This week is going to include the 6 month anniversary of starting my Operation Melt journey. On Friday, 12/15, I will hit the 6 month mark from that first visit with the doctor that prompted me to decide to be healthy. In this lead-up to the 6-month mark, I am hoping for lots of big things to happen.

First, I am optimistic that I will hit the 75-pound loss mark before Friday. I have been pretty much holding steady at 72 pounds down for the last 3 days of this past week. But, that has included a fair amount of drinking (it is the holiday happy hour season!) which causes me to retain water and my weight to go up. One or two dry days and I expect to see a big movement which should put me past that next goal mark.

Second, this week I am “officially” launching OperationMelt.com which includes lots of information commemorating my entire journey. I soft launched it this prior week with a few friends and had them start providing feedback. The first big ah-ha that my friend Julie told me was that the blog needs way more pictures. Pictures of me and of other interesting parts of my work.

Posting more pictures is a little tough, because I have not done a good job of taking photos along the way. I have LOTS of before pictures and a couple from the journey that show some progress, but nothing that really shows the change. I think Liz and I are going to work to recreate some of the moments from old pictures with the new me. So, they will come to the blog, it may just take a little time.

This past week has been pretty motivating in my journey. I had some good, intense workouts. On Saturday, I had a morning at the gym without any time pressures at all and I really killed it. I did 35 minutes on the treadmill with a higher percentage run versus walk than ever before. I did another 25 minutes or so with weights (and really felt it the next day!) followed by some cool-down stretching. In my just over an hour at the gym, I burnt more than 1,000 calories, so this was a good workout for me. Plus, I found myself getting into “the zone” on the treadmill because of my music. I played a very motivational Youtube video that I sometimes watch at the gym of motivational quotes over intense music. This is the same video I have linked in the Inspiration section of OperationMelt… I LOVE it!

Another big motivator this week was feedback from other people. I saw one of my good friends Beth for the first time since late summer (time gets away from us) and she was shocked at how much I had changed through my weight loss journey. She was so supportive and complimentary that it was really energizing to keep going. Plus, another acquaintance of mine saw me for the first time in a while and wanted to know how I did it. I really wish I could have just said “check out my website at OperationMelt.com to learn more about my journey”, but it wasn’t ready yet.

On the stress front, this was another tough week and I am still struggling with the best way to address stress in my journey – open to suggestions. I had a pretty stressful week at work with a number of issues that I needed to address and some that are still going. Plus, this week we had to put our cat down. She has been with Liz and I before we were even together and is about 20 years old. It was her time, but this came on top of lots of other stressors and was unexpected. But, I think my body has become much more resilient to the stress and physically lets it go faster.

One final note…. As I am coming up on the 6 month anniversary of starting this journey, I started to reflect a little bit. I have learned a lot along the way and have captured some of my biggest ah-has in the My Results & Ah-Has section of the site. I have had lots of wins and many losses along the way. Here are some interesting stats about this first 6 months (minus 1 week):

• I have walked about 1.75 million steps since June spanning more than 865 miles covered – this is nearly the distance from Columbus, Ohio to Portland, Maine.
• I have climbed over 1,500 stories, this is almost the height of Mount Kilimanjaro.
• This all has translated to about 93 hours of exercise in the 6 months!
• I have lost about 75 pounds which is the weight of about 100 cans of beer or 300 sticks of butter!
• I have decreased my waist size by about 6-8 inches so far. I have decreased from a big 3X to an average 2X on shirt size.
• My resting heart rate has decreased from around 80 beats per minute to around 58 beats per minute and my overall cardio fitness (VO score) has increase from “Poor to Fair” to a solid “Good”.
• My average pace time for running/walking a mile has decreased from around 17-minute miles to around 13-minute miles or less – because I run now and couldn’t think of doing that 6 months ago!
• My daily calorie intake has decreased by 1,500+ and my consumption of good versus crap food has skyrocketed!
• I no longer cringe when I see myself in a mirror, in pictures or when I go to try on clothes.

So, needless to say, the first 6 months of this journey are shaping up to be very rewarding! I am looking forward to where I will be at the end of the next 6 months. I am confident that I will have crushed my goal of losing more than 100 pounds in less than I year.

That’s it for now… my next post will be at 75 pounds or will be my official site launch on Friday, which ever happens first (hopefully the 75!).

Last week’s stats:
Distance walked/run: 33.8 miles
Total calories burnt: 27,393
Total calories consumed: 11,727
Weight change: 4.3 pounds lost