38 pounds!!

Hit the 38-pounds-lost mark yesterday morning and forgot to brag about it all day. Huh! Maybe because the farther along I get in this project, the more aware I am of how much remains to be done. Biking three miles uphill without a level spot this morning, I thought how much easier it might be to stand on the pedals if I were another 30 pounds lighter. (That would take me back to Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and a two-piece yellow suit in 1966. Ask any fat person what they weighed when, and they know!)

And it is a project. A job even. That’s the only way I can carve out this much time for walking and biking — to think of getting to a healthy weight as my most important job.

Years ago we saw a doc who’d been one of our youngest daughter’s basketball coaches out at breakfast with only a portion of his huge family and only a portion of his formerly huge self. Of course, I had to ask his secret, and he said (this is an urgent care doctor with six or seven kids at home), “I had to make exercise a job.”

The bike ride added about 500 calories to what I can eat today, but right now I’m so tired I can only think about lying down for a bit, not stuffing myself with forbidden fruits.

A recent People magazine article about Carrie Fisher (her face strangely taut) ran with the headline, “I lost 30 pounds and I’m 54 years old.” Piker. Amateur. I’ve lost more than that and I’m 12 years older. It’s nice when anyone who wants to lose weight succeeds (and ironic or horrible or whatever you want to call this crazy world that people are starving while I and others fuss about eating too much), but, come on, 54?

My point, I hope, besides tooting my own smaller horn, is that we can lose weight in our 60s. It’s not been easy, but it’s not been that difficult either. One advantage many of us chubby sexagenarians have is that we needn’t be trapped in an office 40 hours a week. (Although I’m working 70 hours in the next two weeks and anxious about how I’m going to fit in my workouts.)

Back in Oct. 2010, I figured, if not now, when ? Shedding weight certainly isn’t going to get any easier as time goes by, and, besides, I have this horrible memory  from one of my husband’s family funerals. He was a pallbearer for a great aunt who was, evidently, a very sturdy lass. As they carried the coffin down the church’s steep front steps, the pallbearers in front weren’t warned to keep the coffin level, leaving those behind to put on the brakes.

 So my choices were composting or cremation,  a funeral site on the flat or FINALLY use it and lose it. The latter seemed the most productive. And today my current BMI is only 4/10ths of a point above “overweight.” I can’t wait  to graduate from “obese.”