Fat as Hell…

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.