I remind myself daily to trust the laws of physics. As long as I'm being honest with myself about energy in (and I really, really am), then I can trust that energy out is proceeding apace. As The Hacker's Diet makes so vividly clear, over the course of a week in which an actual fat loss of, say, a pound or two is taking place, our bodies will have pumped eighty or ninety pounds of water through the system. The only way to resolve small variances on the scale is over time.
Your comment about nothing really changing has engaged my thoughts all morning. I was going over that exact question last night: what do I expect? And I can honestly say that at age 55, with several brief and disappointing sojourns in "relatively thin and fit" territory behind me, my expectations are very simple: I expect that I'll be able to wear better clothes and look well in them; I expect that I'll move more easily; I expect to fit into airplane and bus seats with room to spare.
Whether the world will treat me differently is hard to say--the world treats me rather well now--but there is a large social and aesthetic difference between a woman who is "Obese Class II," which I was when I started, and "Normal Weight". (I put the terms in quotes because I understand that they are loaded, fraught, politically dubious, etc.)
I can say with certainty that the bigger I got, the more invisible I became. Whether that was because my behavior changed with my self-concept, or because other people regarded me from the outside as a fat and therefore less insignificant person, or because I was coincidentally growing old at the same time, I will never know for sure. I do know that actually losing 100 pounds is proving easier than trying to alter my beliefs about the disadvantages of being very fat.
I can also say that I had "a bit more energy" after losing only about 15 pounds. At 35 pounds, I'm noticing very significant improvements; I see no reason why 65 pounds more will not profoundly alter my relationship with gravity.
But why am I really doing this? Because it's a project I've intended to complete all my life, and I've finally cleared the decks enough to do it. I want to find out what life--even Senior Citizen Life--is like in the absence of that particular project.
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Your comment about nothing really changing has engaged my thoughts all morning. I was going over that exact question last night: what do I expect? And I can honestly say that at age 55, with several brief and disappointing sojourns in "relatively thin and fit" territory behind me, my expectations are very simple: I expect that I'll be able to wear better clothes and look well in them; I expect that I'll move more easily; I expect to fit into airplane and bus seats with room to spare.
Whether the world will treat me differently is hard to say--the world treats me rather well now--but there is a large social and aesthetic difference between a woman who is "Obese Class II," which I was when I started, and "Normal Weight". (I put the terms in quotes because I understand that they are loaded, fraught, politically dubious, etc.)
I can say with certainty that the bigger I got, the more invisible I became. Whether that was because my behavior changed with my self-concept, or because other people regarded me from the outside as a fat and therefore less insignificant person, or because I was coincidentally growing old at the same time, I will never know for sure. I do know that actually losing 100 pounds is proving easier than trying to alter my beliefs about the disadvantages of being very fat.
I can also say that I had "a bit more energy" after losing only about 15 pounds. At 35 pounds, I'm noticing very significant improvements; I see no reason why 65 pounds more will not profoundly alter my relationship with gravity.
But why am I really doing this? Because it's a project I've intended to complete all my life, and I've finally cleared the decks enough to do it. I want to find out what life--even Senior Citizen Life--is like in the absence of that particular project.