Kelly Brown Says: Take it off, Week 26: A stranger in my house

So...guess who hit the half way mark?

This girl, that's who!

I'm down three pounds this week for a total loss of 52 pounds. And it was not easy getting there either!

Last week was H.E.L.L.I.S.H. I am quite sure that I was a walking test specimen in some germ warfare experiment by the government. I was so sick, just out of the blue. Surely someone snuck into my house and injected me with something. (Oh yeah, not only am I dramatic about nature, I'm dramatic about illness too!.)

Seriously though, I had a wicked level 10 cold. And even though I felt like absolute death, somehow I still wanted to eat my face off...and yours too. Knowing that the 50lb mark was fast approaching, the idea of satiating that hunger with extra snacks was killing me. I didn't want to go off plan but I am very big on listening to my body. Even though my cold was willing me to zip through the Wendy's drive through for every meal, I stayed on plan. I was still STARVING though. Like Donner party-esque style starving. So I added an extra Medifast bar to the days when I really couldn't take the hunger pains anymore. I worried that this would have an adverse effect on my loss this week but it all seems to have worked out in the end. I think my body really needed the extra calories and I feel really good about the choice I made to just have an extra Medifast meal instead of indulging in comfort food.

So 52 pounds is a pretty big deal. Every day that I weigh less than 194lbs is another day that I am at the lowest weight of my entire adult life. Whoa.

I've lost one of these:

Yup, that's 50lbs of burger!

And even though I am super stoked about how fantastic I feel, I'm not going to kid you - something is a little off. When I look at myself in the mirror, I am fascinated by the bones I see sticking out of my back and shoulders. The cheekbones in my face that had long been hidden, the hip bones that stick out when I lay in bed at night. I see this stuff in the mirror and that person sort of looks like me...but I don't recognize her. This is not a body I am used to and it's not one that I identify with. So much so that I still believe myself to be much larger than I am. The other day someone told my how tiny I was. Now there's a first! And instead of being proud of (a very generous) compliment, I found myself politely thanking them, pulling on my already too big shirt and changing the subject. I thought to myself 'But I'm the 'big girl'! That's who I've always been.'

I need my brain to catch up with the mirror.

But its hard because pieces of the old me, the big girl, still remain. I've been obese my entire life - everything is stretched out. This is especially evident in my arms, the skin is outrageous. I have bat wings and it sucks. Usually I would insert a joke here about meat flaps - or tell you the funny story about how my arm meat made me think I was about to be murdered. But right now I am just bummed out about it.

So badly I want to wear my floppy skin like a badge of honor. Look at what I've accomplished! This is the body of someone that has accomplished something huge. But in reality they are the scars of my past. They are the proof of the damage I've done to myself and the way I've abused my body. It makes me sad that I wasted so much time that my skin is broken. It will not snap back. I broke my skin. My broken skin is proof that you cannot turn back time and some mistakes have no redemption. They are my cruel reminder that every choice I make has a consequence.

Hopefully one day I can get things nipped and tucked but until then, I will learn to live with it and try to use it as a reminder of my accomplishments rather than my downfalls. My bigger challenge I think will be getting used to this new me. Realizing that even though this body is so foreign to me, it does not make me a stranger to myself. Finding a way to merge old me and new me until I am just me. Because in the end, that's who this body will be - just me - no matter what shape or size it is.

Month One: -16 lbs

Month Two: -5 lbs
Month Three: -6 lbs
Month Four: -6 lbs
Month Five: -6 lbs
Month Six: -8.5 lbs

Week twenty five: -1.5 lbs
Week twenty six: -3 lbs

Total: 52 lbs gone forever!

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*FTC Disclosure: Medifast provides their products for my personal use for free. I am not paid or compensated in any other way for mentioning their products. All thoughts written here are mine. I love complaining so I would tell you if I didn't like something in the program. :)