Non-Scale Victories

Life is filled with small victories-or little learning lessons as the case may be. Of late the weight loss seems to have finally gotten to a point that these victories and lessons are hitting me on the back of my head.

1. riding in coach an an airplane is much more comfortable when you weigh less.
2. When you butt disappears from weight loss you cannot sit as much or as long in one place.
3. When you are thinner people look at you and smile (as 0pposed to looking and then looking quickly away when you look them in the eye)
4. Turnstyles (even the skinny ones) can be walked through without sliding in sideways and jumping through. I walked through one yesterday straight on (I do not know why door checkers are such jerks about moving it with their hand and letting bigger people through the gate-it is humiliating).
5. When you are thinner the doctors office gowns do not expose all of your naked flesh but actually can cover it up!!
6. when you are thinner stairs are not nearly as scary.
7. weight loss does not always occur right after you have been on your best behavior-sometimes it takes months to show up!
8. The band gives you the enforced patience to wait the unfair lag time it takes for the good behavior to show up on the scale.
9. Some toilet stalls are still too small to open the door without straddling the toilet!!-it is not just me!
10. when your butt shrinks you actually get shorter while driving a car! My husband and I now have mirror wars because i am not the same height as he is anymore.

Bottom line-The band is great! I never would have accomplished what I have without it. The band takes work but it is mostly wrapping your head around the changes that the band forces that are that work. The band forces me to be patient because I cannot give up and have a burger or doughnut when I do not lose deserved weight. The band forces me to stop eating too much at my meals, too quickly and washed down with copious amounts of fluid.

With the band I eat slowly, I eat sparingly and I eat liquid free. The tiny bit of food I eat sticks with me for long enough. I can stick a stall in weight loss out long enough until my little turtle moves again(see the weight loss ticker above).

Right now my goal weight is at what I weighed in high school (170). After my last weight loss stall I was worried that it was going to be difficult to get to even this goal. This latest burst of weight loss is leading me to believe that I can dare to hope for a real goal--maybe even 150. At 82 pounds lost I am still more than halfway there (This would leave 72 pounds to go. It just blows my mind that this is possible!!!