Wow! According to my sister, we are taking a 1000 step (pounds) journey. Well, we are hopefully only on the last 100 or so pounds this time. This really has been a very long journey that I have been on. My sister is starting this journey already ahead of me. She sits at the 238 mark; while I am lagging here at the 260 (well actually 259.4). But I am not complaining, over the past 7 weeks, I have managed to lose 12.6 pounds. I am not going to count the first 3 weeks I was on this program, because my second week on program was spend on vacation during which I put back on the two pounds I lost on my ‘real’ first week, plus their twin pounds.
Since I restarted my journey, I keep telling myself that this is a life style change, not a diet. I never did really need to eat all those pints of Blue Bell ice cream, or those “Little Debbie” Swiss Cakes, or any of the other mindless choices I made just because someone made some “heartless” comment about the way I looked. And we all know people that, in their best effort to ‘help’ us, say some of the cruelest things. Some of the cruelest comments come from the ones who say they love us the most.
I can remember (much earlier in the journey) losing more than 60 pounds on Slim4Life (now known as SlimGenics). My company gave me the chance to assist an office in England for a couple of weeks. I decided to take the opportunity to vacation for a week in England since I did not know when I might get a chance to visit across the pond on my own again. During the 3 weeks in England, I actually lost 15 pounds; mostly due to all of the walking and portion control eating I was doing (especially on my vacation since I was trying to save my money for souvenirs of my trip for my friends). I was extremely proud of my accomplishments. During my week in London, I walked for miles each day through London streets as a tourist while eating fresh fruits from street vendors. I guess I should have been cautious about getting sick, but I just washed all the fruit down with large liter bottles of “still” water. (I learned quickly that there are two types of water over there: Sparkling and Still.) I was having the time of my life seeing everything I could during those short six days in London. Food was the last thing on my list, except for a desire to try real “fish & chips”, bangers, and mashed peas. Next trip I’ll pass up on the bangers and mashed peas for sure.
When I returned to the states I kept losing and soon was less than 200 pounds for the first time since High School. At my age, I really have to think hard to remember that far back! About a month after I got back from England, I went “Home for Christmas” to see my father and his wife, my sister and her family, and my brother and his family. While having lunch with my father, stepmother, sister and niece, my father asked about my weight loss. My father had not seen me since before I started that particular journey to a new me. I told him about the nearly 60 pounds I had lost and that I was wearing clothes sizes I had not seen since high school. Just then my sister looked over at me and said, “Wait, I don’t want to be the fat one of the family!” I guess I had never thought of myself as the “fat one” of the family. I knew I was the largest member of our family, but I never put ‘that’ title on myself. I was crushed. For once I was smaller than my sister (she was actually in a beauty contest in high school) and yet she was telling me that she liked being smaller than me! Later that night, while telling my brother about the comment, my brother made the statement that he “did not mind being the fattest of the family” and patted his belly while he laughed. It was almost Christmas, so visions of “sugar plums” started dancing in my mind. I settled for an ice cream sandwich that night.
I did keep losing a little bit of weight, but struggled during the next five months. Finally, after a very trying month of May during which my best friend’s mother passed away and the stress of weekly traveling for my job (I was traveling to various office to teach a program no one wanted to learn, let alone use), I fell off the journey and eventually put back on the 60+ pounds. Of course, as usual, those 60 replacement pounds found some friends of their own to bring along on my journey.
I have now started this journey again and, with the support of my sister (she did ask for forgiveness for the ‘family fat’ comment), I plan to make it to the end of this journey. Well at least I plan to remove the remaining 100+ pounds that I still seem to be carrying. I will say that I have tried almost EVERYTHING out there and am now just trying to find the inner me that is crying to be heard. My weight does not define who I am; however, it does appear to reflect what I apparently think about myself. If you follow me on this journey for its duration, I will promise that the ride may not be smooth, but it will be interesting. This is a one step at a time journey; one day at a time.
I love you, Sis, so much. You have been my nemesis (as sisters often are growing up) and are now -- my best friend. The comment you mention here was selfish and you called me on it. But you were right and I regret that my spoken word curse may have had any effect on upir weight loss efforts. I take back what I said, 1000%. I love losing the weight together.
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