Bearing Down

I reached my WW goal this week.

Actually, I suspect that I reached it last week, but I was on vacation in Florida, and I wasn’t about to start WW maintenance with a leader other than Maria the Spectacular.

I weighed in at 159.75, which translated to 161.40 at WW, roughly 1.60 pounds below my stated goal of 163. If I stay under 165.0 between now and May 12, I will achieve my final WW milestone, Lifetime Membership. If I continue to weigh in at least once a month and stay within 2 pounds of my WW goal, I can attend meetings free for life.

Even though I haven’t yet reached my personal goal, I feel that now I’m embarking on Stage 2 of my journey. I’ve been thinking about what changes I’ll make as I move from Loss Mode to Stasis. I’m planning for how my life will be different, now that I’m a Lifetime Thin Person.

I really believe that: that I’ll be thin for life. It’s exciting to me, and also frightening, since I’ve never been in a place where I felt I looked good. Even in all the years I was thin, I always felt I had a few pounds to lose, or that I would be better off a size down, or that if only I could weigh less than this, then I would be satisfied. Something always kept me from believing that I was finished with losing. I never trusted that I had created a New Me, and that this girl was here for the duration. I suspect now that this had more to do with my general unhappiness than the scale’s reading, but whatever the reason, I’ve never been where I wanted to be, weight-wise or any-wise. But I am now. The weight is the last thing, and it’s almost over.

The loss was different this time. I’m not just eating smaller amounts of regular food; I eat healthy things, and I eat them with gusto. Last week, I drooled over a WW ad for fat free hummus and steamed vegetables. A day later, I was face to face with a chocolate sheet cake, and I turned my back without hesitation. I am a changed person. I am no longer a recovering fat person—I am recovered. I pulled myself out of all those habits, I said good-bye to all that unhappiness, and I am looking forward to a lifetime of good meals, great choices, and fabulous, skinny health. I’ve become someone new entirely. At 42 years old, I will soon be reborn as Amy, Thin Forever.

I’ll ‘give birth’ to my new self on the day that I reach my personal goal weight. True to the origins of this rite of passage, I’ll probably be naked (I weigh in at home au natural), and once the scale reads that final, delicious number, I’ll probably cry. And scream.

Just so we don’t take the analogy too far, I’d better not be smacked on the tuchus. Fair warning to everyone in ‘striking’ distance. I’m a new babe, but I’m still a black belt, and odds are, I’ll hit my goal on a day when my hormones are soaring.

I got to thinking yesterday that this whole Me Rebirth really does mirror labor. It has 3 stages, just like the stages in birth, and the pain is as unique and intense as any newborn delivery.

Stage 1 is the labor. Labor, as in painful stomach contractions, long periods of time when I couldn’t eat, even though I was hungry, and the dread-laced certainty that this will go on forever.

In medical terms, labor is when the cervix opens and the body prepares to urge the new life out of the womb and into the world. In Stage 1 of my weight loss, I opened myself to the possibility that I could eat well and still be satisfied, and that I could find a way to shed all my extra pounds, even though the task seemed insurmountable. I had no idea who I would be at the end, nor really any clear idea that it would be a new person at all. I had visions, certainly: fantasies of how I would feel, or what my new body would look like. But the ‘who’ remained shadowy and blurred. My ‘sonogram’ was 2 dimensional, blurred, and didn’t look much like a person. She was a creature, a foreigner. I wanted to know her, but we both knew that she would remain hidden until it was time to push her out.

As with a newborn birth, Stage 1 is the longest. It’s been almost 10 months that I’ve been in weight loss mode. Ten months of weigh-ins, each time hoping that the number would be lower than the time before. I’ve shed 92.5 pounds from my frame, roughly 36.8% of my original body weight. Every morning when I shuffle to the scale, I do it with my breath held and my stomach tittering. Will I have a loss today? Will I be lighter today than yesterday? Will the octopus move one step closer toward extinction?

These last few weeks have exhausted me. I’m close enough to my goal that, since I still don’t exercise, my body flirts with finishing before I want to be done. This is the transition-where the pain is most intense. Most of the work is done, but that last ten or twenty percent takes more effort than the first eighty. But I had a good loss while I was on vacation. I broke the 160 mark, a barrier I hadn’t crossed since 1988, and the balance scale teases me, showing me that if I can drop 9.75 pounds more, I can move the big marker down from 150 to 100. I can see my goal from here. I can see Thin Amy. She’s just a few weeks away. But there is still much hard, bloody work ahead.

For me, this is the time to hunker in, to grip the handrails of this ride and steer it along these last curves until I’m holding the New Me at last. I’m urging my new self forward, giving Thin Amy some leeway to take the wheel from me and steer us into the express lanes. I’ve been on the entrance ramp for ten months now, accelerating and dodging traffic, waiting for an opening on the Goal Highway with all the other “Afters”.

Stage 2 is where the body pushes the newborn out. It’s much shorter than Stage 1, but it’s more intense, and it’s where many give up and beg for drugs. I’m tired and I’m hungry. I can’t do this anymore. I need to rest. Next thing you know, you’re back in Stage 1 (for weight loss only, thankfully!), with pounds returned, and this time they’ve brought friends. Well, I don’t want to give birth to twins, or any multiple, for that matter. This birth is hard, and I refuse to make it tougher. The last stretch is the toughest, but I’m leaner and stronger now. I can do it.

Stage 3 is the last piece-the new person emerges, a whole confluence of changes take place, and everyone hugs and kisses everyone else. Calls are made, flowers sent, celebrations abound. The cord is cut, and the new person is ready (sort of) to live life as a separate human being.

This is what awaits me. I am somewhere between 5.50 and 16.50 pounds from Stage 3. I am in the final throes, the last few moments before I meet my New Self, cut the cord with the Fat Lady and begin life as Thin Me. Somewhere between now and the day I reach my personal goal, I’ll be in Stage 2-bent in half, yelling at anyone who tries to distract me, and blaming Howard for all my suffering. Oh, the fun we’ll have. Poor Howard. He’s largely responsible for all of my success, but since he’s right here, he gets battered harder than any unsuspecting father in a delivery room. The only thing I can think of that he can be thankful for, is that at no time will I declare that Sex is Bad.

Stage 3 is almost here. I can see that New Girl in the mirror, but she’s not fully here yet.

I celebrated a birthday last Saturday. I wish in some way that I had hit my goal on that day. But maybe it’s better this way, that my Re-Birth Day has its own space on the calendar. A year from now, it won’t matter when I hit my final goal. It will matter only that I made it, and that, once it was over, I couldn’t remember any of the pain.

I believe in Amy, Thin for Life. And I can’t wait to meet her.

A the S(omebody Boil Some Water!)