Um, Wow. (P2, D34)

I hit two big milestones today.

I have officially lost 30 pounds.

I am under 200 pounds, so my weight starts with a "1" for the first time since when I got pregnant with my daughter almost seven years ago.

When I lost a lot of weight on Weight Watchers in 1999 (and kept *most* of it off for the better part of five years), it took me NINE MONTHS to lose 30 pounds. It has taken me just over one month to lose that much this time.

For my dieting/blog buddy Olivia, 200 was a huge mental threshhold. For me, it just feels surreal. It definitely feels like a big barrier has been broken, but I really just can't wrap my mind around this just yet.

Dancing last night was fantastic. I was all sick and sinusy, so I told R I was just going to go dance for an hour and I'd be home at 10:30. I didn't even look at the time until it was midnight. I wouldn't say we were the oldest ones in the club, but I would say our group of seven women raised the average age by quite a bit. But there were enough of us there and we were having fun, so we didn't care. I wore false eyelashes. I wore skinny jeans (skinny for me: size 16). I wore a shirt that showed off my rack, red lipstick, and huge dangly earrings. I felt very pretty.

The bouncer and bartender mildly flirted with me. I didn't have my ID with me but said I wouldn't be drinking so I didn't need a bracelet. He said "how old ARE you?" I answered 35, (not sure why I said that; I'm actually 34, and my birthday is in February.) He leaned in really close, squinted, surveyed my face, looked at my eyes and said, "What, did you get collagen in your eyes or some shit? You ain't got no wrinkles!"

So that was nice.

Then the bartender flirted with me even though I was only getting club soda to drink. So that was nice too.

We danced our little asses off (or, in some cases, our big asses) to Lady Gaga, Madonna, and M.I.A., and were not even discouraged when we realized that 95% of the people in the club had not been born when Lucky Star was originally released (1984). I'm not even kidding. Since most of the people there were college kids, that means they were born in the vicinity of 1990.

Today was my son's class birthday party, and it was mayhem, but fun mayhem. I wore a pretty new scarf/shawlette thingy I knitted for myself over the past month to keep my hands busy at night when I couldn't eat. It was pretty and I felt pretty and thin. Everyone said I looked thin.

It has been a good weekend.

Tonight I made macaroni and cheese for the kids for dinner, and it looked sooo good. My mouth was watering. So I had one elbow, just to see if it tasted as good as my memory. It totally didn't! The pasta tasted cheap and grainy, the cheese sauce was watery, the flavor was completely flat. Have my taste buds changed or am I just paying attention now? And what was weird was that even knowing that it didn't taste as delicious as I thought it would didn't stop my cravings.

This is the first morsel of food I have put in my mouth  in 34 days that was not on the plan, with the exception of lean, skinless, fat free turkey on Thanksgiving. It is getting harder and harder to say no to yummy looking foods, I think because I'm bored with what I'm eating, because I've been so good that I feel I "deserve" pizza and a cupcake at my kid's birthday party, and because it's just been a long time. The ridiculous structure of the diet has been a big asset in that regard.

Still hungry, running out of drops and trying to make them stretch til Monday night when I see Shannon to get more. I'm sure that's not helping with the hunger. Realllly looking forward to maintenance. Nuts... eggs... milk... ham... berry smoothies... cheese..... I'm also looking forward to Diet Coke, which is so ridiculous because it isn't even good, and I'm sure it's horrible for you. I should just stay away from the stuff or give myself some kind of monthly limit (maybe one per week).

I'm kind of curious to see if I will have what will now be called the "macaroni-and-cheese effect" on any other foods that I'm dying to eat again. How awesome would it be if I taste former binge foods, really pay attention, and find out that their flavor is not worth my time? Totally awesome, that's how awesome.

Here are my weights for the week; tomorrow is the last day of week 5.

Day 29	11/29/2010	203.2	-0.4	-26.4
Day 30	11/30/2010	203.2	0.0	-26.4
Day 31	12/1/2010	201.4	-1.8	-28.2
Day 32	12/2/2010	201	-0.4	-28.6
Day 33	12/3/2010	200.8	-0.2	-28.8
Day 34	12/4/2010	199.6	-0.8	-30