Well - it happened. For the first time this year I had a CLEAN weekend! It wasn't easy. In fact I don't think there was a challenge I didn't have to face down! Friday we went to Olive Garden - and in case it wasn't apparent before, I'll state here and now that I'm a Bread and Pasta FREEK! I did all I could to distract myself from the bread when it was dropped on the table and made sure to order a grilled dish for my dinner. Grilled chicken, some itallian sausage and steamed veggies. At cake time I wasn't thinking and I stood over the cake as I opened the box. The smell of chocolate waifed up and I swear I turned into Pavlov's dog! But, I ignored it, sang happy birthday, cut the cake and went to sit at the opposite side of the table. I didn't even lick the cocolate icing off my fingers! Saturday, the challenge was pizza, cheese bread and cinnamon bread from Dominos... The smell of the pizza when it first arrived nearly killed me! But I ate MY food and distracted myself with visions of size 10 pants... Sunday we took the kids out to brunch and everyone's plate distracted me... pancakes on one side, toasted buns on the other side... But once again I stuck to my own food. And THEN my daughter picks up my ABSOLUTE favorite cocolate from the store... I didn't have a single piece. And the results of all of this? Beside the fact that I'm really really proud of myself I'm also down to 177.5! I'm close - so close and I don't want to do ANYTHING to cause a set back now. I will prove to myself that I CAN meet goals... I also got some nice excercise this weekend. Saturday I walked just over a mile, and Sunday we went on about a 3 mile hike. Nothing too rugged but enough to stretch the legs and get the lungs and heart working. In fact we walk partially on a PAR course and I stopped a few times to do the excercises on it - pushups and leg lifts and corkscrews - it felt good to be using my muscles again. Now that I've have a clean nutritional week I'm going to try for both - tonight I'm going to do a light upper body workout. I want to take advantage of the momentem I've created and make sure it continues. I'm feeling good today. REALLY good and I expect for it to continue!