Alison's Predictions, a Year End Re-cap, and other musings...

For some reason, my dear friend Alison has always been eerily accurate with my weight related matters. I am a large person, if you have not yet surmised, yet Alison can tell the difference between a 3 lb loss and a 5 lb loss with me. For a while, I didn't have a scale, and I would just ask Alison to let me know weekly how much I had lost, and she was always right! By the time I got to a scale, I would confirm that she was correct. Perhaps Alison should leave her career as a recruiter and join the circus to guess people's age and weight. There may just be a future for her in that...

If you are a Phatband Phollower, and of course you are, you will recall that Alison (and Stephanie) won the original prediction contest (prizes pending) regarding the amount of weight I would lose in my pre-op liquid diet month. Alison also suggested at that time, that by the end of the year, I would be down 75-80 lbs. With one day left in the year, I'm now down 2 more lbs to a total of 74 lbs. I may or may not lose that additional 1-6 lbs between today and tomorrow, but either way, that is pretty close!

One of the presents I got for D this year was a trip to Key West (and Ft. Lauderdale and South Beach). We celebrated my 30th birthday there in September '06, and we had a blast. I'm looking forward to seeing the difference that 75-80 lbs makes for walking around, etc, on vacation. I signed us up for a snorkeling adventure that I never would have attempted with 75 more lbs of me, so this is exciting! I made sure every place we stayed had lots of fun active things to do, which was not a priority for me during our last trip. ;-)

I know I have so much more to lose, but this first 74 lbs has made me feel human again. I don't have to plan my life around my weight, and that change is profound. I used to be afraid of going to unknown restaurants because what if the booths were too restrictive, I didn't want to make plans to go shopping (still don't because I h8 shopping) or to museums because my back hurt from walking or standing for more than a minute (no exaggeration). At work, at some facilities I have to walk long distances between meetings, and I had to make sure I gave myself enough time between meetings to find a place to rest my back without walking the entire distance straight through. I had a back injury from a car accident that never healed properly, and the extra weight just made it impossible to do the most basic things in life.

My restrictions and my weight gain fueled each other, and the more my back hurt, the less I could move, and the more I gained, and the even less I could move, and so on. The cycle was never ending until now. The cycle has ended. A little while ago, I got separated from my friends at church and I didn't have my cell phone on me, so I walked home 3-4 miles, uphill at least 75% of the way. I *never* would have been able to do that before.

This is the last day of the phattest year of my life. Tomorrow, I have no resolutions (other than to be better about carrying my cell phone), as the changes I want to make in my life are already underway. I'm hoping/planning this next year, and the years to follow will be the healthiest years of my life.

Enjoy the end of 2007, and I'll chat with you all in 2008!

KC