Week 2, part 3: Definitions of success.

When I first realized that, not only wasn't I hovering at just under 200 pounds, but I was starting to gain weight rapidly, when my favorite skirts didn't fit, and I didn't have the self-confidence to wear my favorite fitted shirts, it felt like everything I had been proud of in the last three years was invalidated.  And, yeah, that's a hyperbolic response.  But that 60 pounds I lost was the driving force behind so much else.  If I can do this, I thought, maybe I really can do that.  Maybe I can be the person I want to be.  It's not just that I liked how I looked, it was that I was succeeding at the one thing that I spent years and years trying and failing to do.  And that trying and failing was behind so much of my depression and self-loathing that I decided I was better off pretending my body didn't exist.

What I have gradually come to, not only think, but really believe, is that I didn't fail at losing 60 pounds.  I succeeded at losing, and keeping off, 30 pounds.  Because of my effort, I spent the greater part of the last three years weighing 30 pounds less than I did when I started.  And, because of that effort I put in the last time, I have an easier goal now.  Last time, 60 pounds was going to get me a little more than half-way to my goal.  Now, if I can just make it a little past 60, I will be at my goal.  And this is just an estimate.  I have a goal I'm working towards, but it's been so long since I've been thin that I don't know what I weigh when I'm thin.  The last time I wore a size 8 jeans I was a B cup; those numbers aren't going to apply for me and my DD's now.  So my plan is to work towards my goal, with the understanding that my goal may change as I get closer. 




As of Thursday morning, I weighed 210 pounds.  This is extreme enough to be cause for concern.  My chart looks anorexic.  I know, because I was once.  And succeeding at loosing weight by becoming anorexic isn't succeeding.  It is the worst kind of failure.  So now I am even more glad to have found a good system for exercise, not just because it's good for me and helps me lose weight, but because if I am starving myself I can't exercise.  Which means that if I can exercise than I'm not starving myself.  (Technically, all diets are a form of controlled starvation, but I'm talking the difference between two small meals a day versus an apple a day.  Literally.  One of these causes me to feel faint while walking down stairs, the other doesn't.) 

So I am going to assume that since I hovered around 205 for a long time, and only recently went up over 210, that my body hasn't had time to plateau there yet.  What goes on fast can come off fast.  (Which is why my relaxed weekend rules aren't a problem, what I do in a day I can undo in a day.)  And I am going to continue as is.  Carefully.