Food Goals, Weight Goals

I spent a lot of time yesterday looking at nutrition plans again. (I wrote 'diet plans' and deleted it -- as much as I'd like to lose some weight this is about eating for strength, for immune system function, and for energy too.)  I think for the moment, I need to simply focus on eating relatively clean, no booze, and keeping the calories low enough that the weight starts to shift.  For me 'eating clean' still means sticking to what I would do if on an old JSF style weights program - lots of protein, relatively minimal carbs and extremely minimal processed carbs, lots of veggies and some fruit, some fat.  In practice, I don't tend to eat loads of fat and what I eat I'm fine with (some olive oil, or what's in my food, not much sweets or processed snacky type stuff) as long as I keep it reasonable; minimizing the carbs is the tricky part and what I have to watch. So I'm just going to get my veggies up again and keep the protein as high as I can. I know from experience that a week or so of that will leave me feeling good with better energy, sleeping better, all the rest.

Crossfit loves the zone and also paleo, but I think it's likely to be quite a while before I do real paleo, if ever, due to the restriction on pulses/all carbs/diary.  A more zone-y diet has worked well for me in the past, and while I'm gettting back to exercise I want to get those habits formed first instead of throwing myself full throttle into a diet/exercise overhaul.   I'm also toying with the idea of doing a proper detox and slow reintroduction of foods to check for any RA triggers before doing any strict zone/paleo stuff.   Point being, I'll give it a month and evaluate whether generally keeping clean is working or I need to be a bit stricter. If after two months I'm not making real gains at crossfit and dropping some weight I'll consider changing things up more seriously. For now, it's more important for me to just be CONSISTENT with training and eating generally well.

A note on weight. Starting weight between 138-140 (139 today but has been lower previously in the week, wondering if this is due to Mon/Tues carb overload!).  I know but will be frustrated anyway that in the first month little weight will come off.  In the past, it's during the second month I can actually see changes. I'll be taking starting pics this week.

And despite the fact that we all know the scale doesn't matter, here's the current plan. Relatively modest and attainable over a 20 week period.
End of Feb: 138
End of March: 134
End of April: 129* evaluation point on diet.
End of May: 124
End of June: 118-120
July 24th: 116-120

Of course, if I'm noticing differences in the pictures and in the mirror and my belt loops, I won't really care about the scale. But progress has to continue or I make changes to the routine.