Once I lose 7 more pounds I will no longer be morbidly obese! I can start simply being obese. Woo-hoo! I discovered this today when I started wondering what the exact definition of ‘morbidly obese’ was. After some googling, it turns out anyone with a BMI of 40-50 is morbidly obese. If you have a BMI above 50 you’re actualy super morbidly obese. If you’re super, does that mean you have cool powers? Turns out my starting BMI was 54.9, so did I used to have the ability to fly and X-ray vision and not know it? :)

I also don’t like the word ‘obese’ not because of it’s meaning but just because it sounds funny. Obese, obese, obese, obese. It sounds incomplete, like there’s a syllable missing.

I was tempted to take naked photos of myself throughout my weight loss endeavor, much like the clothed ones on my progress page, but just for myself. However, I ultimately decided that the best way to prevent naked pictures of myself from ever appearing on the Internet was to never take naked pictures of myself. So any changes in lumpiness of my ass or the size of that gut flab are mostly speculation on my part, skewed by the cloudiness and suggestibility of memory.

However, I think my tits are definitely getting perkier.

You get quite familiar with your body, seeing how you exist in it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is narcissistically fascinating to observe the slow changes my body is undergoing as my fat cells shrink.

The tits are the biggest issue for me. The first time I saw a woman’s naked breasts in a movie, I was really surprised. I didn’t realize the nipple was supposed to be that high up. My breasts have always been saggy, like a smooshed cone pointing downwards. As I’m losing weight, I think they’re lifting their little heads to the sky and looking much more spherical, like the scoop of ice cream instead of the waffle cone. As I’ve said before, what I have on my chest are basically man boobs. I bet a man who is as overweight as I am has about the same size chest. I wonder if I will have any breasts at all when I hit my goal weight or if I’ll look like I’ve had a mastectomy.

The gut flab is definitely smaller as well, but still big enough as evidenced by the nice slapping sound it made during my first game of “Dance, Dance Revolution” today. Those two footed jumps really make the cellulite bounce! Sometimes at night I’ll take a good hold of the gut flab and shake it up and down. If I sling it over my desk, I can scoot in a couple inches closer to the keyboard. I think it will be odd when my gut flab goes away (assuming it does) as I am a very fidgety person and I’m always biting my fingernails or picking at scabs or playing with my gut flab. More importantly, will I actually be able to see my vagina when I’m going to the bathroom?

And then there’s my big fat ass. When I was at Lane Bryant the other day, I was surprised at how I looked when I sat down in front of their big mirror. All that ass fat slides right around me like an inner tube. Eeew. I didn’t realize how bad that looked. So the ass – not as fat as before, but still way too fat. I wonder, will it hurt to sit down for long periods of time when that nice cushy layer of fat is gone?

Luckily after 95 pounds, I have no loose skin to speak of. Granted, I’m still over 100 pounds overweight, so who knows what will happen. But my waist has shrunk by 10 inches and there’s no real proof of it. My old stretch marks are almost reverse puckering. My upper arms still look like chicken wings. I hate them! Floppy, floppy, floppy. I hope someday I can wear sleeveless shirts without being self-conscious about the arm flab.

Even though this entry probably contains TMI (too much information), I think it’s important for me to document it. I’m so used to my own body that it might be easy to forget all these mechanics that I now take for granted.

It’s ironic that whenever I read an article online about fat acceptance or about people living healthily at an above-average weight, inevitably there are ads on the same page advertising gastric surgery and weight loss programs. Hypocrisy much?

I understand this is due simply to the advertising program’s reliance on keywords. It scans the page that it is appearing on and finds an ad that is relevant to those terms. Advertisers often buy specific keywords. So, in an article with the words “obesity” and “overweight” you are bound to get Jenny Craig ads.

It still annoys me though because the point of the article is to accept yourself as a fat person, but the ads only 20 pixels to the right are telling you to get rid of that fat ass if you ever want to be happy. Mixed messages!

I’m really curious as to how many click-throughs these ads get. Even though people are reading an article on fat acceptance, do they still feel the need to check at the Barix clinic? I’m thinking yes, these ads probably get very good click-through rates.

It’s been a good week! Again, I don’t think I actually lose 5 pounds of pure fat here. Some of this was probably that mystical “water weight.” But my ramped up exercise program has no doubt helped. I’m going just over 2 miles now at 3.0 miles per hour. However the real indicator that I’m getting somewhere, even though I’m walking in place, is that I’m sweaty and gross at the end of the 42 minutes or so on the treadmill. Sweat is good.

Next week I only expect to lose a pound or two, but I’m so happy to be out of my plateau of the 280′s.

Woo-hoo! My first time eating out at a sit-down restaurant since I started my diet and I did fabulously. Strange that I haven’t eaten out before now. I guess I really don’t have much of a social life :) Notably, this was also the first time I actually ate all the food I ordered at the time I ordered it. No leftovers and no doggy bags. No doubt this is because we skipped the bread and I went for the 9oz steak cut when I previously would have gone for the 12oz. I also had a great salad with blue cheese vinaigrette dressing (Note to self: must buy this dressing. Yummy.) and a side dish of steamed vegetables. Honestly, I wasn’t enthusiastic about ordering the vegetables as I would have much rather preferred the fries or fried mushrooms, but the veggies were better for me and blah, blah, blah I didn’t really mind that much.

Also, I fit in the booth with at least 3 inches to spare :) It truly is the small things in life. Pun sort of intended.