7 Month Update

Here I am clocking in after completing 7 months of healthier living.  Never in my life have I kept a commitment for this long.   It feels really good to take care of myself too.  It feels even better that I kept the promise I made to myself in January.   I am slowly building the confidence that I am in this for the long haul.

Numbers wise it was a decent month.   I lost 2.9lbs (all in a whoosh this week too) and 4 inches (mainly off my upper arms and thighs, but a tad off my waist and hips).   4 inches?  I was stunned enough to remeasure 3 times.    I think it’s safe to say I’m building muscle and my body is redistributing.  Plus I also spent 2 weeks in Cape Cod.  Why oh why does my body swell the minute I leave my normal routine?    To note,  I have now entered a new 10lb range:  the 150’s.     The lowest weight I was ever able to maintain was 152.5 and I am moving towards it!   Every 10lb range still feels like a fucking war, and although it has not gotten any easier, it’s becoming more routine.

Today I experienced a rather fantastic non-scale victory too.   It’s been a goal of mine to re-fit into a particular pair of Old Navy khakis.  Well 5 pairs, to be honest.  I love them (can you tell, I purchased 5).  They are soft cotton, slim my waist and hips, hide my tummy, and are perfect in the length too.   Just last month Tim asked me if I was planning to wear them soon/again as “your butt looks great in those.”  I didn’t know that, or I forgot, but then of course I was salivating to wear these pants because hey my butt looks great in them!  As a sidebar, it’s a good thing my husband is a butt man (you know, over a legs or boob man) because damn do I got me some ghetto booty (and short legs and an average rack).   But I digress. The Old Navy Khakis are also the smallest thing in my closet and they have not fit in years.   Periodically over the past 5 months I have tried them on with increasing confidence and finally last month, I got them up but they were too tight in the thighs and stomach.  After learning I lost 4 inches this month I decided to give the pants another go.  Today they fit PERFECTLY!    Like a little bitch, I even ran down to the lobby to confirm this phenomenon from the multiple mirrored angles.

Recently I have witnessed various bloggers denouncing the simple concept of “losing weight/taking care of yourself for health reasons.”   Instead they proclaim it’s really vanity or other shallow denominators.   Honestly,  I’d like to challenge any of these people to witness their father experience a quadruple bypass surgery that left him in the CCICU for 2 months.    How would it feel if you were only allowed to visit him for 30 minutes a day even though the sedatives made it so he didn’t recognize you?  How would you feel when a doctor sat you down and said “you need to understand, this doesn’t look good?”  Furthermore, I cannot explain how gut wrenching it was for us when they opened him back up the 2nd time due to complications.   Add to that the gruesome detail that they left his chest open for 3 days, covered by a brown sponge.   I can still picture it now, and they kept him like that until his 3rd surgery.   I’m not sure if the further complication of a  pulmonary embolism (ie. a blood clot thrown to the lung)  was worse, but at that point I was just numb.     He spent 6 months in the hospital.  1 month in rehab and multiple months recovering at home.  He went back a year later for a 4th surgery due to additional complications.    My mother’s complication free quadruple bypass surgery in 1999 had her out of the hospital within 1 week.  It took her a few months to recover, she did that home..  My father-in-laws first quadruple bypass was the same, his second was more complicated.

I cannot explain the overwhelming amounts of gratitude and awe I have that these 3 people are still in my life.  To this day, I cannot even think about how lucky we all are to still have each other without tearing up (in fact, I am blubbering now as I type this).   So sure, fitting into those skinny Old Navy Khakis are a wonderful fringe benefit — but it’s not my first or immediate goal.   I’d like to say this to those individuals who so casually denounce such real reasons for weight loss and bring it all back down to vanity:  I , for one, would honestly prefer that you go fuck the hell off.   And on that note I’m off to to do Turbo Jam.