Status Report: 3 lbs. lost, 68 lbs. total

I’m not going to pretend that I now only desire fruits and vegetables and that my love and cravings for sugar and fat combined is a thing of the past – but – I will say that walking into the produce department at Wegman’s does now produce a feeling akin to being a kid in a candy shop.

It’s because I genuinely do love fresh, ripe fruits and vegetables and when I walk into that department I know that I can safely run wild, take home and eat what I like, and my body will be healthy and strong as a result as my weight loss continues.  A beautiful produce department is a safe, delicious, dare I say decadent place for me to be.

This week I brought home white nectarines, plump round Brussels sprouts, sweet rich grapes, curly kale, crisp romaine, beautiful sweet multicolored grape tomatoes, fresh melon that collapses and melts across the tongue, crisp cucumbers, earthy maitake mushrooms… I could go on.  It’s mine all mine.  And I am so grateful I live somewhere with access to these wonderful foods and also possess the resources to buy them.  A lot of people out there struggle due to lack of access and the extremely high cost of eating healthy.

So… three more pounds off!  That’s a few weeks of work, not just one, because I’m overdue to check in.  Closing in on the 70 lbs. lost mark doesn’t feel real.  I don’t feel or look different enough to myself for that to be possible – I look down and go, ‘oh man… there’s still such a long journey left!’

On the other hand my clothing sizes are very different, ranging now from 12 up to 20 instead of up in the 28 range.  I am pear shaped, so my upper half has shrunk down already to a pretty average women’s size large while my lower half continues to retain most of my body weight, I would assume this extreme size difference continues to make dresses impossible for me, but since I haven’t tried one on in over a year I can’t be sure.  Also that tells you how dumb women’s clothing sizes truly are.  For example in pants I’m wearing mostly what they call a 20, because when I try on size 18 I can’t even pull them up over my hips let alone zip them.  So why is there such a huge size difference between 18 and 20?  I discovered it’s because there’s also 18W in there between the two, which, by the way, I can fit into.  It’s just so, so stupid and completely arbitrary.

I have also noticed that my back is almost completely smoothed out, whereas it used to have a couple of fat rolls.  That’s really nice.  I catch myself reaching back to run my hands down my own back, noticing that difference.

I always thought that this far in I’d be spinning in a grassy, sunlit field with glee with my arms flung out in ecstasy – but the reality is it happens so slowly that it’s sort of anti-climactic.  It is really nice though being closer to finished than to the start.  And other people can more easily see what I cannot (and they are nice enough to tell me, thank you!) so I know things are changing, I guess I still just need better eyes to see for myself.

Does anybody else think that when I hit goal I should get a snail tattoo on my butt or something?  Seems appropriate.