Valentine's today and 3 great things that happened!

First, Happy Valentine's Day everyone. I was one to hate Valentine's Day in junior high, high school and college. Like really, really hate it. It was a day that could really shake your confidence in yourself. At least it did for me. Those flower sales in high school? Where friends would buy for friends? I would be so worried I would get ONE yellow flower (which meant the school bought you a flower so that you wouldn't be without a flower. That was worse than getting no flowers!) Now, that never happened to me, I always got a few flowers, but not the mounds of them so many people got. Boyfriend? I never had a boyfriend over Valentine's - ever. Not that I dated much, because I didn't, but man that holiday can bite.

So, it's ironic that Valentine's Day came to mean so much to me (and my husband). He and I started dating in January (long distance). It was the Valentine's Day weekend that I went to visit him, the first time we were together as a couple. It was so romantic and so wonderful and just happened to be over Valentine's Day. So, every Valentine's Day we have a special anniversary, making it our second biggest day of the year (after our marriage anniversary). Though, because it is such a huge holiday for couples, we usually go out a week or so later to avoid the crowds.

But, onto the 3 great things. One, while I was working with the personal trainer, she commented on seeing my hip bones poking up when we were working on the exercise balls. If you can see hip bones jutting up while working out, that means I can't have tons of flab covering them (and I don't).

Second, while I was at my son's school for his conference (which was excellent, btw), I ran into the two music teachers who are really good friends. I've been noticing they've been slowly shrinking the whole last year. I told them they looked great. The one teacher said, "Well, thanks! Between us we've lost 200 pounds. It was you who inspired us to just do it. We've been doing Weight Watchers."

Wow, me? I inspired them? That's awesome! And they do look great and you can tell they feel better too!

Then, a weird thing happened. I was catching up on Facebook after conferences, making dinner, making Valentine's cards with my younger son and Valentine's cookies. I was scrolling through and I see a photo from the gym's fitness page. It said something like, "Dawn is celebrating in her BodyPump class the Raven's Super Bowl win." I thought, "Wait, I was in that class!" And then I realize that this photo I'm staring at has my derriere as the central focus! It wasn't until I recognized my husband off to the side that I fully realized that in fact it was my backside.

It's not how I imagined I looked from any angle. Does anyone look at themselves from the backside in a full squat?

My next thought was, "Dang, I don't look half bad! I look strong, not fat!"

And then it started to sink in even more. My end weight, my goal weight, needs to be more flexible. I am healthy and look fine now. I still want to lose 10 more pounds, but that's it. At 175, after really evaluating everything, I'm calling it goal. Anything I can achieve below that is icing. I will continue to work on my fitness and eating a better diet, but I am not going to push hard to get to 160. I think I would like to make 165-175 my buffer zone. Ten pounds might be a lot for most people, but if I shoot for 170, that gives me 5 pounds of water weight to mess with. I can get that in one day depending on diet and hormones and pee it off the next day.

I don't need to achieve some perfection. I need to achieve fit and healthy.