Time is running...

... and I missed my two-year blogoversary on March 1st!

So, it's been two years by now that I tentatively hit "send" on my first post. I was still some thirty pounds heavier than I am today, with a BMI of 34.6. Still, the weight I had reached on the way down was one I had not been at for over seven years. In between those dates lay my fattest ever point, at a BMI 41, loss of mobility, loss of self-respect and complete loss of hope. I hated what my body had become, but after several failed attempts at losing that blubber, I did not believe in my own ability to ever come down from that weight again any more.
What, in the end, really started me off on the way down was the day when I put my back out so badly that I could barely walk and suddenly finding myself face to face with what my body had become in the mirror, without being able to twist myself around so I wouldn't look as bad. So, I started walking. On the first few days, it was rather dragging around myself with a pair of trekking poles, having to pause every 200 meters because I was completely breathless. Even then, I did not believe I'd lose a substantial amount of weight. I just wanted my back muscles to work better so as to avoid recurrence of that immobilizing back pain. But, for curiosity's sake, I wanted to find out, too, if I could lose any weight at all. So, I changed what I was eating, too.
And I started recondensing. The first couple of pounds, I was expecting the losses to stop at fifteen to twenty pounds down. When I reached 25 pounds lost, which in kilograms also meant getting down to two-digit weights (still about 220 pounds, but as my scales are metric, seeing that number was a big psychological motivator), I did, for the first time ever, dare to hope I might be able to continue recondensing.
Around that time, the idea for this blog was born.
I wanted to share what had worked for me, and I also wanted to keep myself accountable.

Like almost everybody, I have not been perfect. After losing in total about seventy pounds and reaching the limits of morbid obesity, I stopped exercising. You might say I let life get in the way. As my back has been re-starting to act up, I will have to restart my exercise as soon as the weather allows.
As to food, I have found out that it is harder to stay on plan when work gets stressful, and I also found out that some things to me are a surefire trigger for cravings and binges. Harmless-sounding things, even, like a slice of bread.
I have been maintaining- or perhaps rather preventing major regains- around that limit of obesity for about a year now. For my looks, that might even have been beneficial, as I think my skin has been reconstricting a bit during that time. But still, it's not where I want to stay. If going from class three morbid obesity to overweight makes such a difference, then coming down to normal weight from the upper limit of overweight should be even better.

Time to get back on track, if I don't want to join the ranks of the trainwrecks for good...


Julia