Woo Hoo! I'm overweight!

I weighed in at 196 this morning, which puts me at a bmi of 29.8 which is out of the obese range and merely overweight. :)

I have 32 pounds to go before I'm in the normal weight range.

These numbers are all a little silly because they aren't the ultimate authority on how much I should weigh, but it is nice to have some gauge to sort of go by.

The fight against self-doubt and complacency

I've reached an interesting place in this journey. Things have slowed down weight-loss wise and I'm settling in to my new life and my new body. I struggle from day to day with believing in myself and believing in this process. Weight loss isn’t predictable the way my body does it and I still worry sometimes that I’m doing it wrong. Realistically I think, how can I be doing it wrong, when I've been so amazingly successful? But on the other hand, when the scale is jumping around and the only reason seems to be what I have or haven't done food and exercise-wise, I do begin to doubt that I have a good handle on how to do this.

One thing that I could easily see happening, (but that I'm determined not to let happen) is for me to become satisfied with where I am and stop trying as hard to get this last bit of weight off. I'm wearing a size 14 pants right now. I don't remember the last time I wore a size 14. I think it was in high school. I've lost over 100 pounds and I'm feeling pretty good. But I still have a ways to go and I don't want to just be satisfied with coming this far and not finish what I started. It certainly isn't that I'm not happy with myself and my body--I am. Maybe that's why I worry about this complacency setting in, because I would most certainly feel successful even if this is the end of the journey(which it isn't).

Maybe another thing affecting me is that I can't really picture myself any smaller than I am now. I just haven't ever been within reach of being a size 12, 10 or even smaller. So that self-doubt innocently takes root and could be affecting me in my actions and efforts.

My current eating habits are leaps and bounds above my previous eating habits, but they aren’t perfect and I know there are some improvements I could make if I was motivated enough. This way of eating has served me well enough this far, I keep worrying that it has stopped working and that I’m going to have to give up any food that isn’t perfectly healthy in order to keep going. It’s this fine line I try to walk between feeling like I’m on a diet and deprived, verses eating in a manner that leaves me satisfied and will serve me for the rest of my life. I just don’t trust myself to know where to stop as far as how much I can include before I’m including too much less healthy stuff to lose weight anymore.

I acknowledge that I will probably never be free of the struggle over food. That's okay because I have the tools to beat it.