Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

Starting weight¹: 335.8
Last week: 335.8
This week: 324.2
Change this week: -11.6
Overall change: -11.6

Woah.

Okay, well, with just one week of watching, journaling, and counting what I ate I lost almost every single pound that I put on over the holidays. Most people would be jumping up and down in ecstatic joy at double-digit weight loss in a week. I, predictably, am a little freaked out.

It’s not that I’m not excited to be nearly 12 pounds thinner in a little over one week. It’s not that I really restricted or denied myself treats this week, either.² It’s not that I didn’t get a little happy-jolt when my boyfriend³, after a few days of absence, did a double-take when he saw me.⁴

No, the freakout is more metaphysical than anything. It’s too fast. I know it’s too fast, but it’s the way my body reacts. At my weight, my body is practically begging me to eat less and move more. Once I begin to make small changes to those ends, my body jettisons the weight like a slutty prom dress. It seems to misplace a few ounces of fat and water weight every time I stand up. I envision it like an animated tracking device — a puddle here, a grease spot there, and wee wee wee all the way home.

But it’s too fast. It’s way too fast. At some point, it will slow down. Until then, however, I feel I need to strap in for the ride. I’ve never totally ridden out the initial tidal wave of weight loss and seen it through to its conclusion. I don’t know exactly how long it will take to slow down. I don’t know how many more clothes I will have to buy between now and then in order to keep from flashing my coworkers and clients every time I reach for the phone.

12 pounds in a week is just too damn much, and that’s what people can’t seem to understand. Incidentally, there are people who attend Weight Watchers who want to lose 12 pounds in total. I recognize that those people would gladly slap me upside the head right about now, and I don’t blame them. But, if those same people gained 12 pounds in one week, it’d be a different story.

It’s not that 12 pounds up or down is such a big deal (to rational, post-modern people), but that it doesn’t give time for growing accustomed. There is no time to acclimate. There is just a speeding train traveling downhill with no one to man the breaks. There is a sense of being totally out of control. There is a panic, a white-knuckle grip, a holding-on-for-dear-life that is nearly as uncomfortable as those 12 pounds were, hanging off my body like (as the Weight Watchers website boasts) 9 or so ripe cantaloupes.

Ew.

The weigh-in lady clapped and squealed when she read the scale. She wrote “Terrific!” across the sticker in my log book. She asked if I wanted to have the leader announce my loss in front of the meeting so that everyone could clap and squeal, too. I declined her kind offer, though, saying that “It’s just this thing that my body does” and “I don’t want anyone to think they’re supposed to lose that much weight in a week.”

They’re not. I’m not. No one is. The whole 1-to-2-pounds mentality is perfect for a reason: it gives you time. It is a gradual slope. It lets you get used to your body as it changes and that is a nice thing, overall.

I called my therapist as I drove away from the meeting. Her comment? “We’ve been through this before. We know this is what happens, and we will get through it.” She also reminded me that I’m a very, very different person now than i was 2 years ago. I have better boundaries. I stand up for myself more. I have a really rocking support group, which I did not have back then. In fact, last time I started Weight Watchers, I didn’t have anyone to tell. I kept it a secret. People began to wonder if I had cancer, because no one knew I was trying to lose weight.

And, she’s right. Things are different this time. I’m fully expecting to be on plan when the slow-down hits, and I’m currently predicting the slow-down to occur in March.

Then, I’ll be crying for these days. Until then, however, I reserve the right to be a little freaked.

1. I changed my starting weight from the September number of 326.8 to the January number, just to make a clean start and to make this week’s numbers carry the same impact that they really carried. Besides. Although I was going to meetings from September through December, I wasn’t really following the plan for longer than 2 days in a row. Therefore, I’m officially restarting the count. [↩]
2. If anything, I went a little over plan and didn’t obsessively count, measure, and track things. I guestimated. A lot. [↩]
3. Yeah, okay, I have a boyfriend. I’ll write about him soon, since I just got his permission to do so. [↩]
4. He said that he noticed immediately that I looked “different.” When I prodded, “different” translated to “thinner,” yes, but, until I told him what had happened at weigh-in, he thought that it must have been a new t-shirt or new lip gloss and not a ridiculously-dramatic weight loss. He knew that I was trying to “be good” this week but (and this makes two of us) he didn’t think it was possible to lose so much weight in one week that it was visibly noticeable. Surprise, since last time I lost weight, it was nearly 40 pounds gone before anyone noticed. [↩]