Weekly weigh-in 26/06/17- 02/07/17

morning weekly weighers!

well, I had a weird week on the scale...low day of 207, a high of 210 and now I'm back where I was a week ago...

Congrats Gwen on reaching 1/2 body weight lost!

Peach hope your birthday celebrations were awesome!

stats:

HW: 378

LW: 208

TW: 208

have a good one!

Thanks, IF! You're so sweet.

So.. I have a story to tell. Once upon a time, when I started this whole journey, I found myself really wondering about people and their goals. People would claim that they'd lost some percent of their excess weight but it would be based on their goal and their goal was whatever goal the surgeon had given them and we all know that surgeons tend to be happy with us SMO folk just getting into the overweight range, or losing 100 pounds, or whatever other arbitrary number they're happy with.

I got thinking about what "excess weight" really was and learned that it was everything in excess of "ideal weight" but then what the hell is "ideal weight" which led me to a website with a buy of different ideal weight metrics and formula. So I plugged my numbers in, looked through all the formula and their theories, and decided that, at 5'4", my ideal weight was 120. And 120 has always been this super secret totally unattainable goal weight number. Like the "choirs of angels would sing if I ever reached this, I never will, and that's okay" sort of number. (For some people having an unattainable goal would be BAD, for me it's okay. I've got other goals too on the way!)

Sorry, this is long.

Then my plan, once I realized that, yes, I would want plastic surgery, was "reach my goal weight, stay there for a year to let things adjust, and then start the plastic surgery process." I was so naive.

At the beginning of my second year post-op, my dad's cancer moved to his brain, he had brain surgery, and my weight loss stopped. I decided that, hey, 120 is really aggressive and I doubt I'll be able to reach that with the excess mass of extra skin anyway, so let's revise my "start the plastics process goal" to 150.

And then there was my dad's death and college and the realization that I really wanted to start working in my field in 2018, so I decided that I'd do plastics after finishing my AA in mid-2017 so that I'd be all recovered and ready to start working in 2018. This meant that the day of plastic surgery I weighed 166. Clearly nowhere near my ideal goal of 120 and not really super close to my plastics goal of 150 either!

Now I'm three weeks post-op and I'm down 14 pounds since surgery. Let me tell you all, I am SO glad that I did not wait until I reached 120 to have plastics since I would be very unhealthy right now. My body would have had no internal stores to cannibalize for recovery!! Trying to recover from this while actually being underweight? That would be hellish! I'm only 7 pounds away from my next goal of "normal BMI" and I still have two surgeries left. I'm starting to feel like I made the right choice of plastics timing for my body, not just for my schedule. I'm also sort of kind of starting to feel like maybe 120 isn't out of the question after all....

And that's my story. :)

HW: 319
LW: 160.0
TW: 152.7

Next goal: 145 - normal BMI (and I caveat this with "yes, I know BMI is for populations and not individuals but whatever, it's still the thing doctors use so that's why it's on my goal list)

This was a a great read. You have a great way of putting into words the range of thoughts/emotions many of us have. I have been wondering about plastics a lot lately, and the timing thereof. And my chicken-ness regarding discomfort and pain hahaha and part of me wanting to be ok with flappy arms.

but also getting a little existential about the whole thing. What is success?, what even are goals? Lol it's a trip.

i know I've already surpassed my clinics goal, 30 pounds ago. Getting under 200 is the only goal I could manage to set without feeling overwhelmed and ridiculous, so I just keep my head down and focus on the next mini goal. But now that getting below 200 seems inevitable....time to start thinking about what happens when I see that 199...

You know it might be funny but I AM okay with my flappy arms. I've never been one of the people who feels they can only wear long sleeves due to the excess skin. I've been wearing sleeveless dresses since pretty much my first dresses post-op because I don't care that my arms have excess skin visually. I'm one of the "lucky" ones, I guess, because my excess skin hasn't caused any medical problems or mental concerns. The reason I've pursued reconstructive plastic surgery is that the excess skin is freaking annoying and prevents me from doing all the times I want to do. There is literally not enough compression gear in existence for me to be able to do jumping jacks, for example. And I'd like to be able to do jumping jacks!

My surgeon's goal for me was 180 and that sort of screwed with my brain. At my first year follow-up he was all "congratulations! You've made the goal I wanted you to reach!" And I'm all like... but I still want to lose like 50-60 more pounds? But there was that feeling of "but maybe I can just stop here..." That screwed with my brain way more than I expected it to. I wish my surgeon had never told me the goal he expected for me and never congratulated me for reaching it :P

Since my blog is down, you can't easily see my goal list, but I had a lot of goals before that unattainable 120 goal. They were things like drivers license weight, age 18 weight, the various BMI levels, and 25, 50, 100, and 150 lost. So I'm definitely a fan of interim goals!

I'm all about the sleeveless too, pre op and post op. Never bothered me. I also wear stripes, clingy clothes and bright colours, etc. It's literally the flapping that's bugging me, not so much the aesthetics. Like, I can't run up a flight of stairs without a slapping sound! And sometimes the flapping catches my peripheral vision. And 100% could not do a jumping jack without mummifying myself. I wanted to try boxer training, but skipping rope just could not happen at this point.

agreed about clinic goals getting in your head. Coincidentally, my clinic's goal matched my lowest adult weight of 232. So literally every time I've gained or stayed the same since then, I've thought. Well, maybe this is it, maybe they were right, could I be happy here? etc.

Totally how I feel! I really want to do parkour, but it seems impossible with the skin.

Checking back in here. My weight is back steady again. It's been a bit up and down but just within 2-3 pounds so I think I'm ok with that.

HW:377

LW: 130

TW:130

Goal: maintain at or below 145

HW 368

LW 171.8

TW 171.2