18 years and a Thank You

 I had been planning on posting this tomorrow…because in my mind I thought that my blogiversary was on January 6th.  But when I decided to go back to read the first post….well how wrong I was.  My blogiversary is actually on January 5th!

​18 years ago I decided to create a journal of my efforts to lose weight and I decided to do it on an online journal, a blog. The first post was simple.  It didn’t have grand plans.  I didn’t wax eloquent about my goals.  I simply wrote two paragraphs about my desire to get serious.   By that time I had already lost about 50 pounds and I was stalled (ironically enough at the same weight I have been at recently).    I wrote for the first few months; if not years for myself.  I knew that it was a public forum but I had no illusions that anyone would ever read my words.  Imagine my surprise to start getting comments!  I also had no clue that I would meet some fabulous people through this forum, people that I call dear friends.   I had no idea that 18 years later that I would be writing my 2,566th post as a blogiversary post.

Those first posts were sometimes lame (I’ve gone back and read this whole thing a few times so I’m being honest when I say lame and boring) but they are a great view of my triumphs and failures. Through this blog  I have been at highest weights.

And I have been at my lowest.

But this website has been so much more than 2566 posts.

I have written and gained knowledge about weight loss and fitness.  And I wrote about it in posts about Zumba.  I was even featured in the newspaper regarding my love of Zumba.  I was so happy when I made lifetime with weight watchers and I couldn’t wait to share it on here.  I shared my desire and quest to become a runner.  It wasn’t an easy process but I shared it all and I celebrated on here when I set a personal record.

It wasn’t all victory though.  I have tried to remain transparent and honest.  I’ve shared the lows (and oh have there been lows!). However painful and embarrassing, I have religiously shared them!   But through the years, I started to share more of my life.  I realized that simply talking about my struggle to not eat or my victories needed to be seen in a larger context that included aspects from my life.   So I shared my life with things like my experiences with a crumbling marriage and divorce.   I happily shared aspects of my ‘courtship’ with Jason.  I shared my struggles with my mom’s ongoing health and my father’s death. I have written about my elopement to the love of my life, Jason.   And I’ve even shared our pets!  The weight loss story is all encompassing.  Life happens and it affects our weight and our weight loss efforts so years ago I decided to share  it all!  It serves as a record my memories and accounting of this lifelong journey but it is also my accountability!

So to you, anyone that reads this blog/website; I say thank you.   Thank you from the bottom of my heart.   Your presence here was a surprise at first, I had no clue anyone would ever read this.  But I’m grateful that you found me.  You have offered me friendship,  accountability and your wisdom.  And words can’t describe how appreciative I am for each of you. 

I’m heading into year 19 of blogging. It’s insane to think about having being doing this for so long,  but I’m as determined as ever to continue writing.  It’s good for my soul!

Idyllic, I think not!

Well here we are back at Monday!   Why can’t the weekend be longer.  My treat of a three day weekend went by just as fast as a typical two day weekend!   The weekend was a good one on a lot of levels.  I was somewhat active.  I saw family. We relaxed and I even had some revelations about weight loss and how the first time around losing weight was so easy and well...idyllic!

Idyllic Memories

As I have gained weight and faught to restart and maintain this weight loss journey, I have sat back and wished for the picture perfect bubble that surrounded me when I lost weight the first time to reappear.  I look back and it just was easy!  I lost a bit...started my blog...joined weight watchers and then snapped my fingers and the weight was gone in a reasonable period of time.  I have lamented this fact over the years, not because it was so easy then....but because it’s SO HARD now! What changed?  

I figured out what changed and I figured it out quite by accident.  When I started my blog I wrote for me. It was my ‘journal’ and I didn’t label/tag ANYTHING!  As I write my posts now-a-days I remember posts that I wrote that go hand in hand with what I’m writing... but finding them amidst 12.5 years of writing and more than 2000 posts is a daunting task.   So my current mission is to reread and label much of what I wrote for ease in recall.   I started at the beginning.  It was truly just a journal back then...and some days were really ‘dry’.  I have found some awesome nuggets of information though. But more importantly, even though I have only made it through a very small segment thus far...I have seen a TRUE picture of my weight loss journey when I ‘did it the first time’.  Let me tell you, it wasn’t the idyllic experience that my apparently faulty memory had created.

A brief rundown.  In bullet point to make it easy.

**Before I began the blog I had weight somewhere between 315 and 330 pounds.   I gave up soda and dropped mad pounds immediately. I got down to around 250.   At that point I started writing on here.  (At least that’s my memory of that period!)

**the first few months of this blog, I battled my way down to 225 pounds...on my own, but then regained back to 250.

**I joined weight watchers.  My descent down the scales started again.  However my memory that told me that I lost consistently through my weight sojourn at weight watchers?   Faulty!  The first weeks were consistent losses, but in reality it was a crawl, brawl and a battle that lasted for more than two years before I reached my weight watcher goal.  I sat stalled and had to reset and restart myself while on weight watchers.  I had bad weeks amidst the good ones.   

My memory of that ‘idyllic weight loss’ were totally faulty!   Thank heavens I started writing my experiences!  The early posts may be somewhat dry...but they were just what I needed.  The idyllic myth has been busted!  Maybe now I can settle into the slow process of weight loss and stop lamenting that it isn’t as ‘easy’ as the first time around.

Panic

I was starting to really get worried.  My trusty Kitchen Aid mixer was starting to give me grief.  I have a tilt top/head and the bowl was not locking into place.  Therefore, if I used the mixer for anything other than an easy stir (meaning no fast and nothing ‘stiff’) the bowl would wobble and fly off the base.  NOT GOOD!   I’ve been struggling with it for a few weeks. But this weekend Jason walked into the kitchen while I was fighting with it.  He looked at it and said ‘It’s eaither the base of the mixer, which looks replaceable or your bowl.’  He lamented the fact that I don’t have another bowl to test it.  I just grinned and dig deep into the cabinet above the fridge and pulled out my second bowl.  What do you know?  The other bowl works perfectly and looks tightly into place!   What a relief!   But boo....I’m back down to one bowl!  Guess I’ll be shopping soon for another bowl.

The weekend

On Friday I did the grocery shopping, had lunch with some of my favorite people (my mom, my sister in law, my niece and my nephews).  And I spent some time editing and reworking a few things on my ‘year of online dating’ chronicles.    I am planning on publishing it.  My working title is ‘Frog or prince: Adventures in online dating”. I figure it is just sitting there completed in my files.  Why not publish!  (I have a few other things out there that I have worked on over the years that I will probably work on getting published in some form in the future after frog/prince.  That will clean up  up my files and I can share some of the stuff that I have worked on over the years.)

On Saturday, we ran to the zoo and walked for a few hours.

And then we went for a bike ride on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. 

It was hot and those two outdoor activities wiped us out...and filled our day!

On Sunday we chose to have a lazy day.  We did run to my mom's to pick up a few of the things that were still there.  The one thing was my headboard and my bed frame.  For numerous reasons, we decided to use my headboard.  I love it for one....but also because my brother made it (he is a professional woodworker) and I love him!   And my bed frame doesn't have a footboard and neither of us like footboards.....and the frame we have been using (Jason's) has a footbaord.   So we went and got mine and brought it to our new place.  I then took the other bed frame/headboard/footboard down and put it in storage and set up the new bed.  (same mattress and box springs). Other than that, we had a nice lazy day of hanging out and binging on movies!