Milestone Reached … I’ve lost 100 lbs since November.  I was at 424.5 on November 20th, and at my weigh-in yesterday I hit 324.2.

It has been a while since I have updated y’all on the progress I’ve had since my gastric bypass surgery; and to be honest, it is this ‘century’ mark being the main reason for it.  I realized that it had been a while since I blogged about it about the time I breached the 90 lbs mark, and I promised the next post on the subject would come once the milestone was reached.  So, I just held out.  … and held out … and held out.  Three months later, here’s your blog post.

In a way, that should explain to you somewhat how things have been going.  I’ve joked many times over that I have been “Half-Assing my way to a Half Ass”.  Part of the reason I chose to do the surgery I did was that it would allow me to continue to do some of the things that normal people do … like eat regular food … and not not eat regular food.  What I can’t eat is pretty limited – and it actually drives a lot of healthy activities.  Like, processed sugars tear me to pieces – nothing seems to make me sick like a bag of gummy worms.  Then again, the other effects on my diet are similar to other diets that are quite normal – like I am generally lactose intolerant, so milks are out (but soy milk works for me).  Plus the hippie “gluten free” nonsense diet seems to be better for me than heavy breads.  Ultimately – what I “can’t have” is not based on anything someone tells me I can or cannot have, it’s about what my body says I can or cannot have.  I have something I “can’t” have, I don’t sit around the house and feel guilty – I sit around on the toilet and feel gassy.

In a way, the time it took me to reach this Century too should tell you how the summer has been for me.  In short … and in no way to fill in the gaps of the details … not good.  You kinda have to remember that I didn’t become overweight just because I ‘chose’ to become overweight – eating was a good way to avoid my problems (if I want to explain it at a level that so scratches the surface it sounds like an easy answer that is).  A big part of the issues with taking this long is that no matter how small of a stomach someone can have, liquids with heavy caloric counts don’t fill me up and still absorbs at a decent rate into my system.

Now, people in the know kept telling me to not get discouraged over the time it took me to get over this hump.  We all know that weight loss comes with plateaus and bumps.  I never really let that get to me actually, but this was a trend – and a trend supported by other things in my life.

Things needed to change.

I’m exercising almost regularly — not where I want to be, but better than I had the whole summer.  I am doing some things that lead to cleaner living.  I am taking steps to reduce the stress from my life.  So things are changing.  They just aren’t changing that fast, and they aren’t changing in ways I can always control.

But change isn’t something that happens as a big sweeping mass all the time.  It’s like planting a new lawn.  For a while it’s going to look like  big patch of dirt … and you have to keep doing the things you are supposed to do even though it still remains dirt.  Soon enough, it starts sprouting in patches, and spots.  Sometimes you need to change what you do to get a greater effort.  Sometimes you get huge areas come up at once.  Sometimes you have to start over with new seed, but you’ve learned what didn’t work before.  Change has to get time to show a difference.

So this week, I saw sprouts of change – some I can share some that I can’t.  But the one that I have to share is that I ticked over a number that now makes me pass a milestone.

Today the change I can see is a weight.

So today that I is what I will celebrate.  Just not with gummy worms.