Lost Time

Weight: 241.2

I'm mixed on that number. On the one hand, some part of me keeps saying "That's good! You're down 3.3 pounds from when you started!" But, I was 240.7 on Saturday, and 240.9 on Sunday, so I'm not crazy about the reverse progress of the past two days. I just need to keep reminding myself that 3.3. pounds would be insanely good for a normal week, and that I should stop thinking about it in terms of a "first week back" thing.

One of the things I'm having a really hard time with at the moment is not kicking myself too much for missing as much time as I did. I've found myself looking, almost jealously but more with an anger at myself, at the progress my compatriots have made. Seeing so many posts and pictures I missed over the intervening weeks . . . it's just hard.

In about 10 weeks, I gained 9 pounds. To be fair, I don't think that's actually a fair accounting. Even though my absolute lowest weigh in was 235.5, my real weight was closer to 237 or 238. I've also been able to knock off the first 3 pounds of that 244.5 so quickly that it clearly wasn't all real weight. If I'm honest, in the 10 weeks I was away, I probably gained about 6 or so real honest to god pounds of fat.

What bugs me the most though isn't the reasonably small amount of weight I ended up gaining. It's all the weight I didn't lose while I was breaking. I probably could've lost about 15 pounds in that time. I'd be in the 220s, not morbid, and probably within spitting distance of the 210s. Instead I'm struggling to reenter the 230s, and facing a long road until I can drop the damnable morbid label.

However, all is not lost. As I was reading through archives trying to catch up with what had been going on with everyone, I stumbled upon this great piece of wisdom by S. at Ethereal Endeavor: "One thing my weight loss adventures have taught me is that just because I missed a day (or four) doesn't mean that I should throw in the towel."

A lost week (or 10) isn't great. But it's better than a lost year.

I'm not as far as I wanted to be right now, but I'm also a lot farther than I would've been if I hadn't undertaken this journey in the first place. 241.2 isn't fabulous, but it's a heck of a lot better than 278. The best, the only thing I can do right now is to keep on going and keep making progress. I'll get there eventually.


In other news, Erin of the XXL Files very kindly gave me an award on Friday!


Thank you Erin! I promise I'll consider playing by the rules and doing the award thing tomorrow. In the mean time, it was incredibly nice of you to hook me up with blog love after I'd been back such a short time. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Onward and downward

Thank you all so much for the warm welcome back! It definitely feels good to have returned to blogland.

I did indeed go to the gym last night, and it was nice to be back after quite a few weeks away. I only put in 20 minutes on the elliptical, but it was much better than nothing. Combined with the hour walk during lunch yesterday, and the mile roundtrip walk to/from the gym, I think I got in some pretty solid activity.


I weighed in this morning at 242.7, which is 1.8 pounds less than yesterday. The scale tends to move quickly in the first few days of a new/renewed diet, but it's still nice to see. Getting rid of the easy weight is always a nice way to kickstart a diet.

The question, of course, is how much easy weight I have to lose. I'm hoping a good portion of the 240s will end up being fluff and water weight and that I'll be back in the 230s in no time, but things of course don't always turn out as we might hope.

Anyway, a few "While I was aways" just to get you guys updated:

While I was away, I finished my Arabic class. I got an A! I'm really happy with it and enjoy the language, but I think I'm not going to do Arabic this semester and instead focus on losing weight. I simply don't think it's smart to spend 10 hours a week (6 class, 4 homework) on it at the moment.

While I was away, a big paper that I'd spent a lot of time on at work finally came out. It's been received very well, and I got thanked in the footnotes! I was, I won't lie, pretty damn proud.

While I was away, my dormant blog managed to attract its first marketing email. It's from LA boxing, offering me a few months of membership in return for telling you guys if I liked it or not (well, probably it's "tell you if I liked it, say nothing if I didn't"). They sent it to me about a week ago, and since I just checked this email account, I just got it and replied.

While I was away, I turned 24! The side of my blog has now been updated accordingly. Part of me is debating if I should just rock "mid-twenties."

While I was away, I missed you guys a lot. And since I've been back, it's been great catching up.

Right now, I'm optimistic and happy. I had a pretty good 2009, and I'm looking to make 2010 even better. Onward and downward!

The Return of Lunch Time Walks

I took a walk today during my lunch hour. I used to do it almost every day back when I was blogging and genuinely focused on trying to lose weight. As I was out there in the not too terribly cold fresh air, I knew what I needed to do. I've known what I've needed to do for a while now. I'd just been too terribly scared to do it.

I needed to come back.


Slightly before Thanksgiving, I made a few food mistakes. At home for the holidays and my birthday, I made more. And between the icky gains on my scale and the fact that I just couldn't really control myself around food, I became too afraid to come back and own up to my failures. Not coming back immediately was a mistake.

While I was away, for most of the time, I kept yearning and thinking about going back. I silently visited some of the blogs of people I just couldn't let go of—Katie J., Jo, Monica, the kittehs, Actual Scale, Learning to Be Less, and 266, just to name a few—but avoided my own like it was toxic. I winced every time I typed anything starting with an "H" into my browser.

From November to late December, my weight hovered in between about 238 (what it initially jumped up to) and 240. I kept going to the gym, but not with the regularity I had been. I kept hoping that on my own I would find the strength to get the numbers lower, that I'd be able to come back here and post some number, any number that was lower than the 235.5 I left. As late as the beginning of January, I had a weigh in at 237.7.

And then there was the rest of January.

My weight this morning was 244.5.


These past three weeks have been entirely and ridiculously out of control. And it stops now.

I'm heading home from work in just a few minutes. I'm going to go home, change, and head right off to the gym. When I come back, I'll toss out what junk food I've accumulated these last few weeks, make myself a healthy dinner, and come say my hellos in blog land.

I've missed you guys, and I've missed making progress. It's time to get this weight loss show back on the road.

Tuesday Weigh In

Weight: 235.5
BMI: 40.42

I'm 2.5 pounds away from not being morbidly obese. Two and a half pounds. Wow. It makes me shiver just thinking about it.

When I started this blog, I said in my very first post that the goal I was using to drive myself was the idea of not being morbidly obese:

My name is Hadley. I'm morbidly obese. On July 7th, when I started my weight loss journey, I weighed 278 lbs. I'm down a bit now--I hit a new low of 270.7 yesterday--but not by much. I have a lot of weight to lose. I need to hit 145 to no longer be overweight. 145 lbs is, essentially, a world, 58 leagues, four languages and two centuries away, so I won't be focusing on that number much. Sure, yeah, it would be nice and maybe I'll get there eventually. For now though, it's such an alien concept I can't even really focus on it.

So I don't. I focus on not being morbid.

Morbidly obese is one of those icky, icky terms. It's one of those shock terms. Scary words. A scary concept. And yet, also day-to-day reality for me and millions of others.

Right now, my goal is just to not be morbid.

For that, I need to get to 233 pounds. That's a trim 45 pounds away from my starting weight and 37.7 pounds from my current low. It's pretty far away, there's no doubt about it. If you do the standard 1-2 pounds a week with the occasional slip up, you could spend anywhere between half a year and a year on it. But, 233 pounds is something I can imagine. It's a place I can see myself getting. And it's a place I'm going to go.

I am two and a half pounds away from not being morbid. Wow.

This Saturday I found myself staring at my stomach. For the first time, really, it felt smaller than it used to be. I felt smaller than I used to be. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've known for a while that I've been getting smaller. My old clothes are way too big for me. When I do comparison pictures, the difference is clearly visible. The bathtub feels a bit roomier than it used to. But this Saturday was the first time I ever looked at a part of my body and just thought, point blank, "wow, that's smaller."

I'm a bit over four months in at this point so I know the luster should have worn off, but it just hasn't yet. These days I wake up and I'm just blown away by how much I've accomplished. I've entered some sort of twilight zone where there's not a doubt in my mind that this is forever, this is for real, that I will succeed.

Anyway, two mini goals for the week:

1. I'm going to push myself really hard to get to not morbid by next Tuesday. It'll be tough. I haven't put up a 2.5 pound week since early September, and I only did one pound this week. But, I think I can do it, and at the very least I'm going to try.

2. I'm going to get back into the habit of posting every weekday. Yes, work is still pretty crazy and Arabic is hard, but taking time to blog and comment on other blogs makes everything else much easier. So, see you all around the blogosphere!

Tuesday Weigh In

Well, I bring some bad news, some good news, and some better news.

The bad news: I'm horribly stressed at work. I'm going in at 7am and leaving at 8pm, except for the two days a week where I have Arabic, where I need to leave at 5:30pm, be in class until 9pm, and then work until I feel like I'm going to pass out.

The good news: This too shall pass. Things should calm down substantially after next Tuesday, and I'm looking forward to resuming daily posting.

The better news:

Weight: 236.5
BMI: 40.59

That's 2.3 pounds in one week. NICE. It also puts me past the 40 pound mark, which is, well, NICE. Oh, and did I mention it means I've lost over 7 points of BMI and 14.93% of my bodyweight? Yeah, that's pretty snazzy. And I'm a mere 3.5 pounds away from no longer being morbidly obese.

So, I'm struggling at work, and I miss blogging, and I miss all my blog buddies, but at least I get to report back to you guys that in spite of the stress I'm still a weight losing machine.

I hope the rest of you are having fewer life issues, but just as much weight loss success. Take care and I promise I'll start with real posts again soon!