the long weekend

[ciroccoj]

Go me - I finally got to my target weight, and am done dieting ::cheers::. Well, done deiting to lose weight - now I'm just going to watch what I eat so I don't gain it all back.

I lost 37 pounds between March 10 and August 30. The first 27 pounds melted off between March 10 and May 31 (12 weeks) and the last ten hung on for dear life between May 31 and August 30 (13 weeks).

I discovered many things along the way.

• There's some very yummy low-fat milk-based treats (Delicioso and Mousse).
  
• McDonalds actually has a very tasty, healthy meal that won't ruin your diet for a week (McVeggie burger, garden salad with vinaigrette dressing, fruit & yoghurt parfait).
  
• Diet tonic water tastes the same as regular.
  
• I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is really, really, really not butter, and you can believe that with every single bite of toast with Not As Good As Butter & jam.
  
• Exercise won't kill me.
  
• I look better and have more energy at a lower weight.
  
• Fruits and vegetables are our friends.
  
• And most importantly: I so totally don't get eating disorders. (Edit: BTW, nothing below is meant to put down or minimize eating disorders or the people who suffer from them. It's just my own reflections on the subject, written with a profound sense of gratitude that I don't suffer from an eating disorder myself.)
  
  I can understand the feeling of pride when you lose weight through your hard work. I get the sense of self-discipline that comes from being in control of what you take into your body. I can sympathize with the sense of superiority that stems from watching people at the next table to you chowing down on 2 quarter-pounders with cheese, large fries, 2 apple pies and a super-size milkshake each, while you munch on your salad and veggieburger.
  
  But none of those comes close to approaching the joy of eating cheesecake.

In other news, I won't go into the other news because it was one craptastic weekend. Any weekend with almost constant bickering and a major blow-up, plus a basement flooded up to our ankles, is really not worth writing about in detail.

On the plus side, we went to the Ottawa Lumiere festival with Amit and Jeea and Kiran, and it was wonderful. Costumes, beautiful lamps, dancing, oddly-dressed people wandering about entertaining children, two guys in knights & horses costumes dancing to Monty Python's "Knights of the Round Table", and much more.

And ninja_kat came over, which salvaged the craptastic weekend and helped immensely with the big blow-up, and then her hubby brought us dinner and we played Carcasonne. So the weekend ended on a high note, at least. Also: we have a hit, in terms of Chris liking Carcasonne. I foresee a trip to Strategy Games in our future, to pick up our own set. With expansions. Whee!