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.

So I’ve been waiting for this week for two weeks.  I thought I would have made it last week, but thanks to how our wonky bodies work it didn’t happen.

I got my 40 pound star.  Last week was a disappointing and not deserved -.2 loss.  Point. Freaking. 2.  I was mad for sure, but I kept on plugging because this weight loss stuff is really just math.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again it is just math, and you have to find the program that helps you make sense of that math.  For some it’s Whole 30,  for some it’s Atkins, and for others it’s good old fashioned calorie counting.

For me, Weight Watchers makes sense of it to my brain and my body.  I lost 2 pounds without the point this week.  I’m getting close to goal, so I know it’ll be slower.  My body is smaller and burns less calories.  Even thought there will be disappointing weeks it’ll come, because it’s math.

Math don’t lie, but it does fib every once in awhile.

Let’s just get this straight right now – I am not the type to start running 5 miles a day so that I can get to goal in a month.  I run when there is danger.  Period.

So I’ll deal with my disappointing weeks and stick with my Yoga and strength training and walking.

But why the 40?  Why was that so important to me?  I’m an achiever.  I always have been.  Those stupid little gold stars actually help people like me.

Weight Watchers now says they are “Beyond the Scale” but I think that’s crap.  The scale is a measurement tool for that math.  I completely agree that people get totally hung up on numbers, myself included, but if we could only start thinking of it as a way to measure our health instead of our self-worth we’d all be okay.

In my younger days as a teenager I can remember them saying supermodels weighed like 118 and were like 7 feet tall.  If I get in the 140’s I look like I’m sick.  Ribs stick out and it’s not pretty.  So many of us have been taught that women should weigh 120.  I honestly don’t know how they all weight so little, and part of me wonders if they are lying.

I did some gardening this weekend and I always love taking pictures of my flowers at the beginning of the season and then again once they are in full bloom – a reverse before and after picture if you will.  I need to do that and promise I will have that up soon.