Things That Weigh 100 Pounds

It's official!  Since January 7th, I have lost a total of 100 pounds!  I still cannot find the right words to describe how elated and proud I am.  In less than 8 months, I have completely and utterly changed my life on so many different levels.  It's nuts.  Physically, of course I look completely different, so much so that people do not always recognize me if they haven't seen me in months.  This makes me laugh and I love it.  Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I find myself entranced by the difference in my face, and randomly, my neck, which looks a lot longer.  Is that weird?  I was trying on a pair of pants a few days ago and I just couldn't stop looking at myself in the fitting room mirror.  I.  Looked.  Good.  Please know that that is not coming from a place of cockiness.  Blech, I hate cockiness.  It's just that for the past couple months, for the first time in my entire life, I have been absolutely, 100% happy with my body and how I look and that's not a feeling to ever take for granted.  I know it's not perfect, but I have earned the right to be proud of what I see in the mirror.  And I still have ways to go but I have enjoyed and will continue to enjoy every second of the physical transformation process.  Even squat jumps and jump ropes have a small place in my heart.

But the changes are not all just physical.  I've always considered myself a happy person but that was nothing compared to how I've felt for the past six or seven months.  I am just so at peace and in love with my life.  I feel lucky to be me.  My days are filled with smiling and laughing.  This suits me very well, as laughing is totally my favorite past-time.  Making other people laugh and smile is a close second.

I have always been overweight.  I was a chubby kid, a chubby teenager and a chubby adult.  I tried not to let it bother me and I tried not to let it become my identity but it was a big part of who I was and I hated that.  I always felt a little bit less than all of my beautiful, gorgeous, thin and healthy friends.  I'm actually getting teary-eyed as I write this, but I don't I don't feel that way anymore.  I feel strong and confident and awesome.  I feel like I can do anything I put my mind to.

So I want to thank everyone who has been so supportive of me this year.  People have been so enthusiastic about what I've accomplished and you'll never know how grateful I am for that.  It fuels my workouts when I think I have no strength left.  Your kind comments make me smile when I am on the verge of being way too hard on myself for not progressing faster.  Special shout-out to Chad, who is hands-down, the best personal trainer ever.  I'm not even just saying that in the hopes that he will read this and be so flattered that he won't make me do box jumps anymore.  I really believe it.  I know that I'm the one who has to do the work, but the value of having people motivate you and push you is incalculable.

Because this post is so landmark-ish for me, I wanted it to be eloquent and witty and inspiring.  In re-reading it, I think I missed the boat on all three counts but thank you for bearing with me.  Words have failed to express the enormity of what I'm feeling.  Plus I don't really "do" deep, emotional talks about my own feelings.  They make me feel awkward.  So I will leave you with a quick list of things that weigh 100 pounds.  Imagine carrying some of this crap around and that's what it must have felt like to carry around the 100 pounds that I lost.

• 77 Hardback Copies of Dostoevsky's Epic Novel Crime and Punishment.  Seriously, this is a huge book.  One time, in high school, we had to pick a foreign author and do a report on one of his/her books.  Being the total slacker that I am, I forgot to look up foreign authors so when I got to class, I panicked.  Our English teacher had Dostoevsky's name hanging from his podium, so I just wrote that down and figured that I would look up whatever he wrote later.  I figured it couldn't be too bad because I like reading.  To my horror, it was Crime and Punishment, which to my teenaged eyes looked to have 972,000 pages.  So I went to the teacher the next day to ask if I could please, please, please change my author and book.  Full disclosure, I totally had a schoolgirl crush on this teacher so when he said that I could but that he really felt like I was smart enough to handle it, I swooned a little and agreed to keep the book.  It ended up not being to shabby.  Anyways, imagine carrying 77 copies of that bad boy around though.  It's a big freaking book.
• 18, 140 Pennies.  That is a boatload of pennies.  If I had that many pennies, I would spend my life traveling around to various fountains, making wishes.
• Over 28,000 Twizzler licorice whips.  I'm rounding this number because my calculations involved a lot of math and coversions from grams to pounds so there is a level of error to take into account.  But that's a lot of Twizzlers.  I actually really enjoy the original Twizzlers but I do not like Pull 'n Peel Twizzlers.  They have an awful taste but the perk of playing with your food by making shapes and things does have some appeal.
• 5 of my big-boned cat Fish.  He's quite hefty.  If I had to carry around 5 of him, I would suit up in a layer of armor first as he is a biter.  One Fish nipping at my arms is adorable.  5 Fish nipping at me makes me fear for my life.  I imagine whole chunks of flesh would go missing.

Peas and Love Guys!  Cheers to having a beautiful day, a beautiful night and a beautiful life in general!