When we moved to Maryland, the move itself got me to 255 - which I stayed at that weight all year. It actually started to give me hope that I could lose weight and keep it off as I was going down little by little and maintaining those losses. BUT... it was really little by little.
Then, I got the "you are going to die if you don't change your life around" message. OK, it wasn't said, but I'm not stupid. So, I started to lose weight. So, when I started out at 255 I was like a fully blown up balloon.
I worked steadily down to 165 with very, very few hiccups down the road of 18 months. I had very little left to lose, if any. I was like a deflated balloon.
Then I started to blow up again, but not a lot - and stayed there for about a year. And then, I totally lost it and blew almost all the way back up to where I was 3.5 years ago - up to 243. So, looking like a mostly full balloon again.
Now I'm releasing the air in the balloon and again, letting it slowly deflate. (Hopefully for good).
It's like this image, but going in reverse order - or I guess if you start from before I gained weight, it's me going forward and backward through the different stages of the balloon being inflated and then deflated.
But, you know how balloons work. Before you blow them up, they look like this:
But, once all the air has left the balloon and it gets deflated, it looks like this:
It never goes back to the same small shape and size. ESPECIALLY the more you blow it up or the more you keep it at a big size for a long time OR blow it up and deflate it over and over again. Basically, the elasticity gets worn out. Our bodies are like that too. I "probably" won't look as good with this weight loss as I did with the previous one because of the big gain and also because of my age - 44. It's not keeping me from doing this as it's not about looks, but health. It's just a fact of life.
I'm like a balloon. And right now I'm about half way blown up or said more optimistically, about half way deflated as I'm on the losing trend, not gaining.
