Spring is here, people! And I’ve been busy enough that I was totally stumped on what to write, so I’m answering questions that were posed to me. If you have a question, send it to me and I might answer it in a future blog! On a side note, I’m now 164 pounds down.

What do you do when giving up isn’t an option?

I’m big on mental processes, because I truly believe that changing my mind has changed my body and improved my chances of success. But that doesn’t mean I’m cruising along on all cylinders at all times. There have been times when I’ve been absolutely frustrated with my (lack of) progress and wanted to just throw in the towel. That time wasn’t all that long ago, when I was told I’d need to lose more weight to qualify for knee surgery. I reacted quite emotionally and took it as a slap in the face for all the hard work I’d done.

At that time, I was frustrated because I thought my options were limited and that I was honestly doing everything I could possibly do. When I asked the right questions (mainly, would you please help me?) and got answers I hadn’t considered, before, I committed myself to exploring those other options, and found the strength to give a few key changes a try. It worked. But even if it hadn’t worked, it reminded me that there are always other options available. We just have to choose whether or not they are feasible for us.

For me personally, weight loss is a side effect of my efforts to improve my health, both physically and mentally. Unfortunately, my actual weight mattered at that particular moment. While my weight may have stagnated for a bit, I knew that I was getting stronger and improving, so having medical professionals say those changes weren’t good enough was — well — I said a lot of angry, bad, creative words.

In that case, my options were to either accept that I was going to stay at a relative weight that wasn’t low enough to consider knee surgery, and face the very real prospect that I would continue to deal with severe and debilitating arthritis, or push even harder to get to the goal I’d set to achieve: knee replacement surgery. At that point, I knew that I’d already given up once after losing 140 pounds. I’d already beat that number. Was I really going to even consider giving up, again? This close?

Obviously, the answer was no, I’m not giving up. I had to remind myself of previous failures, the biggest being having achieved so many years ago and then letting it slip through my fingers.

To do that, I had to firmly get out of my head, of what I was feeling in the moment. I had to have my own personal come-to-Jesus discussion with myself and accept that even if I had to change what I was doing even further, it was a far better thing to try harder than to let myself down without the attempt.

I think that’s a bit easier to do when you’re facing a medical issue that determines an outcome. It’s much easier, when there’s not much on the line, to let that determination slip down a notch, and then, perhaps, risk letting it slip away altogether. We convince ourselves of things that are rewards in this moment. And that’s where the trouble begins.

I’ve always believed that every single day is The First Day. That every meal choice is The First Meal Choice. That the way you get through a day, a week, a month, a year, is by each small choice you make along the way. But in moments when I feel like I’m weak, understanding that cumulative effect and how many small choices went into a total 164 pound loss is a landmark reminder that making one more choice to remain strong will help me push those numbers a bit more.

Will you have excess skin removed?

Right at this moment, I’d say no, unless it becomes a medical issue in some way. I may change my mind the closer I get to a manageable maintenance weight.

For a while, I considered it. I watched a show on YouTube that featured people like me: folks that had lost great amounts of weight and ended up with excess skin. Some went through as many as three or four surgeries, removing 30 or more pounds of excess skin.

Their changes were pretty miraculous, but I took a few things away from the show, itself. One was that all of those folks were at least 20 years younger than I am, and when it comes to recovery, that does make a difference.

The other was much more important, though. It might have been a construct of the show itself, scripting what the men and women said, but just about all of them said one thing that bothered me: that they saw the excess skin as being as bad (or worse!) than having the actual weight.

While I’m not close enough to a goal, yet, to consider surgery, I would never trade away the immense changes I’ve made weight-wise because I don’t like my skin. While it’s certainly a personal choice, I can’t imagine a world where I’d rather foist all the conditions I suffered from on my body, again, because my skin looked better filled out with fat. I’m sorry — that’s totally ridiculous.

At this point, where I’m just as vain as the next person and I’m not a big fan of skin more wrinkly than an elephant’s trunk, my excess skin is also a reminder of where I’ve been and what got me here, which are important lessons to carry with me for the rest of my life.

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That’s all for this week. If you have questions, please ask; I might feature them in a future blog when I have nothing else to write about, like this week!