Happy Monday and happy Canada Day!

I love that walking thing - it STILL amazes me. I'm going to visit my mom later this month and it'll be my first time going to Longwood Gardens as an ACTIVE person. I can't wait. When I was a kid I used to complain about all the walking but now I'm looking at the maps and reading the estimated mileage/walking time and just thinking, "YES, bring it on!" What a difference. It's nice to not have pain just from existing anymore. I agree that this, alone, makes surgery worth it.

HW: 319
LW: 152.7
TW: 151.1
Next goal? 145 - normal BMI!

Thankfully(?) my weight loss slowed a bit this last week. The week before I was losing 2 pounds a day and that was a little... concerning? I'm sure it was just fluid dumping post-op. This week has had more consistent, but smaller, losses, which is less concerning.

I did take measurements this morning too. (Except for bust/chest, because I didn't want to put a bra on - I'll do that tomorrow when I'll actually be leaving the house.) The numbers are the difference from a month ago (immediately pre-op) and this morning.

Waist 36.5 to 30
Hips 43 to 41
Thighs 24 to 22, 24 to 21.5
Just about the knee 20 to 19, 21 to 19.5
Arms 14 to 10.5, 13.5 to 10.25

6.5 inches on my waist?! Woo! My starting (March 2014) measurements were: waist 50 and hips 59.5. So I've lost 20 total inches from my waist and 18.5 from my hips. I'm thrilled.

Morning guys!

Since it's a holiday for me today I actually have a few minutes to sit here and read a little.

I've been trying to follow the good advice I got from Gwen and put some more non scale related goals on my to do list. I've thought of a couple ideas but none of them have the build up or require the effort I'm looking to refocus on so there's nothing too exciting to speak of just yet. So far the list is 'one and done' things like zip line or seadoo...things I just couldn't do before but nothing that's going to challenge me going forward. Like it or not my brain in scale focused right now. To be fair it's an exciting time on the scale so I'll just try to slow my brain down, enjoy the ride and keep the non scale list growing slowly.

Recently I've been finding the comments I've been receiving a little overwhelming. On Saturday I ended up avoiding a Canada Day party that I had been looking forward to and one of the reasons was the number of people that would be there that hadn't seen me in 100+ lbs. I just wasn't up for it. Some days the comments and compliments are great motivation and reaffirm the effort you're putting in and other times the attention is just too much for someone who has spent so much of her life avoiding it. Increased attention and comments from men in is becoming an issue too. My BF is not handling it very well and it has been the topic of several conversations.

The excess skin on my arms continues to be a concern and I've been giving a lot of thought to fixing them for both cosmetic and practical reasons. Manual labour with compression sleeves is getting old and it's only going to get worse as the summer rolls on.

HW- 386

LW- 195.3

TW- 192.6

So this week I officially reached half of my starting weight..... Hard. To. Process.....

My next goal is 186 (200 lbs lost) and then...... ???

This upcoming Saturday is an anniversary of sorts for me. July 9th 2016 is the day I downloaded the 'Lose it!' app on my phone and I consider it the day my effort finally matched my desire. Looking back on this past year is insane. There will simply never be another one like it. Total game changer.

Have a great week everyone!

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

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!

HW 368

LW 171.8

TW 171.2