So, So Close
 

I'm only 2 lbs away from my all-time weight loss "record" of 70 lbs (which I was able to accomplish in highschool only with the assistance of presription amphetemine diet pills).

I'm excited, and a little panicky too. It's like I'm heading into "uncharted" waters. The nasty me, is telling me that it really isn't as big an achievement as I'm thinking, because I'm no where near my goal weight and I lost a much higher proportion of my weight during my high school weight loss (because I went from 225 lbs to 155 lbs - I had gotten nearly to my goal weight), or even my Nutrisystem loss for a friend's wedding (from 285 lbs. to 225).

I'm usually very proud of my ability to quiet that nasty dieting voice - but it's been surfacing frequently lately, and I'm not sure why. Stress (good and bad, I've got a lot of things going on right now) could be one reason, or it just may be the fear of uncharted waters. Part of me says it won't be "real" success until I get under 155 lbs, only that is truly "uncharted waters."

I've taken much of the power away from my "negative voices," and yet every once in a while they still crop up - the nasty *****es.

I love my life, as screwed up as it is - and I'm loving the additions I've been able to make to it (even starting to suspect I may be able to get back to work in the next couple years). And yet, fear is cropping up. Where is it coming from, I wonder. Is it just feeling that the success I've had is unprecedented, and is bound to fail because it always has?

I don't feel I'm in any danger of backsliding or giving up at all. Just stumped as to why my brain is going where it has been.

I always feel better when I vent here, so for what it's worth to anyone else, I don't know, but it seems to be working for me. People fascinate me, and sometimes no one more than myself.

Congratulations on coming so far, and achieving all you have, while making time to encourage others!

Pass me your nameless dreads (I do sympathize, I have one particular big lurker where, when I get near goal I begin to not exist.....) pass me Your nameless dreads and I'll stomp on them too!

The mind is a weird thing. I often have to tell those negative and fearful voices just to shut up, already :) It's kind of wearying, though.

I'm so glad you posted this - because this is how I feel, too!!! I weigh less now than I did in 8th grade. So it's totally new! Exciting, fun, but also terrifying at times.

I try not to think about the number so much, but just focus on healthy food.

Kaplods! Just shut off those nasty voices. :lol: You have lost nearly 70 lbs!!! That in itself is amazing! You should be very proud of yourself. :) We all have that weight that for some reason is an issue for us. We just need to keep a positive attitude and power on through.

Bear with me, Kaplods, but this reminds me of reading about horses in harness racing. Often, in pedigrees, and usually in news mentioning certain horses in passing, there is a parenthetical mention of that horse's best time ever, at a certain distance. So the horse goes through life followed around by a number. (Even beyond its lifespan, into a pedigree, when it's another horse's ancestor.)

Thank goodness people don't get followed around by a parenthetical notation of the best weight they ever achieved!

Do not reduce yourself to any single number or measurement, Kaplods. The number is only a shorthand notation for something about your body that fluctuates hourly. You wouldn't do this with your IQ, I am sure. Or with your SAT score or your GPA. So don't let yourself do this with your weight.

I do not know if regularly weighing yourself is an integral part of your process. But would it help if you took a break from weighing? I don't mean forever, I mean for a month or so. It seems to me that perhaps, if you got so involved in continuing with your lifestyle -- which is evidently working -- that you "forgot" to stand on the scale for a while, and then, if the next time you actually found yourself on a scale, you discovered had breezed right past that looming number, into even lighter territory, it might break up any mind game you had going on about a particular number.

Thanks everybody, the encouragement is really making my day. I usually am very good at shutting off the nasty voices (or at least, having all my positive voices drown out the negative ones - sometimes it's very noisy in my head), and I usually have a sickenly positive attitude. I do have a dark streak, but as my husband says I'm generally "disgustingly cheerful."

I sometimes joke (not that dissociative mental illness is funny, and on the other hand it's no more unfunny than much of the human condition) that the only difference between men and a person with multiple personalities is that my personalities all know each other, have the same memories and are all named Colleen.

shaef - if this were a serious, daily issue I would very much agree. I'm just in a very temporary mind shift. I do weigh daily, but I am so NOT wrapped up in the numbers (really how this weight loss attempt is drastically different than others). In fact, I've generally had the opposite problem, this so isn't about the weight this time, but about reclaiming my health, that I forget sometimes that my goal isn't just maintaining my weight loss, it's actually to lose some more. If I don't weigh in the morning, I do tend to also neglect the rest of my routine, my exchange plan. And if I don't follow my exchange plan, I don't lose.

I really think that I've created a block that doesn't have to be there. I've made the 70 lbs sort of a magic wall in my head. I think part of me thinks that because I've never gone beyond it before, that I can't get around it now. I'm normally so good at thinking outside the box, but my weight has always been one thing that I didn't treat like everything else in my life (probably because it's one of the few thing I didn't succeed fairly easily at).

I think there are two cures for getting too wrapped up in the numbers - weighing less and weighing more frequently. For me, weighing more was my cure.

I think my little rant may make it seem like this is a big barrier for me, but I think it's not really. It's just that I've done so well in making this "not about the numbers" that when these thoughts do crop up, the seem so utterly foreign. It's like I think "I so thought I was past this." An in a sense I am, as I'm not feeling truly frightened or daunted or insecure - it's more a weird curiosity as in "can it really be me thinking this. Aren't I too smart and too confident for this?"

It just shows me how complicated weight loss is. There are so many booby traps, particularly culturally created (in a sense, we're taught to think of weight loss in this warped, paranoid, self-recriminating way).

It's just really weird to me that I'm seeing these last two pounds as some sort of huge milestone. I guess there's nothing wrong with that per se, it's just creating this weird "Christmas morning" sort of feeling, but it's more like the anticipation of a first Christmas morning of someone who knew of, but had never experienced Christmas morning for themselves.

Or a bit like the anticipation of my wedding - excitement, fear, thinking I knew what to expect and yet always the possiblity of surprise.

It's that "cusp" experience - first day of school, or first day at new school or job, first communion, confirmation, graduation... Something "new" on the horizon.

It's a hopeful anticipation, but also a wet-your-pants fearful one as well.

I don't know if I'm explaining it well - but this is a GOOD thing, but also a nerve-wracking one because it's just so new.

It's sort of like I've always felt about milestone birthdays. I half expected to wake up feeling different on my 10th, 13th, 16th, 18th, 21st (and even 40th) birthday. The day after our wedding I felt the same - I felt like waking up a married woman would be instantly different than all of the days I woke up single. And on one hand, being married is very different from being single, being 10 is very different than being 40, and the first day of kindergarten is very different than the first day of college - and yet one day isn't very different than the day before.

Mainly, I meant my post as 98% celebration and 2% "how the heck did I get here" fear. A tiny bit of fear is a good thing (reminds us we're alive, and keeps us from doing stupid stuff that could get us killed). It's just as I get close to this "milestone" I'm feeling all the anticipation (good and bad) of any "first time" experience. I know that once I pass it, it will be both a life-changing and yet a very mundane experience. Life will be different, it just won't necessarily be an "I'm an entirely different person" experience, more of a "what was I so worried about" one.

Colleen - :congrat: on your loss so far. It IS a big achievement! You can't compare it to your earlier losses, because there are too many different variables.

I am so proud of your progress, I am grinning from ear to ear! And - just ignore that nasty little voice - it doesn't know what it is talking about.

I think we all get visits from "the voice". It spoke to me just yesterday - it wanted me to worry that my lost weight would somehow find me again - even if I stayed on plan. That I would wake up one day and start re-gaining for no reason at all.

I find that humor usually works with "the voice". It doesn't like to listen to reason, and sometimes it likes a good debate - which can be fun and/or depressing - depending upon my mood.

Maybe we should send "the voice" on a nice long vacation - with a one-way ticket so that it doesn't find its way back anytime soon ;)

At the very least we should stuff it in a piñata and celebrate your 70 lbs. ;)

Colleen, you are doing AWESOME and you will keep on doing awesome, because you are truly committed. And you are an inspiration to the rest of us. I'm so happy for you!!!!

Whoo Hoo, Happy Dance!

As of today, I've officially broken new ground. 71 lbs - One pound more than I have ever lost before, so it's official.

I realized today that despite my "slow" progress, I've made several astonishing accomplishments in the past four years.

About four years ago, shortly after moving to Wisconsin and having to apply for disability, I lost the first 20 lbs without trying (and without even weighing myself). That was a first - I'd never, ever lost weight "accidentally" before - so that was my first record.

During those four years, I have often overeaten or made less than perfect choices, but I haven't really, gone on a true binge. Before that, binges weren't so much binges as food "benders," days or even weeks of gorging well past the point of feeling ill, but to the point of severe pain - sometimes to a point that I thought I might actually die from overeating (there were several times in my life where I'd eaten so much and hurt so bad, I thought I meeded to go to the emergency room - I was having a heart attack, or my stomach might actually rupture - and the only thing that kept me from going to the ER was the embarassment of admitting that my severe pain was from eating too much).

During those four years I did a lot of "firsts" like riding a bike for the first time in over 20 years. Walking, not just for "exercise," but for fun (and not just while shopping).

Never during the last four years, gaining more than ten pounds before getting right back on track (I can gain up to 10 lbs during TOM water weight gain, so ten pounds may seem like a huge amount to backtrack, but for me it's not necessarily even a sign that I'm "off-track"). Four years without a significant backslide - I can't even describe how miraculous that is for me.

Even little things like ordering soup or an appetizer as a meal, or going from dreading buffets as a "death-trap" and excuse for going off plan to seeing them and USING them as a way to stay on plan. Always taking home leftovers from a restaurant - getting two to four meals out of a restaurant meal.

I guess I was looking at exceeding 70 lbs lost as my first foray into new waters, but the fact is I've been breaking ground (to mix metaphors) for some time now.

I was excited, but in as much of a fearful as a positive way when I first opened this thread. I guess getting past the 70 lbs was both a huge victory, and yet also a non-event. The earth did not open up and swallow me, lightening did not strike, I did not hear the voice and trumpets of angels (not that I'm discounting the role of divine intervention), that I felt this overwhelming sense of "what was I so afraid of," and helped me see that this isn't so much a milestone as a natural progression of changes I am making.

I realized today (after I crunched the numbers) that on average I've lost an average of 1 lb per month since I started this journey four years ago. Most of that has been in the last 16 to 18 months, so if I average only the weight loss during those months, it scoots up to 3 lbs per month.

I feel that I'm getting proof of what I've suspected for a while now, that I'm actually "on a roll," and as a result am experiencing a snowballing effect. I don't mean that I will give up if I can't lose more than 3 lbs (or even 1 lb) per month, but it does feel like I'm "getting the hang of this." Some of the changes I've made are even ingrained habits - not any that couldn't be reversed by bad choices, but having any of those positive changes become "second nature," is a blessing I didn't expect.

I don't know how to explain how great I feel, and I suppose I should stop trying, or this post is going to be 100 pages long.

:congrat:
Colleen - I am so proud of you. You are such an inspiration and source of help and encouragement here at 3FC. I am so happy to see you doing so well!

You are so patient, and wise, and giving - I can't wait to see you lose those next 23 lbs and kick that "3" to the curb.

I absolutely - without a doubt KNOW that you will do this.
:hug:
I have tears just thinking about how great you are doing!

Congradulations! Every pound you lose is a success story. It means you used control, did some exercise, and made an effort. You've had that success over 70 times! Yeah for you! Nothing comes easy (except gaining weight, maybe?).. so all the hard work and efforts you have been putting into your weight loss cannot and will not disappear unless you stop doing them. That is the most amazing thing about weight loss - it is something YOU control!

Oh and yes, to restate the comment of the last poster.. your posts are very informative.. you have done more than lose your 70 pounds, your information and advice have helped others to lose theirs.. the credit may not show up on your scale, but those successes also partially belong to you.

In many ways, this has been the easy way, which I think is why I sometimes don't feel the weight of the success. I decided not to be upset with myself, not to do anything I wasn't willing to do forever, make everything as "fun" as it could be (including sticker charts, incentive "contests" with myself, choosing fun ways to exercise, looking at the process as pampering not punishing myself). The only difficult part this time, is sticking to my food plan as consistently as I would like. Even the slow progress usually is ok with me.

It sure beats all the white knuckled tooth and nail methods of the past.

Colleen - Congratulations!

I always enjoy your posts. They are very insightful and thought provoking. I believe that you will reach your destination in this journey.