For January, I was trying to lose 15 pounds before the end of the month.  I was close…really close.  In fact, I weighed myself again after my morning swim and I had lost 15.5 lbs, but that’s pretty much cheating since I was just dehydrated.  I ended up losing 14 pounds altogether, which I’m happy with. The first week and a half I was fighting off a cold and that didn’t help matters. If your curious what I was doing, I lost the first few (5-6) just eating normally and working out, and the last two weeks or so I focused on cutting “white” carbs 6 days a week (aka slow carb diet)  The carbs are definitely the key for me, and it was interesting to see just how much of them I eat in a day.