Almost Forgot!

Friday came and went and I forgot to post the results of my weigh-in!  I am down to 225.4; that's 72.8 lbs down from my high weight of 298.2  Ain't that some sh*t.

You know, it's funny...I never realized how crappy I felt when I weighed that much.  I didn't notice it until after I'd lost about 30 pounds.  Then I kept thinking to myself, Good Lord...you were a mess.

I couldn't walk up the stairs without getting winded or having the muscles in my legs hurt.  I'm not talking about a lot of steps, either - I'm talking about the 15 or so that are in our house.  At one of the hospitals where I worked, there was a shuttle to take you from the parking lot to the hospital entrance.  I took that shuttle every day.  I would wait 15 minutes for it if I had to but I certainly wouldn't think of walking, because if I did I would be sweaty by the time I got to the door, even if it was 50 degrees out.  Now when I'm at work (at a different facility), and the guy in the tram stops as I'm walking to the door - a good 10-minute walk, by the way - I tell him, "No, it's okay, I'll walk."  And I'm so grateful for the exercise and the fresh air, and I'm so happy that my body can do it.  It's as if I know that I can do it, so I should.  And that's so awesome.

Some of my shoes used to hurt my feet.  I told myself that they were lousy shoes, but really it was just that either 1) my feet had gotten too chunky for them or 2) there was just too much damn weight pressing down to wear those shoes and be comfortable.  Try teetering around on 3.5-inch Kate Spade high heels when you're almost 300 pounds.  The heels of those shoes are tiny little areas...I don't think they're meant to support that much weight.  I'm picturing a stick trying to support a boulder...  I wonder why they didn't snap in half.  (Now they feel wonderful.  You get what you pay for!)

I had a bag of clothes I was going to donate, and I added to the bag weekly.  Shirts that were too short, too small, too "tuggy", or "just not right anymore".  I kept marveling over how they'd all shrunk in the dryer somehow, despite the fact that I'd been washing and drying them for months.  But all of a sudden they shrunk.  Of course.  That had to be it, because it definitely couldn't have been the fact that I was just too fat to wear them anymore.

The lies we tell ourselves...man.  We're so self-protective sometimes that it's astonishing.  Anyone on the outside would be saying, "Psst, Nicole...the reason you can't fit into that large t-shirt is because you weigh 300 pounds.  You need an extra large, darling."  But I was saying, "No, really!  Gap is just making their clothes smaller!!!"

Amazing.

Happy weekend!!!  :D