I know many of you likely come here to read about actual weight loss, and I haven’t had that to report, lately. My most recent low was last October, just before I left for a cruise. Sometimes, I feel like I should apologize — but in thinking about this, I’ve realized that while seeing someone lose weight is a fascination and a draw, it’s not at all why I come here to write and share.

Hey, I get it. It’s why people watched The Biggest Loser for so long. Seeing someone change before your eyes, especially losing incredible amounts of weight, is a rarity. You hope they post those infamous before and after pics; we all have seen the saddest pics ever for the ‘before’ pics, and then a victorious, smiling person standing with both legs in the same leg of a huge pair of pants.

I’m less than half the weight I was when I embarked on this journey. Although I’m not in maintenance yet, and I’m not fully sure what that will look like because I’m basing that transition on my health rather than my weight, I, too, could pull out my start weight clothes and look something like a child in a parent’s over-sized clothing. My shorts were 4X; my shirt 3X. Eventually, I might take such a pic for my own purposes. I am proud of where I am and where I’ve been — and where I hope to continue to be as I move forward.

Massive weight loss is an attention getter with its own “viewer demographic”. Both those who will never need to lose half or more of their body weight, and those who dream of it (as I once did), often hope it’s a fast process, a linear and predictable one. I watched the first couple of seasons of The Biggest Loser, where contestants were judged only on their ability to lose weight each week, and if they didn’t show a loss (or, heaven forbid, they showed a gain), there had to be some failure responsible. They didn’t try hard enough. They were caught sneaking something in the kitchen and exposed for it. No, it couldn’t ever be that the human body is a complicated thing, and sometimes it just doesn’t do what you hope it will.

I couldn’t stomach how they treated the contestants. I know from direct experience that fast weight loss isn’t necessarily the best method, and that morbid obesity takes a large physical toll on the body. To me, it seemed as if the contestants were being punished rather than taught how to change. I know with absolute certainty that there’s a segment of the population who think obesity is a moral failing and that the morbidly obese should be punished. But lifestyle changes that are forced on someone are rarely effective; check back with the heart attack survivors who are told to stop smoking, and see what they’re up to a few years down the road. Many may have forgotten the lesson in stopping their behavior, only to return to it.

I was a big time loser. I lost 140 pounds — and never learned the lesson. I didn’t learn how to respond to the very things that destroy most weight loss efforts, and for me, this blog and this effort is more about resetting my normal to be the healthy response than a return to the detrimental. All of us experience life challenges that threaten our norms; it’s how we respond to them that makes the difference.

Whether it’s a vacation or a major surgery or an emotional roller coaster, my new intentionally chosen normal is a return to what I know makes me feel my best. If I come back from vacation a few pounds up and I find that frustrating or a surprise, I haven’t been honest with myself; choosing to eat differently on vacation will cause weight gain. If I know that going in, and I accept that I will need to deal with the gain afterward, then it’s an expected outcome that can be dealt with.

I have, in the past, slid off diets and dropped back into the habits that made me obese in the first place. Most of us have set out to change something, only to backslide. I’ve known what I was doing at the time, but it’s usually been a matter of being so frustrated with whatever was going on that I either didn’t want to go back on a diet after a vacation or food was a comfort during an emotional situation. The issue isn’t so much the sudden change in eating — as it is not recognizing the damage done by the aftermath. Making a temporary deviation a permanent situation, all while beating myself up for failing yet again, does more to kick me psychologically than anything else. It’s self-punishment by imagined reward.

Here, have a cupcake with three inches of frosting on it. Feel better for the five minutes (or less) it takes to eat it. And then beat yourself up for making the decision to eat it once you can’t taste it any longer.  Sound at all familiar?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it, again: frustration over diet is never improved by going off of it. I have been there oh, so many times, and you would have thought I would have learned the lesson much earlier, but so many of us do the exact same thing. And by doing that same thing — going back to the behavior that got us in the situation in the first place — we embrace that “normal”, for us, is the behavior that harms us.

For me, learning how to recover from the challenges in life is important. I knew having two major surgeries in one year would slow my weight loss this past year, and it did. But I’ve also accepted that I feel better when I am firmly entrenched in my normal, and that, these days, is the return to the path that’s making me a healthier person. I know I feel better. Mentally, I feel more powerful and in control when I know I am back to normal, and that the definition of normal has changed.

That’s the victory, for me. Not before/after photos that insinuate that I was an unhappy, unhealthy wretch in the sad-face ‘before’ photo and so vibrantly happy in the ‘after’ photo, as so many show. It’s not a fleeting notoriety for beating the odds, because this isn’t a one-and-done thing. It’s an ongoing lifestyle built and constantly corrected with small choices and adjustments.

I understand that people would rather read about the huge changes that come with massive weight loss. The season finales for The Biggest Loser were all about showcasing the winning participants as if, now that they had finally lost the weight, all the troubles of their existence would suddenly dissolve. The New York Times article “After The Biggest Loser, Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight” points out that all but one contestant in Season 8 regained all of their lost weight, plus some. While I may disagree somewhat with the reasons the NYT puts forth, much of their temporary victories in my mind can be blamed on the methods used.

Slow loss and transformation isn’t as glamorous, but it’s more likely to be effective. This process is not a race. In the long run, beating the odds and maintaining my health for as long as possible is far more important than the soon-forgotten before/after photos. If you’ve forgotten I was ever 371 pounds, that’s fine. I haven’t, although I’ve long since stopped looking behind me and am ultimately focused on a better future. Dwelling on past successes is far less important than the simple choices I make on a daily basis.

Losing weight is tough. Moving forward and maintaining health is both the ultimate challenge and the end goal, and what I train for with every choice I make, including in how I recover from life events. It’s the sole reason for this blog; the examination and learning process of how I move forward into a future that has been indelibly changed — and that’s a beautiful thing.