2013/2003: Week 10

In my quest to re-lose the weight I took off in 2003-2005, I've decided to document each week, comparing life now (first post) with life 10 years ago (second post). My hope is that I can find the momentum that carried me through those two years by looking at what worked for me then.

WEEK 10: 2013 
Beginning Weight: 264.6
Last week's weight: 248.8
This week's weight: 247.4
Week 10's weight loss: 1.4
Total weight loss: 17.2

Apologies for the tardiness in writing, but I refused to post the blog yesterday. For some unexplainable reason, the scale was up a full 2 pounds, and I could not bear to write that down. So I thought I'd see what today's number was, if it went down to Sunday's early weigh-in weight. If it didn't go down, I would face the music here. But if it did, I'd report as of today. I hope you don't mind the fudging. My heart just didn't have it in me to say I gained weight.

I don't have a lot of good to report again. So sorry. Life has been overwhelming me and the negative thoughts have crept back in. Perhaps I could blame it on my restaurant outing this past weekend when I had a margarita and chips. Or the small (but still) pack of peanut M&Ms I bought on Sunday. Of course my mood was already poor when I ate those things (which is why I ate those things).


NOTE: I just deleted two large paragraphs of negative thoughts. I don't want to be that person! So you will not see those complaints. I kept the above paragraph because I needed to come clean about the food.

On a positive note to end this post: I've made it 10 weeks! And that's nothing to sneeze about, especially if you know my history. The weight-loss is frustratingly slow, but at least it's a loss.


Week 10: 2003
Beginning Weight: 317
Last week's weight: 288.8
This week's weight: 286
Week 10's weight loss: 2.8
Total weight loss: 31


Published: 04/15/2003
My bathroom scale hasn’t been able to accommodate me for years.

It’s embarrassing to admit. But for the past few years, when my bare feet have climbed aboard the tiny square, the scale pointer would zoom through the numbers, climb past the 280 mark and then start over again at 0.

I’d have to do math to figure out how much I weighed.

I can’t believe I’m admitting to this. But it’s time. Who was I kidding anyhow? When I couldn’t fit into the auditorium seat or had to struggle with the car seatbelt, it’s not like I could hide my 300-plus pound body.

OK, so 317-pound body to be exact.

Flash back to the late 1980s. I remember sitting on a school bus – I must have been in middle school – and staring up at the boy in the seat in front of me, who had turned around and started in on his daily teasing.

“What do you weigh, like 300 pounds?” he said, laughing.

“No!” I remember shouting, thinking that I could never be so large, and hoping at the same time that he wouldn’t take his teasing down a notch and ask if I weighed 200 pounds, which I believe I was nearing at the time.

But more than a decade later, I’d reach that 300-pound mark, not even fully aware of it when it happened. For about two or three years, when I was a reporter in Jacksonville and then Southport, I stopped weighing myself. I stopped attempts at exercise. And I ate and ate.

Then, during a yearly physical exam in 2002, I glanced down at the front of my medical records, where, in black ink, last year’s nurse had written the words “morbidly obese” next to my name. My heart ached, those words ripping through me.

It didn’t stop me, though, from going home and eating.

Last year, I made two attempts to lose weight. The first lasted twentysomething days, ending when I took a trip to New York. The second lasted about two weeks, ending when I took a trip to Maryland. Both times, I’d eat one bad thing (a piece of Easter candy in New York and a cookie in Maryland) and those bad things would jolt my brain into believing I was done. No more dieting. I can’t do it.

This time around, I haven’t allowed myself those pieces of candy or cookies, mainly because I’m afraid of how I’ll react to even tiny acts of “cheating.” Some think I’m silly, others think I’m strong, but I know in my heart, it’s something I must do to keep losing weight, to get that scale pointer down below the second 0 mark.

So imagine, if you will, the pure euphoria I experienced last week when my bathroom scale finally accommodated me.

I’ve lost 31 pounds – my first Weight Watchers 10 percent goal – and I can finally weigh myself without doing math.

Note: I know the numbers don’t add up, but my scale, God love it, is about six pounds off.

Here’s another recipe, good for a family dinner (and no one will gripe about the low-fat status). It’s a Weight Watcher recipe (eight servings; 6 points each):

Chicken ’n’ Cheese Casserole
2 cups cooked macaroni
2 cups coarsely chopped cooked skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 can 98-percent fat-free condensed cream of mushroom soup (undiluted)
1.5 cups fat-free milk
8 ounces low-fat cheddar cheese, cut into small cubes
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large casserole dish, combine all ingredients, mixing well.
Bake, covered, 35-45 minutes. Remove cover; bake 10-15 minutes longer, and serve.