4-2-15 The Scale: The Frenemy

Oh the scale. I both love and hate it at times. Really I cannot think of an object that incurs all on its own the same level of fear and dread that a scale does, while also providing this level of joy that is baffling given the terror that it invokes.

My love/hate relationship with the scale has gone on for such a long time. I think it is that way for many people who struggle with their weight. there is no more accurate tool for measuring weight loss than the scale, that we have. Yet even that measurement isn't the most accurate.

I've been told time and time again to be careful and modulate my expectations of my weight loss or lack there of because of muscle gain, because of water retention or a host of other factors. Your weight can fluctuate a couple of pounds every day, even more so when you are at higher weights like I am. So it can be really hard to accurately gauge your weight.

Clothing can be another indicator, but who is to say the clothing isn't stretched. I've had shirts from the same company in the same size fit me differently just because the stretched/shrunk in different fashions. So while clothing can tell over time, it isn't always the best indicator either.

Through my exercise and diet program I have thought I had seen improvements. I thought I was fitting into clothing better. I thought that I might be a bit more flexible. I was certainly doing a lot more exercises, that much was for sure, but I didn't know. Some days I felt less flexible, bloated terrible.

Anxiety and the mind were the biggest factors in this. I have felt like I was working my ass off. And I don't mean the pun, I mean literally I feel like I have been working it off. I have been tired and sweaty and eating barely anything all in the pursuit of my weight loss goal.

Yet I was worried. What if I wasn't meeting my goal weight? How much harder would I have to work if I wasn't, to catch up to what I was going to do. I was terrified of this. I wasn't going to be seen to be weighed until May 7th and I started to panic. I couldn't wait two months to be weighed, so I arranged so that I could be just weighed after 3 weeks from my last appointment.

That three week mark was today. I felt better, knowing I was going to have that buffer where if I wasn't doing things enough, I could somehow, someway work to find a way to do better. I spent today going back and forth between being excited to see how much I would lose, but then dreading the scale reading something low, that I hadn't done enough. I had had it happen before.

I must have nearly thrown up about three times, just from the anxiety today. I was fitful, distracted and so nervous. I got so nervous I started trying on clothes again and questioning, is this fitting better? Oh I haven't worn shoes in a long time, maybe I can wear them comfortably, I've been more stable lately. (it turns out I can now, so that is progress at the very least).

In the end I was nervous and scared and my home care worker Patti, she offered to go with me. But then my mother arrived and said she would go. She's never been able to go to a weigh in with me or any of my appointments and I have been wanting to for a long time, to have that family support. So she went.

And I've been keeping up the suspense long enough. My goal, to be on track for a July 4th weight of 650 pounds was 756.6 pounds. This is 1.18 pounds per day over the course of the last three weeks. I got there and I got on the scale and it was...

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I'm a bastard...

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744.2

That's 37.1 pounds in 3 weeks. 1.766666~ pounds a day. This is the lowest my weight has been in 3 years. I need to lose 94.2 pounds to reach my goal weight in 3 months. If I get within 40 pounds of my goal weight, I can meet with the surgeon. That's about 54 days at the current rate of weight loss. My birthday is in that time so I might be fudging a day so 55 days. That's two months. I could potentially be meeting the surgeon to plan the surgery in June, not July.

I am so relieved and so happy. I have all of this pent up adrenaline from the nerves that have been wracking me since the day started. I am well on track. I am so much closer and for the first time since this journey began, I am within double digits of my goal weight.

photo credit: Bathroom Scale via photopin (license)