Losing the Same Pound...527 Times

I am feeling chipper this morning. Want to know why? Because today, my demon scale says I weigh 203.8 pounds. Sure, that just two-tenths of a pound less than yesterday, but it puts me down in the 203s again.

Which brings to mind this point: how many times am I going to have to lose this particular pound before it stays gone for good? How many months is it going to take me to break 200 pounds? I have this nightmare vision of hovering around 201 pounds for months, maybe even years, while my stubborn old body desperately contrives new ways to manufacture fat out of thin air.

The day I weigh 199 pounds should be joyful but it will not be, because I know no matter how hard I work to get there, my body will go into full fat panic mode and start churning out globules of fat in record fashion, just to hang on to my thunder thighs. Which means, the day after I hit 199 pounds, I will wake up and discover that I weigh 257 pounds. If thighs could smile, mine would be grinning like mad.

Today is day 30 of my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program, and I haven't missed a single check mark in my journal. I am very proud of this accomplishment, but seeing so few tangible results from my month of hard work is discouraging. I now understand why people who have a substantial amount of weight to lose, people like me, don't stay with our exercise programs. We don't see results, we bail out.

In my little pea-sized heart, I think a month is a long time to go without seeing visible results. I want to kiss my jiggly ass and flubbery thighs goodbye, but they are still there, menacing innocent knickknacks on my friends' furniture. (I specify my friends' houses because I have been forced to "butt-proof" my own house.) It makes me sad to look at myself in the rear view mirror and see the "Queen of all Butts" still leering evilly at me. Will I be dragging that thing around forever? Will it never bow to the dictates of physics and contain itself?

We have been conditioned by shows like The Biggest Loser to think that all we have to do is eat less and exercise more and the pounds will come flying off. In real life, that's just not so. 30 days ago I weighed 206.4 pounds and today, after a month of walking, a month with no Coca-Cola or ice cream or homemade Ghiardelli Chocolate Brownies or Chocolate Chip Cookies or crunchy, buttery cinnamon toast, I weigh 203.8 pounds, a loss of just 2.6 pounds.

Like I said, pretty discouraging results for a month of work. This is where most people would get off the bus. Heck, I've wanted to get off the bus for a couple of weeks now. But I'm not going to. If I accomplish one goal with this, it will be to stop requiring blood pressure medication. I don't want to have to take a pill every day for the rest of my life when my "condition" could easily be normalized with regular exercise and better fitness. And my blood pressure numbers don't lie or bounce around like my scale does. They have been coming down steadily and staying down.

Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion the medication is at least partially responsible for me suffering something called a vitreous tear in my left eye. The doctor told me it happens as you get older, particularly if you lift something heavy (I had been hefting some heavy boxes around) and...if your eyes are dry.

Duh, I've been taking a diuretic. Of course my eyes are dry. Everything on me is dry – my lips, my mouth, my throat. I drink water like I just completed a 7-day desert trek. I go through lip balm like it was Easter Candy or perhaps, considering the time of year, I should say, Halloween Candy.

So am I to believe that my poor eye just up and spontaneously ripped itself apart, sort of committed eye hari kiri?

Uh, I don't think so. But here's a multiple choice question I never thought I would have to answer:

a. Would you like to have a heart attack, stroke or kidney failure?

or:

b. Would you like to go blind from the medicine we're giving you to keep you from having a heart attack, stroke or kidney failure?

Gee, is America's pill-driven medical culture swell or what?

I choose Answer c. @#$%!!! you all!

Yes, I know that technically that answer wasn't actually on the quiz, but it was a trick quiz anyway, designed to drive frightened patients into an expensive lifetime of pill dependency when frequently, all they have to do is modify their behavior to save their own lives. And yes, crazy pill company lawyers...I realize there are some lifesaving drugs that absolutely cannot be replaced by simple dietary or lifestyle modifications...so tuck your lawsuits away inside your stuffed shirts and leave me alone.

I'm taking responsibility for my health into my own hands. I am slowly weaning myself off the blood pressure pills, taking one just every other day now, and my pressure is staying way down. Next week, I will start taking a pill every third day, and so on until I am off the things entirely.

The way I see it, a little 30-minute walk every day on my treadmill is a small price to pay to keep from having to pick either a. or b. – even if it does mean I have to keep losing the same lame pound over and over and over again.