(Accidental) Weight Loss

For a while now, I've been trying to lose some weight.  I know that on the BMI scale I am literally on the cusp between overweight and obese.  Unfortunately, my chest pain has made it tough to work out consistently without ending up in a whole ton of pain.  So I was pleasantly surprised today when I stepped on the scale and realized that I had lost 5 lbs.  It's not a whole lot, I know, but considering I haven't been able to workout a lot and I've lost it mainly by making healthier choices while eating, its kind of a big deal. (Yay optimism!)

In light of not being able to work out a whole lot, for the past week I've been wearing a pedometer to see how many steps I take in a day.  It's my hope that by taking a week or two to figure out a baseline of how many steps I take in a day, I'll be able to slowly increase the number of steps and lose weight.  I also plan on walking Bella more often.  The combination of the pedometer + walking Bella should hopefully help me lose some more weight.  

Now for the reasons I want to lose weight.  One is as mentioned above, on the BMI scale I am very close to being obese.  I would like to approach a healthier weight.  I'm sure that some of my back pain stems from the extra weight I carry around every day.  Aside from avoiding pain, I also want to make sure I live a nice, long, healthy life.  Knowing that my dad has adult Diabetes, keeping my weight under control is uber-important.  So in order to get healthy and stay that way, I've got to get my weight under control.  Unfortunately, as mentioned above, my chest pain has made this difficult if not impossible due to the inability to work out and that I had to take some steroids a year ago.  The combination of the two made me gain 15 lbs.  I was able to lose 20 lbs, but then gained another 5.  Right now I'm about 5 lbs lighter than when my chest started hurting.  Another, more vain reason that I want to lose weight, is that I would like to look *amazing* in a wedding dress (for the wedding that I'm not sure when will happen).   In essence I have set some long and really long term goals for myself.  

Anybody have some advice on the best way to get and stay motivated while losing weight?

Here are some useful links to using pedometers if anyone is interested:

http://walking.about.com/cs/measure/bb/bybpedometer.htm

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/