50 lbs lost and counting...

Starting Weight: 324.5 lbs
Weight Last Sunday: 275.5 lbs
Weight today: 273.5 lbs
Weight Lost This Week: 2.0 lbs
Weight Lost to Date: 51 lbs
Weeks Completed: 16 Weeks to go: 36

Well, I'm half way there. My goal was to lose 100 lbs in a year. This is also approaching the most weight I have ever lost. My personal record is 60 lbs when I tried Optifast about ten years ago. Optifast was cool. I drank nothing but nasty chocolate drinks every day for four months. In the end, I gained it all back PLUS 40 lbs. I know it's not Optifast's fault but it all seems sort of silly in retrospect. I truly believe that in most cases, extreme weight loss techniques are all short term-even gastric bypass. I've known three people who gained their weight back after having their stomachs stapled. It took them many years, but they still gained the weight back. Anything that does not require you to be disciplined won't last forever.

Time for another episode of Today's Nasty Fat Side Effect. Our topic for today is stretch marks. Most women who have been pregnant could probably describe stretch marks better than me. The difference is that once a woman gives birth, she can forget about her stretch marks, hoist her newborn to the air and scream, "I have created life!". The best a fat man can do is, take stock of his stretch marks, put down his bacon sandwich, and scream, "I have a map of the London Underground naturally stenciled in purple across my abdomen.

Stretch marks are strange and cruel. Even when you lose weight, they don't go away. They may stop being purple, but they mostly don't go away...they turn a nice shade of white. It's kind of like guidelines in a coloring book. I sleep without a shirt on (go ahead, visualize that). I'm afraid one of these days I'll wake up and my four year-old will have colored in my stretch marks. I can only imagine it will look like some unholy tie dye.

One friend of mine told me that when she was pregnant, her doctor told her to rub lotion on her skin twice a day to increase elasticity and avoid stretch marks. I could have lived in a vat of lotion and that wouldn't have saved me. I hope that as a lose weight, I don't end up with extra skin like that chick (er Kate) on John and Kate Plus 8. If so, I'll end up having to have that stuff hacked off and will have fodder for another Today's Nasty Fat Side Effect".

I look at it this way, I can use these stretch marks as a badge of courage. They can be a constant reminder of what 12 years of wanton gluttony can do for a guy, a daily warning that all pizza and no walking make Len a fat boy, a beacon of fat things to come!

It's all good. I'm fitting into older clothes and feeling better. I might even break out some paisley before it's all over.

Thanks for tuning in this week. It's been cool. See you in the 260s.

Len

http://trappedinafatman.blogspot.com/