The Thrill of the Fight!: Here We Go Again!

Well everyone, it has been more or less forever. Six months ago yesterday. WOW I am a slacker. The biggest obstacle has been that for some reason my Body Bugg no longer connects to the computer. & it does it on both the laptop & the desktop so clearly its not a computer problem. So I keep trying to get that taken care of but so far no go. Being able to clearly see what I was doing well kept me on track but really, they say the longer you take to lose weight the better you maintain it so as much as I'd like to be going faster, I recognize the wisdom in that idea. That being said, we are headed Thanksgiving, followed closely behind by a wedding, Christmas, & New Year's. SO I need to be firmly back on track before all of that makes its presence firmly rooted in my gut.
The wedding is my brother Barrett's. He is marrying Amber Theobald. She is the mother of Mia (5) & Addison (3). Her ex-husband is not in the picture so Barrett will be adopting the girls once they are married. From day one they have fit perfectly into our family & we could not be happier to have them. We absolutely adore them & Barrett is anxious to be a husband & daddy, my parents are fabulous grandparents, & the four of us girls are loving being aunts. The girls haven't gotten to meet Uncle Andrew yet; he has only met Amber, but only a couple more weeks! I question how much I enjoy being an aunt when I wake up at the cabin at 3AM with Addi in my cot & a dead arm but its wonderful! At this point we're all just eager for the wedding to be here & for them to officially be part of our family because it feels like they have been all along.

Alright so here go the comparisons:

I think overall I am just very happy & proud. Not even close to where I want to be, but SO much closer than I was when these pictures were taken in January. They were taken ten months ago Tuesday. Seeing the changes, its enough. I can be proud of myself & accept the accomplishments I have made thus far & move forward with determination. I resolve again today to let the past go & to only look forward to what I am striving for, to what I really want. I don't simply want to have a nice body or be healthy. I want to have a greater sense of self, a feeling of real accomplishment when all this is "over". I want to look hot, yeah. But more than that I want to feel hot, like "oh yeah, this was all me. I did this." That internal change is what matters. And here you all can see one of the most giddy moments of this year for me:

I bought these pants in early October of 2008, about a month before I went into the hospital. I had gotten down to about 190 when I went in & got down to 180 with recovery but I can now get these pants on & its so exciting! I do wish my lower trunk would keep up with the upper. The stomach & abdominal fat are the parts I hate the most & the parts that are changing the least. All well! This picture was taken August 28th, so I've been more or less hovering in this range for a couple of months now but hey, not going up! & as I said, onward! Oh, & I commit to a renewed effort to post every week again, even if its just pictures & numbers.

With one disclaimer, here are my numbers! As I have weighed on four different scales throughout this process & there is no way to really gauge the differences between the four, I have decided to start from my highest recorded weight (238) & just take whatever the loss is from that on my current scale.

Numbers as of Sunday, November 7, 2010
Weight: 203.6 lbs. LTD: 34.4 lbs.