As you've read by now, I have lost 102.8 pounds as of Monday night, March 1st. Tuesday we had our group pow-wow at PHC with our weight loss consultants, and, in an effort to get everybody moving towards their goal a little more quickly, they have put our team on a pretty stringent plan for the week. I've been losing well on average, and they gave me the option of the bread and water diet (minus the bread, plus a little chicken and some seasoning) or of staying on the same program I've been doing. As tired as I am of chicken and eggs, I decided that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" was probably the best course of action. So I'm sticking to my usual routine for this week, and if it slows up, I will be making some quick changes.
By Tuesday night, Johnnie (our trainer) had had plenty of time to think about the fact that none of us had a very good week, especially compared to the other team. I knew we were in for it Wednesday morning, and, sure enough, he told us all to dress warmly because we would be spending our hour outside. With winter weather advisories humming over the radio and TV waves, we went outside, warmed up (a relative term when you're sucking in 32 degree air), and ran wind sprints in the Omni parking lot until our workout time was up. I enjoyed it (surprisingly, because I've always HATED running), and although my legs are still sore two days later, it was a good workout.
The rest of Wednesday was uneventful; Thursday I went to PHC, and it was that time of the month - time for us to be measured again. When people talk about losing x-amount of inches, they add up the total of inches you have lost from various parts of your body to come up with a number. For the men, they measure your chest (on an inhale and on an exhale), your waist at the level of your belly button, your waist right above your pants, your biceps, and your wrist. For the ladies, I think they add the thighs. One of my teammates can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's how it works. I took my measurements home and discovered that during the first month of the competition, I had lost 15.5 inches. During February, I had lost 19.5 inches - proof on paper that I had gone through one of those phases where the scale doesn't reflect the loss, but the clothes do! I am really proud (and also stunned) that since beginning this competition, I have lost nearly 18 inches off my waist. I even lost half an inch off my wrist this last month, a number that had not changed since November. My watch and my wedding band don't fit anymore.
After leaving PHC, I went to the gym to work out (I usually don't work out in the evening, but circumstances prevented me from going Thursday morning. I grabbed a treadmill next to a wall, and started walking. The walls at Omni are large mirror panels, with a six-inch mirror panel at each seam. I happened to catch my reflection simultaneously on the wall panel and the seam panel, and it made me look like I was much wider than I really was. That wider image is still how I see myself in my mind's eye when I look in an ordinary mirror - I still see that guy who was always the largest person in the room. It was kind of startling as I moved back and forth in front of the mirrors and made myself go from fat to thin in the blink of an eye.
This morning we got to do something that my teammate Charles had been wanting to do for a long time. Charles is in charge of food services at the civic center and Bell Auditorium (excuse me, the James Brown Arena - it will always be the civic center to me, just like Lake Thurmond will always be Clarks Hill to us old-timers in Augusta). The Harlem Globetrotters are due to appear next weekend, and Charles managed to secure permission for us to play full-court basketball in the arena at 5:30 AM this morning. He got us in the building, secured a ref, and we went to town against each other for two halves. Good thing the civic center had us sign waivers releasing them from responsibility, because we had our share of injuries this morning. I was probably the least injured - got a raspberry on one knee and a big ol' strawberry under my chin. Several of us got tangled up going after the ball, and I ended up with it in my hands, but in trying to avoid landing on Ashlee (blue team member with a hurt back right now), I tried to sail over her and ended up on the floor, face down, chin sliding across the hardwood, and the basketball stuck right where my stomach used to be. Someone (probably Donna from PHC) arranged for an NBC Augusta news camera to be there to shoot some video and a little "face-time" for each team, which will hopefully see the light of day sometime on TV. It was a great time with both teams together, a ton of fun, and I appreciate the effort Charles went to in order to get us the time. With 10 weeks until the finale, everyone has been stressing, and it was a lot of fun to get together over something besides "how many pounds did you lose this week". (In full disclosure, our team lost. With the notable exception of Charles, we were a bunch of klutzes on the court!)
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