Down 2.6 this week.  Not to shabby!  I new it was coming because I had those few low weeks.  The thing about Weight Watchers and now FitBit you get a whole lot of data.  I love data, numbers, everything and anything to do with analyzing information.

I think that many people who get “stuck” would realize that they have a pattern.  I tend to have lower losses, and then a big one.  My body likes it’s fat, and isn’t going to let go right away.  But let it go it does my friends, if I don’t get discouraged and just keep plugging along!  I’ve lost 43.4 pounds so far, with 15 to go to goal.

The pic in this post shows a 25 pound difference for me.  The little nephew Roman found some of those pounds 🙂  I had on no make-up, my hair was a mess, but even in a world of filters and poses and 50 selfies until you get that perfect one I decided to take this picture anyway.

It’s all about documenting your life.

I’ve learned about this the hard way, after my parents died in succession.  When you lose your parents you inherent things like all the family photo albums.  My best friend’s Mom died soon after mine, and we found out our parents had a couple of things in common.

Both our Mothers struggled with their weight, going up and down their whole lives.  My Mom was skinny most of the time when I was growing up, but she also did not eat.  Like I never saw her eat.  She had a lot of health problems because of this, and when she got to her 40’s the starving stopped, and the weight packed on.

My friend’s Mom was the opposite.  She was always bigger and lost a ton of weight when she got older.  Unfortunately it was from un-diagnosed diabetes, and once diagnosed and treated she gained it all back.

The other thing they had in common was the disappearance and reappearance in pictures.  I have pictures with my Mom when I was little, but the older I got the more these became less frequent, or not at all.

I barely have any pictures of my Mom once she started gaining weight.  I don’t even have a picture with my Mom when I graduated from college.  Do you know what I would do to have that??

It was a sad realization, and you can’t go back and get memories like that.  It must be fairly common, and seeing my friend go through the same things just makes it all that more sad.

I imagine being in the world we are now it’s even worse.  I don’t understand it.  I mean, I understand the avoiding pictures thing – God knows I’ve done it too.  What I don’t understand is the obsessive culture we live in where people do so much to their pictures to look perfect.

I mean, we see you in real life.  We know you don’t look like that.  But with all this pressure to have that perfect picture on social media has probably made the picture phobia ten times worse because I’m betting a bunch of people out there fear the dreaded tagged pic – the one where your double chin and thunder thighs are in full view.

So that day back in February, when we had an unusually warm day and I took my nephews to the park to play, I took a really awful pic with messy, windblown hair and no make-up.  It was a great day, documented forever.

Yesterday, about 25 pounds less, I took a similar picture.  I’m glad I have them, for sure, because I can see my hard work paying off.  But I’m also glad that I have them for the memories made that day.

I don’t want to die and have people be sad because they don’t have documented memories of me because I thought I would look fat.  I don’t want to leave behind a sterile Facebook page full of pictures that don’t match people’s memories of me because they look nothing like me.

I’m going to document my life, my real life.  No one is going to look back and think “God she was fat!” or “man couldn’t see have got the lighting right?”

They’ll just be happy to have a visual to go with their memories.  I sure wish I had more.