So much for planning

It's that time again. I know you've been holding your breath to see if I'd actually blog again. Well, your lack of oxygen to the brain has paid off! Here's your nonsense for the week.

But first, we do the numbers. (Did anyone else hear Kai Ryssdal from Marketplace in their head when they read that? No? Just me? Great. Anyway, here we go...)

I weighed in today at 239.4 lbs. That's another almost 3 lbs down and I broke the 240 barrier (which was about where I gave up on my last adventure). Granted, the barrier isn't broken by much, and I still have miles to go before I sleep, but I'm still on track. Actually, a little ahead of schedule, which is fantastic because I'm super worried about hitting my first plateau.

I've been wandering through some other people's weight loss blogs (and if you have several months to kill, there are about as many weight loss blogs as there are...I just spent five minutes trying to come up with a clever cliché. I got nothin'. Fish in the sea? Starbucks in Seattle? Mosquitoes in my parents' backyard? Pick your favorite. Point is, there are a lot.) and I've started to freak myself out. Mostly they talk about how this is hard and there are lots of setbacks and drops in motivation that lead to backtracking. This person lost 75 lbs, but it took them 2 years. That person lost 120 lbs, but it took them over 3 years. And my brain (really, my worst enemy sometimes) has started whispering things like "you're in over your head here. You've set an unrealistic goal and now you've got other people's money tied up in it and you're going to lose. It's not physically possible to do what you've set out to do."

Which I'm pretty sure is all a lie.

Here's the thing: that's their story. And my story is not their story. I don't know what their personal struggles were or are - no matter how detailed they are about them in their blogs (I can't know because I'm not them) . I don't know what kind of support they had, or even if they had any. I don't have a detailed account of their methods. Just the things they chose to share. And that's not enough data to make an accurate comparison.

And, for every "I made it but it took me three times as long as you've allowed yourself" there's someone else (you know, trainers and medical professionals and nutritionists and people with degrees who have done studies and research and have experience and knowledge I don't have) saying that the goal I've set is perfectly reasonable. One trainer said that if I committed to him, he could help me lose 100 lbs in 6 months. I'm not sure I'm ready to put myself through that kind of punishment, and I'm certain I wouldn't be able to maintain that energy level in the long term (which is the goal here, right? Get it off and keep it off?) and the very reasonable excuse of "I travel 9 months out of the year" makes that not even an option (however tempting). But, excited fitness trainers aside, the majority of the research (read: Google searches) I've done have said that you can reasonably (and healthily) lose 2 - 3 lbs a week. When I set this goal, I estimated 2 lbs/week and figured that would give me some wiggle room to get me through the plateaus. Here's math:

2 lbs/wk * 52weeks = 104 lbs.
104 > 90.

I should be good, right? SOMEBODY VALIDATE ME I'M FREAKING OUT!

I actually thought a lot about what I was going to blog about this week. None of that was it. :)

But before I publish this and then tell Facebook what I've done, I do want to mention a couple of other things I've added (or am trying). I had intended to go into some detail about them, but I've rambled on enough already, methinks. Maybe next week I'll flesh this out. I don't have that much detail anyway.

• I'm taking green tea extract once a day. (This, my friends, was the inspiration for the title of the blog. I know you were bursting with curiosity about that. Now you know.) Green tea is supposed to be good for all kinds of things. The one that particularly caught my eye is it has been proven to target and break down that most evil of all the fats: belly fat. (I don't actually know why belly fat is more evil than fat in other places. But from what I hear it is specifically linked to all kinds of rotten health things, so getting rid of it should be good.) I could be drinking unsweetened green tea, but, quite frankly, I'd rather drink boiled grass. So, since the pill form seems to be just as effective (from what I've read anyway), and doesn't taste like warm mud, I'm just taking the pill.
• Multi-vitamins! (The chewable gummies, because the 5 year old in me said so.) Just one. Nothing fancy. Women's One a Day. Not the Multivite brand because I don't like them as much. They don't taste as much like candy. (Go ahead and judge. Your judgement means nothing. Vitamins are good for me because I'm exceptionally bad at eating a balanced diet.)
• Benefiber. Well, actually the generic because when I sat on the floor (it was on the bottom shelf and I have no shame) and read the labels, there was 0 difference. It's all just wheat dextrin and the store brand was 1/3 the price. It did not, however, come in handy-dandy single-serving water-bottle-friendly packets. This made me so sad that I nearly handed over an extra $10 for something I wasn't even sure was going to be beneficial. For experiment time, I decided to just use a spoon like a grown up. (I'd already allowed my inner child to buy gummie vitamins. You gotta draw the line somewhere.)

I'll go into more detail about the Benefiber later, but I will say that I've been taking it for about a week (1 heaping Tbsp in 16oz (approx.) of water per day) with no ill effects. And, true to the commercial, there is no taste or texture difference (that I've noticed).

So, I'll flesh out those choices a little more next week (or whenever I get around to blogging again.) In the mean time, thanks for going on this journey with me and for all the supportive shout outs on Facebook. It means a lot that so many of you are cheering for me.