(no subject)

[mangosteen]

20 pounds.

20 goddamn pounds.

I weigh 20 pounds less than when I started my "eat less, exercise more" diet, almost three months ago.

I have two feelings about this. On one hand, I'm ecstatic that I have material progress towards my weight loss goal. I'm feeling better, my clothes fit better, I have more energy, I'm sleeping better, etc. On the other hand, well, allow me to illustrate. A few months ago, when I checked in for my flight at Heathrow to get back to Boston, they weighed my backpack. It tipped the scales at 9 kilos. That's just a little less than 20 pounds. This implies that somehow, on my body, I stored one not-very-light backpack's worth of... stuff.

There was a backpack inside of me, and now it has gone away.
How remarkably odd.

Comments

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

congrats !!!

yes, that oddness of losing ... it's so hard to really get
a handle on what it really means in the short run. when i lost
my big bought of weight 3-4 yrs ago, it was more than most people's
kids in "the crowd" weighed. heck, it wasn't quite a baker's
dozen of baby units, and certainly a few toddler units worth.

"i was carrying that everyday?" yow - and people complain about
a laptop :)

[skreeky]

Yeh, no kidding. Even in my relatively mild version of weight loss, I hit a point every 3-5 pounds where I get up in the morning and I feel the difference. It's like having put down a sack of flour you forgot you'd been carrying, and every joint in your body says "ahhhh, why didn't you do that sooner?". I'm also struck by the way it even feels like my own skin fits better.

Huzzah! You go!

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Freaky, isn't it? Now strap that backpack on again and imagine having worn it around all day, every day, under your clothes, and to bed. (Of course carrying it around is a different experience when it's seamlessly and proportionally distributed from head to toes, but still.)

Anyway -- Kol ha-kavod! (Wait, is that a pun? kavod, kaved...)

Mazal tov

[magid.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on your backpack-ectomy :-) !

(I should follow your example.)
"

[broken-gizmo.livejournal.com]

Whoot! Go, you! I've lost 22 since October, and I know well the feeling of, "... the hell?" I boggle some more since the only place I can notice that I've lost any weight is in my fingers (since my rings don't fit correctly any more), and I highly doubt I've been carrying around 20lbs there. :)

Congratulations!

[lifecollage.livejournal.com]

Having just discovered the almost same phenomenon when I stepped on the scale this morning (-17lb/3 months), I totally understand. I've been feeling the skin of my (face)cheeks every day and going, "That feels *different*!" And the brassieres I bought late last year are downright loose.

Go us.

[fj.livejournal.com]

That's why I consider "Oh just go exercise more" as such a facile answer -- usually when I hear slim people say it my first thought is "Sure, why don't you strap on 40 pounds of rock and hit a treadmill."

Not to say the exercising doesn't need to be done, but we shoud all appreciate how hard it can be for sedentary or overweight people.

On a related not, it rocks that this is working for you. I hope you manage to make your current set of habits permanent, I know how hard that can be.

[pookfreak.livejournal.com]

Congratulations babe - you're doing such a great job I'm so happy for you *hughug*

go go go!

[kalessin.livejournal.com]

Impressive!

I get the same effect thinking about what I lost last year. 40 pounds is more than one would want to try to carry in a frame pack for a day hiking.

Sigh... I want winter to end, so I can start cycling again...

[awfief.livejournal.com]

w00t! Cool! Me too, tho that will go in my own lj post soon.

The coolest thing is to imagine 20 pounds of fat. Visualize a pound jar of crisco, or a pound of butter. Now imagine 20 such things.

Ew. And that's gone. Yay.