I’ve got a few things to write about, today.  The holidays are approaching, I’m seeing more positive body changes, and I have a pants dilemma!

I don’t currently have a pair of goal pants to use.  I had an initial goal of working my way through my smaller clothes as best I could without buying anything else, but I can only find one pair of size 22 jeans, and they’re far too small to use as goal jeans.  So, I’ve actually had to order some jeans, and I hope they are a looser size 22 than the ones I have.  Still, I’m thrilled that the next jump is to size 22!  And to think, in the spring, I had stretch 26 jeans that were cutting into my skin when I wore them, and I was afraid I’d be making that dreaded trip to Catherine’s for jeans larger than size 26.  (Just an FYI — I still have a pair of size 34 jeans from Catherine’s that I kept from years ago.)

I’m still seeing lots of neat changes with weight loss, and I’m sure they’ll continue.  I haven’t had the problems I once did with water retention; my body will still hold onto water occasionally, but I think it’s within the normal range.  My knees are feeling much better than they have in some time, and I’m pretty sure that’s from the combination of losing weight and strengthening leg muscles.

My wedding ring is loose enough to take off without feeling like I need to remove the finger with it.  It’s easier to tie my shoes, because there’s not as much of me in the way.  Likewise, there’s not as much of me in the way of the steering wheel in the car.

Whereas I used to have to be picky about what pair of undies I fished out of my underwear drawer, because they might be too small, I now have to be concerned about picking up a pair that might be too big.  A smaller size of underwear is probably in my future about the time I fit into my next goal pants.

I’m losing a fair amount of weight in my face.  I happened to find a pic I’d taken for an avatar on Facebook, and it was almost a year ago; my face is noticeably thinner. Random people now comment on my weight loss.

Some of the disconcerting health issues that moved me toward getting fit, again, have all but disappeared.  It’s been quite some time since I’ve had any racing heart issues.  I don’t have problems with my hip seizing up from sitting on certain kinds of chairs for too long.

I’m still looking forward to doing things like being able to cross my legs.  That’s a long bit off yet, I think.

All in all, I’m moving easier, getting up and down from couches and chairs is much easier. Personal hygiene issues aren’t nearly the issue they used to be.

I’ve been on T3 (Cytomel) for about six weeks, now, and I have to say that I think it’s helping.  The early afternoon used to be a tough time for me to stay awake; I just had to struggle my way through, or give up and take a nap. (Good thing I’m self-employed, and work from home!)  Now, while I still occasionally feel sleepy in the early afternoon, it’s not as much of a struggle to stay awake and focused. I don’t have that brain fog quite as much as I did previously; now, if I have brain fog, it’s from lack of caffeine.

I also noticed that my outer eyebrows are starting to fill in.  How neat is that?  People with hypothyroid may see the outside half of their eyebrows lose hair, and I’m one of those people; I was working on my eyebrows the other day, and noticed that I’m getting more hair growth there.

I feel tons better with 44 pounds off.  I know I’ll feel even better with another 44 off, and another 44 after that.

The observant among you probably noticed that I didn’t have a pants/shirt try-on post last Friday.  I will this Friday.

Last week brought a number of surprises with it; I had expected my oldest brother to come for a visit, but he brought my other brother with him.  What started out as a laid-back planned time with family turned bigger.  Wednesday night to Saturday was spent with both brothers, my mother,  and my daughter.

So, for one thing, I preferred to spend time with my brothers over trying on pants.  I made the decision in part because I went off-plan on Wednesday night.  That’s the “be reasonable” part of this post: even though I didn’t stay within my normal carb allotment, I was close on calories.  I kept my meals reasonable without going overboard just because I wasn’t on plan.

Sometimes, there’s the temptation, when going off-plan, to just say the hell with it and go for broke. Eat half that pizza, indulge in ice cream, order pancakes for breakfast with extra maple syrup. I did none of those things.  In many ways, I ate like how I think a person with a normal metabolism and no eating issues would eat; and just because I had the option of whatever food I wanted in front of me, I didn’t take that option. (We ate out just about every meal. I could have ordered whatever I wanted. I didn’t.)

Being reasonable also means accepting that there will be times that you have to change what you had planned, and if you do, remaining in control is always the best option.  It means not obsessing over whether a certain restaurant has anything you can eat, when in the long run, it’s more about the company than the food.  It also means the assumption that when things that have changed your course are no longer present, you go back to your routine, and it doesn’t become an excuse for letting cravings and bad judgment dictate your choices.

Finally, being reasonable also means that I have to accept there will be times in this (very long) journey that I may need to take a different path that delays weight loss.  So be it.  This is not a race.  Although I tend to be impatient with weight loss, there’s no deadline that says I have to have X amount of pounds off by a certain date.

So here I am.  Being reasonable, for me this past week, also meant being rational and letting my head decide my actions instead of my emotions. It was a great lesson to learn.

Happy Halloween!  Yet another sugar holiday.

This past weekend, I and my teammates competed in a chili cook-off.  We didn’t win anything, but it was loads of fun.  And for the most part, I got around pretty well, despite having to stand and walk on concrete, which is a real challenge for arthritis.  Still, I feel like I did well, and my endurance was up, as well.

Every year that we’ve been involved, there has been lots of picture-taking and silliness, because the cook-off is always around Halloween.  This year, one of my cohorts-in-crime brought inflatable hair for the women to wear.  Two foot tall inflatable hair isn’t exactly an easy thing to wear, especially outside!  Still, we took pics.

When I saw the pics, I cringed.  In my mind, I’m doing well with this effort, and my brain pictures me as being much more physically balanced than those photos do.  I look at them, and my first thought is that I’ve thrown away the last seven months, because I don’t look a bit different.  It’s that defeatist attitude; the one that derails me with the absolutely nonsensical idea that being frustrated with the way I look or what I weigh should result in not sticking to a diet program.

What the heck?  It’s totally illogical.  My brain tells me to just give it up because I’m still a fatty, but what does that solve?  Were I to give in, I’d stay a fatty, or become more of one.  It’s an idiotic response to something I need to view as feedback.  I know, without photographic proof, that what I’m doing is working.  Why do a couple of photos make me feel like it’s all been a lie?  Like I haven’t been trying hard enough if I still look like crap?

I’m still on the straight and narrow, because logic is luckily in control and while I emotionally feel punched in the gut by the photos, I know mentally that the input my ego is trying to push at me is wrong.  I can understand frustration, but the result of frustration should be determination to see it through, not just tossing in the towel.

I will continue to fight the good fight, but I really do need to work on how my brain processes seeing photos of myself.  These emotions that want to derail me cannot win.

I tried on my goal jeans and shirt, this morning, and was pleased. In fact, I was shocked! The jeans aren’t far from fitting, and I truly figured that after seeing progress last week, it would be optimistic to expect the same, this week. The shirt fits better, as well.  Historically, my weight loss tends to come in waves, so seeing a better fit is atypical.  I feel like I’m seeing results quicker than I did during my last go-round.

Today, I’m wearing the last pair of jeans that I used for goal.  I hadn’t worn them for a little over a week.  See, I have this fear of calling “goal!” on a pair of pants, and then having a regain and feeling them grow tight, again, so I tend to put them aside and not wear them. I did the same thing with the first goal pants.

Now, part of that is based on previous experience; when I lost a ton of weight years ago, I tracked my weight daily, and one of my trends was that I would routinely gain weight during certain parts of my menstrual cycle, followed by a loss of all the weight I’d gained, plus a few more pounds. During those years (yes, years!), my weight loss chart looked like a roller coaster; a slope upward, followed by a descent, and then back up. Just a note, though — in contrast to most women, who become bloated during a menstrual cycle and lose the water weight afterward, I actually bloated before the cycle and lost the water weight during.  Those were when my lowest weights occurred.

So, getting to a point where I can call “goal” on a pair of pants implies that I’m at the bottom of the descent, and previous experience dictates a gain over the days to follow, so yes, I often experienced newly fitting clothes that felt tighter for a couple of weeks.

However, it’s also a trick of the mind.  I haven’t seen that roller coaster effect this time around, but then, I’m peri-menopausal and on hormone replacement therapy.  I’m also not tracking weights like I was, but I can still tell by how clothes fit.  My former roller coaster often meant a water weight gain of 10-15 pounds, and when you’re carrying over a gallon of extra water, it’s not just a matter of clothes not fitting; it’s painful.

Still. I set my last goal jeans aside and was hesitant to wear them, as if I somehow imagined them fitting, and that if I tried them on, I’d see my efforts reversed. Like I’m not legitimately losing weight.  There’s part of my brain that continually calls me a liar. It whispers to me that what I’m doing isn’t working, and that unless I’m willing to do something more drastic, I will fail — again.

I’m insecure when it comes to believing in my own weight loss.  I think that’s probably a lot of the reason why I’ve been so scale-dependent in the past; I could see immediate feedback and adjust.  While that’s a smart thing to do overall, my reaction to seeing the scale report no loss, or a gain, was to adjust by doing something drastic, almost like a self-punishment for not being successful, instead of looking at things objectively and seeing where I could improve.

I need my brain to behave.  I need to tackle those feelings of not good enough and also be willing to try different things. The requirements of my body, today, are not the same as what they will be a year from now — even if I fail. What works will change, and I have to adapt. I have to throw out the old thoughts and retrain how I think.

Not an easy task, at 50, because many of these issues are imprinted on my brain, but as I realize each of these pitfalls, I can work on them.