My Own 600-Pound Life

So I've never really been a patient man and without patience, persistence can be more difficult than you would think.  As is how it happened today.  I woke up this morning and tried to weigh myself and the scales wouldn't register me.  The one kept going over limit and I couldn't get a firm weight to stick.  I cannot even tell you how bummed I was.  I had worked super hard this last week to make it a perfect week on program and I had succeeded, but now I couldn't use the one measure of success that I count most dearest to me to measure that success.  I think I literally sulked all morning and most of the afternoon.

Then I thought of an idea - well, Weight Watchers has to have people that have been my size in the past.  I wonder if they have scales that will go to my weight.  I'm an online member right now, so I call member services and ask them and they say that some of the "branded" sites (the ones that are specific Weight Watcher corporate sites) do have the higher weight scales, but not all of them.  They couldn't tell for sure and since the sites don't have any phones at the locations, they couldn't call to see if they really did have what I needed.  Still, I was pumped.  The one nearest to my location was open until 7 that night.  Could I possibly get weighed and be able to know what I actually lost this week?  Could it possibly happen?

Well, as soon as I got off work, my wife and I drove to the location.  And then I sat there.  It finally came to my realization that even fat people aren't as fat as I am right now.  Well, at least most of them aren't.  To walk in and ask if they could weigh me was more than just asking a favor - it was asking them to guess my weight or me have to tell them.  After about 20 minutes of encouragement from my wife, we walked in there together and I went to the lady and asked if she had the higher weight scales.

To my dismay, she wasn't sure, but she said, "Go ahead, step on up here."  So I did, but I was scared to death.  What if I broke the scale?  What if it went to capacity?  I was in a weight loss place, but it wasn't full of people my size.  I stepped on the scale and low and behold, it held me quite nicely and showed the number - 583.4.  I was ecstatic.  Not only did it show a 10 pound loss without counting in the other factors, but it was able to weigh me!  When I got home, I adjusted my weight for the new scale (adding pounds for clothes and also weighing after 2 meals instead of in the morning) and calculated my overall loss for my first week at 15.6 pounds.  Holy crap!

My point here is don't give up.  I wanted to.  I didn't want to take these extra steps just to verify that I had done a good job!  But I took the time, the energy and the willpower to do it.  It took patience to find the place and figure out how to weigh myself and it took persistence to keep myself moving in that direction.

We all are on a journey and we all will get there at different paces.  For example, my wife lost 7 pounds this week, which for her body weight is proportionally more than what I lost this week.  She did great!  That just goes to show that we all can do this.  We just need patience, persistence and a little positive support along the way.  Find your support and you might find that the patience and persistence just fall into place.  Don't give up - there is a reason you made the step to weigh less and get healthy.  Remember that reason and keep on!