Nifty Nifty, Look Whose Fifty!

...Fifty pounds down that is! As of this mornings weigh in on the Wii Fit I have officially hit the fifty pounds lost mark, an exciting milestone in a journey that started 7 months ago. I'm a mixture of happy and sad and scared and anxious all at the same time.

209-ish.

 Happy for the improved health that I surely will have and for the smaller size pants that I can fit into. Happy that I've been able to take my time, and have, for the most part, keep my cool about my rate of progress and loss. Fad diets and get skinny quick schemes are abundant but too often they are also temporary. My method is slow and steady and intended to improve my health for the rest of my life.

But I'm sad about the life-long changes too. I think about the foods I've eliminated from my diet and the foods that I miss eating but it's all fond thoughts. I know that someday I'll be able to order French fries in a restaurant, eat them, and not have it derail me, but that time is not yet and I know that.  I have about 50 more pounds to go before I'm considered clinically "healthy." Right now my BMI is still in the "Obese" range and while I try not to give the BMI  too much focus, it's still jarring to still be considered OBESE after all my hard work.

And it IS hard work. I do cardio exercise seven days a week. As I type this I'm still sweaty from a bike ride that I took and I'm preparing to hop on the treadmill as soon as I'm finished. I've started getting up early enough a few days a week so I can exercise before I go to work, leaving my evenings free to have dinner at a decent time and relax, like a normal person. Some would think that because I don't have children and because most of my hobbies are sedentary that I have not sacrificed much for my exercise routine. To those idiots I can only shrug, those people don't know me well enough to say that.

I'm anxious for the summer, to do the things that I usually do but to do them without the extra 50 pounds of baggage. I'm excited to be more mobile, to walk with ease, to sweat a little less. I'm even a little bit excited to shop for summer clothes. It's never been that fun shopping when you're limited to just a few stores or a few racks of clothing, or even a few brands. I'm anxious to see photos of myself and not be ashamed of them.

I'm scared of my eventual plateau, the point where my weight loss starts to level off. I worry that I won't have anything *more* to give, anything else I can do to cut caloric corners and keep myself rolling on the treadmill. I'm also scared of competing my One Million Steps goal. At the time I started it seemed impossible to me that I would even be able to complete it yet here I am, less than 90,000 steps away, changed physically and mentally for the better. When I reach my million steps what's next?

What's next is that I keep going. I need to see the million steps as a milestone, not as an end. Part of me had grand ideas, like reaching the million steps should be akin to the end of a marathon, there should be a ribbon for me to break as I cross it. But it's not the end of a marathon, it's only the passing of a mile-marker. Forward, forward, the journey must go on.

If you'd like to catch up on my journey please read my post, Half Way To Somewhere.