Sarah Jayne’s Journey

I just got back from my monthly weigh in at the nurse’s office and I now weigh…..*drum roll please*

227 pounds! That is a 5 pound loss in the past month.  I figure anything more than a pound a week is to be considered a good month and especially when I had a few days of eating total rubbish at the parties we had in the month.

I have no clue at all when the last time I weighed anywhere in the 220 but it had to be in my early teens or late pre-teens.  I wonder what my body thinks is happening to it..lol

The nurse also said today that she is going to keep me on Xenical until the company notices I have been on longer than the initial two years and tells me to come off of it.  Again, I have no idea how much the Xenical is actually doing these days since I am counting calories on my own and eating such low levels of fat daily but I will take what I can get for as long as I can get it!

So, this means I have two pounds to go between now and my wedding on the 19th to be at the 225 pounds I wanted to be at so that if I gained any weight on the honeymoon it wouldn’t be likely to take me back into the 230’s.  I should be able to do that unless I really get dumb.

That said…pizza night tonight as my last ‘cheat’ before the wedding!

Okay so I have really fallen behind on posting here and need to jump back in and try to get back into the mindset of daily accountability.  I haven’t had an official weigh in since my last post so I don’t know how much (if anything) I have lost.  The next weigh in at the nurse is Friday so I will find out soon.

In  the last month I haven’t been all *that* bad but I don’t think I have been all that good either.  Anthony and myself have kept up going for our morning hour or so walk on most weekdays and that has been a good thing to keep us moving.  We did host two parties though (Eurovision and a joint bachelor/bachlorette party) and that meant a lot of party food and not really counting calories for days at a time. So, I am hoping the weighin isn’t too bad.

My goal between now and the wedding - which is on July 19th - is to try to be about 225lbs or bellow.  The reason is because I know that on the honeymoon we will not be eating fantastically (though, I am not going to go out of my way to eat horribly either) and I would like to drop enough that even if I gain a few pounds over that period that I am still in the 220’s on our return.   Having not been weighed this month I have no idea how close I am to that already but we shall see on Friday.

Anyway, my challenge I am setting to myself is to have no ‘cheats’ until we get married on the 19th of July.  Now, the reason I am saying ‘cheats’ is because on my weigh in day I always allow myself a takeaway meal and that is suppose to be the only really bad meal I have that month (doesn’t always work out that way but it is the aim).  So, this Friday we shall be having a much longed for pizza.  So, other than that I want to go to the 19th without eating any rubbish and I want to make sure that I have counted my calories on the vast majority of those days.  Not only should this help me drop some weight and hopefully reach the 225 goal for the wedding but also it should help to make sure my skin and hair look as good as they can for the day.  Plus, you just feel better and more energetic after a long stint of eating well and exercising (if only we could remember that as well as we can remember how good chocolate tastes).

So, that is the challenge..let’s see how it pans out.

I just got back from my monthly weigh in at the nurse’s office.  I am pleased to report that I lost 5 pounds this month which takes me down to 232 pounds.  I am pleased with that sort of rate of loss and I know I earned it because with exception of a few days I counted calories everyday and exercised to some degree (usually a 45 minute walk in the morning rather than my exercise bike because the weather has been really nice) most mornings.  So, I shouldn’t be all that shocked but you know how it goes because sometimes you can do everything right and still not drop an ounce.

Next month is probably my last month of being issued a xenical prescription and I have been really worried about that even though I know at this stage I am eating so well that it really isn’t the reason for my loss.  What I have been worried about is not having the structure of the monthly weigh in because I think that has had more to do with keeping me in check than the medication.  So, I talked to the nurse today and the good news is that even when I stop the xenical they are still going to let me part of the weight loss clinic and come in and get weighed every month.  I think that will be really important for me.

Looking ahead, I would really like to see myself in the 220’s next month.  I honestly can’t remember the last time I was in that weight range but I bet I was around 13 years old or younger.

I wasn’t sure if it was too late into my weight loss ‘journey’ to start a blog. After all, people do tend to do these things from the beginning and I am doing it halfway through my rather long journey. However, I decided that it is better late than never and that includes the blog.

I can’t really say when my start date was because I didn’t sit down and decide it was going to be the day I started to lose weight. For similar reasons I can’t say for sure my actual starting weight. I sort of played with losing weight for years. I would go on whatever diet (often weight watchers) and lose pretty much the same 15 pounds and then I just couldn’t get any lower than that. Then it would all come back on and bring a pound or more with it. I have known for a number of years that I have PCOS (polycystic ovaries) and I guess I was using that as my reason (excuse) to accept that I was getting stuck at the same weight loss each time.

Then on November 24,2004 my world totally and very suddenly changed. My husband, who I had been married to for 8 years and two days shy of 1 month, had a heart attack and died. He had been left disabled due to an accident some years before and those injuries contributed but he was a very big man that didn’t really watch his diet and that no doubt was the real contribution that  horrid night.

For the year or so after that I played around with weight loss a couple times again. I even joined a gym which for me was a massive step because just the idea filled me with horrible flashbacks to gym class. Still, I kept hitting that same place. Then one day after a night of really hating my lack of willpower and browsing pages about weight loss surgery I decided to swallow my pride and go to my doctor and ask for help.

She was very helpful and could see that I had lost some weight on my own and asked me if I would be comfortable trying Xenical. Now, of course I had read about Xenical and I was filled with visions of spending the rest of my life on the loo. Plus, in my life I have spent so much time in the BBW community and weight loss medications were always such a taboo topic not the least because so many people in the community had tried then and died. Still, what I also knew was it was one of the few around that didn’t mess with your brain but only your guts.

In desperation I decided I would really try with Xenical. I soon found out that if I stuck to the rules (less than 40 grams of fat a day) there were no loo related problems at all and the weight started to slowly move down. It took a long time but finally I had broken that barrier I had never been bellow but it was still moving slowly. Still, slow was better than nothing.

Then my real breakthrough happened about a year into taking Xenical and losing very slowly. It dawned on me that even though the materials I was given when I started taking Xenical set fat gram limits it didn’t mention calories at all. Calories had always been evil and calorie counting to be avoided at all cost in my past. At this stage though I was already writing down every thing I ate and counting fat grams. So, decided to count calories too. As soon as I started doing that the weight began to move much faster.

I don’t know why it took me so long but after finally taking calories into consideration I realised that even though I could have barely any fat in my daily diary I could still get a ton of calories. For example, pasta has very little fat but a lot of calories. So, I started eating to be low calorie and low fat and really if I watched the calories the fat fell in place. I like big meals and so I wanted to get the most food I could for as little calories. This lead to me ditching most of the meat from my diet and eating largely vegetarian meals. I am not at all a vegetarian but by keeping meat to a few times a week my weight and my lifestyle finally changed.

I am nervous because in July I will have been on Xenical for two years and in the UK you can only be on it two years and then you are required to stop. I am nervous about going it alone but the nurse that I see to get weighed every month pointed out that with how little fat I am eating and how closely I am counting my calories that Xenical has probably had little to do with my weight loss. In other words, it was training wheels that let me find the way to do it myself.

Still, I am nervous that maybe it was the need to go get weighed by the nurse every month that has kept me so strict with myself.

I have lost nearly 75 pounds but I have a very long way to go and it is going to be slow. That is why I am deciding to start this now so that maybe I won’t be going it as alone as I think I will be. Perhaps that will keep me on track and allow me to prove to myself that it isn’t the Xenical that has achieved this but it has been me and it will be continued.

I am getting married again on July 19th. The same week I stop taking Xenical so I want the start of this new life to be strong and confident.

Anyway, hello and I promise my normal posts will be a lot shorter..lol