152

I've now lost 152 pounds. That's like losing my sister. Actually that's probably more than my sister weighs, I don't know I've never asked her. Let's just agree that 152 pounds is a pretty large amount and move on.

I don't have a single interesting, insightful or useful thing to say about 152 pounds. 152 pounds loss means I'm still 58 pounds from that "Goal Weight" that I told weight watchers online when I started the program. That number didn't mean anything at all to me when I put it in. When I began my journey to becoming a healthier person that one benchmark goal I had in mind was a clothing size. I'm wearing shorts in that clothing size as I type this. They fit. It's safe to say I now wear the size I was really looking forward to wearing. But if I'm honest with myself I guess I thought that this size would be a lot closer to the stupid goal number than it is. Like maybe a 25 pound difference instead of a 58 pound difference.

I've never really gotten frustrated or discouraged during this whole process. I mean for years I'd let myself get fatter and fatter and fatter until one day I was so disturbed by my body and my weight that I had to change my life so if I lost 1.6 pounds one week instead of 2.4 it's really not that big of a deal. But now I'm frustrated if not discouraged. 58 pounds. Really, I'm at size X and I've still got another 58 pounds to reach that number that never mattered until now, suddenly it does matter? And by the way that 58 pounds still puts me in the "overweight" category of the BMI but whatever about that.

Even at my heaviest, my close to 400 poundness I was never one of those people who couldn't walk and talk without being short of breath. I was never tempted to ride one of those scooter things in a store because it was physically taxing to walk around. Because my weight didn't mess my life up too terribly I was able to comfortably ignore it. B and I had a conversation the other day though about all the things we did or didn't do that were dictated by our weight before. She listed a whole bunch of things and though I knew she was right and they were true I still tried to deflect and be "oh it wasn't that bad, we weren't really that compromised" but that's bullshit. We were. We were limited in where we could shop, where we could eat (I'd never eat outdoors anywhere with plastic chairs for fear of breaking them), where we could watch movies (old theaters = small seats) and where we could go (I'm afraid of flying yes but I was really afraid of flying morbidly obese. I didn't want to be that super fat person that everyone on the plane looks at with disgust because I don't fit into the little seat). We were limited in a lot of ways.

We're not limited at all because of weight anymore, we're active and healthy. So why have I become obsessed with numbers on the scale? I mean I'm not going to lie and say that I haven't been happy this past year and change every time my weight has gone down. When you're morbidly obese getting lighter on the scale is the one piece of data you can point to as evidence of getting healthier. I know I'm healthier because of the food I eat and the exercise I do and the multivitamin I take each day but one real concrete measure of that is how much I weigh.

I had mini goals. Like I was really looking forward to losing 100 pounds. The day I did it I went to the record store and the coffee shop. Two of my favorite activities in one day in celebration of reaching the 100 pound mark. After losing 100 pounds I was really looking forward to weighing 250 pounds. That was the number B and I decided that I could try to start running. My body just weighed too much for me to run before. As a medical professional B was really concerned about damage to my joints if I tried to run (even though my lack of cardiovascular fitness would only have let me run in tiny bursts) when I was well, well over that 250 pound mark. How did we arrive at the arbitrary 250 pound mark? Our mutual love of football is to thank. I convinced her that football players ran at that size. I hit the 250 pound mark a couple months ago but I haven't started running yet because hi, summer in Kentucky is freaking hot and want to give this running thing the best chance to endear itself to me. I had wanted to hit 250 by my birthday. I beat that goal so I was really happy about it.

And now here I am having lost 150+ pounds and I'm not feeling that great about it today. Jesus on ice and Mary in the penalty box I sound like a whine don't I? "Boo hoo me I've lost 152 pounds but still weigh well over 200 and need to lose almost 60 pounds more to meet some mythical goal weight."

Maybe if I break this goal weight thing out into the open it'll help. The goal weight that I gave weight watchers was 180. Where did that number come from? Some vague recollection of weighing 176 in high school. But see I think that's a false memory because in that memory I was 176 and wore size 16. I said hello to size 18 a little while ago and I'm, come on do the math, well above that now. Fine, 58 pounds above that.

When I gave weight watchers that goal weight I didn't think there was any chance in hell of reaching it. I just didn't think my body would go that low from where it was. All I wanted in terms of a personally measurable weight goal was to be a size 18 and from my false memory math I thought that would be around the 195-200 pound mark. Now I'm size 18 and weigh 228 pounds. My fuzzy math was off by nearly 30 pounds.

So now I have this crazy intense drive to weigh less than 200 pounds. I know the number is arbitrary. Will I be just as healthy at 204 as I am at 198? I'd say yes. But that doesn't change the way I feel. But the really funny part is the weird rationalizations going on in my head. It's something like "oh I really wish I could get to 180 but I can't so I'll be happy to get to 195. But I have to get to 195." Bitch please. What's going to happen if you don't get to 195. Where is this coming from, what idea have you bought into? I'd like to blame the BMI index for telling me that I'll be overweight unless I get to 173. I used to say and mean things like "I'm always going to be big, it's the way I'm built. I just want to be healthy." I really meant it when I said those things and I want to mean them now. And I think I do mean it on most days. I honestly think there is a point where my body is going to be like "I'm good here" and my mind is going to be like "I don't need to starve myself or exercise like mad just to get below this weight. I'm good here too." I think that weight is going to be somewhere in the 190-205 range. You know how fuzzy I am at math though so I could be wrong about those numbers.

All of this was a a very long drawn out, navel gazing way of saying I've lost 152 pounds but recently I've become a little too obsessed with numbers instead of thinking about health. To deal with that a little bit I'm buying new running shoes this weekend (my current ones were shot 120 miles ago), I'm going to buy an iPod shuffle next weekend (the Apple store here opens next weekend and also there is some kind of iPod announcement coming from Apple on Wednesday) and I'm going to start the Couch to 5K program in earnest. My goal, concrete really hope I reach it goal, is to run a 5K by the end of calendar year 2007. That may be a little too ambitious and I may fail but that's the goal.