I was putting on the weight: I was eating for a much higher training load. Time and other more important commitments keeps the training down, so the eating has had to come into line. But the flip side of that is that it actually feels good to be hungry at times. As I write this I'm a little hungry, but it's 9:30 and no way am I going to eat anything now. My teeth have been brushed (as a reminder to me that my mouth is closed for the evening) and I'm not planning on eating until after my workout in the morning.

I do get my HR up during my warm up and through some of my more 'circuit' types of routines, but it's not the same as running hard or cycling hard / long. But for now, it's what I can do and I'm making the best of it.

I still haven't done 10 pull ups (9 1/2 last week) so maybe this week ...!

I'm continuing to enjoy the weight workouts, so that's why I'm still doing them and this is week 17 after 7 or 8 months off last year. Even my middle aged body is responding well to the training. Today I did a bench workout that works on strength: doing 6 sets of 6 reps with a 120 second rest; today I did 205. I may have completed this 1 other time in the past 7 years of working out with weights. For me it says what I'm doing is working: still.

The bottom line: if I can do it, so can someone else. It takes some discipline and commitment, but the results are great in how I feel and what I'm able to do. Sunday I was able to go for a run after doing a task for my wife. I wanted to run for an hour, so I ran 8 miles and it took 1:04, roughly an 8:10 pace. I haven't done that for a while - and I've not been training for it. So it was nice to just go run and then see the results when I got home. Part of that can be attributed to the loss of 12 lbs.

My encouragement to you would be to think about where you want to be and start working to that end. It's never to late to make a change in your life.