a little perspective

Alternately titled: Never give up.


Friends are good, huh? If you're lucky enough to have friends that cheer you on when you do well, you're just that. Lucky.

If you're fortunate enough to have friends to talk you out of eating that entire pint of ice cream and just forgetting about this entire process because it's just too hard, you're blessed indeed.

I am blessed with such friends.

And these friends have offered me valuable perspective in my various times of need. Sort of a "look at the glass as half full, not half empty" type of thing. Imagine my surprise when such a thing starts to occur in my brain, by itself.

Big stuff, I tell ya.

Here's an example. Before Christmas, it was nearly impossible for me to walk on the treadmill for twenty-two minutes and complete an entire mile in said time. I wasn't even considering adding a second mile; good grief.

Eight weeks and four days later, I can complete a mile in 15:01. And there are running sprints in there too, you know. And twice a week I even add a second mile. I'm also doing weight training and have been able to increase the heaviness of the weights.

In eight weeks and four days.

I had a wonderful lunch with my husband prior to my appointment with my doctor yesterday. I ordered my favorite burger, cut it in half, pulled two french fries from the basket and set the rest aside. I ate that and two onion rings from the appetizer, drank my one diet Coke and I was full. Honest. Granted, the burgers are fairly large, but still.

And better yet, I stopped eating. And I didn't feel guilty about leaving those fries because I don't really like them anyway. I did save the other half of my burger, but I had Jon take it to the office to put in the fridge so it didn't spoil while I ran errands after my appointment and he forgot to bring it home last night.

Please bring home my leftovers tonight, babe. I wanna enjoy the second act. Thank you.

And the other thing. Remember how I was totally obsessing the other day? Well, did you catch how I said that I had lunch prior to my appointment? Yeah. Totally worth it but at least in part to blame for me not seeing the number I was hoping for at the doctor's office. Super close; 170.6, which for the record, goes down as 170 in my chart.

But here's the thing. As deeply disappointed as I was at not cracking 170, and I had to force myself to not cry and to answer all the nurse's questions accurately, when she left the room a thought occurred to me.

What if I ask Doc about my last recorded weight?

So, three or seventeen minutes later, I could barely contain myself when he said "Do you have any questions for me?" To which I blurted out "I'm dying to know what the last recorded weight you have for me is...cuz I'm working on that, you know."

It takes him getting into the computer records to find it, but when he does, I nearly hugged him.

"Oh my," he says. "You were at one ninety-nine on your last visit." Then he looks down at his paper and says "And one seventy today, you really are working on it, aren't you? Good for you!"

And then he circled it and I nearly fainted. Circles are like yellow textbook highlighters to doctors, you know.

So I didn't get to the 160's in the timeframe that I set for myself. But I'm so close I can taste it. Then the next decade and the next and the next. I may even not get there before another birthday is upon me, but I will get there.

Never give up.