Holy moly, 90 pounds

Stepped on my scale this morning and got a nice surprise: a new low weight, 189.4. I even stepped off and back on, to confirm the number. Down 2 pounds from yesterday. This means I’ve lost 90.1 pounds and have 59.4 to go.

I don’t think I could life 90 pounds without help. How was I walking around with all that weight? The answer: not very well. I was taking the maximum dose of a couple of diabetes medications and they were barely keeping my blood sugar in good ranges. Now I’ve been able to cut out both of them. I still take blood pressure medications, but I’m going to look into eliminating those at my next doctor’s visit. We live halfway up a hill, and I have to park at the bottom and make that walk every day. At my top weight, it used to take me the longest time, and I’d have to stop a couple of times to catch my breath. At one point, a neighbor even stopped his car and asked me if I was OK. Now, I don’t run up the hill, but I can make it in pretty good time, without stopping.

I’m lucky in that the tightness of my band is exactly right. I’m in the green zone. I can eat what I need and not be ravenously hungry, as I’ve felt in the past. I’m making sure that I’m following the rules: no liquids with meals, and waiting a half-hour after eating before resuming drinking. Sometimes I’m counting the seconds until me next cup of coffee, but that’s my new reality.

I want to remember this feeling for when I’m tempted to overdo foods that get me in trouble, like chocolate. Oh, I’ll have my sugar-free mochas, but I’m deliberately walking the other way from the giant bag of Ghirardelli chocolates someone has placed atop the filing cabinets. It’s hard for me to eat just one, so I won’t eat any, at least today.

And tomorrow, if I eat one or more, the world won’t end. I’ll just have to work harder to get past it. That’s what I love about weight-loss surgery: I’m not sweating out the weekly weigh-ins that can determine how the rest of my week will be.

I hope the rest of your week is good. See you tomorrow.