Before & After

I’ve been saying for awhile that I’d post before & after pics of my weightloss – but I haven’t truly felt like an after. It’s only just today, as I texted HTC to tell her I wasn’t coming to WW that I realized that although I haven’t reached my eventual goal weight, I am an after.

I have all the tools that I need to get to where I need to be.  As I was eating lunch today, I concentrated on eating slowly & paying attention to how I felt.

I ate a few bites past my “full” place (couscous salad & potato dill soup – yum), but I didn’t clean my plate. I need to work on paying attention to what I want to eat, when I want to eat it, and how I feel. I can do this – and I can do it better than trying to figure out how many points I have left for my glass of wine and slice of cheese.

So – I am totally an after. I know myself, and although we don’t don’t always get along perfectly, I know enough about me to make it work most of the time.

I know that I’m a lot more sensitive to being over-full than I used to be. A few years ago, when I looked like this:

(I included a normal-sized woman for comparison – I have no idea who she is, but was on the camping trip I was on when this picture was snapped. I edited out all the people whose names I actually know, but don’t care about the privacy of the stranger, apparently.)

I could eat an entire pizza in one sitting – and at least once a month, I did so. It was usually on a Friday night – and I deserved it for surviving a hard week.

Last Tuesday, the architect picked up a pizza, and I ate half of it (i.e. WAAAY more than I usually eat, which is 1/4 of a pizza – or 2 slices). And you know what? I felt like CRAP after – even the joy of Obama’s landslide election couldn’t dull the pain of a too-full belly (also, the pizza totally interfered with my wine drinking, leading to an embarrassingly low alcohol consumption for an election night – remind me sometime to tell you the “running out of wine” story from 2004).

Of course, now I look like this:

(Aren’t we the cutest?)

Confession – I just wanted to publish that photo – it’s not a very good representation of how much weight I’ve lost – for that, this might be a BIT better – I don’t really have many recent full-length photos of me where I’m not wearing tons of clothing (also – please to ignore the socks with Tevas [mortal sin] and the “I’ve been camping for 3 days hair”):

Of course, I do want to lose another 15-20 lbs. I’d like to be at a healthy BMI. There is a history of diabetes in my family, and I know that being at a healthy weight will be instrumental in preventing it. But more than preventing diabetes, I just want to be strong enough to keep doing what I enjoy doing well into my old age. IN addition to having a family history of diabetes, I also have a family history of longevity, and I’d rather be the one who still lives (mostly) on my own at 93, than the one in a nursing home before age 90 needing help to go to the bathroom. I could, conceivably, be only 1/3 of the way into my life, and if I want this body to work in another 60 years (I have a great uncle who’s 96 – and although definitely getting a little frail – he keeps trying help other people & breaking his hip – he’s in pretty damn good shape for an almost centenarian), I need to take good care of it now.

And that means? In addition to my running, I need to concentrate on strength training. My quads are ridiculously weak, and I finally have had someone (my PT) confirm that I am just not well balanced (physically).

So – in addition to the week’s workout goals I listed on Friday, I would like to add this:

I will do my damn PT exercises every freaking day. I will do squats. I will do lunges. I will hopscotch in place in front of a mirror. I will do bridge lifts on my ball. I will use the stupid stretchy band thing. And for good measure – I will do a minimum of 10 (military-style) push-ups every day (I say 10, ’cause that’ the maximum I can do right now in a row without using my knees).

Because, even though I know I’ll never look like this again (16 years does interesting things to body shape that it’s next to impossible to erase), I’d like to look as good as I can while still being as healthy as I want to be (without giving up full-fat cheese):

(*sigh* wish I’d known how attractive I was when this was taken. I kinda figured I was pretty lucky if guys asked me out. Kinda explains that late high school/early college romance mistake. Also, check out how serious I am about my hotness. And god, I miss bodysuits.)

AND, since my ploy to quit the gym today didn’t work (they offered me a $10/month reduction in fees, which I took), I need to be hitting the gym at least once a week. Crazy weights this week – here I come!

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