I think I just I had an epiphany.

In response to my last (whiny) post about not having enough time/energy to complete all the administrivia that seems associated with losing weight successfully, BikiniMe wrote “…the most important thing is the doing, not the logging.”

She’s right, of course, and that has been part of my ongoing frustration.

However, as someone who’s natural instinct it is to archive, document and analyze (I’m a librarian for goodness sake) another good chunk of my frustration lately has stemmed from just how little I seem to have learned from all this “busy work.” Honestly, I don’t mind archiving the details of this journey… in fact, I *want* to do it. Believe me, if I could figure out a way incorporate the dewey decimal system, I probably would. :) But what’s more, I just *really* want to learn something from the whole process otherwise, well.. it all seems more than a little pointless. Even if it does result in shed pounds, if I don’t LEARN something about myself and how I eat and what’s wrong with the way I eat then what’s to stop me from gaining all that weight back??

Then tonight, as I was posting my food diary, I noticed something.
A trend, if you will.

If you look at my daily food intake it’s easy to see that I eat the vast majority of my calories at dinner. I sometimes eat no breakfast at all, and when I do, it tends to be small — a piece of fruit, etc. Then a relatively small lunch and then nothing again until dinner, which is usually massive (compared to the day’s other meals anyway) and almost always accounts for over half of my day’s calories. Then I started thinking about the times (of day) that I eat.

Breakfast: between 6:00 - 7:00am (if at all)
Lunch: between 12:15 - 12:40
Dinner: between 6:00 - 7:00pm

And then it happened.

At first I thought the skies were parting above me and that beams of heavenly light were actually shining down as if from some divine spotlight… but then I realized it was just the light bulb going on over my head.

I need to eat more frequently.
I need to eat smaller meals.

*cue hallelujah chorus*

I need to eat smaller, more frequent meals.

Um… duh.

Here’s the thing… this ain’t rocket science, folks. I mean, eating smaller more frequent meals is a highly recommended approach to weight loss. In fact, even though I am loath to call this new way of living a “diet,” the truth is that most “diet” programs recommend a similar approach to eating… and a lot of people who have been successful and taking and keeping off large amounts of weight list smaller and more frequent meals as a key component in what finally worked for them… and yet, I just couldn’t see it. It took forcing myself to write it all down, day after day, for months and months and months (with admitted breaks here and there) before I finally *learned* something. I swear. Sometimes, I feel like I should be wearing the weight loss dunce cap, or something.

That’s not to say that eating smaller, more frequent meals is the right approach for everyone or even if it’s the right approach for me. However, given the data I’ve collected from months and months of logging my food choices, it does seem like it just *might* work. so… here’s what I’m going do:

Even though, officially, it’s too late for me to join Krissie’s 10 day challenge to “win” — I’m still going to participate. Starting tomorrow, and for 10 days, I’m going try to split up my eating into smaller, bite sized (har!) chunks. Instead of eating the traditional breakfast lunch and dinner, I’m going to aim for at least 5 mini meals per day. I’m still going to shoot for less than 1500 calories per day (and preferably more like 1200 - 1300), but I’m going to see if eating more frequently helps curb the afternoon/evening hunger that causes me to overeat at dinner time.

I figure, after 10 days I’ll have an idea about whether or not this is really a viable approach… plus, c’mon, I can commit to just about anything for 10 days, right?

And in the meantime I get to ride the wave of having actually discovered something about myself… in the hopes that, in the end, all this self-reflection will make me a stronger, better and *fingers crossed* thinner person. Besides, who knows what I might *learn* next! :)

———————————————————

PS: I’ve mapped out my route for ScaleJunkie’s 5k In May challenge. Of course, I won’t add the badge to my sidebar until I’ve actually done it, but here’s a sneak peak at my route. If When I do finally walk this course it will be more than just a distance victory for me… but I’ll wait to talk about that when I finally do it. In the meantime, I’m excited because, c’mon… check out that badge! Plus, even though I’m so proud of my blogging buddies who’ve gotten up the gumption to actually run one (or more) 5k’s, (yes, Andrew and Marshmallow, I’m talking to you, among others) I’m always just a little bit jealous of those accomplishments. I look forward to the day when I’m no longer *just* cheering them on, but am also donning my own pair of running shoes, you know? But in the meantime, walking a 5k is a good start. And I’m excited about logging these steps and earning this cool new badge for my sidebar. Anyway, the walk is one I’ve done before minus the overlapping inset that pushes it over the 5k mark.

Anyway… Go me!

Gosh. I do!

When I was a kid, my brother and I had to share a bike. He was younger than me, but taller and stronger by an early age. So… he’d put me on the handlebars and we’d ride around our neighborhood park. I haven’t owned a bike since way back then, but thinking about having one again brought back a flood of beautiful memories. If I were to win this contest, (which I’m not counting on since I never win anything), I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t ride anyone around on the handlebars, but I think it would give me an excuse to take off the virtual “training wheels” and kick my fitness routine into high gear.

Go see Scale Junkie and get your link on.

I have to tell you… I’ve really been struggling lately.

Struggling not to put food I don’t need to eat into my mouth.
Struggling to make time to add up my calories each day.
Struggling to get off my ass and do some kind of exercise (beyond just walking each day).
Struggling to stick to the stick-to-it-ness that’s kept me going so far.

One of the things I’ve tried really hard to do through out all of this is to not have unrealistic expectations of myself. I know I’m not perfect. I know that I never will be. I know too that expecting perfection from myself will only result in big FAT failure(s). Believe me, I’ve spent a lifetime setting myself up for failure, and I promised myself that this time would be different.

So far, I’ve done pretty well… but lately I’ve been feeling overwhelmed.

It’s tough to keep up with all the work that doing this involves. Between all the writing and tallying and posting and commenting and recording and analyzing and fretting and… well, you get the picture… it’s no wonder I can’t find time to exercise! Or at least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself.

Lately, I’ve been trying to find the *easy* way out of all of this. Ironically, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to lose weight without doing all the stuff that’s helped me lose weight in the first place.

Now, I realize that there are some people out there who don’t *need* to exercise to lose weight. People who don’t *need* to count calories or keep a food diary or to blather on endlessly about this freakishly hard journey. And while I *hate* those people, I also greatly envy them because I am NOT one of those people.

I *do* need those things.

And I *need* to make time for them or I won’t continue to lose weight.

So… to that end, I’ve decided to accept Paola’s gracious invitation to join the “food confessional” where I will attempt to post my daily food diary. I haven’t decided about how to best record my daily exercise, but I know that I have to start doing that too. Further, I know that I need to be better about setting weekly goals and then recording my progress towards them.

*sigh*

I wish I could do this without all the virtual “paper pushing,” as it were, but the hard truth is that I can’t.

It’s funny, but you’d think that this far into it, I’d know more. You’d think that having lost 75lbs, I’d have it all figured out… but I really don’t. In some ways, it still feels as though those 75lbs just sort of came off by accident. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked hard for them, but I can’t pin point one or two key things that made it possible.

Here’s what I *think* I know:

I *think* that when I write things down, I am more apt to eat less.
I *think* that if I don’t exercise before 8:00pm, it ain’t happening.
I *think* that my body processes fiber differently than other people.
I *think* that if I don’t get 8 hours of sleep, I suck at saying no to foods I shouldn’t be eating.
I *think* that I can’t just “have a starbucks” once in awhile… I’ve got to quit that stuff cold turkey or it will forever be a problem for me.

I haven’t, however, figured out the following:

How to make exercise a *habit* and not just something that I feel like I am forcing myself to do.
How to wean my husband off of junk food and onto healthier choices.
How to prioritize my time such that creating a healthy life for myself comes first.
How, when I don’t have enough time for everything, to figure out which things I absolutely must do in order to be successful.

If any of you have this all worked out, please… I’d welcome your insight.

In the meantime, I’m giving the confessional a go. I know I won’t be perfect… but right now I’m just shooting for more days when I do the right things than days when I don’t.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve had a busy week… which has resulted in poor eating habits but lots of steps. Here’s my numbers:

Sunday: 12,574
Monday: 17,201
Tuesday: 17,039
Wednesday: 12, 254
Thursday: 16,454
Friday: 14,413
Saturday: 16,602
Sunday: 12,232

(click the link to see the pictures)

I’m not sure if we’re supposed to count Sunday (today) or not, so my totals are as follows:

Week 3 Total(s): 106,537 (w/o today) -or- 118,805 (w/today)
Weekly Average(s): 15,220 (w/o today) -or- 14,851 (w/today)
Challenge Total(s): 290,753 (w/o today but w/bonus steps from wk 1) -or- 303,021 (w/today but w/bonus steps from wk 1)
Challenge Average(s): 13,854 (w/o today but w/bonus steps) -or- 13,773 (w/today but w/bonus steps)

I wish I’d had more time to keep up with the other people who were participating in Fat Bridesmaid’s Pedometer Challenge, but I hope that everyone else benefited as much from this challenge as I did. Regardless of who “wins” I feel like I’ve already won. Even though this week was a tough one for me food wise, the pedometer strapped to my waist kept me moving my ass even on those days when I didn’t really want to. So… I just want to say thanks to FBM for lighting a fire under me and for keeping us all moving over the last several weeks. *mwa!*

Anyway, I didn’t weigh this week. I have no good reason for this except that I’ve been afraid of what the scale would say. I’ve really blown it food wise this week and I have no choice but to really buckle down from here on out. Perhaps not recording all of my food every day wasn’t that great of an idea after all.

Lots to ponder.

Have a great week, everyone.

I’ve been avoiding blogging since my last entry because this week has been, (in terms of eating and taking good care of myself), a disaster.

I’ve gotten in plenty of steps (I’ll post the pictures another time), but that’s really just because work has been madness and has *required* that I run around like the proverbial chicken with no head… I’ve only actually exercised once this week, and even that was short lived and truly half-hearted.

As for food, well… it’s been ridiculous. And I don’t really have any excuse for it.

I’d love to give you a blow by blow, play by play of all the fattening food I’ve put into my mouth this week, but only bits of it remain in my memory.  There’s either been too much to remember or I’ve purposefully blocked the memory.  Honestly, it’s probably a bit of both.

Thing is, last week was such a good week for me.  Full of successes and victories and things that I was anxious to celebrate.  It was, of course, easy to blog about those because it’s always easier to share the things that make us even the teeniest bit proud of ourselves.  But this week has been different, so I’ve remained silent, trying to convince myself that I was just too busy to blog… but that’s not really true.

Then I read this post by BikiniMe in which she talks about some terribly personal things that had also been keeping her away from the keyboard.  In the post she talks about running across “several blogs that have great beginnings and then *poof*, they’re gone.”  And I think she hits the nail on the head when she theorizes that she knows what happened to these bloggers: that after the magical first few weeks when everything seems possible they get “derailed and shamed, unable to write that entry, [until] the blogger slips away and disappears.”

She goes on to say:

So many times I’ve been tempted to do this — just not write about the bad stuff, present only my good, perfect, wonderful, victorious self to you guys because I want to be liked, I want to be admired, I want to be considered an inspiration — but also, I have a tendency to be hard on myself and when I fall down, I tend to think, “Broken! Weak! Imperfect! Not Quite! Less-Than!” and I don’t want to be exposed as an imposter, a party crasher.

BikiniMe’s entry continues in a beautifully brave and personal way… and I would strongly encourage everyone who stumbles upon this entry to go and read hers.

It’s been difficult for me to leave a comment on her post because it’s hard for me to add to what others have said about it without feeling awkward and inadequate.   That said, however, the one thing I can do is follow her lead.  I’m not, by any means, comparing my situation to hers.  But if she can let down her armor and share her story for the sake of keeping the promise to ourselves that we all made when we started these blogs, then so can I.

Man, this has been a busy week. But a good one. Before I get into my good news report, here are my pedometer numbers for the week:

Sunday through Saturday, respectively

And today…

Totals:

Weekly total (I’m not including today in the weekly total): 90,254 steps
Daily Average for Week 2: 12,893 steps
2 Week Combined Total: 184, 216 steps
Daily Combined Average: 13,158 (this average includes my *bonus* steps from the first week)

Gosh. All this stepping is sure paying off in a number of ways. First of all, on Friday I had a long awaited doctor’s appointment. Anyone whose been reading this blog for any length of time knows that I have a love/hate relationship with my doctor and that a visit to his office, nearly a year ago now, is one of the things that most put a fire under my ass to finally start taking off the weight. Since then, I’ve been back to the doctor a few more times, and each time I go, I’m more and more determined to prove to him that I *can* lose enough weight to be taken off of the blood pressure and cholesterol medicine that he started me on last July.

Unfortunately, this kind of motivation sometimes leads to crazy behavior on my part.

For example, *knowing* that this appointment was coming up, I started weighing myself all the time. April arrived, and the moment I turned the page on the calendar and saw that doctor’s appointment looming, I went into scale overload. I found myself weighing every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I was so determined to show a “big loss” when I got to the doctor’s office, that I swiftly flew into obsession mode — which, let me just tell you, isn’t a nice place to be.

Anyway, after a week or so of this, I decided that I’d never make it to the end of the month, if I kept obsessing… so I just stopped weighing all together.

I thought… fuck it. I’m already doing everything I can to make myself healthy, stepping on and off the scale isn’t going to do anything except make me feel bad. So, I put the scale away for the rest of the month. I didn’t announce my decision here because, frankly, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stick with it, but within a few days, I’d stopped thinking about the scale at all and was, therefore, able to focus on the business of actually taking care of myself. Imagine that! :)

So… Friday came and I went into the appointment blind. I didn’t even weigh myself that morning. “It is what it is,” I thought as I drove myself there and sat in the waiting room, vowing not to hate myself too much if I hadn’t lost any weight or even if, heaven forbid, I’d gained.

But then something amazing happened when I stepped on the scale in his office.

*drumroll please*

244.4lbs.

Now, the last time I posted my weight here, I was 254lbs. Since then I know I’ve popped up a couple of pounds and then back down one or two, until the week that I finally decided to stop weighing altogether.

But now I’m 244.4lbs. :)

I’ve decided to round it down to 244 even and call it a 10lb loss because, well… just because I want to. I realize, of course that’ll mean that I don’t get to spend any time enjoying the 70lbs lost badge, but somehow, I’ll manage, I think.

But wait!
That’s not even the best part!

The best part is that during my visit, the doctor said that the *next* time I visit (in 6 months) that we’ll look at reducing the dosage of the blood pressure medication — the first step in, essentially, weaning me off it completely.

I simply cannot tell you how ecstatic that makes me. Getting off this medication was, and continues to be, such a motivator for me. I don’t want to take *any* kind of medication for the rest of my life.

I’m only 37.

I just want my body to reflect my real age and not all the years I’ve added to my life by being obese. I know lots of people who spend all their time thinking about what they will look like once they finally reach their goal weight… and don’t get me wrong, of course, I think about that too. But the truth is, what I want most is to be healthy. And I don’t think that’s any more noble of a goal than the goal of just wanting to look hot in normal sized clothes… it’s just a different goal. (Though, looking hot wouldn’t be too shabby either, now that I think about it!) For me, getting off the meds and being healthy is the light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t know what weight that will be or what being at that weight will look like… I just know that I’m not going to allow being fat to kill me. And when I finally reach the point where I can say goodbye to the medication and where I start feeling and acting like someone who is only 37, well… *that’s* when I will have reached my goal.

Anyway, Friday was a good day.

But then again, Saturday was a pretty good day too. On Saturday a package arrived at my door containing these gorgeous earrings, which were hand made for me by the utterly fabulous Paola. What’s really cool about them, I mean, besides the fact that they’re absolutely beautiful, is that Paola sneakily asked me what colors I liked and then crafted the whole gift around my response - with pretty orange paper around the box, tied with a blue ribbon. So cute!

And the card read: “Keep on walking!”

Now, I ask you. Seriously. Does it really get any better than that?

It’s funny, you know… even writing all this out, it feels like it’s not really even happening to me. I mean, as hard as I’ve worked and as much as I’ve wanted to prove other people wrong about how much I will be able to accomplish, the truth is, I don’t think I ever really expected to lose 75lbs. Sure, I’ve tried to stay positive, and I can’t even count the number of times each day I have to remind myself that I *can* do this, but the truth is I’m usually far *less* surprised when I fail.

I wonder what it is about me that causes me to expect so little from myself.

Anyway… it was a good week here, folks. I hope yours was equally fantastic.

I’ve been trying for about 30 minutes now to upload my recent pedometer challenge pictures, but WP doesn’t want to cooperate. Nonetheless, here are my numbers:

Monday: 10,409
Tuesday: 15,199
Wednesday: 15,178

I’ll try to post the “proof” tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’m struggling with keeping up with all the different aspects of my weightloss program (for lack of a better term). When everything is running smoothly, and there’s enough hours in the day for me to complete everything, here is what I do: Count calories and try to remain under 1300 each day.

1. Post said calories and all food eaten on my food diary.
2. Exercise according to a weekly plan
3. Post weekly exercise plan and…
4. Post exercise progress throughout the week.
5. Write/Reflect/Post other bits of flotsam related to my quest to lose weight.
6. Maintain records of all of the above on calendar/spreadsheet for the month

I guess it’s important to note that there *never* seems to be enough hours in the day and right now, I’m really only accomplishing 1, 3 and sometimes 5 with any success. The others are falling by the wayside. And when I write it all down, it doesn’t seem like a huge amount of stuff to do, but currently, I feel like I’m being bogged down by the administrivia of it all. And frankly, if I do take the time, that is to say, force myself to do the other things on my list, something else will have to give… namley the time I currently put into exercising each day. And well… that just doesn’t seem so smart.

But I don’t know.

On the one hand, it seems smarter to be actually *doing* something about my weight than simply sitting around recording all of the things that I should be doing. But, on the other hand, I know too that writing it down and posting that information makes you more open to public scrutiny and, in that way, holds you to a higher level of accountability.

*shrugs*

A part of me feels like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.
Another part just feels like I just need to prioritize.
And still another part wishes I had some chocolate.

Do any of you ever feel overwhelmed by how much work it is?
How you do balance it all?

I don’t know how other people are doing this, but here are my week 1 numbers in FBM’s Pedometer Challenge:

Let’s start out with Saturday and Sunday’s numbers (respectively):

So… that makes my averages look something like this:

Weekly total (I’m not including today in the weekly total): 80,996 steps
Bonus steps (FBM let us include any steps we took prior to the official start): 12,966
Total including bonus steps: 93,962
Daily Average (not including bonus steps): 11,570 steps

Gosh… I have to admit, that’s a lot more steps than I would have guessed that I was capable of when all of this began. And I know it’s a bit cliche to say, but I truly feel as though I’ve already won, even if everyone else in the challenge is outstepping me. Right now, I feel like a rock star.

That said, I realize too that I’m starting week 2 a bit on the low side, (this is the first day that I have *not* topped 10k steps), but I don’t feel terribly guilty about it because despite the lack of actual steps taken today, this was a very busy day for me. In addition to the mountain of housework that I got done this afternoon, my husband and I also stood in line for about 2 hours to see Hillary Clinton speak tonight. Additionally, once we were “in” we then stood for another hour waiting for her to take the stage and then for the entirety of her nearly 3 hour long speech.

I mention this only because I can remember, as a kid, before this crazy internet thing, standing in line for hours and hours and hours on end to get concert tickets… and then standing in line again on the night of the show in order to get the best seat, not to mention the long hours standing up while the band performed. Furthermore, I can also remember leaving those events *not* feeling as though my hips were about the crack in half. Alas, those days might be close to being over, though. I mean… seriously, standing for that long tonight really wore me out. I was *so* glad to walk the 15 or so blocks back to our car tonight, just to get some blood pumping in my tired little legs.

On the drive home I asked my husband when I’d gotten this old.
He didn’t seem to know.

He did, however, challenge me to imagine how standing for that long would have felt eight months ago when I was carrying around an additional 65lbs.

Honestly, it’s tough to imagine, and frankly, that’s a little scary to me. I mean, I really, really don’t want to forget what it was like to be that girl. I want to remember her because I’m pretty sure that forgetting about her would be a mistake for a couple of reasons. First of all, forgetting how it felt to be that fat would probably only make it that much easier to become that fat again. And secondly, how am I supposed to fully appreciate being healthy (and relatively thin) if I can’t remember what it was like to be, well… not.

I think part of the reason why it’s difficult for me to remember being 65lbs heavier is because when I look in the mirror each day, I don’t really see much of a difference. I mean… I *know* that I’m losing weight because my clothes fit differently, people tell me that *they* notice and, oh yeah… there’s the scale too. But, mostly, when I look at my face and my body, I just see the same girl I’ve always been… and on many days, I do wonder when the new girl is going to emerge.

Anyway, this coupled with the conversation I had with my husband tonight made me want to look for a picture or two of me 65lbs ago in the hopes that seeing *that* girl would help me appreciate the new one a bit more… so I started going through some photo albums and files on the computer in search of some photographic evidence of my fatness.

And here’s the scary thing: I couldn’t find any. (Well, that’s not *exactly* true… eventually, I did find one, but it seriously took hours to locate. I’ll show it at the end).

Like most families, my husband and I take pictures during key moments of our lives. Holidays, family get togethers, trips, etc. And while we *do* have pictures chronicling those events, it would appear that I’m not in any of them. At first, I found this pretty shocking. I mean… I’m not *always* the photographer during these moments and even though I’m pretty loathe to have my picture taken, I didn’t think I’d managed to successfully dodge every photo opportunity that has ever come my way. Then, while I was sitting here scratching my head in disbelief, I remembered something.

A couple of Christmases ago, I can remember standing around the tree/fireplace at my mother in law’s house while the obligatory family photos were taken. Her camera was not working, so she asked if we could just use ours and then share the pictures among all the family members. We quickly obliged and soon we were all striking poses and putting on our best fake smiles.

This next bit is really hard for me to admit.

Later in the evening as things began to settle down my husband and I grabbed the camera and started looking through the shots. Gosh, even now, I can remember how hot and red my cheeks felt looking at the pictures in which I was included. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so bad about myself. Not only was I fat, but I looked unhappy and ugly. I was mortified and literally had to turn away. But the worst part is that after he set the camera down and went to join the rest of the family, I actually sat there and deleted every picture that *I* was in. In essence, I erased myself from that Christmas.

I wonder how many other family milestones I successfully removed myself from, either by throwing away the pictures or deleting them or by simply refusing to have my picture taken?

I know we’ve all spent time thumbing through old photo albums, reliving memories and revisiting the people and places who are no longer with us. In that way, photographs are not only a documentation of a particular moment in history, but they’re also a physical reminder of the people who come into our lives and help shape who we are. Many of the people in my life don’t have that kind of reminder of me… and it makes me sad and ashamed to think about. But also, it makes me wonder, how much do you have to hate yourself to feel like it’s ok to deprive your own family members, the people who love you no matter how much you weigh, of images of you?

Denying the people that you love, and who love you, pictures of yourself is not only selfish, but it’s also very sad. I know that when I chose to delete my own pictures, it wasn’t because I didn’t care about the people who might want them, it’s because I was so ashamed of who I was, because I couldn’t possibly imagine anyone loving me enough to want those pictures.

Now… 65lbs later, I still don’t like the way I look in pictures, but there’s been a huge shift in my thinking. Not only do I see how wrong it is to remove myself from the photographic story of my family’s life, but I also love myself enough to feel as though I deserve to be included in it.

Anyway… without further ado: Before & During.

If there’s nothing else to notice… I think I look a lot happier now.
And that’s because I am. :)

Ok. As Kai Ryssdal from Marketplace would say, “let’s do the numbers….”

The last couple of days have been busy, but good. The number of steps I’ve been getting at work each day seems to be dwindling a bit, but that’s just meant that I’ve had to move my ass a little more in the evenings to make up the difference. Of course, I say that so flippantly, as though heading out after dinner in search of 6,000+ more steps is no big deal. (Especially on a Thursday when you’re just plain tired and want nothing more than to go to bed by 7:00pm and cement, once and for all, your status as a senior citizen).

In this way, the pedometer challenge has been such a good thing for me. I’ll tell you, on Thursday, after dinner when my number was just barely touching 4,000 steps, I’d all but decided that I was just going to chalk it off to a “bad day,” post my picture and go to bed… but there’s something about that little plastic box… staring up at you, daring you to take just one more step, and then another and another. Finally, I gave in and went for a walk, convinced that while I might only bump it up a thousand or so more steps, that at least *that* was better than nothing. But in the end I just kept walking until finally I’d topped that magic 10k number. Gosh it felt good.

This coupled with John’s recent post on the subject has gotten me thinking about inspiration. I read a lot of weight loss blogs and I see people talking about the things that inspire them. And it’s interesting to me, because (like John) I often find that I am *not* inspired by what other people find incredibly motivating. I’m not all that interested in having my body look like what the media holds up as beautiful, I don’t have a “vision board” filled with pictures of slender girls in the hopes that one day I’ll look like them. I don’t draw incredible inspiration from television shows like the Biggest Loser and I don’t read diet books filled with the inspirational stories of those who have already lost all of their weight and want to pass on their secrets to the rest of us chubbies. Sometimes those things can be interesting, but none of them make me want to jog 10 miles or gnaw on a celery stalk.

Rather, for me, I think a lot of what inspires me is the challenge of all of this. It’s important to note here that I’m *not* talking about competition. This isn’t a race and nobody gets a gold medal at the end. This is, however, a challenge — a fight — a struggle. And what’s more, it’s one in which every last one of us is the underdog. The odds are stacked against us, folks. Hundreds or thousands of people “go on diets” every day and the vast majority of them throw in the towel, or lose the weight, only to gain it back. And as strange as that may seem, in some ways, I draw a great deal of inspiration from knowing that I’m the “long shot” in all of this. I love the notion of beating the odds, of throwing a monkey wrench in the statistic, and especially of proving all those people who say it can’t be done, wrong.

Like most fat people, I was fat for a long, long, (long) time before I finally decided that it was time to do something about it. It wasn’t like I was living in a funhouse where every mirror was distorted such that, even at 300+ pounds, I always appeared willowy and svelte. No. I knew I was fat. And I wanted to lose weight, sure. But for years and years I went about my business simply not caring enough about it, or perhaps myself, to actually do something that would facilitate taking off the pounds. So what changed?

People started giving up on me.

I know I’ve told the story here before about the fateful doctor’s appointment wherein my health care professional said a) you’re going to die and b) you have start taking medication to keep from dying because c) you’ll never lose enough weight to keep from dying on your own. I can still remember going home that afternoon so pissed off. Pissed at everyone and everything: the doctor, myself, my mother (why not??) and feeling like I’d been dealt a terrible injustice. Then, to make matters worse, when I got home I told my husband about the whole story and even though he tried to be supportive, I could see that he too believed that the doctor was right… that I was too far gone.

That was the turning point for me.

That was when I knew I had to do something. And yes, a huge part of it had to do with not wanting to die, but I’m not ashamed to admit that a massive amount of my inspiration came from wanting to prove everyone wrong. How dare they give up on me??? At the time, I felt betrayed and abandoned. But now I’m so thankful that I hit that low… because if I hadn’t, I’d have never felt the need to start climbing my way back up.

My husband (and mother, by the way) are fond of telling me that I am probably the most stubborn person that they know. And perhaps stubbornness isn’t the attribute that I sometimes like to think it is… but in this case, I think my stubborn streak may deserve at least some of the credit for saving my life. I don’t know where the rest of you draw your inspiration, (though I wouldn’t mind hearing about it), but I know that for me, a great deal of my motivation comes from my desire to always do and be a bit of the unexpected.

And perhaps that’s why this pedometer challenge has been such a good thing for me. Right now, I’m so determined to get those 10,000 steps in each day that I’ll do just about anything to make it there… including move on nights when I might have otherwise decided that it was ok to take the night off. And again, it’s not about winning, per say, it’s more about wiping that smug look of my pedometer’s face when the sun’s going down and I’m only at 5,000 steps. It’s about knowing that someone in my physical condition isn’t supposed to be able to move quite this much. It’s about proving that I *can* do it… especially to those who said I couldn’t.

Anyway, here’s Friday’s number, folks. And with that I’m off to start my Saturday.

Little too sleepy for any brilliant insights tonight.

I did, however, want to post my numbers and thank everyone for their kind comments on yesterday’s meltdown post. I’ll respond properly soon. Promise. :)

In the meantime, keep fighting the good fight, folks. We’re all in this together.