Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

Celebrating: Crossing into the 200’s! Defeating the troll under the 300-pound bridge! Achieving my end-of-the-year goal! Call it what you will, I’m under 300 pounds!

Grateful for: I had really wanted to take a picture of my purple toesies framing the 299.8 point. However, I must have hit that point somewhere around Wednesday night after spending all afternoon and evening in the emergency room. Wednesday, I had another pain crisis which resulted in a 7-pound drop only 30 hours later. My doctors seem to think I have stomach acid problems, which leads to such debilitating abdominal pain that I am rendered immobile, speechless, breathless, and lying in a pool of my own sweat on the carpeted floor of my office. I just don’t understand how severe indigestion could be making me lose this weight. I’m sticking with my ovarian cyst theory until proven otherwise. (Note: I don’t “bounce back” from these dramatic weight losses, as though they were pure water weight or some other scale game. No, I lose the outrageous amount of weight in the 2 days following the pain crisis and it never comes back. All I can figure is that a combination of eating right, exercising, and battling the huge, fluid-filled aliens living deep in my torso has spurred me to these current numbers.)

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 300.4
This week: 296.8
Change this week: -3.6
Total change: -57.8
Next milestone: 60 pounds gone

This week’s mantra: Be grateful. Be grateful. Be grateful.

Celebrating: Crossing over from BMI’s “Severly Obese” into just “Obese.” Yay!

Grateful for: I wrote earlier about an increase in [otherwise healthy] carbs and my trepidation over weight fluctuations this week. Well, the mystery seems to have been solved when I experienced another ovarian cyst rupture yesterday at work. Thankfully, this one was only about half as severe and debilitating as the one linked above, and that is what I’m grateful for this week — that I was able to ride it out with my office door locked, get home safely, and rest. (And, heck. Maybe once my body re-absorbs the rest of the cyst fluid, I will have crossed into the two-hundreds!)

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 301.6
This week: 300.4
Change this week: -0.8
Total change: -54.2
Next milestone: 55 pounds gone

This week’s mantra: I’m too close to ease up! TIME TO CROSS 300!

Celebrating: 50 POUNDS GONE!!!

Grateful for: I’m sorry — maybe you didn’t hear me. I’VE LOST OVER 50 POUNDS! (Okay, also I’m grateful to have broken past 40 BMI points.)

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 306.8
This week: 301.6
Change this week: -5.2
Total change: -53.0
Next milestone: 55 pounds gone

This week’s mantra: Hold on tight and enjoy the ride.

Celebrating: Being able to wear a 2X t-shirt! (more on that later)

Grateful for: payday yesterday. Phew! That was a close one!

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 309.0
This week: 306.8
Change this week: -2.2
Total change: -47.8
Next milestone: 50 pounds gone

This week’s mantra: Oh my gosh! I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I can do it.

Celebrating: 45 pounds gone!

Grateful for: all that I am learning about myself in this process.

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 311.4
This week: 309.0
Change this week: -2.4
Total change: -45.6
Next milestone: 50 pounds gone

This week’s mantra: Achieving goals is good; there is no need to sabotage them.

Celebrating: 40 pounds gone

Grateful for: living in a body that knows how to heal itself.

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 312.0
This week: 311.4
Change this week: -0.6
Total change: -43.2
Next milestone: 45 pounds gone

This week’s mantra: put the so-called energy bar down and back away from the table.

Celebrating: 5.6 BMI points and 12% of my “starting” weight gone!

Grateful for: always having room for improvement.

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 313.6
This week: 312.0
Change this week: -1.6
Total change: -42.6
Next milestone: 45 pounds gone

This week’s mantra: Losing weight is nice, sure, but let’s focus on fitness.

Celebrating: 40 pounds gone!

Grateful for: having my internet access back this week.

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 315.0
This week: 313.6
Change this week: -1.4
Total change: -41.0
Next milestone: 45 pounds gone

This week’s mantra: As silly as it sounds, this week I want to focus on FITNESS and FLOSSING. (Of course, this morning I had a little waxing-at-home accident which also means that the words ALOE VERA and RAW SKIN IN AWFUL PLACES are going to figure in prominently, too.)

Celebrating: Recovery from medical emergencies.

Grateful for: Eggs. I dunno, I just feel affectionate toward their protein-y, yellow-y, jiggle-y goodness today.

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 325.8
This week: 315.0
Change this week: -10.8
Total change: -39.6
Next milestone: 40 pounds gone (just 0.4 pounds away!)

This week’s mantra: 10 pounds? Man, that was a big cyst.

My favorite brother was in town this weekend to help me work on a video project. Naturally, I tried to stay with my “mostly right” line of food choices and accepted the fact that entertaining my brother would likely result in a small gain on the scale.

So, you can imagine my surprise when, on Saturday — a mere halfway through his visit — I stepped up and found that I had gained over 8 pounds. I was all the way up to 325.8, in spite of being “mostly” on track. Ouch.

The double (quintuple) ouch came Sunday afternoon, about 2 hours after I took him to the airport and said goodbye. My ex-boyfriend was over and we had a nice healthy salad lunch at our favorite cafe. Then, as we settled onto the couch, I said, “Man, my tummy hurts. Maybe I ate too much salad.”

Well, the pain gradually worsened until I doubled over, held my stomach, groaned, and said, “Maybe food poisoning?”

Of course, I hadn’t eaten tomatoes or jalapenos at lunch, and the pain just kept coming. I broke into a sweat that quickly soaked through my hair and clothing and made it look like I had just sprung, fully-clothed, from a refreshing shower. It didn’t take long for me to soak the couch and render it unusable, while I writhed and moaned in pain. The ex, while sweet and very helpful, was obviously freaking out. I’d seen the look before — the “trying to be supportive but scared out of his mind” look. The last time I saw it, I was already on my way to the emergency room.

I knew exactly what was happening — and going to the emergency room wouldn’t help. It was an ovarian cyst rupture, and there was nothing to do but wait it out. Ex-boyfriend stood over me, fanning me with a hand towel and alternating telling me funny stories with giving words of gentle support.

Then, as I knew from previous experience that it would, the pain suddenly subsided. It took about 20 minutes to go from a 10 down to a 7, which is apparently the pain level where I still hurt, but not so much that I’m incapable of crying. The tears came, then, in a great flood, adding to the soaked-through sweat of everything. It was over.

Now, two days later, my weight is back down under 320. I can’t help but attribute the killer gain and loss to whatever monster ovarian cyst chose to squat in my innards and then, finding the accommodations inadequate, blew out of there like a tumorous Hindenberg. We’ll see how this week’s weigh-in goes, but I have a feeling that all will be right with the world again.

Celebrating: No trip to the emergency room this week.

Grateful for: The sheer luck of not being alone when my innards erupted.

Starting weight: 354.6 pounds
Last week: 318.2
This week: 325.8
Change this week: +8.6
Total change: -28.8
Next milestone: complete recovery from medical trauma.

This week’s mantra: Next time, bring more towels.