What's in store

Now that I have completed the Challenge, what’s in store of me?
Continuation, after all, the whole point was to effect a lifestyle change.

I’ll take this time to chime in my two cents about the Challenge focus, which to me seemed to lean way too heavily on weight loss.   About week six, when weighing in and finding that I actually gained weight from the previous week, it hit me that weight has absolutely no value as a metric, at least no value during the 12 weeks of the Challenge program.  It took me 25 or so years to get into the atrocious physical condition that I was in when the Challenge began, so it seemed completely unreasonable to assume that any measurable improvement would occur in 12 short weeks. 

After week six, what actually happened to me was (1) my A1c went from 10.0 to 8.7, (2) I felt so much better, (3) I could see that my bad eating habits were changing to the point that the things I craved (like fast food) were becoming so much less important (4) my weight had decreased slightly from week one of the Challenge.

Now that the 12 week ‘official’ challenge is over I find that my weight is coming down every week not because I’m dieting, but because I have actually changed my lifestyle, i.e., I live by the 9 inch plate rule; I exercise and enjoy it; it’s actually fun eating out knowing that I’m capable of making intelligent choices; and I FEEL TERRIFIC!  It’s my view that by continuing to practice what I’ve learned in the challenge, my body will adjust over time to its ‘normal’ weight.

Bottom line:   Don’t fall for the fad diets; change your lifestyle!