Happy dances might make you look funny, but they're still fun to do.

Last week's gain kind of threw me off. It was hard for me to stay on track in my head, but I did it. I swam every day except Sunday this week. 80 lengths a day. 2kms. Hard work but I'm LOVING it. I love getting in that pool and just swimming up and down, over and over again. I get in the water with the intention of working out, but it ends up being much more than that. I'm in my own head, thinking things over, tossing them about, making decisions. It's very therapeutic. And stress relieving.

If you had asked me back in November if there was an exercise I enjoyed, really and truly enjoyed, I would have said no. Sure, I didn't mind walking (as long as I had my iPod), but swimming is awesome.

The weightlessness of being in the water, the resistance of the water against the limbs, the way the water drowns out all the noise.......it's awesome.

So I've been going every day. And I seem to have gained a reputation. I was at the pool today and a woman in the next lane looked at me and asked "Are you Canadian by any chance?". How she figured that out by standing and looking at a fat chick in a bathing suit and goggles is beyond me, but I answered "yes". She carried on... "And are you the one who has been swimming 80 lengths a day?". "Um. Yes?", I say. She says "Wow! Good for you! That's awesome." and then swims off.

Weird.

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I weighed in last night. I'm not sure why, but before I went I had this horrible feeling that I had put on weight. I guess last week's weigh in threw me more than I had realised in that respect.

But...success! I lost 1.4 kgs this week. That brings my total for 17 weeks to 17.8kgs (39.16 lbs).

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Do you have a happy dance that you perform, whether people are watching or not, when you do something awesome? I do. It's not pretty, it's kind of funny looking actually, but it's fun.

I got to do my happy dance on Tuesday.

The town where I live is surrounded by beautiful hills. People walk and run these hills all the time. I, on the other hand, have stayed comfortably at the bottom and admired their beauty and scoffed at the insanity of the people who choose to use them for exercise. And then my friend Crumpet told me she was walking them. It was like a challenge had been thrown down. If she could do it, why couldn't I? Well the answer to that is that she's lighter and fitter than I am...but I wasn't going to let that stop me. I asked her to take me up the hill.

This hill is called the Gentle Annie. The path that goes up one side is a zig zag path (which apparently is why it's called Gentle Annie..something to do with a washing machine?) and gives the illusion of being easier to go up than the side that is just one long straight path. Gentle, my arse.

I thought for sure I would be super slow. I thought for sure that I would have to stop about 20 times to catch my breath.

I was wrong.

I made it up pretty quickly and only had to stop a few times to catch my breath and have a drink of water. And when I got to the lookout at the top? I did my happy dance. I wish I'd had a camera to take up with me. It was gorgeous up there, and not just because I made it up there without dying.

This was a huge achievement for me, and one I plan to repeat.

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I am putting together a list of things I want to do at various points in this weightloss journey .... and for final rewards, I'll talk more about that later this week.