I broke double digits a few days back, though I’m not ready to celebrate just yet. I’m not gonna pull the ‘athlete interview’ routine and say that the full 115 is the only real goal and that this is just one step towards that (cus then I’ll have to talk about giving 110%, and just doing what coach tells me, etc.) but 10 pounds was never really on my radar to begin with.

From the beginning of all this, I’ve known I would have to have smaller goals along the way in order to give myself a sense of accomplishment and keep me motivated. The first one was just getting the site up and sent out to everyone. Even though I’d already been tracking my food with it for over a week, it wasn’t really real until then.

Next was stabilizing my calorie intake, even if it was above my goal. When I first started tracking my calories I was amazed by how much they varied from day-to-day. I needed to get it regulated and stable if I was ever going to steadily cut from it. It took a couple weeks, but eventually I found myself reliably taking in about 2,700 calories a day. Now that I have that established, I’ve been looking for ways to slowly cut from that without starving myself. Over the last 10 days I’ve averaged just under 2,500 and I think I can maintain it. Even better – there’s still room I see for improvement.

Now I’m looking forward to my next milestone, 15.1 pounds. Why 15.1 and not just 15, or for that matter 10? Because the moment I’ve lost 15.1 pounds, I’ll have less than 100 to go. It’s odd, but to me, being 100 pounds overweight seems infinitely worse than being 90-something pounds overweight; sort of how things that cost 99 cents seem like less than a dollar I guess.

Whatever the reason, 15.1 is going to be a much bigger deal to me than the recent breakthrough of 10, and I’m looking forward to it.