heh - naturally

Of course the morning after I make a whiny-ass post about not being able to break the 216 barrier on my scale, I wake up and weigh in at 215. So now I have officially (as official as my bathroom scale allows me to be) lost 50 pounds since I started this process in April. That's a pretty big milestone for me, as it puts me down to a weight I never thought I'd see again, and didn't really have a whole lot of interest in looking for. I have 25 pounds to go before I get to the goal weight I set for myself, but I have to admit, if I don't see 190 it won't kill me. I think I can be happy at 195-200, but at least once, I want to see the first digit on my scale change to a "1" before I settle in at a maintenance weight.

All the body mass indices and other ideal weight calculators are telling me I need to weigh somewhere around 185 - 195, and I think I'll be happiest around the top end of that scale. I've put on a lot of muscle in the past couple of months, mostly in my legs from riding so much, so my real healthy weight may be higher than normal. But I still have a gut that needs to go, and I have a pair of 36" waist jeans in the closet that I purposefully bought a little snug, so that I would continue to work towards something.

I rode my ass off on the exercise bike last night while watching SVU, which comes on immediately following my only reality TV show indulgence - The Biggest Loser. It should come as no surprise that I relate to the people on that show, who are real people fighting the same fight that I am fighting every day. I look at the guys on that show and see myself in a few years if I hadn't started working out, and it's hard for me to watch them struggle without getting emotional. Because unlike some other shows where the contestants are striving for money, the folks on that show are trying to get better, not just for themselves, but so they can have a normal family life.

And it's hard. I've never really thought about how differently the world treats fat people, until I started to work on not being fat anymore. It's as simple as having trouble wedging yourself into a booth at a restaurant because your gut is bumping into a table, and as annoying as having to stop on a short walk at Merlefest because your knees hurt so bad. So I get emotional when I see the contestants on The Biggest Loser have to go home, because I know how hard it is to do this shit on your own, and I never had as much to lose as most of these people.

So last night my favorite contestant, Phil, got eliminated. Phil is a BIG dude. He's way over 6', probably close to 6'5", and started off at over 400 lbs. He was also the guy carrying the red team, and when they got stuck in elimination, they couldn't come to a decision about who to vote off, so the blue team got to pick who got sent home. Since Phil was the biggest threat, the blue team picked him. Good strategic move for the blue team, since it is a game and there's money on the line, but I really liked watching Phil compete every week and sometimes by force of will alone carry his team to success or survival in the challenges.

At the end of every episode, they show the updates from the player who was eliminated, and last night we got to see how Phil had kept up his exercise and diet regime. He lost 61 pounds in the 6 weeks he was on the show, and has lost another 40+ pounds since his elimination, bringing his total to over 100 pounds! That's almost an entire F-Train!

Yes, I measure weight loss in units of F-Train. When I started my diet and exercise I weighed in at 2.04 F-Trains, and my goal weight is 1.46 F-Trains. My current weight is 1.5 F-Trains, so I'm getting closer! Of course, if F-Train makes his weight gain goals for the December WPBT gathering, then my scale is all fucked up and I don't know how many F-Trains = 1 Falstaff.