Gray Star

I hadn't intended this post as a celestial follow-up to the SuperMoon, but I like the continuity of that juxtaposition! Also, I appreciate any excuse to use the word "juxtaposition". "Juxtaposed" is nice, too. It's a genuinely useful word, and if you say it out loud with a straight face you sound really smart and sophisticated. Like you could be a political commentator. Try it! I'll wait.

See?

I got a gray star sticker today at my Weight Watchers meeting. It's currently adorning the front of my little membership folder, sporting the designation "5 lb". You get one of these every time you reach a five-pound milestone. I lost 2 this week, bringing my total since returning to WW to 11.6. I have two little stars, therefore, one more disheveled than the other, gracing the folded piece of cardboard that concisely summarizes this leg of my lifelong struggle.


For those of you uninitiated in the WW culture, you weigh in with a receptionist-type person when you arrive. It's private--no one can see the scale but you and the generally positive, compassionate person checking you in. Your new weight is entered on your little folder-card-thinger. Then, if you feel like it, you stay for the meeting and discuss whatever the topic of the week is. At the end, the leader asks if anyone has anything to celebrate. Those brave and/or joyous souls share their successes, and even the most minor victories get a round of heartfelt applause.

And sometimes you get a sticker. Like in elementary school. It's funny to me that they still work.

Gray seems like an odd color choice...perhaps they were going for silver? But I'll admit that it's fun plunking that thing on my card. Ha! Take THAT, sour cream and onion chips that tempted me all week! Where is thy victory, oh Twix bar?

If you've been following this saga since the beginning (because the minutiae of my life are seriously fascinating, I'm sure), you may be wondering about the numbers. My original list said I had 15 pounds to lose in order to bring the total to 100. Please disregard that number. It proved unreliable on many levels that would be very, very boring if recounted here.

Let's just skip straight to where things stand now. As of today's weigh-in I have officially lost 88.6 pounds since the beginning of this journey. I currently have two goals:

1. First, get to a healthy BMI for my height. I have...oh my gosh, only 6.2 more pounds to go!! Whoa. OK.
2. Second, I'd like to see whether I can lose another 5.2 after that to bring the total to 100 pounds. That would leave me well within the upper range of a healthy BMI. If this last step turns out to be unhealthy, I'll abandon it. But if I'm going to spend the next however many years saying that I've lost almost 100 pounds, I'd like to at least try to do the whole thing. Because maybe I can. :)

You have to understand that I have never...NEVER...been a healthy weight as an adult. Not for one day. I gained weight slowly but steadily through middle school, high school, and college, and by the time I got married at 22 I was well into the "obese" section of the BMI chart.

So the thing is, you see, that I feel completely incredulous about this whole thing. I can't believe it's happening. I don't feel like a different person than I've ever been, but for some reason this time it's actually working. And on some level I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the inevitable stall followed by a steady slide back into my size 20 jeans. But I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, this is going to happen for real. And maybe it will stick.

I don't know what to do with that yet. It's just sort of hovering in the back of my mind. When it starts to get in my way I keep putting it back in a box marked "God's grace". That's the only thing to which I can attribute my current success...it's CERTAINLY not the result of any great self-control or discipline in my character. And I figure that if God's grace can enable me to start dealing with my destructive eating habits and the avalanche of deeply-buried crap that is associated with them, then I'm just going to have to trust His grace to help me navigate the next step in this journey.

I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now I'm just going to keep doing what's in front of me...trying to honor Him with what goes in my mouth. And trying not to eat the Cheetos that Jack requested for lunch.

In the meantime, though, I will readily admit to enjoying my little gray star. :)