Still Losing, But slowly.

Some of you might remember that on January 1st, I announced that my new years resolution was to (continue) to lose weight, and that I had at the time lost 15.2 lbs. I had a 78-day head start on my diet (compared to the usual New Years start date).

I am happy to say that I have stuck to my guns, sort of.

My weight-loss chart stops at February 17th and doesn't have another entry until today:
(click the image to see it larger).



In the intervening 42 days I stopped dieting and exercising, but I stuck to my plan of good (but not "great") eating habits.

So you can see that I didn't plateau or even gain weight. Instead I've lost a decent 2.5 lbs in the past 6 weeks. That isn't much to write home about, but I am happy.

What happened?

Well I started working 10+ hours a day in order to totally revamp my invitations business while still doing my normal work. I admit that February is usually a bit slower, than June, but I still shot 4 weddings and did a lot of invitations for spring (as well as some bridals and engagements).

To re-tool my invitation business I've been redesigning my design examples, redesigning my website, and revamping my product lines (including testing new products and purchasing and testing new equipment).

The end result will be a new website and business that offers more information, better products (even slightly better prices, as my costs have gone down). I'll post the new site in a couple days when it launches.

The main thing I've done has been to add cardstock invitations. In the past it has been on just photo paper, but new printers allow me to get great photo quality results on cardstock (if you received a Christmas or Valentine card from us in the last months you can see what I mean, though those were a bit too contrasty and over-saturated, which I've fixed).

We've started leasing a new slitter-cutter-creaser, which will cut the cards out and even do a crease (for folding cards) all in one pass. That will allow me to mass-produce the cards on an economic scale. I can also print addresses directly on the envelopes economically, which will bring in more customers I think.

So I'll post the new site hopefully by Friday. I'm still waiting on a company to fix some mistakes on an order form that uploads photos. I have done all the web work but the upload forms and a price calculator, that I had my brother-in-law, Nathan Jensen do (he is a wiz at Javascript).

My future weight loss.

Well, I peaked at about 290 lbs some time last year. When I started the diet on October 15th I was at 285.2, I have lost 25 lbs since then. I am sure if I had kept dieting and exercising, I would be closer to 35 lbs right now.

But, hey I've proven that the lifestyle changes I made (at least in eating) have been some that I can sustain. And even if I continue at this much slower pace, I am continuing.

I hope to get back to exercising soon. It gave me more energy. The next couple of weeks will tell if the new site brings a lot more business or about the same. If not much more comes in we'll still eat well and have clothes on our backs, etc. Plus I can lose more weight faster (I will have more time to work out, for one).

If a lot of business comes in, I'll probably be on the slow track still, but that is fine. I'm still working on it. I lost about 7.5 lbs in the first 1.5 months of the year and 2.5 lbs in the 1.5 months after that. So it is still working, just at 1/3rd the pace.

Stephen