I’ve got a perfect body, but sometimes I forget
I’ve got a perfect body, ’cause my eyelashes catch my sweat
- Regina Spektor – Folding Chair

I haven’t hit the 80 pound mark yet but I’m getting very close. I won’t say how close I am because I don’t really want to jinx myself. I’ve even been debating this post the last week or so because I’m worried that by blogging about it, it won’t actually happen. Silly, I know.

In any case, I’m really hoping that I get to 80 pounds sometime this week or next. It feels like I’m inching towards the 80 pound mark but I’m feeling more excited than frustrated (sort of like that feeling when you’re looking forward to something exciting like a vacation). Part of the excitement is that I’ve broken through to a set of numbers on the scale that I haven’t seen in a long time. If my memory is correct, I’m now back to what I weighed as a freshman in high school. It is exciting to think about what that really means for me as an adult, not a 15 year old kid. Sometimes I look back to when I had reached my highest weight at 25 or 26 years old. Even though I wanted more than anything to be normal, I don’t know that I really believed that it was possible to get to where I am right now. I’m proud of what I’ve done but I do get frustrated thinking about how much more I’ve got to go. I *hate* that even with all the weight I’ve lost I’m still viewed as just another fat person. I keep thinking that I’ve lost all this weight and I’m still in the same category. I just wish that it was apparent to other people that I’m now this really healthy active person.

I have to remind myself that when I was 26, I probably would have given anything to be where I am right now. In fact, I think I used to get annoyed by people who are at my current weight and whined about being fat. The 26 year old version of me would have smacked the 30 year old version of me and told her to shut up and stop whining. And it is funny to think that I was miserable in this body at 15 and here I am fifteen years later and just so thrilled to have this same body back. I can look at myself in the mirror and be amazed by little things (like how my neck and shoulders look) and just feel so blessed that I somehow made it happen.

Perspective is a funny thing (my HCI education is compelling me to make a reference of looking at things through a different “lens”).

But despite all the mixed feelings that this number is bringing up, I really am looking forward to getting to 80 – mostly because I really want to do the following things:

  • Donate 80 pounds of food. I’ve been thinking for a while that I wanted to do this once I reached my goal weight but since my goal weight is still far off, I want to do it now! I actually want to try to do this for every ten pounds that I lose until my goal weight. So once I get to 90 pounds, I want to donate another 90 pounds of food. Now some of you may remind me that food pantries would be better off with me making a donation rather than buying the food myself from the grocery store but WHAT FUN WOULD THAT BE?!? There is an emotional component here – I need to see what 80 pounds of food looks like. I need to collect it, weigh it, and carry it in.
  • Get a 90 minute hot stone massage. I’ve never had a hot stone massage before so I really want to try it.
  • Buy an 8th water bottle. I’ve been collecting SIGG water bottles to represent my weight loss – one for each 10 pounds. Since I drink a lot of water, it is a fun little collection.
  • Buy new running shoes. My running shoes could probably go for another month or two (I bought my current pair right before my injury so I don’t have a good sense of how much mileage I’ve put on them) but I figured that would be a nice (and pretty useful) treat.

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