Celebrate with me, my friends! I’ve lost 4 pounds this week, setting my new loss at 137.4 pounds down. I haven’t lost that much in one week in the better part of a year!
If you had asked me 3+ years ago how much weight I hoped to lose, I would have tried to stay positive and say “all of it — every last ounce of 200 pounds”. But I didn’t believe it. Not really.
I have failed so many times at achieving even the smallest amount of weight loss that I had very little faith in myself. That’s despite already knowing that I was once capable of losing 140.5 pounds, something very few people are able to achieve. I reasoned that if I did that once, I could do it, again, but it was lip service.
Oso the German Shepherd weighs in at 137 pounds. Who’s a goooood boy?
Truthfully, I faked it until I felt it; I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm until I had a few small victories and started regaining the faith in myself to succeed. Until I started feeling better. Looking back at my first pics now, I realize exactly how bad I felt, both physically and mentally. I looked miserable, and I felt just as miserable as I looked.
No, I haven’t lost 200 pounds, yet, but with each passing day, that possibility seems more real. Here I sit, on the brink of matching the huge weight loss I had several years back… and passing it by. In just a few measly pounds (3.1! Less than I lost this past week!), I’ll be in new territory; I will have lost the most weight I’ve ever lost. Many people never achieve big weight loss once; I’ve done it twice. And this will not be “three times a charm”; twice is plenty enough, thanks!
It’s a strange mental place to be in. I clearly remember hitting that first 140.5 mark — it was in 2005, I think. I even took a photo of the scales that morning. I was absolutely torturing myself to reach that mark; I was consumed with the idea of losing weight. I worked out a couple hours a day. My meals were regimented. I was totally obsessed with breaking through… and then I hit a two-year plateau. I managed to hover about twenty pounds above my low, but then just finally gave up.
This is what I meant when I recently wrote about programs which are sustainable in the long run. It’s also the reason that I believe I will succeed now, more so than any effort I’ve made, before.
This time, I’m not obsessed. Yes, I’m aware of what I put into my body, and I’m careful about it; but not to the point of being rigid and inflexible. Not to the point of not being able to forgive myself for the occasional deviation. I’m not working out a couple hours a day; in fact, I’ve been walking around my yard and up and down my street for about a month, now, and I’m up to 3,000 steps a day — a far cry from the workout fiend I was, back then.
Against everything any diet guru would tell you, I’m getting similar loss results. Yes, it took a lot longer, but my health conditions are a bit more complicated than they were more than a decade ago. I’ve focused on correcting what’s imbalanced with my body instead of beating myself up. I also no longer live in fear of temptation or falling off the wagon on a grand scale, because my methods are habit now, and when I actually crave something, I address it. I’ll wait for a day when I plan on higher carbs and calories, have my treat, and move on.
My body has had more time to accept and settle into each decrease in weight. I’ve come to believe that our bodies naturally fight against loss as a threat to our systems, so the natural response to fast loss is fast gain. While my loss seems to crawl on at a snail’s pace, my body seems to more easily adjust to these gradual changes. My brain, too.
I say it’s a strange mental place to be because on occasion, I feel like I’m still sitting at 371 pounds; not because I feel bad or ponderous, but because I feel like I haven’t put a superhuman amount of effort into accomplishing this feat. It no longer feels like work; it just feels like life. Everything in my brain tells me I should still be at that starting weight, because I haven’t flogged myself, I haven’t punished myself, I haven’t obsessed to the point of excluding large chunks of my life in the name of micromanaging my health.
Being this far into my loss doesn’t seem real at moments like this, because it’s been so much easier than it ever has, before. Perhaps that’s a big sign that I’m finally doing things right, and these changes are permanent. I honestly wish I’d found this ability, before — this me that I am, right now. Yes, what I’ve done has still been hard work, in the same way that careers are hard work, but when the rewards are great, the perspective is different.
I know there’s a lot of people out there who would love to be in my spot — there was a point when I would have said, ‘me, too!’ I truly appreciate that I’m standing here today with this good fortune, and I wish the same for anyone who hopes to achieve this, and more.