Sure it is just a number... but it feels so good!

 

For the first several months after my surgery, losing weight was easy. In fact, When I weighed in three months after my operation, I was down just over 100 lbs.- that is over a pound a day! The scale was my buddy! There were some days where I didn't lose any weight, but that was inevitably followed by a day in which I would lose up to 5 pounds! Crazy, isn't it? The weight loss still occurred, averaging between 5-10 lbs a month for the next several months. By the beginning of this year, my weight seemed to settle into a comfortable 226 - 230 pounds, which was a loss of around 160 pounds. I have been feeling great, and have settled into a routine of weighing in once a week or so.

When you lose weight as rapidly as I have, you tend to make certain observations. One thing that stuck out for me was that I would lose some, plateau a bit, then lose some more. It was during the plateaus, however, that I would notice the biggest changes to my body, including the never-ending need to buy smaller clothes. Even since the start of 2011, with my weight largely remaining steady, I have gone from wearing size XL to size L in my clothes. So even as I have hit my longest plateau, I have been reveling in my many non-scale victories! My health is better than ever, my energy level is sky high, and my clothes continue to fall off of me.

People have been asking me, "How much more weight are you going to lose?" My own mother has told me that I am already too thin. I would be happy to remain where I have been the past few months, but honestly, I still have a bit of a muffin-top around my waist that would be nice to shrink. But lately I have been telling people that this is probably what I will look like in terms of weight from here on out. And considering that I have blown by the pre-surgical weight loss estimates of my surgeon, I am ok with that!

So imagine my surprise with the events of the past several days:

I weighed in last Wednesday at 226 lbs. Status quo.

I took last Friday as a personal day so that I could go to the Red Sox game with my son and some friends, so I got to sleep in a bit Friday morning. When I got up, I decided to jump on the scale, just for shits and giggles. When I did, it read 222 lbs.! Holy crap! Where did that come from? I went to the game, and had a great weekend. Then, Sunday morning, I decided to see what the scale said, and expected it to be back to normal. Instead of seeing 226 lbs., my old buddy Mr. Scale read 217 lbs.!!!! What? From Wednesday to Sunday, I lost 9 lbs. Wow!

I know that it is just a number on the scale, and I know that there are so many other reasons to celebrate my weight loss, but I have to admit, that seeing that number drop like that really feels terrific! According to the government, my BMI still has me listed as overweight. According to them, my weight should be around 182 lbs. While I don't ever see me getting there, it would be nice to drop another 20 lbs. or so. More important, I want to keep an active lifestyle, and keep focused on WHY I did this surgery.

But I have to secretly admit, sometimes a number can make me feel so gooooood!