Losing It

My big milestone right now is to dip below 200 lbs. I haven’t been there in a while and it’s depressing . . . my weight tends to go up and down, always hovering around 220 and I am so NOT accepting that 220 is my body’s comfortable weight.

This morning, I stepped on the scale and it said . . . 116!!!!! I haven’t been that low for a very long time. While it’s not a huge drop, it’s a significant one. Now to just keep this sucker moving down!

That means this past week, I’ve lost 3 lbs. MUCH better!! And in total, I’ve dropped 10, which is pretty awesome, my belly is totally melting away.

Woke up this morning and did what most women who are trying to lose weight do, examined myself in the mirror. We have a full-length mirror in our room and I was surprised to see . . . I’m getting my shape back! My stomach is noticeably smaller, though I suspect the majority of it just decided to hang instead of standing up straight, but if you kinda cut it off just below the belly button, there’s a marked improvement.

Since I could actually SEE that I’m thinner (and the fact that I had to stop and tie my exercise pants tighter at Zumba on Tuesday), I decided to step on the scale again. A whole pound lower. If you look at my sidebar, I’ve lost a whopping 7lbs this month. Gak. Must speed things up!

I have a friend who is doing an extreme diet. She has a reunion coming up and is stressing out, so she is doing something that involves daily injections and 500 calories. She suggested I do it, too. I laughed at her. Five hundred calories? Seriously? I’d faint on an hourly basis on that amount of food!!

What I do need is to drink more water. I’m addicted to Coke Light. I thought it was better because of no sugar, but apparently it can stimulate your body into producing too much insulin and give you diabetes. Not sure what I’ll do for my astoundingly high caffeine needs, but it’s time to cut back and drink more water.

So, that’s my goal this next week. To drink 3 bottles of water a day (20 oz). I failed miserably in my plan to do Wii, but water I can definitely do. Especially if I get two more bottles and just have them sitting here on my desk.

How is your weight loss going?

I actually meant to be really brave and post photos on a weekly basis, but then I couldn’t get a good photo and I ended up leaving it for later and then forgot. Ahem. So, just for the record, here’s one of me from last week.

TMI Alert: Interestingly enough, over the past 8 days, I’ve noticed something happening to my abdomen. Normally it is just regular old fat. The other day, I looked in the mirror and . . . my belly fat is going away, but the skin is still stretched, so it rather looks like after you have a baby and you have that extra “flap” hanging there. My belly is hanging. And it hasn’t done that since after my second son was born nearly 3 years ago. I’m taking this as a good sign.

Anyhow. I’m still horribly ill and nothing is staying in my body for more than 2 hours, so while I do hope to feel better soon, I’m thinking this can only aid the weight loss. Plus, I’m drinking tons more water than normal because I’m losing so much of it . . . that’s got to be good, right?

Well, I’ve totally redone this blog, deleted all previous evidence of my weight loss attempts (except now I’ve told you so that’s kind of pointless, right?) and I’m ready to start fresh.

I currently weigh in at 226 lbs. That sucks. I’ve tried many times to lose this weight, but it just sticks on there! However, there are a few things that have recently come to my attention that made me take some steps to start dropping this fat for real.

• We went camping. The campground was 220 meters down a steep hill. I made it down just fine, apart from some severe nerves walking with little kids alongside a dropoff, but coming up the next day, I couldn’t do it. I sat down and cried in the middle of the steepest section, heart pounding, sweat pouring and hamstrings aching. It was pathetic. And I realized that I NEED to be in better shape! I want to take my kids on outings without stressing about whether I can actually make it or not.
• Someone I know died. I hadn’t been in touch with this person for many years, but he died way too young and I started thinking about my own mortality and what would happen if the boys were alone in the world, without their mom. I don’t want that to happen, so I need to get healthy.
• I feel like crap. I do. Every day, I sit in my chair and feel fat. My stomach flops onto my lap. My boobs cut off my breathing when I lie down. I don’t like it and I want it GONE.
• I’m embarrassed. People who read my regular blog, Expat Mom, are coming to Guatemala and I actually have to SEE them. That’s fricking embarrassing when they see how huge I am. I spent over a year refusing to leave the house more than once a month because of this embarrassment, time for it to stop.
• I’m getting older. I turn 30 on April 12th and I’ve seen my dad dealing with the effects of being overweight for decades. I really don’t want to be dealing with degrading vertabrae and other serious health issues when I’m 60 if I can possibly help it. Being fat is not helping!
• I’m not turning heads. Not to be vain (but secretly, yes), but I used to get catcalls and whistles from guys on the street. I hated it. Now, no one but my husband even looks at me! Now, it’s not that I want guys to be all over me, but it does make me notice how fat I really am.

I’ll blog another day about what I’m going to do about all this excess fat. But here’s the deal. I’ve joined up with Plus Size Bloggers to do a challenge, blogging about my weight every week. I’m not going to hide. This is the place I’m going to let it all hang out, literally! So that means there will be photos on this blog that I’m not proud of. There will be numbers that make me want to gag and hide in the closet for a year. And yes, I will blog about the cake that I eat and then feel horribly guilty about.

And this time . . . I’m actually going to keep blogging this stuff until I finally make it to 120 lbs, darn it. Or at least somewhere in that area.