Next Tuesday is a big day for me: it’s my 6th anniversary. On September 3, 2013, I made the smallest of decisions with the biggest outcome: to try, just one more time, to lose weight.

I made myself accountable to anyone and everyone. I announced what I was doing. I asked for support. I put myself at risk in ways I hadn’t, previously, because I knew that if I quietly went about my efforts, I could just as easily quit.

I’m more surprised than anyone to be here, on the cusp of crossing into my seventh year, successful. I know darned well that even my closest friends may have supported me in the beginning, but silently watched and wondered when I’d reverse my efforts yet again. After all, I’ve repeated that pattern more times than I care to discuss, thank-you-very-much.

As I complete my 6th year toward not just weight loss but bettering myself in large ways, I feel a lot of things, and I’ll discuss them in the weeks to come — but this week’s thoughts may surprise you: I feel guilty.

Guilty for not having tried harder the numerous times I’ve traveled this same road. Guilty for knowing better and still giving up.

I regret that the decisions I made to stay where I was caused the problems that it did. My knees are hardly the only parts of my body to have sustained damage from morbid obesity; I’m sure I have arthritis that may eventually damage other parts of my body (or already has). As I back away from the edge of diabetes, I pray I have not done internal damage. My skin? It’s a mess.

I regret that I succumbed to depression and anxiety, and that had dire effects on my family. I regret not being a fully active parent to my daughter. I regret how my anxieties about my weight made me withdraw from social functions, and I gave in to hiding in corners whenever possible.

I regret, most of all, not being a fully active participant in my own life, denying myself so many opportunities.

I can’t go back in time and change those things. I can only do better from now on, and hope it’s enough. But at least that small decision that one September 3rd gave me something I hadn’t had in a very long time: hope. Every single day that’s gone by, since then, has brought just a smidgen more, but six years of little smidgens have added up to tremendous hope for the future and the determination to keep changing, keep improving, keep living a better life.

I’ve learned a lot over the past six years, including how much of a fighter I can be. I refuse to be broken, now.

“A 1999 study estimated that just 20 percent of overweight or obese Americans are successful at losing at least 10 percent of their body weight, and keeping this weight off for at least a year.” – The Best Way to Keep Weight Off | Live Science

“Here’s a sobering statistic: Roughly 90 percent of people who lose a lot of weight eventually regain just about all of it.” – Weighing the Facts: The Tough Truth About Weight Loss

“A team of researchers at King’s College London, found that an obese man has a 1 in 210 chance to get himself to a healthy body weight, which becomes a 1 in 1,290 chance if he’s severely obese. For women, being obese means they have a 1 in 124 chance of attaining a healthy body weight, or a 1 in 677 chance if they have severe obesity.” – Odds of an Obese Person Attaining a Healthy Weight Are Incredibly Slim, Study Finds

Depressing reading, isn’t it? Just reading the headlines is nearly enough to discourage someone who’s morbidly obese from even trying, if the chances of them regaining weight are just about a sure thing. I can’t say my life experiences have been much different.

Just about is not always, though. There’s some room in there for the exceptions, and I choose to believe all of us are the masters of our own outcomes, regardless of the percentages. All of us have it within us to beat the odds, as long as we’re willing to continually put in the work necessary.

I’ve chosen to shift my thinking about how I go about bettering my life. I think of this journey much like a chosen career; something I want to be good at, so I am constantly looking at ways I can adapt. It’s not a job as much as something I — okay, I’ll admit it — enjoy. Believe me, that’s not something I would ever have said about any previous time in my life when I attempted to lose weight, but I think the biggest difference between this time and all the times that came, before, is that my efforts now are about my life as a whole, not about a number on the scale.

I honestly have come to enjoy the differences in my life; my own thinking, my own abilities, the ways I have committed myself to changes that make my life more enjoyable. Those things in total are so much more than any temporary disappointment I might feel when I step on the scale and don’t see a number I’d hoped for. While I still weigh myself daily, I am so much more patient with myself, now. I know that’s just one number among many indicators that I am healthier, and that’s the point.

For instance — I wear a FitBit daily. Lately, my resting pulse has gone downward — noticeably, despite my weight still being above my low. I’m sure this is a result of walking daily, and it’s a great outcome. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be in for my annual wellness exam, and I fully expect good news, including the possibility of being able to drop a medication. That’s a huge payoff and a number I’d much rather see, especially since I started this journey, concerned about my health.

I believe that to continue being a success on this journey means pushing away stats; they’re meaningless in my own personal battles. As long as I am doing better each day, I no longer care what all those articles say about my chances for beating the odds; they only measure weight loss and gain, after all, not the effectiveness of long term choices.

I’ve already beaten the odds, and I’m just gonna keep working on beating them.

After last week’s buckling down, I am more confident this week that I’ll soon be at a new low weight. I’m glad because one of my biggest fears is that I’ll stop losing, lose heart, and once again regain everything I’ve lost, and more.

I always tell myself “never again!”, but to be absolutely honest, I say that every time I have made a weight loss effort. I stopped believing myself decades ago. I want, in my heart, to be absolutely sure — without a single doubt — that this time, when I say “never again”, I’m telling the truth. I’m well aware that’s entirely up to me.

Being complacent about my efforts results is the same thing as backsliding. That’s the truth of it, and it will not change with time.

I used to hope that I would magically arrive at some point in this process where I could just live a normal life. A time when there would be no consequences to making poor choices. A time where choosing not to exercise wouldn’t adversely affect my health.

That time will never come. If you are here, reading, wishing for the same — well, that’s the bad news. I have metabolic issues that no magic wand, or for that matter, medical treatment, will entirely cure. I’ve come to accept that’s part of the price I pay, and I’m willing to pay it. That’s a departure from my mindset of past efforts; I usually fell off my diets because I wasn’t getting the results I wanted, so I just gave up and decided I would enjoy my food, my time not exercising, and turn a blind eye to the effects it had on my body and mind.

None of us can stop time or turn it back. It just keeps moving on, whether I make good choices or not. With nearly 6 years behind me, now, I am absolutely thankful that I stuck it out, even when I wasn’t actively losing; I could have chosen to change nothing at all. The truth of it is, with the health issues I had at the time, there was no guarantee that I would still be here six years later. I firmly believe that making those choices, investing that time, is why I’m here today; healthier, happier, a bit saner. It wasn’t wasted time at all, even though I had to prove to myself that I was able to follow through and change my own course.

During my weak times, I remind myself that I could have given up the moment I got discouraged and didn’t get the results I’d hoped for. With as much time I have now put into changing my life course, the weak times are occasionally still there, but I’ve invested so much in this outcome that I’m fine with not having a time limit for when it all ends.

Because it doesn’t really ever end; just moves into different phases. This is my life, now. The choices I make each and every day add up, and the results I’ve gotten have been slow, but life isn’t a race. As I move into my next phase over the days, weeks, months, and perhaps years to come, I know that I have complete power over “never again”.

(Accountability Update: I have 9 pounds to lose before reaching my low.)

If this blog is about transparency — and it is — then I have an admission: one I recently had to come to terms with, myself.

It’s easy to get caught up in the moment, and I have often written, here, about trying to remain in the moment, but there is also importance to not only remembering the lessons of the past but keeping an eye on longterm goals. I admit that sometimes it’s easy to fall into old habits and thoughts, particularly the thought of I deserve.

I have struggled with the idea of deserving since childhood, often feeling as if I didn’t deserve the simple joys of life; love, respect, kindness. While it’s easy for me to say I was often treated as less than by a father who saw women as a lower class than himself, I have had to come to terms with a couple of distinct truths.

The first is how much I have brainwashed myself to believe I have earned to right to be deserving; the other, how much I formerly brainwashed myself to believe I was undeserving. I know how contradictory that sounds, but the workings of the brain are complex. Particularly mine, at times.

My father didn’t value my mental abilities unless it was convenient for him. I remember probably being 10 years old, or so, and ending up in the trunk of our car so I could attach speaker wires for my father. Part of it was because I was small enough to fit, and part of it was because I had a simple understanding of how such things worked, so my father took advantage of that. It wasn’t the last time I had to crawl into tight spaces and hook up electronics. My husband will tell you that’s part of what I do: if it’s electronic in nature, I’m usually the go-to person.

So often, though, instead of appreciating me for the things I was able to do, my father criticized my size and my outward appearance. It wasn’t a constant thing, but it was an underlying component of our relationship. His assessment of my value had more to do with my physical being than my intelligence. We hope that parents give unconditional love, but his love was far from it.

I didn’t realize until I started this journey how much I felt I was undeserving as an obese adult. Not being able to break out of that mental cave because I felt that I deserved no better, while constantly torturing myself with longing for what I really wanted, was a mental prison that I built for myself. Understanding that I was solely responsible for my life and my situation was a huge step forward in being able to release myself from behind those bars.

On the flip side of this, as busy and full as my life is now, it has been far too easy to push down the lessons I’ve learned and forget what life was like for me just six short years ago. I was less than a month away, then, from making what I hope is a final change in my life (not that I knew it at the time), but it was certainly on my mind a lot. The truth is that I felt physically at risk, and I was ashamed of what I had allowed my life to become. I started with the conviction that I owed it to those who love me to try harder to be less of a burden to them. It was within my control to change what I had become, so I decided, one day, to simply try.

I’ve done a bit of introspection, recently, to reground myself on the goals I have set. That has meant coming to terms with the false notion that I used to have: that working hard meant I deserved a break. Over the course of the summer, my weight has crept up, and I have to own the reality that it’s because I have not been as steadfast as I have been in the recent past. I deserve crept in. I deserve the pretzels I ate with wild abandon while camping. If anyone ever lures me into a hostage situation, it’s going to happen with pretzels, friends.

Eating pretzels isn’t the issue; I keep sane with my eating program by understanding that it’s okay to take occasional food holidays. I know the consequences and accept them before embarking on such times.

No, the problem with I deserve, because it’s not a matter of deserving. That’s an emotional response, and I have worked hard to take the emotional response out of my weight loss journey, but I allowed it to creep in. Deserving is an idea that hurt me as a child and its reverse can hurt me, now, so I have to be vigilant about taking detrimental emotional responses out of my thinking.

I have worked far too hard to lose ground to the idea that hard work must always have rewards that detract from that hard work. It’s no different from planting a tree and then cutting it down after it starts to grow. With careful pruning, though, the tree can grow stronger. I need to always be about the business of making sure my reasons for my actions are the right ones, so I can continue to move forward instead of retracing where I’ve been.

Over a decade ago, that thought of deserving an outcome led me back to regaining all the weight I’d lost. I will not allow that to happen, again. Over the past couple of weeks, I have recommitted myself to my goals, and I will reach my initial goal of losing 200 pounds. In the meantime, I’m working on relosing (yet again) the weight I allowed myself to gain. I have around 11 pounds to reach my low; and beyond that? A mere 7.2 pounds until I’ve lost 200 pounds. And past that, another 7 pounds until I am no longer considered obese. What’s 25.2 pounds, compared to 207 pounds? It’s a mindset.

While I know many of you are here because you’re fascinated by the immense amount of weight I’ve lost, I still consider my fluctuating weight to be an indicator of my mental wellbeing. When I see the scale go up, I regard it as a symptom of something that needs attention. When we know better, we do better; when we strive to succeed, and we earn it every step of the way, then the rewards are what we become.

Permanent change rarely comes without a fight. And I am a fighter.

What have you done that’s useful today?

My mother often says this to me as a harmless conversation starter, but I admit that it usually irritates me. It’s a throwback to a childhood where I often felt like I had to justify my existence, particularly to my father, who I’ve spoken about in this blog on occasion.

Maybe it irritates me because I have spent a good chunk of my life not feeling useful — or more to the point, not feeling as if I’m contributing something to the world, whether it’s been through my chosen profession, volunteer efforts, free time. When she asks me that question, I immediately feel as if maybe the things I do aren’t useful.

For me, this boils down to creativity. Everything I do that I derive value from comes from the deep need to create, whether it’s designing websites (my profession), knitwear design (a past profession), creating music, writing, or simply being creative in other ways. It’s a core belief for me that I submerged for longer than I care to admit; when I create, I feel as if I’m adding something of value, even if it’s only in my little corner of the universe.

This is very much a part of my own mental and emotional growth, the largest component of this massive life change I’ve committed myself to for the past nearly 6 years; in just one month, I’ll pass that six-year mark. Yes, there are most definitely times that I tend to step off the path and revert to the “why me? Why does this have to be so damned hard?” self-pity program, but even when I occasionally entertain those thoughts, I am so incredibly thankful that I have put in the work that I have. That effort has made it easier to get my head back in the right place.

It hasn’t just been physical work. Sure, any diet program is about physical changes, including food, exercise, methods. I’ve done that a billion times, it seems, but the results were far from final because no diet program in the world will completely be a success if it doesn’t address the core issue; until then, it’s just a band-aid. And band-aids aren’t permanent. (Personally, I think this intentional by the diet industry as a whole. It keeps them in business.)

Or as Taylor Swift so aptly put it, band-aids don’t fix bullet holes. I have also had to accept that the part of me that kept me down for so many years will always be there, and I will keep fighting it. The voices that try to lure me back grow softer each day, but there will always be a trace of bad blood. I work hard to make sure that trace remains just a trace.

Embracing the part of me that needs to feel free and create has been an important step in changing my mental functions. It has also made me more aware of my own social anxieties; my natural inclination is to pull away from situations that include a lot of people. I used to feel particularly scrutinized and claustrophobic when out among large crowds, but I’m finding that these days, they don’t bother me like they used to. I no longer feel the cold judgment that I did, years ago, knowing without a doubt that some of the whispers and looks in my direction were because of my size. Now, I hope the first things people notice about me are my contributions, not how much physical space I take. It’s taken quite a few years to shift from that mindset.

Removing that roadblock has helped me feel more comfortable when I go about dealing with other people, regardless of our relationship. Whether my feelings of not feeling accepted were my own imagined issues or someone else’s, it’s freeing to have made that important step forward, and most importantly, it helps reinforce my commitment to never returning to that dark place.

We picked a cool and breezy day. July in Arkansas usually makes a sauna seem like a refreshing cool-off, so the change in weather all but demanded we take our planned hike out to the waterfall at Lake Catherine State Park, where we camped for most of the week. Neither my husband nor I have been there, but we saw the tv spot I mentioned last week, and I’ve had several friends tell me they thought I was capable of hiking the trail.

If you happen to watch the video, and you’re not familiar with the trail, you may make the same error I did. While I did a fair amount of hiking in my youth, I am admittedly not familiar with how trails are classified, and this one is classed as a moderate trail. I expected some elevation changes, narrow paths, and the occasional more challenging section, based on the video. After all, they didn’t show the whole thing. I felt pretty confident that it wouldn’t be an issue. Hubby also does a lot of walking and I figured it would be about the same for him.

What we didn’t know was that there’s a common section of the trail that goes right back to the waterfall. Not knowing any better, we went the other direction. It looks nothing like the video; it’s a narrow trail that winds over creek beds, past rock outcrops, through gullies, up and down rock formations. In short, it was a lot more challenging than either of us expected.

The beginning was somewhat deceiving, but fit what I expected, with small bridges over the creek, some ups and downs over tree roots and smaller rocky areas. Further in, though, we had to make wise choices and use a fair amount of teamwork to navigate passages that were steep, wet, long rock descents (for us, they were long!) that were rock “steps” but much higher than an average step. Both my husband and I are on the short side.

At the top of the waterfall, we ended up going down a steep boulder section with narrow gaps; I slid down this on my butt. I may have new knees, but the rest of me is original equipment, and I had no interest in making it that far, just to injure myself. About 1.5 miles in, we arrived at the waterfall, complete with our small pack of water, water shoes, and a towel.

The water was cool and clear; other people were there as well, and we spent a little bit of time enjoying ourselves at the waterfall before following the rest of the trail back out to the campground — realizing quickly that the way back was far easier than the way in. So much so that it seemed like a completely different trail; flat, we could walk side by side, the trail surface was smooth, root-free, and gently curving in places, instead of zigging and zagging both vertically and horizontally.

Had I known that, beforehand, I admit I might have chosen the easier route. I was interested in both hiking and the waterfall, but the waterfall was the goal. Instead, the sense of accomplishment I felt in being able to successfully conquer the challenges of the trail was just as much a reward for the effort as the experience of reaching the waterfall.

When I started this weight loss journey, I often dreamed of the easiest route to get to the goal. Who among us, that has dealt with weight issues, wouldn’t want to just wake up the next day, thin? I used to think that quite often — like waking up from an obesity nightmare to find I was at the perfect weight and it was just an ugly figment of my imagination.

The challenges are there to teach us. The easy route bypasses those lessons, and while you can certainly reach your goals in a variety of ways, the one that yields the most rewards is often the one that’s also the most challenging and, frankly, scary at times.

Chasing waterfalls? I’m not about to stick to the rivers and lakes I’m used to, thanks! Not when goals are in sight and the journey has great rewards.

We’re heading out to camp, again — our last long trip for the summer. The location is the state park closest to us; it isn’t a long trip, and it’s a great state park. A bit on the small side, which is absolutely okay by me. We’ll be camping lakefront, with our camper bedroom nearly on the water; I’m looking forward to some cool breezes, fishing, and maybe a night or two with the camper windows open, since we’re expecting some cooler evenings before we return home.

Just by some nice coincidence, the local news station’s evening travel segment focused on the same state park. There’s a small waterfall at this state park, and that’s what they featured in the segment; the hike back to it through the woods. There was a time in the not-so-distant past that I would have watched, knowing that I’d be risking my health if I tried to take even a short hike on, certain that the total discomfort and embarrassment I’d feel would be so overwhelming that I would just opt not to go.

Last night, as I watched, instead of lamenting that hiking, which I loved to do in my younger years, was permanently behind me — that thought never entered my mind. Instead, I thought it wouldn’t be a bad hike at all, especially if we pick a cooler day. (Hey, I may be far more mobile these days, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy sweating!) Maybe a small backpack, big enough for a couple of bottles of water — hey, what? It hit me like a rock when I considered it this morning; those old you can’t do that thoughts never entered my mind. Instead, it made me want to plan on the hike. My only reservation (other than the inconvenience of sweating) is that the trails don’t allow dogs and we’ll have our dog with us, so we will need to plan for her.

I have spent an awful lot of time, as an obese adult, yearning for the things that once brought me joy, knowing for certain they were lost to me. We all relive glory days, to a certain extent, wistfully yearning for those times when we were young and free to do things we took for granted.

As I continue into this second young adulthood (of sorts), I’m getting a second wind for doing those things I previously loved so much.

Make music again? Check! Orchestra rehearsals start in just over a month, again, and I’m looking forward to my Sunday afternoon moments of making music with friends.

Dance all night? Check! Who’d’a’figured this old broad would dance the night away on a Caribbean cruise? I’m looking forward to the next!

Hike, just to see what’s there? Check! We’ve already done a bit of hiking, just to explore what was nearby, and I no longer worry about calculating the distance or worrying about whether there’s a place to sit down, or if I’ll get out a long distance and either feel sick, slow down my walking partner, or deal with severe joint pain.

I used to stop myself from these things because I knew I had hard limits; many physical, and frankly, some mental. I used to calculate whether I could do a task, go to a place, eat at a crowded restaurant and not feel claustrophobic because the tables were too close together for a morbidly obese woman to get to without a great deal of trouble. Or request that a hostess not seat us at tables/bars with barstools, because I couldn’t get on them. I spent more time worrying than I did actually doing.

I spent so much time and energy, having to plan around limitations, that I often felt defeated before even trying. Now, my planning is of an entirely different sort: I look forward, I make these things possible, I spend that energy creating solutions instead of feeling distinctly restrained. I take the chances.

I used to think of glory days as those that were behind us and lost to us — and maybe that’s not true at all. What stops us from making now our glory days?

Last weekend, my daughter and her family visited, and we got to hunting something from her childhood that I thought was in a cedar chest with other family treasures. I admit that I haven’t opened the chest in a few years, and forgot about some of the things tucked safely there.

That included several pieces of clothing; a Gunne Sax dress from my glorious days in the early 80’s, her Christening gown, a baby dress I wore, pieces from my Ukrainian heritage. And then — two pieces I had forgotten about; a jacket in size 4X and a pair of jeans in size 32W.

If you think these were the clothes I kept that were from my largest size, you’d actually only be partly right. I have another set of clothes from my very largest; I wore them for my “before” photos in September 2013. I have a 3X tee shirt (stretchy!) and a 4X pair of stretchy shorts from then. The jeans and jacket were actually from 2003, the first time I lost a lot of weight, but I wasn’t at my largest.

While I’ve tried on any number of clothes for fit, I haven’t really put on clothes that I knew were from my “before” days, unless you count my wedding dress a few months back. Holding them up, I was honestly surprised how large they appeared, and when I slipped the jacket on, it felt as if I was trying on something from a time I barely remember, now. My body memory doesn’t really remember what it felt like, anymore, to be that size.

While I hope I never fully forget those days, it really did feel like a step back in time. My husband immediately said I needed to have my photo taken in those clothes, but I declined.

I know there’s any number of photos where people have lost drastic amounts of weight and they will take the standard “look how huge these are!”-type poses. Both legs in the same leg of the old pants; a shirt or jacket wrapped around them a couple of times. I might, at some point, do the same thing, but not now.

I’m not done, yet. I don’t want to be done, just yet — both physically and mentally, although I believe I’m closer than I have ever been in my 57 years. My time for settling into what I’m happy with is near, but I really couldn’t put that into words at that moment.

While I believe I’ll be a work in progress until the moment I no longer draw breath, this phase of my life and growth — this mental and physical becoming what I’ve always been all along — will be moving toward a transition into the next part of my life; the part where I live with this new body, outlook, brain. The skin I’m in may be 57 years old and galloping toward 58, but this recognition of me is still incredibly young and needs a bit more time to nurture.

I’ll know when it’s time to say goodbye, though, to the body I’ve worked hard to leave behind.

I truly didn’t think it was possible, but I’m starting to forget what my former life was like as a morbidly obese woman.

Some of that thinking will stay with me for the rest of my life, and that’s a good thing. If I don’t step on the scales every morning, there’s a part of me that scolds myself for the omission. There’s a niggling part of me that reminds me, any time I decide to take a food holiday, that it has to remain a holiday and not a constant. It’s the same shadow that reminds me what can happen if I try to pretend I have a normal metabolism — I will pay for it with weight gain and a dip in my mental outlook.

There was a time when I thought living with that shadow would be arduous, but really, it’s not. For me, it’s healthy that I no longer feel like I can banish those thoughts and simply go off the rails indefinitely. The norm I return to, now, is far more healthy than it used to be. Rationalizing that I was just gonna be fat and unhappy, anyway, so I should just indulge myself — that part of me will probably always exist, but its voice has been reduced to the tiniest of whispers. When I treat myself, it is the occasional indulgence instead of a way of life.

Just yesterday, I walked with my elderly mother into a local store. She walks with a cane, now, but I walked with a cane for far longer. In those days, I wore a cross-body purse so I wouldn’t feel as if I needed my hand on that side to be constantly checking a purse, and it’s a habit I’ve kept; I rarely carry a large shoulder bag these days. I mentioned this to her as a possibility but she said she has problems adapting to that.

When I told her that, though, it struck me how far I am removed from those days. It almost felt like I was lying; because let’s face it — how often do people who end up walking with a cane get to do what I did? I have that cane around… somewhere. My travel wheelchair found a home with my mother-in-law, for the time being. The walker is hanging up on the garage wall; and while I won’t tell her this, I have kept it in case my mother needs it, and perhaps it’s time to simply leave it at her house in case she wants to test it out without the embarrassment of having someone there with her.

I have distanced myself from that part of my life to a point where it no longer seems a part of me. It’s been long enough, now, that those of you who know me personally may even have to think back to those days, yourselves. As long as I never forget the lessons I learned when I yearned for a healthier body, I think this is a great place to be, mentally; I no longer think of myself as a handicapped person, and there were many days when I believed my descent into disability would never have an ascent to a healthier body. That my lot in life was to accept decline.

Friends, it doesn’t have to be that way for any of us. We don’t have to accept self-invoked limitations; we can work to overcome them if we allow ourselves the freedom and the hope to do it. Regardless of what anyone says, we are not permanently doomed to live as morbidly obese if that’s our choice; that’s what my life has been about for going on six years, now — rejecting the odds and doing what’s best for myself. I believe more firmly than ever that the seeds for success have had everything to do with my brain and my attitude; weight loss is a side effect of that mental change and cleansing.

Pick whatever it is you want to change about your life, and set your goals for working at it, whatever it is. Even if you never achieve that goal, working toward it is its own catharsis.

Just do it.

It’s summer and we’re doing the camping thing, again — my husband, our dog, and me. We’ve owned a small pop up camper for a little over three years, and it has been more of a gauge of my progress than most — perhaps because it’s an occasional thing and not an every day task. Sometimes, small increments of progress get lost in the common details of our daily lives.

We camp a few times a year, and now that both of us have nifty new knees, we might up the amount a bit. When we first got the camper, I had some difficulties maneuvering; it’s a small space and I wasn’t small. I also didn’t bend well. I needed a stool to get up into the bed bunk end, and I worried more than anyone ever should about things like rolling out of the bunk end (it’s just canvas there, after all) and falling down the step. I used to get down out of the camper backwards so I wouldn’t fall, and it’s taken me a bit of time to accept that I can step out forward without killing myself.

We’re at the lake as I write this; I can see the lake over the rail bordering our site. We are the farthest site away from the bathhouse, which means a quarter mile walk there. That’s something I absolutely could not do two years ago, and have no trouble with it, now. It’s — dare I say it — normal.

I admittedly have spent the vast majority of my adult life as a morbidly obese woman, and although I have been at a normal weight early in my adulthood, I find myself going through a constant checking process. I don’t really know what normal is in this new world of mine. I don’t know what normal expectations are, or even normal reactions.

Earlier, I was down at the bathhouse and heard a couple of teenage girls come in while I was in a stall. After a couple of minutes, I heard them giggling as if they had an inside joke, and I have to admit that I immediately thought they might be giggling at me, even though I was in a stall and hadn’t so much as made eye contact with them. Does everyone else just assume they’re the butt of a joke? I have lived much of my life, subjected to whispers behind hands while their eyes have taken in my size. I have no reason to feel that way anymore, but it still is embedded in my responses.

The last couple of days, I’ve also watched, with some trepidation, neighbors in the campsite beside us. She was using a handicap scooter and was morbidly obese. She didn’t use the scooter all the time; if I had to guess, I’d say she has limited mobility and can get around small spaces without assistance. I’ve been there. He, on other hand, likely weighed more than my previous 371 pounds — by a long shot.

That site has direct lake access, and they spent a fair amount of time floating in the water on their floaties. I wondered if they had picked the site because they could do so without eyes on them in the same way they would be if they had used the beach; I’ve been subjected to snide remarks when I have been at beaches and have been close to their sizes. It’s possible their normal is the same as mine once was; removing myself from common activities and hiding so no one would make me feel as if I didn’t belong. Quite honesty, I wouldn’t blame them. People can be incredibly cruel for no good reason. Just because someone is overweight doesn’t mean anyone else has the right or authority to criticize them for it.

Last night, we ran the risk of severe weather; my husband and I worked to get our site in order if winds and heavy rains came up. Our neighbors, on the other hand, left their things out in the weather and left the site altogether. I don’t know if any of their things were harmed, but it occurred to both of us that they might not have been able to move their things easily, so they just protected themselves. Their normal — my former normal — often comes at a price because of disability or inability.

That normal is unimaginable to people of normal size and abilities. And normal size and abilities were once beyond my grasp, but as I settle into this new existence, I still have a lot of learning to do. Most of the changes in my life are positive, and I’m grateful, but I also hope I never forget how difficult life once was.