Happy news, my friends! Over seven long years ago, I set a goal to lose 200 pounds. At the time, I weighed 371 pounds. And, as I’ve mentioned before, I never really truly believed I’d meet that goal.

I met that goal yesterday morning.

In fact, I surpassed it just a tad; I even took a pic of the weight on my scale and shared it with some close friends and family. (Note to self: CLEAN THAT SCALE! OMG!) Yesterday — just a simple Thursday in November — was the day I thought would never, ever happen for me. And today? Even lower, at 202 pounds lost.

Yes, I absolutely cried some tears of joy. Those of you that have followed me over the years, and that know me personally, know how long I have struggled to arrive at this moment in time.

Every tear, every disappointment, every setback, every time I doubted myself during the past seven years has been worth it. Every accomplishment, every recovery, every shift in my methods, every learning experience, every cathartic moment when I learned something about myself that I hadn’t realized — has been worth the work.

This past Monday, I walked 6 miles when I went out to walk for the day, and it wasn’t the first time. On Wednesday, I surpassed it; instead of eating my emotions during a stressful time, I walked it out, and reached 7.27 miles. Not even the .27 miles was possible for me on the day I made the very tentative decision to try again. I was in pain — physically, mentally, emotionally. I hoped that by trying again, I might stand a chance of giving myself my life back, and in the process, start to make it up to my friends and family for the horrible condition I was in.

Thank God. One small step has led to so very many others, and that initial thought of just maybe I could try to pull this off wasn’t a pipe dream.

More recently, I decided to amend my goals to 210 pounds down. That’s my next goal, and at that point, knowing I’ll be seeing my doctor at a weight at which the idiotic BMI scale says I am no longer obese, I want to assess my health markers. I’ll adjust from there as I move forward.

I started off with a number so big that I was far too scared to create a weight loss ticker for the entire amount. I figured looking at it would scare me so much that I’d fail. Again. So I worked in increments of 50 pounds. Now, I don’t even have a ticker, anymore. I don’t need it. And any remaining weight I may lose, based on my health markers, is a fraction of even the smaller increments I once chose for my mental wellbeing.

Setting my ego aside, for a moment, though… while I originally created this blog as a way to remain transparent, there’s a message of hope for anyone who is now in the situation I once found myself in. You can take control of your life. You can change things. You can work toward and commit to whatever it takes to change your health. You can come back from the brink. And I hope that my own accomplishments might encourage someone else to just make the decision to start.

Prove it to yourself you can do it. My proof? I’m still here and moving forward.

So, about that whole cupcake thing from last week… it wasn’t a cupcake that got me; it was a dark chocolate brownie with vanilla bean ice cream and whip cream on top.

Last Friday, we went to a restaurant with our friends and dined out on the patio. I was pretty proud that I had reviewed the menu beforehand and selected the best options for my birthday meal out. After all, I was a mere 3 pounds above my next goal weight and I didn’t want to do anything that might set me back.

That was until the waitress presented me with the free birthday dessert at the end of the meal, and I was completely caught off-guard. Under normal circumstances, I might have expected it, but we have rarely dined out during the pandemic, and let’s face it, the way restaurants must do business has changed. This was also my first visit to this restaurant.

I’m embarrassed to admit that the logic loop on the way to eating almost all of that luscious brownie was probably about three seconds long, if that. I know it wasn’t the case, but I also felt like all eyes were on me in that moment. Had I been thinking clearly, I might have given it to someone at my table. Or asked for additional spoons so others could eat the majority of it and I wouldn’t have been facing expanded-hips-by-brownie. But I went for it.

I don’t use any kinds of sweeteners; not sugar, not artificial sweeteners. I do not eat anything at all that’s sweet. So when I took that first bite, it tasted so sweet that my teeth literally ached. And it was a very tasty treat. I enjoyed every bite of that unplanned deviation. But I did not enjoy the 2.2 pounds I immediately gained from it, or the fact that it has taken me nearly a week to get back to where I was before I made that choice.

I even posted a pic of it online with the admission of making that choice. Many of my friends told me that I deserved it, and they hoped I enjoyed it. I’ve written about this previously, but I firmly believe that using food that’s off plan as a reward for sticking to a plan is self-sabotage. A rare, planned treat is one thing; an unplanned and totally spontaneous indulgence, when I have been working hard to achieve particular goals, is quite another.

It’s the small choices we make that add up. This particular choice cost me a bit more time as I rid my body of the sugar and fought immediate cravings for food, which is something I don’t normally deal with. I’ve now paid the price and gotten back where I was, but had I avoided that particular pothole, I might have at least been closer to my goal — or I might have even met it. I could have been spending this blog writing about finally achieving a weight loss goal of 200 pounds lost, and my plans moving forward from finally meeting that momentous goal. But I let a bowl of sugar get in the way.

As the holidays approach, I am dedicated to being more steadfast in controlling my choices.

Yesterday, I turned 59 years old, just in case you missed the national celebration. Don’t worry; so did I, since there wasn’t one. 😉

With it came my 7th annual angst-fest over whether or not I really wanted a birthday cupcake. I love cupcakes! Especially ones that are more frosting than cupcake. I don’t even really consider myself to be a big lover of sweets, but cupcakes? Just YUM!

Spoiler alert: I didn’t get the cupcake. And it’s probably just as well, because that tasty explosion of sweetness on my tongue is short-lived, and not worth the three years it takes for me to undo whatever damage all that sugar and flour does to my system. A moment on my lips, a billion years on my hips, or so it seems.

It’s not that I don’t feast on occasion. Allowing myself the occasional food vacation, whether it’s for just one meal or for the duration of an actual physical vacation, happens occasionally. But right now, I am a mere 2.6 pounds above achieving my 200 pounds down initial goal, and I have stopped short of claiming that goal far too many times to let myself get sidelined by something as innocuous as a cupcake. There are a billion things I like better, anyway.

Like last Sunday. Hubby and I drove to a nearby botanical garden and strolled around for over four miles. It was a gorgeous day, and we saw everything from huge colorful arrangements of fall mums to a chipmunk to a snake hubby nearly stepped on in the nature preserve. The only downside for me was that I should have worn better shoes, and I ended up rubbing a couple of blisters on my toes. But otherwise, it was a leisurely time and we were even home with plenty of time to hang out for the rest of the day in the backyard.

It wasn’t so long ago that I wouldn’t have been able to do that, or doing it would have exhausted me for anything else. If I had been able to do it at all, I would have been grouchy because pain in my knees would have taken my focus away from the beauty around me and I would have been ready to go home — or sit on every bench I came across — long before seeing much of the gardens. I would have been sore for a long time afterward, as well.

I didn’t get to this point in my health by looking only at the short term rewards, and things like cupcakes are definitely that. I know the price of a cupcake for me. It’s the hunger the sugar spike causes. The water weight tied to glycogen stores in my body from the sugar. It’s the battle to get past it to what I really want: the sweeter ability to claim much larger accomplishments that are back within my grasp.

At some point, on some future vacation, that cupcake will be mine, but I’d rather have the 200 pounds down. This year, that cupcake didn’t win, and I did.

Over the last couple of years, I have maintained my weight, sometimes drifting upward before I get my head back on straight and put in the effort. While I have accepted that my weight battles will always be with me, I have also imagined a line I’d cross from active weight loss into maintenance. I know better than to believe, as I used to, that crossing that line will magically solve all of my issues, but it struck me just today how much change has still been going on over the last couple of years, despite more slight changes in weight.

I’m near my low weight, again, but I’ve been near it or at it countless times in the last two years. It’s also the time of year that I change out my warm weather clothes for cool weather, so I decided to start the process last week, pulling out jeans and long pants. Earlier today, I decided to move some clothes into my closet, and ended up challenging myself to pull out clothes that I haven’t worn in the last couple of years.

I used to do this all the time, but haven’t, recently. My reasons, before, were because I was actively losing weight and going down in clothing size, so I pulled out the things that had become too large. I’ve donated a few bags of clothing here and there in the last couple of years, but nothing on the level of where I once was.

When I lost weight years ago and then started to regain, I kept some of my clothing with the hope that I’d get a handle on my weight gains and get back into them. As I increased in size, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the clothing. It felt like giving up hope. I squirreled away clothing and didn’t look at it, again; it was just too painful for me to do. At one point, not long after I had attempted weight loss again to limited success, I got mad enough to part with a lot of that clothing. Donating them felt final — as if I was closing the door on the possibility that I would ever regain the body I’d briefly had after losing over a hundred pounds.

A small thought entered my mind as I was pulling out last year’s jeans for this year. I had kept my favorite pair from that effort back then, and I wore them last fall and winter. I wore them again just last week and realized how stupidly large they were getting. I’ve washed them, and they’ll be donated. They, and an out-of-style jean vest, are the last remnants of that large effort, but they’re too big, now, rather than being too small. Donating them, as well as the other clothes I’ve been holding onto for absolutely no reason except for insecurity, will no longer be an act of giving up hope. This time, it’ll be an act of never allowing myself to fit back into larger clothing.

Hanging on to things that no longer serve me, whether yesterday’s too-small clothes or today’s too-large ones, is one of the ways I recognize my changing body, but I’ve come to the stark realization that keeping the things that are too large allows me a cushion. I don’t want that. The scale may read nearly the same weight as it did two years ago, but my body and my mind have done a lot of changing since then, and there’s no longer any reason to hang on to such things.

I’m under construction. I’ve been renovating my mind and body without ever really paying much attention, especially during a pandemic that has allowed me to stay in comfy clothing for months on end, with very few exceptions. It’s no longer about an imaginary line that I’ll cross and then move into maintenance; in many ways, I’m already there. I’m still changing. Instead of looking back with dread, I’m looking forward with hope.

The last time I lost a lot of weight, I admit I was cocky about it. I was proud of having lost 140 pounds. I was definitely proud of my new athletic abilities; I even managed to squat my starting weight of 338 pounds — as a woman in her 40’s. I also walked for at least an hour a day and had started in on jogging, something I’d never done without a PE teacher demanding I do it.

All of those accomplishments were good ones; it was my own mental attitude that was my eventual downfall. I over-exercised and hurt myself. I just had to be absolutely right about my dietary needs and became inflexible. I put myself out there as a success. I was thrilled to be able to sneak up on people I hadn’t seen in a couple years and totally surprise them with my new-to-me body. I was happy to talk to people as an authority on weight loss. I had beat the odds, after all, and wanted everyone to know it.

I lost friends over it — mostly friends who were obese. And the truth was that even after all I had accomplished, I was still obese, but in my mind, I’d become Super Woman. My attitude changed and I ended up pushing friends away; friends I’ve never gotten back and have no idea where they are, now. I regret that because while I might not have just said anything overt about weight, those people obviously felt as if they no longer had a connection to me.

The social stigma of obesity isn’t just a matter of how the obese are treated by society. It’s also in how we treat ourselves and how we let it steer our relationships with others. Just like a teenager who goes overboard because she’s made it onto the cheer-leading squad and driven away the friends who can’t bear to listen to her go on and on about her new status, I likely drove away the friends who once found common ground with me because I was obese, like them. Mind you, I remained obese, despite my then-lowest weight; my physical changes didn’t drive a wedge. My mental ones did. And for that, I’m sorry.

I did a lot of things wrong, back then, including believing that I had found the answer and that I had become infallible, somehow. I felt like I was sharing my own gospel and talking about everything I’d done right while pushing aside what I’d done wrong. When I regained all the weight lost, plus more weight on top of it, I was mentally humiliated. I felt as if I deserved any scorn others might have had for me. Quite obviously, I didn’t have all the answers. I wasn’t bulletproof. And I really needed to stop talking and making others uncomfortable with my chatter.

These days, I’ve surpassed all of those markers I set back then. I’m still obese, but not far from crossing that BMI-driven line into merely overweight. I am much more thankful for the lessons I’ve learned. I still don’t have all the answers, and I know it. I don’t silently judge my friends regarding their weights or their eating and exercise habits; if anything, I want to be supportive, because I certainly know the battles we all face. I refuse to invite karma by being boastful about what I’ve accomplished. My hope is that people who are newer friends have no idea of my previous life; not because I’m embarrassed by it, but because I strive to live in a way that keeps me true to my chosen path.

This is the biggest reason why I choose not to be defined by my weight loss efforts, and why I rarely discuss them with anyone, unless they specifically ask. If I define myself as a successful weight loss survivor (of sorts; after all, I’m not done, yet!), I put myself at risk of resting on my laurels and rejecting the flexibility and quest for knowledge that I need to complete this phase of my journey and to move into the next one. I want that more than just about anything; anyone who has dealt with morbid obesity and its consequences likely knows the deep-seated desires I once had to no longer be a captive to my body.

Instead, I hope that my friends who are on their own journeys know that I’m an ally, whatever paths they choose. I know the yearning for something better while feeling absolutely powerless to achieve it. I know what it feels like to be judged by my size instead of my mind. And until my mind is no longer obese, I have to view my successes as temporary and always at risk.

I think, like my body, my mind is nearly at that tipping point where I am ready and can accept myself in this body. I am no hero; I only hope to be able to live the rest of my life comfortable in my own skin.

Last weekend, hubby and I took a mini vacation. We’ve both needed to get away; we each have our own burdens that have been amplified since the start of the pandemic, so we planned a getaway that allowed us to keep our social distance with others but still enjoy doing things we love.

We usually go to a wine festival every year, but understandably, it isn’t being held this year. The wineries, though, are open, so that’s what we planned to do. Beforehand, we drove into Fort Smith to walk downtown and see the Unexpected FS murals; for those who are unfamiliar, Fort Smith has a rich (wild?) western past, sitting on the border with Oklahoma. Its downtown area has a lot of historic buildings, but when both of us lived there years ago, the downtown area had declined.

Over recent years, there has been a movement to revitalize the downtown area. One of the wonderful things to have happened, there, was The Unexpected; primarily an outside art project, it features international artists who come to Fort Smith once a year, and they create imaginative artwork on the sides of old buildings, grain silos, gas stations, old houses. The venues and methods vary by the artist, and the artists change each year.

We hadn’t yet seen 2019’s additions to the project, and while we were in Fort Smith several weeks back for a family funeral (my husband’s mother), the time and the weather kept us from seeing the murals. Last Saturday morning, we drove in for a couple of hours and walked the downtown area to see what we could. We started by strolling a farmer’s market, and then walked the downtown area, taking our time. We both had our FitBits on and walked a couple of miles before we headed out to lunch and then off to the wineries.

There was a day when the only way we would have been able to do such a thing would be for my husband to push me in a travel wheelchair. If I had chosen to walk, I wouldn’t have been able to go as far and certainly not for a couple of miles. I would have been in pain, and when you’re in pain, it’s hard to put that out of your mind and simply enjoy a beautiful day and a pleasant stroll. Even though I probably still would have enjoyed the day, I would have had to plan and keep an eye out for places where I could sit and get off my feet, and once back in our truck, deal with stiff and swollen knees. I would have been out of breath, uncomfortable, perhaps sweaty despite the mild temperatures.

All of that has been removed. Such things weren’t even on my radar, and when the pain and the compromised endurance is out of the picture, the experience and the pleasure of simply walking downtown to look around is amplified. That whole thick layer of having to constantly calculate how to accommodate a morbidly obese body is no longer there. Everything I do, now, I can focus on with all of my attention, instead of having to figure out how to accommodate my body.

I’m thankful for making the decisions and investment it took for my life to open up in so many ways, and every day is a new, unexpected experience.

The week started off on a sad note. A friend I’ve known and held dear for the past 14 years passed away from health issues she had been dealing with indefinitely. She was an unfailingly kind person who led a larger than normal life, but unfortunately, those of us that knew her at a distance had no idea how severe her health issues were. She was always quick to think of others, but rarely if ever asked for help, herself. I’m not sure anything would have changed had we known, but I do know this: she leaves us grieving, certainly, but I know with confidence that all of our lives are far better having known her.

None of us know what challenges we may face down the road, especially at a time when so many have died far earlier than they should have. Those of us who are still here can either shake our fists in anger and grief — or we can work for change.

Seeing my health markers last week was a wake up call for me. While they’re far from horrible — most people would likely be fine with them — they were better just one short year ago. A lot has changed over the course of a year; wild highs and lows, fears, anxiety, grief. I’ve used those things as reasons to backslide rather than to strengthen myself, and if I needed evidence, it was right there in black and white. Medical tests don’t lie; they’re tools allowing us a glance at what’s going on inside of us.

Sure, at the beginning of the pandemic, many of use were making jokes about the Quarantine 15 (gaining 15 pounds, which I have lost and gained several times in the last six months), eating everything in the house, and more. I think nearly everyone decided it was a great time to do a lot of baking, especially bread. Many of us channeled our fears over what we hoped would be a short term event into ways to console ourselves; food, alcohol, and more.

I did it, too, although my gains were more recent and I used food as a way to vent emotions. I knew what I was doing, but it took seeing the evidence to drive it home that if I continued to allow food to comfort me, I was in danger of losing control over something I’ve been very proud of doing: regaining my health.

When I first dared to take my early steps toward health, I did it because I was afraid I would not survive to experience not only life events like the birth of my grandson, but the joys of regaining abilities — physically, mentally, emotionally. I didn’t want to cut my life short. While I am far from the place I started, my friend’s death is a stark reminder that life is short and we should absolutely make the best of each moment. I know she did the best she could with the issues she faced, and I should be doing that, too. It’s been far too easy to fall into complacency. I must move forward with renewed vigor.

My life is not on hold because there’s a pandemic. I have to stop living as if it is and allowing it to erode my mental outlook. It’s time to quit letting things get in my way and finally push through to where I want to be. That’s the job I should be doing.

It’s that time of year: health insurance renewal and qualification for a monthly discount. For our health insurance, it’s a biometric screening and a written health assessment.

I am never a fan of the health assessment; it’s a series of far too many nosy questions that just assume you’re fat, lazy, don’t take care of yourself, smoke, drink too much, and have a lousy outlook on life. The questions are written in a way that assumes you need improvement. Instead of “do you smoke?”, it asks “how often do you smoke?”

I understand the questions may be written for brevity. It’s quicker to ask “how often do you smoke?” and select the range that applies (including options like “I don’t smoke” or, in my case, “I quit smoking more than a year ago” — in actuality, much longer) than to ask “do you smoke?” and then drill down another answer if the answer is “yes”. Nearly all of the questions are written this way. And while it’s more economical to write them that way, it’s also fairly abrasive. By the time I finished the health assessment, I felt like I’d been through an interrogation.

Also, many of the questions are leading in nature, such as asking what you plan to do to improve in each area. I also know these questions are designed because there are services the company provides to assist in various areas of life, although I also think they are very cut and dry.

The end results? I’m pretty much on my deathbed, according to them. I could be an Olympian and not get a perfect score with an insurance company.

I know, without a doubt, that I’m now going to get nagged by their various program offerings. That includes dietary information; I could tell by the slant of the questions that their preferred method of weight loss is NOT how I have managed to lose nearly 200 pounds. There’s no allowance for differing viewpoints. It spewed out my BMI, of course. It showed me how much weight it thinks I should lose. In its robot way, it sees me exactly as if I never did anything to improve my health.

Mind you, this health assessment was done after I had already consulted with my doctor, who did not tell me one single thing that needs improvement; I am the one who knows I still have work to do, as I admitted last week. It’s almost as if the insurance company prefers to second guess the guy with a medical degree that had me standing right in front of him.

I refuse to see myself as the insurance company does: something to be changed, by their rules, not an individual. The irony is that as I continue to follow my own path, I look better to my insurance company. I appreciate the differences: the health insurance information sees me as data input/output. My doctor sees me as a total person.

It’s important for me, the one being assessed in either situation, to also see all of me — the one who already has direct experience in what needs to change, how those changes need to happen, and when.

Yesterday was my annual physical. I used to cry my way through them. Seriously, I’m sure my then-doc probably had private notes on my chart to always have adequate tissues on hand. All it would take would be something like “you’ve gained a few pounds since the last time you were in” and the tears, previously held back and just under the surface, would shoot out like a geyser.

I don’t do that anymore. For the last few years, I’ve felt pretty darned good about doctor appointments, for the most part. (It’s a little hard to forget about when my knee surgery was delayed because of weight a couple of yeas ago.) I didn’t cry yesterday, either, but it wasn’t as shining and glorious a report as I’d been getting. My current doc doesn’t bring up my weight unless I do; and for the first time, I didn’t, but I have also been judging my final weight on health markers. While they are still excellent overall, they’re not as good as I had hoped. I have work to do.

I have also not been as steadfast with efforts recently, and both my weight and overall cholesterol numbers show that. I can blame lots of things for that; stress, a recent death in the family, my husband’s recent return to work as a teacher for in-school instruction during a pandemic (and the paranoia of whether or not we might both contract Covid and pass it to someone else), and the list goes on. But when we get right down to it, I’ve been putting too much of the wrong kinds of food in my mouth. And while I know that solves nothing and only adds to my stress, I’ve done it, anyway.

Yesterday was a reminder of what I already know: it’s time to buckle down and stop making excuses. I know what I’m doing wrong, and I’ll phase back to strict adherence while I also explore ways to relieve stress and take away that excuse. No “food vacations” for a bit. I’ve extended the last one far too long, and I know better.

Please don’t see any of this as me beating myself up: it’s more the process of analyzing and understanding what needs to be changed and adjusted, which is now a constant process for me. That tends to get set aside during times of stress, and making good decisions is more of a challenge when faced with, for instance, preplanned family lunches after a funeral where every lunch is identical and wrapped, as it should be during a pandemic. But rather than mitigating and accepting a small deviation and sticking with the sandwich I wouldn’t normally have chosen for myself, I doubled (and maybe tripled!) down with chips and brownies.

Now, as things are starting to settle down, it’s my job and in my best personal interests to simply figure out ways to alleviate stress, and to also not use it as a reason to add more stress to my plate (or anything else that doesn’t belong there). I’m better off making the effort to do things I will be proud of as I lay my head on my pillow each night. I know well that those small efforts lead to large victories.

I know where my comfort zone is, and I haven’t been there. It’s time to head toward my journey’s home.

Seven years. A total of approximately 2,557 days. Some good ones, a few stinkers in there, and some really great ones.

My 7th anniversary of starting what I first considered a diet was yesterday. I’ve reposted my first blog post, before, but there’s also some personal stuff I haven’t put online. Below are excerpts from my initial notes from September 3, 2013, followed by my comments from now.

(2013) I’ve been looking forward to this day, as well as dreading it. It’s the first day of what I hope will be the last time I start a diet. I want this time to be a success like no other.

2020: so far, so good! Although I’ve learned that every single day and every single choice made is a restart of sorts. Looking at the small choices makes them less daunting and easier; instead of telling myself from the get-go how much weight I needed to lose, I broke it down. Because otherwise, I would have broken down, overwhelmed by the task in front of me. And yet, here I am, almost 200 pounds later.

I have that desire every time I start. It’s a mix of high hopes, dread, anxiety, shame, and cynicism. I think it’s often the cynicism that does me in; I want this to be the time when everything changes for me, when I finally lose all the weight I need to lose, when I finally regain my health and can do so many of the things that fat has kept me from doing. But I don’t have faith; and why should I, really? Every single previous attempt has failed. What right do I have to believe that this effort will be any different?

And yet, I really do want it to be different. I’ve come close, before, and given up. I don’t want to give up, this time. I keep changing what I’m doing in hopes that this time I’ll find the key.

I’ve had to accept that I did things wrong, before — and I’m fully capable of screwing up, again. Just because something works for a little bit doesn’t mean it won’t need adjustment in the future; the body I have today requires different care than my 2013 body did. Most of all, I had to get out of my own way and be willing to accept and learn different ways of dealing with not only weight loss but my own mental health.

So, this morning at 4:40 am, I got up with the intention of driving to the gym. Not to exercise, mind you; to weigh, so I’d know a starting weight. Our home scale will not weigh above 300, and I know I’m easily above that number. The gym has an old doctor’s scale, so I drove there — only to find that the scale stops at 350, and — you guessed it — I weigh more than 350. I admit there’s part of me that expected that; and part of me that’s shocked, dismayed, and embarrassed.

I was faced with a choice. I have sworn to myself that this time I would make myself accountable in a number of ways, including knowing my starting weight, knowing my measurements, taking photos, blogging, videoing, and yes, this book. I can’t tell you how many times I start with good intentions of doing those things, and then don’t. When I don’t weigh or measure, I deny myself ways that reinforce to me that my body is changing, and while I might be embarrassed now, I know I’ll regret it if I don’t document.

And here I was, immediately faced with the knowledge that I don’t have a way to document a very important number: my starting weight. That happened years ago, when I first went on Atkins; I recorded my starting weight as 337 pounds, because that was the first weight I was able to see on a scale, several weeks after I began. I don’t know what my starting weight was. I console myself, now, that I was heavier, then; I wore size 32 jeans from Catherine’s, as well as a 4X jacket. I still have them.

Still. I swore to myself I’d document, and the first thing I’m faced with is no reliable way to do that. I told myself that I’d make weekly trips in to weigh until I lose enough weight to use my home scale, but how many times can I stand to make that drive, only to find out I’m still not within range? Talk about self-defeating.

I sucked it up and ordered a fancy new scale that weighs to 400 pounds.

And a couple days later:

Well, I’ve gone and done it. I weighed in.

Holy crap — I weigh 371 pounds. It’s no wonder that my body feels as badly as it does. I’m carrying more than 200 pounds than my body should, and just shy of a 100 pound gain since last July. I honestly don’t see what I’ve been doing to gain that weight, but that’s how it always is. All I can do is start, right? So that’s what I’ve got to do.

I plan to take photos and make a video today. There’s part of me that really doesn’t want to do that, but I desperately need to have a good talk with the future me — the one who may bail out after some success, because of any number of reasons, and give up the fight. I really need the future me to be strong and do this.

If you’re wondering if I made a video — I did. I’ve made a number of videos since then, and occasionally, I watch them to remind myself where I was, before, and why it was so necessary to document everything so I wouldn’t convince myself that things weren’t really as bad as they were and then backslide. Some day, maybe I’ll string them together and release them. Not today, though. Not today.

I also made those videos so I could see for myself how bad I really felt. How difficult it was for me just to move. How I couldn’t stand in front of the kitchen sink and wash all of the dishes because I was in too much pain to stand for the length of time it took, so I had to wash dishes in shifts. Or how long it took me to just get ready to go somewhere; clothing and personal hygiene were often a nightmare.

There’s a red cane in the back of the closet; that was actually from when I had started walking again and was able to walk for short distances. We loaned out my folding wheelchair (extra-wide, mind you) and just put it back in the garage for storage; not for me, but perhaps for relatives that might need it. There’s a walker mounted on the garage wall from my knee replacement surgeries. And if you’re wondering why I still have these things — I don’t keep them for me; I keep them because I know at some point someone — like my mother — may need them. Perhaps having lived that way gives me a glimpse into the real pain and the embarrassment of needing that sort of assistance.

While I hope to never return to those days, I also hope I never forget them, and that’s not quite as easy a feat. It’s been amazingly easy to leave that life behind with each improvement I see. Seeing the photos I took of myself seven years ago seems as if it’s someone else. I don’t deal with the pain, the awkwardness, the health issues. I don’t deal with the difficulty in movement, the time it took me to prepare for anything, the anxiety over just leaving my house. I no longer have to figure out the path I’ll take while grocery shopping so I don’t end up too tired or in too much pain.

I used to suffer from overwhelming anxiety because of my size. I felt as if eyes were on me, judging me wherever I was. If I met with a new client, I feared I would be out of the running not because of my abilities, but because of my size. I often felt like apologizing for who I was or appeared to be.

I have to always remember those days; not only so I never repeat them, but to always remember there are many who are, now, where I used to be, and they deserve as much humanity and respect as I do, now. None of us know what someone else is going through; there but for the grace of God go I, and I have fallen, before. I am determined not to fall again; every lesson is a bridge to the next stage. I have gained so much of my life back that I cannot fathom going back, but I also know that it will take all my determination for the next seven years — and the seven after that.