Weekly weigh-in: I can do this!

Last week's weight: 184.8
This week's weight: 183.6
Difference: -1.2
Total weight lost since January 2010: 88.2 pounds

After a year of constantly feeling like I'd lost control of my healthy eating habits, I finally feel like I'm on the road to success once again. This week hasn't been perfect, but I've made smart food choices. And, if I can do that in the same week that my heart got broken, I feel confident I can do it for the rest of my life.

For weight loss purposes, my week begins on Fridays. I immediately weigh-in after waking up. Today's weigh-in went exactly how I'd expected. I knew what to expect because I'd been keeping track of my Weight Watchers points for the entire week.

Friday and Saturday weren't my best food or exercise days, but by Sunday I was right on track. Only going over my daily allotment once for the rest of the week. The best part is that I also exercised 30-45 minutes each day Monday through Thursday.

For those who don't know yet, my boyfriend and I broke up on Sunday night. I was so worried that the breakup would be a giant pitfall that I put all of my mental energy into managing what I ate the rest of the week. It worked!

Now I just have to keep it up. Already today I've faced a lot of temptation -- champagne cupcakes, doughnuts and giant cookies. I did splurge a little at the company picnic (eating a hamburger and a hot dog without the buns), but I stayed away from the cookies, chips and sodas. That's a big accomplishment at this point.

The rest of the weekend also will be filled with temptation -- dinner out tonight and a festival tomorrow -- but I feel prepared to make smart choices. If I've learned anything during this journey, it's that I don't have to be perfect. I just have to manage what I eat and how much I eat. And I'm feeling pretty proud that I was able to do that during such an emotional time.

Breaking up is hard to do

You may have noticed that I haven't blogged in nearly four months. That's because I started dating someone about five months ago and I didn't want to write about our relationship publicly because I knew it would make him uncomfortable. And, if you've been a longtime follower, you know I'm pretty open and honest in this blog.

We broke up yesterday. So I'm ready to start chronicling my weight-loss journey once again. I'm not going to get into a lot of details about the breakup, but I will say that it was somewhat unexpected and I am heartbroken.

The good news is that it hasn't quite been 24 hours since we ended it and I'm already looking for the bright side. Don't get me wrong. I cried a lot over the weekend and I'll probably cry some more at some point. But there might be a silver lining -- now I can refocus on reaching my weight-loss goal.

As of this past Friday (yes, I've still been weighing in weekly), I weighed 184.8 pounds. I thought I'd gained 5-10 pounds during the relationship, but a quick look back showed me that I weigh almost exactly what I did when I first met the person. That surprised me. And it doesn't really matter.

I've gained about 11 pounds in the past year. I have all sorts of excuses, but none are worth mentioning because they don't matter. What matters is that I'm dedicated to the healthy lifestyle changes I started in January 2010.

That brings me to the title of this post. Breaking up with someone I truly cared about isn't easy and could be a major pitfall in my journey. I'm hoping that by identifying this potential problem I can avoid it. Yesterday and today have gone well in terms of eating. And I even walked a couple of laps around the neighborhood when I got home today.

So I'm making a short-term goal: Track what I eat for the next three days and not go over my daily allotment of Weight Watchers points. I'm also hoping to do at least 30 minutes of physical activity each of those days. If I can keep myself from falling off the cliff through this weekend, I think I'll be able to make it through this emotionally difficult time.

Wish me luck!