Feelin' Good

Well... I'm feeling better.  Not 100%, not even 10%, but probably a barely-perceptible 5% or so.  I only cried once yesterday, and not at all (yet) today!

Yesterday I had weigh-in #3, which was another success! I'm down almost 14 lbs! That's over 1/10th of the total weight I have to loose, and just shy of 5% of my starting weight.  Weight Watchers celebrates 5% and 10% loss of your starting weight, so as long as things stay on track I should be getting a sticker next week (OOOH a sticker - I know it sounds corny but it's the little things that keep ya going, you know?)

In general, physically, I feel great.  I have a TON more energy and my mood is (relatively) up... I don't know that I could've gotten through these last couple of weeks if I was still in 'fat' mode.  I know I've only last 13 pounds, but my mind doesn't see myself as an out-of-control fat girl anymore.  Now I'm just, like, a skinny girl who has to hide out in a slowly-shrinking fat girl's body for a year or two.  I genuinely feel like this is it, like this is the time that the 'diet sticks' and I actually loose this weight.  So... How do I know? (I'm glad you asked...)

I smoked cigarettes for 14 years: from age 14 (yikes, I know) to age 28.  In high school it was just one here and one there... mainly because I didn't have the supply (it's illegal to sell to 14 year old, FYI) and the opportunity (living at home.)  But when I went off to college I was all over those cancer sticks.  I teamed up with my roommate and this girl across the hall (now one of my BFFs, the one getting married later this year) and we all just sat around and chain-smoked.  It's hard for me to even imagine that way-back-when (in 1998) you could still smoke IN YOUR DORM ROOM.  But yeah...


So fast forward a decade or so - through years of stressful restaurant and bar jobs where being a smoker is pretty much a job requirement - until 2009.  I had been living in Santa Fe, NM on and off for about two years at this point.  If you've never been to Santa Fe, go.  Immediately.  It is truly one of the most magical and peaceful places on the planet.  You're 8000 ft above sea level and something about the crisp, clean mountain air just makes you want to be breathing it and ONLY it.  I'd been thinking about quitting for awhile (what smoker isn't?) but it wasn't anything I planned on doing soon.  And then on St. Patrick's Day, while running errands at lunch and stopped at the gas station to get a soda.  Per usual, I checked my pack and saw that I only had 3 smokes left, so I planned on getting a pack while I was in there.  I even remember thinking, "Good thing you checked, it would SUCK to run out of cigarettes in the middle of some good St. Patty's drinking!"  So I went in, grabbed my usual 20oz of Coke, and at the register managed to squeak out: "And could I please get a pack of Marlbo... Scratch that.  Just the Coke."


I don't know what came over me.  Something in my brain just snapped.  All of a sudden, I really didn't want to be a smoker anymore.  So, I passed on the cigs.  In fact, I never even smoked those three that I had left.  I put them back in my bag and donated them to a smoker friend that evening. 


It's an identity thing, I think.  Until that moment, standing in that gas station, I had identified myself as a smoker.  And in that moment, my brain decided that, instead, I was a non-smoker.  And I never smoked again.  I mean it, not even a hit not even once.  Now, don't confuse the level of difficulty with which I made the decision with the level of difficulty of the IMPLEMENTATION of said decision.  I was in legit withdrawal.  The worst part lasted about three days.  I has throwing up, I had no appetite, and instead of sleeping I would just lie half-awake at night have horrible lucid nightmares.  (For example, I dreamt that while I was sleeping the two cats in the house crawled under my covers and were eating me alive.)


I can't judge smokers because I learned for myself that quitting is not going to work until you're ready.  Until your brain says so.  I think that drastically changing your lifestyle and eating habits is the same thing.  That's why all of my attempts before now have failed.  I wasn't ready.  For me, I (unfortunately) think that I have to hit a new low before my brain gets fed up. 


Long story short (TOO LATE FOR THAT, HUH?) - I feel the same way about loosing weight and getting healthy as I did after I quit smoking.  It's a resolve, and it's very personal.  It's really only ME holding ME accountable.  In fact, when I quit smoking, I didn't tell anyone.  Well, not at first - people noticed eventually.  Especially my smoking buddies!  I didn't want to talk about it because being a smoker wasn't ME anymore, that part of my life was over.  And I feel that way now.  I don't like to talk about my weight loss because I feel like that makes me a fat girl loosing weight, instead of a skinny girl just biding time.  The luxury of quitting smoking is that you can go from being a smoker to a non-smoker in an instant.  Unfortunately, going from a fat girl to a skinny girl takes a lot longer.


I suppose I could do this faster - with expensive and painful surgery or a crash diet.  But this isn't a phase for me, this is the rest of my life.  I have to learn to do this my way, forever.  And frankly, I can't afford surgery (no insurance!)  So, I wait.  I don't have any inclination to go back to the way I was before.  Occasionally I'll crave a soda (and occasionally I'll crave a cigarette) - but I know myself well enough, and I know that I can't just have a sip, or a hit... So it's all or nothing.  And if the hardest thing I ever have to do is to NOT do something, then I'm living a pretty easy life, huh?