Let the Navel Gazing Begin!

Yes, I know, I've been a bad girl. No updates but once a week. Sorry. I'll try to be better. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

It's kind of hard to believe that it has been a full year since Dr. K went in, rearranged my insides and changed my life upside down in many ways. I can't say as I have minded, though. It's been wonderful rediscovering the old me and finding some new bits of me along the way.

I decided to title this post the way I did because I honestly feel that blogging about losing weight - heck, blogging for the most part - is simply an act of self-servedness, building oneself up, and essentially doing the whole "Look at Me! Look at Me! I'm IMPORTANT, DAMMIT!" thing. And it's something that I don't particularly enjoy. Never have, but I think I kind of got swept up in the whole, "You must catalogue these changes. You need to have a record of it all so that you can look back and see where you were in misery and how far you've come. If you don't, you'll just forget about it and NOT FORGETTING is important. You must remember your FEELINGS!" mentality.

But why? Why must I remember these feelings? I have to remember the feeling of despair that made me want to take a carving knife to myself to just get the damn fat off my body? Thanks, I prefer not to remember that. It was depressing living through it. Why would I want to re-live it? Even though I will always remember that particular psychosis of mine. But you get my drift.

Maybe I think this way because this journey along the DS garden path has, up until this point, been 95% a bed of roses. De-thorned roses with nothing but lovely scents and soft petals to cushion my fall. And now that I've said that, I will promptly be struck with bad luck that will have me in the hospital dealing with strangled bowel lengths and other nasty things like that. Because karma is a bitch that way.

So why do I continue to blog? Well, because I like to tell stories about what goes on in mine and other people's lives. I have about 25,000 words that I want to use a day and because I just don't talk to many people during the day, I usually have about 15,000 words that go unused a day. Blogging gets it out of me.

Here I sit, a hypocrite at her finest, telling you about all the lovely things that are happening to ME. Hey, at least I'm honest about it, right?

Anyway, in the past 12 months, I've managed to go from 315 pounds to 199. This despite eating all the wrong things at times, but still sticking to eating the right things because they actually taste good, you know? Life is a smorgasbord. I'm here to eat the delicacies from it. And I'm not going to apologize for it.

I have yet to take all my measurements. I'll probably be doing that this evening and I'll post the differences for you then. I'm sure it's going to be something utterly mind-boggling to me.

I have gone from a size 26/28 jean to a size 14/16. Technically, I am at the goal that I set for myself. If I could get rid of this damn pooch of a tummy, I probably could go lower. If I do, marvelous! If not, size 14 was my goal from the beginning and damn it if I'm not there.

On top, I have gone from wanting a 30/32 shirt (the girls needed their room!) to being quite comfortable, thank you, in a regular XL t-shirt. They're even a little bit *gasp!* baggy!

Dresses are a whole other animal. I used to wear a 26/28 from Lane Bryant. I really haven't actually tried any on since that size simply because I don't like most of the stuff I see. But the dress I sewed for The Husband's and my vow renewal started out at a 20 (equals a size 16 in regular clothes) and I had to chop a bunch down because I would have been swimming in it. So who knows where I am on that front. I haven't had the time to go to Mervyns and just pick out a bunch of stuff and try it on to see where I'm at but I probably should just for research purposes, you know?

Bones I never knew existed have been making themselves known to me. I have shoulder blades and collar bones for once. I also have sagging skin that makes me almost as depressed as the fat that formerly filled it does and makes me want to take aforementioned knife to it as well to get rid of it. At least a good foundation garment can take care of the ick factor for the most part, but still. Plastics will be a must at some point. Ugh.

I had my lab work drawn this morning before coming into work. Nine vials (Vampires those phlebotomists are, I tell you. Vampires!) of dark red blood that will be furiously spun in a centrifuge and subjected to testing to discover if I've been naughty or nice. To figure out if something Terribly Wrong is going on with my supplementation regimen and absorption levels. We shall see what we shall see and make adjustments from there.

All in all, it's been a wonderful ride this past year. Once the healing was over, my life has gone on, and it's been better than I even expected. I won't deny the hiccoughs, but that's all they've been so far - minor irritants in the great scheme of living life to its fullest. Hopefully this journey will continue that way for a long, long time.

Thus endeth the navel gazing of the day. Now commenteth! Validate me, please! Or not. It's all good. :-)