Necessary Mutilation

Weight: 210.7 lbs.

I couldn’t get enough sleep last night, and now have awoke feeling groggy and woozy. And for some reason, as soon as I hunker down into bed every night, my hips and lower back and legs start throbbing and hurting so much sometimes, that it keeps me up. It then takes a long time in the morning to walk the pain off, and for some reason, this problem is getting progressively worse. Much less often I hurt in similar ways during the day - although occassionally my hips and lower back do hurt so bad that I must sit down or they feel as if they will snap from the pressure. I’m not sure what this is all about, but some years ago I had seen a chiropractor and had an X-ray of my lower back, and was shockingly told that I had an old fracture in my lower spine that I was previously completely unaware of but that may have explained the cause of the pain I was having that sent me to the chiropractor in the first place. I’m not sure if this is a back thing, a hip thing, both, or perhaps a saggy mattress, as Tom is speculating. Next weekend we will be out of town and staying in a hotel to attend Tom’s nephew’s wedding, so I will get a chance to see if I feel any better sleeping on a hopefully firmer, newer mattress!

OK - now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let me get to what I know that you all have been waiting for. Actually, I am already thrilled that I have listened to you and decided to do the measurement thing, because in measuring my waist, I discovered already that I have gone down about 3 inches from where I was just a week or two ago when I playfully measured this with my friends over. At that time I was down 10.5 inches from what I had recorded as my starting waist measurement - so now I am down  13 inches. I guess. Debra’s theory about losing inches despite the scale hardly budging is so true, and I am so pleased!! Now I even feel somewhat vindicated over all my diligence with seemingly little results, and surely this will help me maintain perspective better if once again the scale is sluggish. (”IF” - Ha! I should say “WHEN!”)

So, here goes:

Waist: 41 inches (still huge and heart attack wide, but way better!)

Upper Arm: (including bat wings…15 inches)

Upper Leg: (God I’m getting hangy…26 inches)

Wrist: So you can see how small boned I am - 5 3/4 inches

Ankle: 8.5 inches

Bust: Bigger than my waist and I’m not sure if this is good or bad! 45 inches

Where am I forgetting?? What else should I be measuring? I hope I am holding the tape correctly and measuring where I should be. The waist one is spanning my belly button and where my fat indents around the middle. The boobs was harder and wierder and considering sag and all, I’m not sure that I got it right. Any advice would be welcome!

Well, there you have it, I guess. Can anyone speak to how they think I am doing, comparitively speaking. Is about 13 waist inches an ok or expectable loss to correlate to about 93 lbs. Why do some people seem to lose so many more clothes sizes and I feel as if I can still fit into my 3x’s - albeit very baggy. I now wear everything from x-larges to 2x at times, depending on the cut, my mood, and how worn the item is. I’m guessing that 22’s are my best fit at this time, although I haven’t really tested this out and gone out to try on real clothes from a real store yet, or anything. I’m not sure if my old grandma clothes count as an accurate measure or not.

Well, speaking of, I was bad and skipped my work out yesterday and don’t want to repeat this today. So, off I go to sweat off a few more millimeters, and I’ll check back in later!