Now for the hard part

First … thank you for your comments yesterday. I really appreciate you taking the time to do that.

Now … If I'd stuck with my Christmas-morning goal of losing 50 pounds by the end of 2013, I'd be done. And that's a pretty good feeling, lemmetellya.

Of course, I wouldn't be done. I'd be doing what I need to do to maintain a 50-pound loss for the rest of my life. That's something I've never been able to do before.

I'm guessing both of you have achieved a significant weight loss at one time or another. But that's just a guess, based on real-life friends and acquaintances and family members who also have repeatedly lost the same 10, 20, 30 or 50 pounds.

I've lost a significant amount of weight twice before: 38 pounds in the mid-70s and about 35 pounds 20 years ago. But I never figured out how to keep it off, and I fall into that vast majority of losers who regain their loss and then some.

Only a few weeks after beginning the paleo/primal/caveman plan, I realized I probably could lose more than 50 pounds. I'd been unsuccessful for months by simply creating a calorie deficit through the Standard American Diet + exercise. Learning what worked for me was eye-opening, empowering, amazing!

Expanding my weight-loss goal to one in which I would also have a normal BMI means … not much, really. It means I'm going to keep on doing what I've been doing, because what I've been doing – eliminating grains, legumes, dairy and sugar – has worked spectacularly well.

For me.

I don't miss grains, legumes, dairy or sugar most of the time. You know I'd be lying to you if I said I never missed it. What surprises me is that when I started, I thought I would long for cheese and Greek yogurt. What I find myself wanting, though, is pasta – not because pasta tastes so great, but because when there's little time to put dinner on the table, pasta is easy.

At any rate, I've found other quick-and-easy dinners and I've learned to plan ahead a little better and, well, the results speak for themselves.

True confession: Last night I was really, really, really wanting something sweet. So I ate a lump of brown sugar. That's all, one lump. If I'd had any dark chocolate in the house, I would have had a piece or two instead of a sorry lump of refined sugar.

As I was waking up this morning, I noticed a twinge of pain in my right hip. I haven't felt pain in my right hip – the hip I'd considering seeing an orthopedist about last spring – for several months now.

Hip pain following ingestion of sugar could be unrelated. But ingestion of sugar can't be a good thing, nor can it be a regular, normal, everyday thing. Cause and effect, Debbi, cause and effect. Something I need to pay attention to from here on out, if I have any hope of losing 15 more pounds and maintaining a 65-pound loss.