Feedback...

These blog entries are going into a memory book, and I include the following two stories here because I want to remember them:

1. Yesterday morning I walked into CVS Pharmacy while wearing my "Biggest Loser" t-shirt. For those of you who have not seen pictures, they look a lot like the t-shirts on the TV show, with the addition of the word "Augusta's" across the top, and three small logos across the bottom for Omni, PHC, and NBC Augusta. I walked to the pharmacy counter; the pharmacist asked if he could help me, and I told him I was picking up one prescription for my wife. He looked at my shirt and said, "Do you work for NBC?" It struck me that he did not look at me with a giant Biggest Loser logo on my shirt and ask if I was in the competition; he wanted to know if I worked for the TV station!

2. This morning, a couple that used to go to our church, Jim & Louise Boner, came to our spring festival. These people sang in my choir, heard me preach, and even sang in a trio with me on a couple of occasions. They are very sweet people who love me and my family dearly. I walked up to them and talked to them for a little while... about 20 minutes later, Louise saw me again, but this time I was with Brenda. She hugged Brenda, called her name, and then turned to me and said, "ED???!!?!?" She then confessed that when we had first talked, she knew I looked familiar, but absolutely did not know who I was! I saw a few people today who had not seen me in a while, and they all commented on my weight loss, but she is the first one to not even recognize me.

I'm getting more and more of the "you've-lost-enough-weight -- stop!" comments... got one from my mother last Sunday. I told her, "You were on me about being fat for the last 40 years... don't give me grief about being skinny, now..."

This week I should see a little loss... not too much, I'm sure. I'm on the second week of the same diet that produced an 8.8 pound loss last week, but as we have discovered, it doesn't take the body long to adapt to the number and type of calories being eaten. I'm hoping for maybe a 3 or 4 this week.

Been a rough week for my co-leader Nandy, who may be finally surrendering (temporarily, I hope) her lead. She has been one sick girl this past week - bronchitis, among other things - and the doctor gave her a steroid shot to reduce the inflammation. On top of that, she had a pretty good quantity of cough syrup and cough drops, all loaded with sugar. She is discouraged, of course, but as disappointed as she is, she understands that getting her life back is a much greater prize than winning this competition. And she has definitely succeeded in that - if you've seen any of her pictures in my facebook album, or have seen her on TV, you know that she looks great, feels great (when she's not sick), and has totally knocked this thing out of the park. Either Nandy or Laycee is going to win this thing, in all likelihood, and it's going to come down to the wire. There's a couple guys within striking distance of my lead, but it's a little bigger lead than the 1 to 5 pound lead Nandy has nursed for weeks on end now. If she ever reads this (don't think she does, but she will tell me if I'm wrong), I hope she knows how proud we all are of her.