The question of a goal.

As someone who has spent her entire teen-adult life as an overweight person, it can be quite difficult to focus fully on a goal. I don't simply mean 'to lose weight', after all that is the overall goal of this process. No, I'm referring more explicitly to the physical goals we set ourselves. Having been around people in diets for a reasonably long time (I'm a woman, and some women like to complain about their weight even when to me they're perfect) I know that for many this physical goal is a particular dress size. Either it'll be a size that the person once was or it's a size that they've aspired to be. For me, this is a good deal more difficult. For the last 10 years I have shopped exclusively in plus size shops. I cannot buy clothes in 'normal' department stores because they just don't have my size. I do not remember what it was like being at a particular 'normal' size and as such don't know what is a reasonable goal to set myself.

At Weight Watchers meetings you have a few options. If you're not too far from a particular goal weight you can stride right in and declare that you will have reached goal at 9 and a half stone. So long as this is in the healthy parameters of a person's weight scale that is fine and a person will simply continue until they attain that goal. When you go to a Weight Watchers meeting and it's obvious you have a bit more to lose you will be given a 5% or 10% goal. This simply means that your CURRENT (not end) goal is to lose five or 10 percent of your current body weight. As such, my current goal at 5% of my body weight is 22 stone and 8 lbs. Obviously, this is not the weight that I want to get to and stop. Medically to be at a healthy weight for my size and age I should be no heavier than 10 stone and 11 lbs. I have absolutely no idea what that weight will look on my body and that's truly daunting.

Me, about a month and a half ago-for reference purposes. 2013.  Andrew Cumming

So, I know I have about 183 lbs (total, including the 4 lbs I lost over the last week) to lose to be considered in the healthy category. The trouble is visualising that. When I lost the weight before I struggled to see how much I'd changed physically. This is simply a case of perception. As a person who lives in my own body I see myself every single day. The tiny losses that happen day by day don't seem as evident then as they would to a person who hasn't seen me in a few months. I remember the looks of absolute shock when I'd suddenly appear, significantly lighter than before when people hadn't been around me. Looking back it's clear to me now that my body had changed, but it is so incredibly difficult to see that at the time. I was in ballet classes 4-5 times a week and had some serious muscle definition in my arms and legs, my collar bones were significantly more visible, my skin was radiant (I've always had good skin but this was something else) and my hair and nails were shiny and strong. It was only when I tried to lift a 70 lb garden feature that I realised just how much I'd been carrying around with me. I was fitter, I was healthier and I was better looking. There's no denying that.

You see frequently in diet shows a successful person coming across the amount of weight they'd lost in terms of packets of sugar or butter or something similar. Unfortunately (?) that is something that the average person losing weight does not have access to. As such, seeing a pound of sugar before you doesn't really make the point register. You can't take that one pound and add it up on your body to see what it actually would have been. That just doesn't work. The last time I lost weight I tried some kind of financial incentive. I bought a beautiful Tuscan money box (the kind you need to smash open) and vowed to put in:
£1 when I lost a pound
£1 for every week I did the program
£5 for every stone I'd lost
£2 for any lbs I'd gained
I had thought that this financial incentive would drive me to work harder because I could buy lovely things at the end of it. Unfortunately, I started losing track of whether I'd put money in or not, at weeks I didn't have the change around and there were times at uni when I could really use £10 and would go thieving from my own money box. All in all, didn't work.
I came across an idea on Pinterest the other day that intrigues me. It's obvious to me that simply seeing a graph change is not enough to really see a marked difference so I intend on creating weight loss jars.

Weight Loss Jars (http://pinterest.com/pin/282108364130823566/)

Hopefully, once I've bought the raw materials, it will keep the motivation up and I have no reason not to participate. Any little helps.

So finally, goals are important but it's all so easy to be side swept by your goals. In this life we need to be flexible to what happens and take the good with the bad. I continue this journey in that vein. So one day, in the not too distant future, I will have turned this 23 and a half stone woman into a 10 stone 10 lbs woman. Whatever one of those may look like.