woke up and weighed-in at 274.4. obviously that’s horrible, but earlier in the week i was weighing-in at almost 280, so this is good. i’m trying to get down to 269-270 the day i leave. i’m hoping to be 235 when i get back. I’ll be in the great nation of Ghana for 16 weeks and in paris for one week, so if i lose a normal 2 pounds per week, i’ll hit the goal.

this is going to be really hard and not so hard in many ways. i’m not really a fan of ghanaian food, or at least not most of it. i’m hoping that this alone will at least help the whole addiction-y part of things since nothing there is really meaty or sugary or dripping in fat/oil. what’s kind of scary is that a lot of the girls who do the program end up gaining weight, but i think it’s honestly because they’re all super skinny to begin with and their homestay people force them to eat.

that is the other side of the coin - the homestay. this basically means i have very little control over what i’ll be eating, let alone calorie info or portion sizes. again, i’m hoping that the fact that i don’t really like ghanaian food will make things easier. also just already being soooo overweight hopefully means that i don’t need to eat 1200 calories a day just to lose weight. but again, you never know. also, i’ve had the most success doing atkins, which may just be because i was committed to it, but maybe not, and it worries me that ghana is such a starch-based food place (that was not elegantly worded at all…)

but all these things just mean i have to try my hardest to control what i can. what i can control is my water consumption (which needs to be really really high), exercise, and the meals that i do get to choose. i’m going to try to run and do floor exercises while i’m there, and obviously to choose healthy low-cal food whenever i have the option to.

this water calculator i did online says i need five liters a day, so i will make it a point while i’m gone to get in that much water, not just to keep my water weight down, but also because supposedly it’ll help you stay healthy while abroad. i will try to exercise for 4 hours per week starting out, and depending on free time, i will increase to 5 or even 6 by the end of the semester.

the other thing that sucks is obviously not having any access to scales throughout the ENTIRE semester. i guess that means it will be really interesting to see what happens when i get back, but it does kind of suck because i am so used to daily weigh-ins when i am trying to get back on track. i will try to at least find a tape measure, and maybe i will take a picture of myself in an outfit and see how i look in the same outfit when i return. my friend ashley is on a diet, and her mom showed us this picture of her from last summer where you could reallyyy tell the difference. i have seen this effect, unfortunately in the opposite direction. but hopefully this time it will be different.

i’m really hoping/praying that being away from american food culture will make it easier to diet. i know there will be issues of culture shock, depression, and frustration that will plague me along the way, but hopefully as these things are happening i’ll find new ways to cope and live and get through the frustrations of life.

what’s good is that i woke up this morning and wanted to weigh in. and pray. and blog. and i know that these are the activities that keep me strong. and when i don’t want to do these things i am in a bad place. i need to make these things habitual so that even when i’m not in the mood to do them, i still will.