Breaking the first barrier

Ta Da!

I got on the scale today and for the second day in a row it read 199.8 lbs.  I have broken the 200 lb. barrier!  When I started this process last December 3rd (I like to be precise about dates and all) I had several - short, medium, and long term goals.

• Get below 200 lbs.
• Get down to at least a size 16
• Ultimately lose 100 lbs.

The below 200 lbs is because that used to me my line in the sand.  When my scale approached that weight it was my wake up call to do something so that I was NEVER heavier than 200 lbs.  And I blew past that when I was pregnant, and haven't been below it since just after Little Runner was born.  So for about 3 1/2 years I've been existentially unhappy with myself because of my weight. I think having a line in the sand can be useful as a behavior modification device, but it can also be very harmful in terms of what happens when life happens and you cross that line in the sand that you thought you never would.  For better or worse 200 lbs is still my line in the sand and may always be.  Here's hoping I never cross it again!

Upcoming goals

Weight and size are obviously related to each other.  At this point I am 199.8 (I love seeing that 1 there!) and a size 18.  So within the next 8-10 lbs I will phase into a size 16.  For the males who read this that means that shopping for clothes gets exponentially easier.  For whatever reason most popular clothing manufacturers only carry up to a size 16 in their stores - even if they sell well into the 1x,2x,3x or more sizes.  Those sizes are shunted to the online store, making finding clothes that fit if you are bigger than a size 16 annoying, difficult and expensive because on top of the $5 - $10 premium you pay for the plus sizes you now also have to pay shipping.  So getting to a size 16 or less has real-world economic benefits.  Or another way to say it is that being over a size 16 has real-world economic detriments.

Clearly I need to think of some goals between getting to a size 16 and losing the 100th pound because that gap is going to be about 50 lbs.  Most of my next level goals are activity related - such as start taking Krav Maga classes, and maybe in 30 lbs. or so try to run again.

Why do I want to lose a total of 100 lbs?  As Dogbert says, "humans like large round numbers".  That would put me at 135 - a mystical weight I haven't seen since I was about 12.  Supposedly it is at the upper end of what a 5'3" woman should weigh.  It's a nice definitive and impressive number.  I'll be seriously impressed with myself if I lose that much weight.  In a weird way it's like any other athletic goal - can I do what it takes to make this goal?  I can't really evaluate the worth of the goal yet.  I'm too far off from it - I've lost 38 lbs, leaving me 62 more to go.  I know that I looked and felt pretty good at 150, but I was still chunkier than I'd like to be.  I'm not willing to do the massive amounts of cardio and weight-lifting I did the last time I got down to 150, which means that the next time I see that weight I may not be the trim size 8 that I was - muscle is more compact than fat.  I'm willing to stop losing weight at any point that I think I look and feel good, and that my health is optimized.

Aside from my vanity (which is a surprisingly powerful driving force) my real goal is improving my current health and my long-term health prospects.  Which means that whatever I do has to be sustainable and not make me crazy or too inflexible for a little boy and husband to live with happily.