A Pause to Reflect

Yes, I've been away. Did you miss me? Hubby is in town, so we've been out running together and doing gaggy "are they still newlyweds or what" stuff together. It's been nice.

(I don't know, are we newlyweds still? It's been almost 2 years. I guess we still are, maybe.)

I had an exam on Monday, and since our grades were due for the semester the same day, our teacher just emailed us our grades. I got an A on the exam and an A+ in the class, w00t! But the same day I also got back Jackie's evil Cardiac exam from last week, and did pretty poorly on that. The first poor grade of the year for me, and yes, it stung a bit. Hopefully I can ace the last exam and still get a good grade.

Weight is holding at its hormonally-induced, elevated level. A couple days and it should come back down a few lbs. I hope it's hormonally induced, anyway. I made cupcakes for hubby's birthday and we've been snacking on them, so that can't help much. They are red velvet cupcakes, from a (overpriced) mix I bought at Williams-Sonoma, and thank God I didn't have to answer a doorbell while baking them or I might have been investigated for homicide in my kitchen. Is that much red food coloring really necessary? Anyway, perhaps they don't help me get my weight back down...but whatever, I'm not terribly concerned at this point.

This week--scratch that, this month--has been nice. We had a few classes last week for our official finals-week break, and this week isn't really a break but two of our classes have ended for the semester, so we only have 2 classes anyway. One only meets on Mondays and we don't have an exam for it (physiology) for another month; the other class is Priniciples, which goes on and on, but is probably our most fun class anyway. So now we pretty much have one class per day until the summer term starts in June. It's so weird not having an exam this week and next week to study for. We can use the break.

I have nothing interesting to offer about the current state of weight loss today. I'm still reading PastaQueen's archives. For fun, because I was in the 2006 archive, I looked to see if she blogged on my wedding day, and she did: she posted her ebay auctions that day (August 13). She also posted on my birthday, August 19, when we were on our honeymoon. It took me back a bit, thinking about it. She had lost 160 lbs at that point, with 50 lbs to go to her goal. When I got married, I had been considering WLS for the whole year, but wasn't totally decided on doing it until I got back from our honeymoon and saw our wedding photos. I was devastated at how I looked. Isn't it interesting that our brains don't really register what we really look like until we see pictures?

Our wedding day was wonderful, we had a great time, and I'm glad I didn't obsess over losing weight before the wedding day because I wanted the day to be a fun celebration, not a "perfect" day designed just to have "perfect" photos. And our wedding was about as much fun as a wedding can be, if I do say so myself. Relaxed, intimate, and fun. But when we returned from our honeymoon I was forced to face my weight problem, and I was pretty depressed for weeks afterward. I felt kind of dumb being so down about it, but it was just a matter of facing what I had been in a bit of denial about. My hubby didn't really know what to do about it, actually. But I decided, when I came out of the funk, that I was going to do this lap band thing, and set up my battle plan (which is how I deal with stuff, I make a plan). I attended my seminar in December, and the rest is all documented in my own blog archives.

And here I am. I do feel like a different person in a lot of ways. I'm not "cured" of obesity, and I certainly could gain the weight back if I'm not careful. I have to keep exercising, and trying to make good choices, and working my band so it can work for me. Looking back on wedding pictures is sort of bittersweet in some ways. It's a record of our happiness that day and a celebration of our life. It's also a documented moment in time that I can look back on as the last time I went about my life without considering the health consequences of my lifestyle choices. I've gotten real since then. Sure, I'd love to be able to look back on pictures of myself as a slender bride, but in a lot of ways, I got a lot more out of the wedding that we really did have.