Week Six: YAY ME!!!!!!

This week's weigh in seems to have brought lots of good news with it. First, I lost 1.8 pounds this week, which is awesome! I always aim to be closer to a weight loss of two pounds than under one pound, and I did it for the second time in two weeks. Second, I've lost 30 pounds-- fabulous!! Third, I am less than 20 pounds away from my next intermediate goal!!! That seems a lot more attainable now, just because I'm looking to lose 19.4 more pounds to reach that goal.

But.....the best news this week is that I'm finally FINALLY under 200 pounds! If you could see me right now, I am grinning from ear to ear. I have not been under 200 pounds since I graduated college almost six years ago. That fall after my college graduation, I started graduate school where 95% of my classmates were male. And to be included to lunches, that meant that I had to go eat where they wanted to: wings, beer, pizza, burger joints, sports bars, etc. Not exactly the healthiest fare.

I remember when I moved from being a size sixteen throughout most of my college career to being a size eighteen in graduate school. I actually remember myself being in my first apartment, trying on a pair of jeans that fit so easily a few months ago (sidenote, I had moved to Florida... not much jeans wearing going on there!). Hard to believe, but I wrote it off to having a heavy lunch (I think it was wings and beer that day after a long statistics seminar). I went out that weekend and bought a few pairs of size 18s at Old Navy and went with the flow. I can seriously smack myself now for giving myself permission to get bigger jeans instead of saying, Hey! What the HECK are you doing?? Lose that weight now!!!!

That was Fall 2001. When I graduated with my PhD in April 2007, I was barely fitting into my size 20Ws. How embarressing is that? I've been trying to pick out some pics to serve as my "before" pictures (trust me, there's no lacking in that area!) and they all seem to be coming from graduation last year, which was me at my biggest. I actually remember going shopping for a graduation outfit and feeling uncomfortable trying on the clothes. I ended up getting a pair of dressy Bermuda shorts and a twinset from Talbot's Woman (who the hell at age 27 wants to be shopping in the WOMEN'S section of any store? I know I didn't). I remember how uncomfortable and swollen my feet got from being in strappy sandals the night of graduation because they had to support 230 pounds of PhD in them? We fat girls don't like to admit it, but there are tons of "beauty is pain" things we put up with-- like mangling our feet in pretty shoes that were not made to support our weight, chub rub under cute dresses and skirts, stuffing ourselves into "foundation garments" like Spanx. No way, no more for me.

And now, I'm back to fitting into a size 16. A REGULAR size 16, not a PLUS size 16. I LOVE IT. I can't believe I'm back to where I was six years ago. There has been a lot of talk on my favorite discussion board about motivation in the past few days. My motivation is to not be a fat girl anymore, to be able to walk into ANY store and fit in pants or shirts, to not bemoan the fact that the closest Lane Bryant is an hour away but rather have options at my own local mall, and finally to not have chub rub (oh, a girl can only dream of this!!!). One thing that I can say is that I've always had high self-esteem, even during my heaviest times (call me stuck up or narcissistic, but if you don't love yourself, who ELSE is going to do it??), but I can see now that I am looking GOOD. And I'm going to look even BETTER as the numbers on the scale keep moving down. Sure, health plays into this, but the BIGGEST side benefit is being able to shop at the Gap whenever I want and not have to worry if I can fit into those clothes or not.