Month 20

A blur. My lowest weight for the month was 251.2 lbs, it went downhill from there. I started my Dostinex and ever since then I've been retaining water like a freaking sponge. I'm also retaining water because for a good 2-3 weeks I hadn't been eating as much protein as I should have, especially over my trip and the two weeks I have been battling this annoying cold & allergies. I still have some residual sniffling and a cough that is sloooowwly resolving. My sense ofsmell and sense of taste are also slowly returning which has made it incredibly difficult to try to get the nutrition in that I need PLUS it's been easier to get in crappy food instead of good protein. So, for my sanity's sake, I am putting down 251.2 for the month which isn't remarkable, but here's what is. Remember that new scale I got the measures body fat, skeletal mass, etc. Well, a day like today is exactly why I got it. Early January, I had, on average, 130 lbs of body fat, as of today, that's down to 110-111 lbs, pretty awesome! This gives me much comfort when I step and the scale and it !@#$-ing reads 268.8 lbs! Yes, my friends, 268.8 lbs! That's almost 20 lbs of water and most since I got back. I'm really panicking too much because I know it's water weight and I know what I have to do to lose it. Sigh. My clothes still fit fine, but I certainly feel and see it in my legs and feet. If I have learned anything over the last 20 months is to stick to the plan and everything falls into place. I've been so out of whack this month that I know when things get back to normal and I know I can trust my DS to get me to where I want to go.

This month I also did some shopping! I bought two dresses which is something remarkable for me, I am so very excited to wear them and I will get my first opportunity this weekend. I spent a couple of hours on the phone with my sister, S, as she guided me through the wonderful world of shoes. If you thought my sense of fashion when it comes to clothes was lacking, my notions of cute shoes is downright abysmal. Most of the comes from the fact that I have large feet, well, I had prohibitively large feet pre-surgery, around a size 13, now I wear a size 11.5 wide. This barely puts me in the range of cute shoes. What's funny is that I just realized this a couple of weeks ago when I was going through a pile of shoes my mom had set aside for me and much to my surprise, a lot of the 11's (what can I say, we're tall women) were barely too small. What a shock! Long story, short, she walked me through a couple of shoe stores online and I feel fairly confident in the 3-4 pairs of shoes I bought, one of them even has 2 1/2" heels! Awesome!

I didn't play as much tennis as I would have liked because I did go out of town and it's been raining more than usual lately, but I have been enjoying myself when I do go out and I absolutely love my tennis lessons. The running hasn't been happening because I do not like it but I do have to get serious again because the 10K is in only a couple of months and I would like to be able to run 1-2 miles at a time without stopping. I swear, once that race is over, no more running for me. By then I should be starting on a tennis team and can occupy my time with that. I mentioned before that tennis is huge in Atlanta so there are like three major tennis leagues, from what I can gleam, USTA, ALTA and T2. BP and her husband are in all three and probably play tennis 4-5 times a week and that's seriously running around the court, competition. I'd like to work up to that so that tennis will be my primary source of exercise OR I might take up something else. I really want to get into some kind of martial arts, I think, maybe kick-boxing or something. I don't know, we'll see.

I do still think a lot about goal weight. I was flipping channels last night when I caught the tail end of Celebrity Fit Club. I guess it's a show where celebrity's compete to lose the most weight or something, but I happened to see the weigh in of one celebrity (I forget her name, starts with a T) and one of the judges gave her a big congratulations because she had finally reached a normal BMI. Then on the flipside, this past weekend, I saw a show on Discovery Health about a 627 lb woman who had a RNY and one of the things she said was that she had no expectations of ever being a size 10 which caught my attention and at another point her doctor said that for people like her, getting to "normal" wasn't the goal, that for her she would always be obese, but by losing 200-400 lbs would be such a great benefit. Things like that make me go back and forth on the whole goal weight issue. Despite all the gyrations I often go through, I am sticking to 199 as my goal, the one thing I am changing about goal is when I would like to get there. Instead of trying to reach that by my 2 year anniversary (which at this rate ain't happenin' -- possible, but not likely), I am giving myself til the end of the year. That's 8 months to lose 50 or so lbs. This will give me the opportunity to develop long-term, sustainable, healthy habits which is very, very, very important to me. I want to get to goal, but I want the tools in place to stay there. I don't want to be spending much time still trying to figure things out.

In May, I am cutting back on the cheese and low carb breads. I need to give my innards a rest. I need to give my whole system a rest, being sick for almost two weeks is not fun. I'm also getting rid of my glasses and getting contacts AND will be doing something with my hair, I'm not sure what, but I suspect it will be much shorter in length. I'm mildly excited about that.

Anywho,