I’ve been extremely overweight for most of my life.  I remember being an extremely skinny kid, and then being a really overweight kid.  I don’t remember the in-between, for some reason.  It’s almost as though I ballooned overnight.

For most of the time that I was overweight, I’ve needed to lose well over 100 pounds.  Because of this, I’ve always had a hard time understanding when people have said that they need to “lose 5 pounds to get into this dress,” or “I need to lose 10 pounds”.  My first reaction (in my mind) was “so?”  I understand now that sometimes those last few pounds are the hardest to get rid of, but until recently I still didn’t understand what difference 5 or 10 pounds could possibly make.  I didn’t understand how only 5 pounds could keep you out of a dress size.  But that’s kind of understandable, because when you are as big as I was, it sometimes takes 20+ pounds to change clothing sizes.  I just couldn’t see how 5 or 10 pounds could make any difference, in a person’s appearance or otherwise.

Until today.

While I’ve been thrilled that I’ve lost the past two weeks and also by the mere fact that I am losing again, I’ve been rather discouraged by the fact that I’ve only lost about 13 pounds since January.  During the same period of time last year, I had lost 40 pounds.  Of course, that isn’t really a fair comparison because I also weighed 80-40 pounds more than I do at the same times this year.  But it has still been discouraging, nonetheless.

I just got home from an appointment with a woman that I haven’t seen since March.  One of the first things she said to me was, “my dear, you’ve been losing weight.”  After thanking her, I explained that I had actually lost quite a bit before she met me (last June) and that in total I’ve lost 158 pounds.  She couldn’t believe it and went on for several minutes about how great it was.  She then proceeded to grill me on how I’ve been doing it, and said that it’s encouraging to see a real person do it, and not some celebrity on TV.  She also said that she can tell a big difference just since the last time she saw me, especially in my face.

As I mentioned, it was in March that I saw her last.  I’ve only lost 10 pounds since March.  Apparently I was wrong, and a 10 pound loss is noticeable once you reach a certain weight.  I’ve learned a lesson today.