It *finally* happened!

For now, anyhow!

I know it’s just a number. I know that the number changes every single day, bouncing around up and down and back and forth … but every time I hit one of my mini-goals, I feel good all over again. Today’s mini-goal is actually one of the milestones and I don’t just feel “good” right now, I feel effin’ fantastic!

See, when my health went to hell and the scale started climbing as the water kept building up in my system, I topped out at a known high of 412.  I could barely move. I was on supplemental oxygen and I had already been warned that if something wasn’t done to get me off the medication that was both saving my life and killing me, I was going to die. That’s some scary shit. So … they told me the quickest way to get off the medication was to lose a lot of weight. A LOT of weight. Bariatric surgery was about my only option. The cardio guy told me that the surgery might kill me. But without it, I was dead anyhow, so why not at least go down fighting?

So I decided to go for it.

And I knew that even with surgery to help me, this was going to be a battle. I knew from a lifetime of experience that losing any significant amount of weight and keeping it off was all but impossible for me. I couldn’t blame myself for the last 170 or so pounds of my weight because that really truly was caused by the medications. The other 100 extra pounds I was toting around was all my doing though.

So fast forward past all the delays and hoops and I had my surgery on July 5, 2011. My first mini-goal was to get under 400 and I managed to do that before surgery — went into surgery at 385.9 — and my next goal of note was to get below 300. I had other goals in between there, but “under 300″ was a milestone goal.

Then I wanted to get back to the 212-225 range that I normally stayed in before all this happened and my weight went skyrocketing ever higher.  Again, there were lots of mini-goals in between there and 300, but that was my next big milestone goal.  The next one beneath that was just to cut my weight in half — hit 206 — and then immediately afterward was the milestone which was to have lost more than I currently weighed– that is, lose 207+ and weigh -205 so the numbers were reversed finally!

Once I hit that, like a true woman who is never happy with anything, I was already on to the next milestone goal, which was get below 200 freaking pounds. I have been hovering just above 200 for weeks now. I kept bouncing back and forth between 200.1 and 203.6 for about the last six weeks and it was driving me crazy.

Well no more.

I have finally hit another milestone goal!

I now weigh …

Finally below the dreaded 200!

So now I am off to the next mini-goal: below 190. The next milestone will be 175.

After that, I don’t know what’s next really. My ultimate goal is still 140, so I guess my next milestone would be 150.  But I don’t know for sure where I’m going to settle in at. Will it be below 140? Will it be above? I just don’t know. Everyone tells me that your body kind of finds a point where it’s happy and it sticks within a few pounds of that under normal circumstances. They tell me my body will settle in at something and that’s going to be the easiest area to keep my weight stable. But I don’t know what that is! I had half started wondering if I was never going to get below 200, if maybe my sweet-spot was going to be right at 200.  (And the little voice that tries to sabotage me is saying “who knows it may STILL continue to hover right here, you may never even see that 190″ — and the little voice is also trying to convince me that although I know I’d be settling for it, I would mostly be okay with it.) 

I know that when I weighed 160 I was wearing a size 10 or 12 and I felt really really good. Of course that was back in 1985! Who knows what 160 will be now? Sizes have changed, plus I’ve got at least 30 pounds of excess skin hanging on me right now (which I really do not want to have removed unless I just have to. I can live with it!) and I know that will be a consideration.  Also, do I still go for 140 when 30+ pounds are excess skin?  Or do I shoot for 170 because then if the skin was removed I’d be at or below goal?

Too much to think about right now!  All I know is I have now lost 213 pounds, I have only 59.6 pounds to go to reach my goal (or less if that excess skin shouldn’t be counted!) and my BMI has dropped from 68.6 to 33.2.  And I’m approaching 100 inches lost so far. And all of it in a year and 12 days. You can’t hardly beat that, can you?