It’s a 2.91 mile race. Mouse over the pictures to see the 13 obstacles that have to be cleared through the trail. I’m SO excited! Clint signed up with me, as did my cousin Julie, her husband, an another cousin of ours! That is going to be the toughest physical endurance challenge ever, and at the same time, I know we will be laughing our hineys off the entire time! Cannot WAIT! Oh yeah, and that fuzzy helmet pictured up there?? Oh yes we do…get to wear one while racing.

I have been struggling with my body image lately. It’s been a bit of a setback, bringing up emotional eating again, but the past few days have gotten better, and I’m working on getting a visit to the psych at the clinic where I had the surgery done. Just need to find out what I can do to get over this hurdle. I just feel like my brain refuses to catch up with the physical changes that have happened, and it’s hard to accept still. Weird. I thought being skinny would make everything so easy! Crazy idea, huh?

I have joined a Body Blast class at a local community center. It’s a one hour non-stop, work your entire body, workout. Thursday was my first class, and it was intense. I can finally walk today without pain. I go every Tuesday and Thursday now, so thank goodness I had a few days to recover. Can’t wait to see the results!

Clint has also joined the gym at the same community center and has been working out 4 days a week (sometimes 5 if he can make it there before they close on Fridays) so that has been a great motivator for me too. He’s such an awesome support system.

Still maintaining weight loss. I fluctuate 3-5 lbs. up or down, but holding steady.

My trouble is when the clothes are off. I hate Clint seeing me in my bra and underwear (or less). I hate when I have a tank top on or very short sleeve shirts, because of the looser skin on the inside of my arms. I hate my stomach, how loose it is…although it isn’t nearly as bad as I had thought it would be when I imagined myself at my goal weight. And I absolutely HATE my boobs. Well, if you can call them boobs, that is. The could technically be called pancakes…deflated balloons…you get the picture. These babies are the epitome of sad.

So even though the weight loss is amazing and my health is awesome, these physical things that I still see with my body, are really taking a toll mentally.

When I saw the therapist prior to having my surgery, this was something that was on her radar for me that she predicted that I would struggle with. At the time, I blew it off, because again, I thought weight loss was the absolute answer to it all. Guess she knew what she was talking about.

Feeling a bit down about all of this has taken me back to not following the rules of eating as closely as I should be. So today, I have started to write down everything that I am eating just to track my protein and calorie intake. At the end of the week, I will post my journal just so you can see basically how I eat now.

I am holding steady at appprox. 110 lb. weight loss. I hover between 167-171 lbs. I am able to eat more now at a sitting, maybe up to 1-1/2 cups depending on the food. If it’s salad, I can easily eat 2 cups of lettuce, but if it’s chicken, turkey, or other kinds of high protein meats, I may be able to only get in 1/2 cup of it. Depends on the density of the food.

I have allowed myself bread once in a great while, although I can only handle a very small amount of it as it expands in my stomach, which, believe it or not, I can feel when it happens. What a weird feeling. I do eat some carbs, and not always the best choices in them (especially around a special time of the month), but I still do keep good focus on the protein that I have to have. I make sure I get in at least 64 oz. of water per day, and I do drink coffee in the morning. Caffeine was a big no-no in the beginning, and truthfully, caffeine never affected me before the weight loss. Now? Holy crap does it get me going! The one food I haven’t eaten yet is any kind of pasta. When I can feel the bread expand like it does, having pasta doing the same, worries me. So I have avoided that for this entire year.

My activity is pretty constant. I have a hard time sitting still. Good news for our home, as it stays pretty spotless these days. I am still running, normally at least 2 miles per day 3-5 days per week. I have found that I truly love it. If for some reason I miss a couple of days of running, I start to have dreams about it at night. I miss it that much. What I do want to start doing again more seriously is my boxing. It’s very sporatic right now.

I have quite a few pictures to upload from this past year that will give you more of a sense of the journey it’s been. I have seriously lacked updates here since I hit my goal weight, but am realizing lately that I really do have more to me than just my weight loss that I should be sharing. Even just how it really is a lot of work to maintain at this point. I realize that people think having the surgery is ‘easy’. And although it has been easy for me, in the sense that the weight finally came off, there is alot of mental and physical work that went into everything that I have been through in the last year.

For now, I will close, but will post more very soon. I miss the contact with my visitors (if any of you are still here!). I hope your Christmas and New Years was amazing! XOXO!!!

My clothing sizes have changed again. I can now wear Medium (SAY WHAT?!?!) shirts, and size 8/10 pants. I was NEVER this small in my entire adult life, or the last 2 years of high school either. CR.AAAAAAA.ZY

I have stuck with my word and registered for my first 5K run which is coming up a week from this Saturday (October 30th). My training has been slow but sure and my distance has improved and my recovery between run/walk sprints has greatly improved and I’m actually beginning to enjoy running! I never thought I would reach that feeling. It was like death creeping up on me after 30 seconds of running/jogging.

I’m really at a stand-still as to where I should take this website now that I have reached my goal. I will be focusing more on my maintenance at this point, so we’ll see what ends up showing up here!

Thank you for all of you who still peek in once in awhile!!!

THIS MORNING I REACHED MY GOAL OF 170 LBS.!!!!!!!!!!!

I have pictures already taken, but I need to get the comparison shots together and I will post them. Hopefully tomorrow I will get that done.

I’m constantly having dreams of gaining the weight back, or like last night, all I had on was a towel wrapped around me, and couldn’t find any clothes that fit me. Everything was too big. Even though I don’t need to lose any more weight, it’s still a constant on my mind. I guess that part doesn’t go away so easy.

We are going out tonight for a real ‘grown-up’ night out to a comedy club with my cousin and her husband, so I went out today to buy a much needed outfit that FITS. I still can’t get over this, but I got a pair of size 10 jeans, and a Juniors size 11 skinny jeans!!! I’m having Abbie take of picture of me when I’m ready. I’ll post it tomorrow.

I had my 9 month check-up last week and everthing is perfect. The main comments from each doctor I saw were, ‘Model patient’, ‘poster-child’, and my favorite, ‘You’re so TINY!!!’. It’s such a great feeling to go to the doctors and leave there with positive results, instead of how it used to be, where everytime I came home, I was on a new medication and something else was wrong. Now, all of my illnesses are GONE! No diabetes, no high cholesterol, no high blood pressure, PCOS symptoms are GONE, depression is SO much better, even my good cholesterol is still climbing higher and higher because of the exercise.

I’m still working on training for my first 5K on October 30th of this year. Thing is, I ran the day before yesterday, and the bottoms I had on (leggings and shorts) would fall down everytime I started to run. Definitely need to get some smaller clothes.

I will get more pictures up soon at my current weight. I’m getting alot of comments from people that I need to stop losing, and I even had someone who saw me for the first time in about 3 years, be very excited for my loss, and then asked ‘Are you ok? You’re not sick, are you???’.

The only bad thing that has come from this, is the loose skin. Mind you, it’s not as terrible as I expected, but I don’t like seeing myself naked. The ‘girls’ have gone south. And I don’t mean migrated. I mean they have taken up permanent residence in a very southern state. I have started weight training and hoping that the toning up will help some.

Now that I have accomplished this, I’m SO COMFORTABLY in a size 12 and M/L shirts, I only have one goal left to hit and that my ultimate goal of 170. Just 6 more pounds. Say WHAAAT??? Me??? Only needing to lose 6 more pounds?? Wait. Not 106??? Nope. 6. JUST SIX!!

I have had so much going on lately. I had another terrible spell about 2 weeks ago that lasted for 8 hours. I posted previously about the pain I would have and nothing would get rid of it. This time was 5 times worse than that. When I got in to see my surgeon to see what could be causing it, I told him my symptoms and he immediately said he would be shocked if it wasn’t my gallbladder and that I would probably need it removed. I had ultrasounds done, and they were in and out of the room 3 different times with doctors in and out and noone saying anything. Come to find out my gallbladder is fine (no stones) but what they were concerned with is that before my surgery I had an ultrasound done on my liver and they had found a ‘spot’ on my liver. The surgeon did a biopsy during surgery, and said everything came back fine. Well, when they did this ultrasound, they couldn’t find the spot any longer and the fatty liver was gone!! So losing 100 lbs. has helped my liver to heal completely! What great news!!!

So now that the ultrasound came back normal, this Friday I am having an endoscopy (I think that’s what they called it – the scope down my throat) to see if there is any trouble in my pouch or any kind of ulcer that might set off the pain.

In the meantime we have added a stable on to a garage that we have out back of our house and today we are having a fence installed for a pasture. Yep. We are getting horses. Two of them. It’s a mom and her daughter. So all of the medical and construction has kept me away from the computer.

I will post again after the scope and let you know how everything is, and should be back to regular posting after that!