This week was the start of week # 10. My weight has stalled for 4 days now, so that's a little discouraging, but I've been averaging 3 pounds weekly since that first week of crazy-rapid weight loss - so I'm not panicking -- YET ! I'm trying to focus on how great I feel, how I'm enjoying life, and how much better I look. Trust and patience - that's hard.
So - pretty exciting! At our group session this week, they were talking about how to deal with emotional eating. One of the tools that they are giving us is called 'Mindful Eating'. Basically, it is a practice of how you eat your food. It goes like this: (1) sit down, take a couple of deep breaths, close your eyes and 'center' yourself, (2) use all five senses and enjoy the food - sight, smell, tough, hearing(yes, listening to your food), then finally, taste; (3) Chew the bite 25 times, enjoying the taste/flavor sensation; (4) Stop after you swallow and take another couple of deep breaths, and start over.
After practicing this exercise a few times, they broke the news that we can now have solid food again - Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy! In addition to the 4 shakes and extra 2.0 L of water, we now get to eat 1 raisin per day to practice this 'mindful eating'. I hope I don't gain weight! :-) It's actually a pretty good exercise, and the idea is to make this a habit BEFORE we start eating regular food again.
You might wonder what Sue and I do for date activities now? Well last night we spent the whole night going through my closets again doing a fashion show. I try on the clothes, Sue tells me which pile to put it in! Turns out that most of the clothes in my regular closet are now way too big to wear. There is now a HUGE pile of clothes destined for Value Village, and another HUGE pile of clothes to be altered once my weight stabilizes. I heard that after a certain point you can't alter clothing, in other words size 44 to 40 might work, but 44 to 34 wouldn't. But we'll cross our fingers and hope that a lot of the items in the alterations pile will work.
This week, after the classroom/group session, Sue met me downtown at Phase2. It's a great used clothing store similar to Value Village. I've found that it has a better selection AND better quality clothing than V V - at least for men's - didn't check out women's. I put money in the meter for an hour, thinking, 'That should give us plenty of time'. Nope. Got a ticket (well a warning) for being 45 minutes overtime. That's a whole big bunch of clothes to try on! Then we went to the Tommy Hillfiger store in the Outlet Mall. We were thrilled to find the 70% off clearance racks at the back of the store - 60 dollar shirts for 18. How about them crackers! Talking with the clerk - basically brand new arrivals garner full price and a spot at the front; then after a couple weeks, they go to the middle sections at 30 to 40% off; after a month, they go to the clearance rack. Okay, so I can wait a month. A year ago I couldn't wear anything in the store because I was just too big - their XXL was way too small. Now I can wear anything in the store, mostly in medium, but I tried on a small shirt and it fit perfectly. Basically, with men's clothes I'm convinced that the person on the assembly line who has the job of slapping a label tag on the article of clothing just picks size labels at random!
Anyhoo. We came home with a trunkload of clothing. I even have clothes in the 'skinny closet' again, so I should be good for a few months. Thankfully, my amazing wife has worked hard to preplan the finances involved in this 'clothes rental' scam - you know, buy, wear, discard, repeat.
It has been a truly remarkable journey over the past two months. I feel so much better, and I'm learning new tools for success. So even though it feels like the scales are broken this week, I have to grit my teeth and believe that they will unstick soon, and enjoy the 'new me' in the meantime.
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