56 pounds lost in 12 weeks!

I just finished a biggest loser contest at work. My daughter stumbled across this site when looking for sites to track calories. I've always thought I was a good judge of what was a proper amount to eat, but my weight gain in the last couple of years was an indicator that I was not! I found that in the beginning of the contest I had trouble keeping my carbs under the limit. That was a real eye-opener for me. I set my goals to lose the max, 2 pounds a week, and my exercise of choice was lots of power-walking, I was able to lose almost 5 pounds a week. That's probably not ideal, and maybe even not healthy, but I was trying to win a contest (for $300)! I started the contest at 6-4, 314.4# and ended up at 258. I started out with casual walking 1 mile 2x a day at about a 20 minute/mile pace. The last week I power-walked over 50 miles and was down to a 14 minute/mile pace. My longest walk was 10 miles and it took 2 hours and 17 minutes. I had been in a 30 mile ultra race 3 years ago, but all my exercise up to that point had been for that one race. I didn't have any goals after that, so I put on all my weight and more in the next year or so (over 55 pounds). I love to walk with music at night, so that's when I did most of my walking. This is getting kind of long-winded, but I wanted people to know, if they take the time to just walk and log in EVERYTHING to the food diary, drink all their water (I was ALWAYS over on water) and stick with it after bad days, the weight will come off. I am 50 years old. The weight doesn't come off as easy as it used to, but it will come off. Some days I craved the extra calories I was getting from exercise (walk to eat!), and other days I would use the walking for extra calorie deficit. I am currently on a 2 week hiatus from strict dieting and walking, but we start another "Biggest Loser" contest on June 10. I hope to take off the rest of my pounds to achieve my goal. My original goal was to lose 75 pounds. I did have 19 to go, but this first week off I've been hitting restaurants I stayed away from during my 12 week contest, so I have a little cushion going into the next contest. HANG IN THERE!

No, I got beat by some young punk who was lifting 2x a day and he recently took up mountain biking. He also fasted from food the last 2 days and fasted from water the day before the weigh-in! Hopefully my weight will stay off longer!