It is really quite infuriating. You come up with a plan…spend countless days arranging everything so your road blocks are minimal…you rally your support network, hire the professionals to help guide you, you set your realistic and timely goal…you do everything that you are supposed to do. You work your ASS off every moment of every day, you make sacrifices and your struggle and you claw your way to that goal. And then you REACH it…you have MET your goal. But instead of a rush of adrenaline and happy thoughts you reach Mount Anticlimactic. Your brain starts asking why you did not lose more. Your brain tries very hard to make you believe that it must not be working because you have only release _____ pounds. You can no longer see that amazing goal and accomplishment…all you can see is frustration and deprivation.

This will be my Thursday topic this week with my therapist. I have a feeling this is again the addition talking. This is my addiction trying to get me to break plan and return to my old ways. It is trying to tell me that a cheat is ok and that I can still hit my goals when I indulge every now and then. It is telling me to take a break for a bit- I have earned it with all my hard work and focus. It is telling me that I still have a LONG way to go…will this ever end? What will life be like when 30/10 is gone? I cant’t live like this! I cannot eat cauliflower mashed like potatoes for the rest of my life! Its panic…pure panic. But it is really hard to not feel like release 25 pounds is not an accomplishment. Maybe these two feelings are different from one another? Maybe there are two things going on here?

I now know that this is a shared feeling among those who struggle. A friend reached out today to congratulate me on my 25 pound mark but then shared that see too feels as I do- that meeting these goals and releasing the weight is hard to celebrate or recognize as a milestone or an accomplishment. We both talked about how great it DOES feel when you have to start buying new clothes because your old ones just don’t fit. That IS a great feeling. She is setting her releasing goals based on pant size…she is going to set pant size goals instead of weight numbers. I think this will be a good direction for me too. Once I break the 40 pound mark my clothes will start feeling different. I have gained and lost these 40 pounds for the last 4 years and have never gone up or down in size. I bet once I pass that 40 pound mark things will be fitting poorly. The drawback that I see is that- like others people weight- it is all in the eye of the beholder. I have know idea what size I would want to be since I have not worn regular sized clothes in 10 years. I have no idea who wears a 16…a 14…or what those look like on peoples bodies. I know roughly what size my sister wears but she has told horror stories about ordering her size and nothing fitting because it was too big or too small! I don’t think there is a universal size anymore…I mean shit when you can wear a 000 there are issues. Maybe I will never break out of the Plus-Sized category. I think I was wearing a 16 in high school and though of myself as a fat cow then. I swear they keep sizing top secret so you have to go into every flipping store and try on everything. It is another way to keep consumers thinking about their size and weight and questioning their worth as a human.

But THIS goal DOES sound appealing. I would like to be able to wear regular sized Zella. Ahhh…this GLORIOUS fabulous athletic wear made and sole by Nordstroms. The soft fabric and catchy designs get me ever time. They make some awesome Plus-Sized clothes now but not nearly as awesome as the regular sized line. I would like to be able to wear EVERYTHING including their jackets which might prove a problem for my boobs. They are BIG and have been since I was 14. no matter…I am going to SQUEEZE my fun bags into some Zella one day…even if I never wear it in public. I would also like to buy an entire outfit that is featured in the Nordstroms catalogue. The whole flipping thing…from the tops to bottoms to shoes to accessories. One day I am going to walk in Nordys, grab a sales person, point to the picture and say “I want this…all of this.” And then I am going to ROCK that outfit. So yeah…not necessarily a concrete pant size but a definite section size…I want to shop in “Woman’s Active” and not “Encore”.