Jello, is this pudding?

I've tried to blog before but I usually get too wrapped up in my stupid little life to remember to blog my daily activities for no one to read. I am definitely going to try and keep up with this one, though. I need to remember my goals daily so that I don't stray from my diet or new plan.

A quick run down: I've been over-weight since I was 16. I have steadily gained about 20+ pounds each year since then and this year, it stops. Also, I just had a baby, so that didn't help my situation much. I didn't gain as much weight as I thought I would throughout my pregnancy. As a matter of fact, I am just a few pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight. Don't be fooled, though. Pregnancy completely ravaged my body with stretchmarks, loose skin and more cellulite than anyone cares to know about. My loose skin, huge abdominal scar and stretch marks are like battle wounds of this past year and my new life. While I do respect them, I no longer want them.

So what am I doing about it? Right now I am only eating low carb foods. Basically, I go to the store on Sunday and plan out what I will eat for breakfast, snack, lunch, snack and dinner every day, for the next 5 days. My staple foods have been cucumbers with cream cheese and salmon, pears and mozzarella, veggies with cheese for lunch, strips of steak with bell peppers, quiche, egg salad, chicken salad, jalapeno poppers and flour-less chocolate cake (mmmm...) Doesn't sound so bad, huh? It's really not hard.

What is a diet without some exercise? A waste of time. So, I have been exercising a decent amount. I work full time and am also a mom full time, so fitting working out into my schedule is kind of difficult, but I do it. Right now, I am sort of infatuated with Wii work out games. So far, I have Michael Jackson: The Experience (a dance game) and Gold's Gym Dance Workout (self explanatory.) I manage to fit one of those in for about 40 minutes a day along with some treadmill-ing. I am planning on purchasing the Zumba workout for Wii on Wednesday.

Finally, what are my goals? Basically, I just want to like myself. I mean, I like myself, but I want to like what I see in the mirror. If you want to get really technical, I want to weigh 160 by June. The date is January 23rd today, and I started this diet January 1st. I don't know if this will happen. When I started this diet, I weighed 242 pounds. Right now, 3 weeks in, I weigh 235 pounds. I did lose the 7 pounds pretty rapidly but I am at an absolute weight-loss plateau right now. I am hoping that I can get past this without becoming discouraged and reverting to my old eating habits.

 I'm trying to break up my big goal into 5 mini goals...

Start: 242
(1) February 1 - 225.6 lbs
(2) March 1 - 209.2 lbs
(3) April 1 - 192.8 lbs
(4) May 1 - 176.4 lbs
(5) June 1 - 160 lbs

As of today, I am 9.4 pounds away from meeting my first goal, which needs to be met in 8 days.