Why??

Why did I decide once again to try to lose weight? Most everyone that has ever gone on a diet knows that success is hard fought and short lived, why set myself up for this trauma yet again? Easy - I wanted to go skydiving.

Since I was a young child, I have wanted to sky dive. The opportunity presented itself, and I became the driving force behind setting it up with a group from church. The website said the maximum weight limit was 225. The lady I spoke with on the phone said 240-245. The problem - I weighed more than that!! I was not about to let my weight stop me from fulfilling a life long dream. Besides, how humiliating would it be to admit that was why I couldn't go.

This was in March, and skydiving was in July. I had to lose exactly 9.4 lbs to meet the very upper end of the weight limit. I really wanted to lose a whole lot more weight than that. I had this vision of having to weigh in front of everyone to prove I was not over the limit. I thought it would be those giant scales like the used to have in grocery stores, where every one could see the hand swirl around when you stepped up. Lots of people were going to be there. Besides those of us that were jumping and our families, others from church were going to be there. They couldn't witness my shame.

Obviously, everyone around me knew I was overweight. All they had to do was look. But no one, not even J-boy (my husband), really knew how much I weighed. As I said in my first post, it is one thing to believe something and quite another thing to have it confirmed.

Then there was the fact that I would be strapped to someone else. That person was going to have to heft my big, fat self around. That person would know just how much woman I really was. I was not about to have that!

I fibbed when I made the reservation and said I weighed 200 lbs. I actually didn't say it was me. I just said there were three people and gave their weight & age. I didn't say which one I was. On the day we jumped i weighed 205.6 lbs. Pretty close, huh?

I had another small victory that day too. They give you a jumpsuit to wear over your own clothes. My trainer, looked me over, and went to the rack to get a jumpsuit for me and came back with a medium!!! It was too small and he had to switch it for a large, but I got a real boost out of him thinking that I might actually wear a medium. Neither one of us broke anything either. There were no snide comments about my size from anyone involved and even better no scales!! No one seemed concerned at all that I might be too fat to jump!!

Here's a shot of me, looking like a stuffed teddy bear, in my jumpsuit.
Part of me wishes that I had documented my progress better with pictures, but the aforementioned pride and previous failures kept me from doing so. I have a few more pictures from this point forward.

In my next post, I'll share a little more about what I did to shed the pounds.
Thanks for reading.