You look great, Scarlett! I wish I was still at 29" myself. I've got some skirts I'd still like to wear!
Weight loss certainly is a "journey"! I've been there... and back... several times. That's the bigger challenge in the long run: not just "taking it off," but keeping it off. It's like Sisyphus rolling that great boulder up the hill, only to see it roll back down again. So for anyone who might happen to be interested in the details, I'm titling what follows
Not just a "journey," an Odyssey!
It's sobering to look back and reflect that every time I've regained weight after losing it, I ended up even heavier than I was before! I have records from years past to demonstrate this. Here's part of my "journey." For instance, back in the 1980s I must have had about a 30" waist. But by the beginning of the 90s I was getting fatter. So I dieted:
22 Sep 1991: 169.5 lb, 34" waist
4 Dec 1991: 152.5 lb, 30.6" waist
So far, so good. And not bad for a 10.5 week diet, losing over 2.3 lbs per week. But by the end of the 90s I was up to 187 lb, and much fatter. So I had to go at it again:
12 Oct 1998: 187 lb, 38" waist (UGH!)
14 Feb 1999: 137 lb, 29.5" waist
That was a pretty nice Valentine's day gift to myself back then. If you ask how I lost 50 lbs in 125 days, 0.4 lbs per day or 2.8 lbs per week, the answer is I was fasting from Monday to Friday (except for vitamins), then eating anything I felt like on weekends. It worked fine for a crash diet, but it was pretty drastic--I found myself getting tired by Friday--and it's not something anyone wants to keep up forever.
I must have gained a lot back by the start of 2005, and in early February of that year I had the flu, which was rare for me. I hadn't had flu for twenty years, and haven't had it since. It was one of those unusual occasions when an illness actually improved my health in the long run. How come?
Well, I'd made some efforts before to give up smoking. And you know what they say about smoking: "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it dozens of times!"
We could well say exactly the same about losing weight!
Anyway, a doctor at a routine checkup in 2002 urged me to quit smoking--not that my health was bad, just as a matter of policy--and pressed into my hand a prescription for Wellbutrin to help. I never did fill the prescription, and a year later I learned he was dead, which seemed sadly ironic since I was still alive and smoking. Still, I recognized the soundness of this good man's advice, and over the next couple of years I made two tries to quit smoking, but they never lasted more than a few days.
However, that bout of flu left me in bed for a couple of days and I didn't feel the least bit like smoking, so I used the opportunity to jump-start another effort to quit. This attempt was "third time lucky." I haven't smoked since, and I'm sure I'm better off for it in every way--except for my weight! I had the same problem many other people find when they stop smoking. It may save us from a premature death, but it can be the death knell for a slim figure. So I set to it again:
5 Mar 2005: 193 lb, 38.8" waist
3 Sep 2005: 141.4 lb, 29.7" waist
Mission accomplished--for the moment! This time I didn't do anything as drastic as fasting. I adopted what I thought of as a "modified fast": that's to say, "minimal sustenance" Monday to Friday, eating and drinking anything I wanted on weekends to relieve the boredom, otherwise I would never had kept it up for so long. I also did considerably more walking and cycling, which must have helped. Weekday "minimal sustenance" consisted of 70g of bran cereal (for fiber) with soymilk, and a can of chicken, salmon or something of the kind for protein, plus vitamins. I didn't lose weight quite as quickly as I did with fasting, but 2 lbs per week over 182 days is still good and the diet was far more sustainable. No doubt healthier too.
The trouble was, as soon as I let up on the diet, the weight went back on again, far faster than it did before I quit smoking. And I have to say the winter--the holiday season especially--is the curse of any dieter. By the following spring I was heavier than ever. So I had to do it all over again:
24 Apr 2006: 203.4 lb, 39.0" waist
18 Nov 2006: 141.8 lb, 29.4" waist
I used the same diet regimen successfully, again losing 2 lb per week, though this time of course it took longer, 208 days.
Then the dreaded holiday season and winter intervened again, and while I made efforts to keep the weight off, I'm ashamed to say I rather lost heart after that. Over the next five years and more I let my weight balloon up to an average of 215, the heaviest I'd ever been. Each successive peak over a twenty-year period had been higher than the last: 169.5, 187, 193, 203.4, 215!
I've no doubt that getting older, with metabolism gradually slowing down, played its part in this, along with smoking cessation. Still, this just "wasn't me," and "never had been me," not at 215 pounds. Among other things I was left with about one skirt with a stretchy enough waist that I could actually get into! I needed to lose a third of my weight.
Well, long story short, I made one final, Herculean effort using the same diet regimen, and in stages got down to a low of 141.7 lb with a 30.5" waist in 2014. And this time, as with smoking cessation, it was "third time lucky" (since 2005), more or less. I say "more or less" because it has floated up a bit, and I still haven't maintained that elusive 30-inch waist. Still, 155 and 33.5" is better than 215 and 40 inches! I went out and bought a bunch of new clothes for Marianne.
I just have to watch my weight, that's all, and take prompt action if it gets above a certain threshold. That's the first piece of advice. I think it's too easy to become complacent when weight starts drifting up--"Oh, it's just a little bit over, it doesn't matter"--until it gets out of control to the extent that getting it back down again seems too daunting a task to tackle, not until it's really, really bad; too bad to tolerate. (And when it gets that bad, some people never do.) I just mustn't "get above myself," that's all.
And of course, what works for one in dieting doesn't necessarily work for all. If I need to lose weight fast, my method works for me. I'm glad yours is working for you, Scarlett. Good luck in keeping it offl!
Oh, when I was above myself
I was a curious pair;
My lower feet still walked the street,
My uppers trod on air.
Said folk "You must come down a peg,
We know not where you stand";
So reaching up I pulled my leg
And took myself in hand.
- From Goings On of an Alter Ego
M. H. Longson, Punch magazine, 9th February 1949
but it is a lot easier to find clothes that fit...
Originally Posted by Pumped
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