The scale has been pretty slow to respond lately, so I’ve been looking for other ways to measure my progress. One of the most exciting happened this week when I went shoe shopping. For the past twenty years I have been wearing wide shoes. In fact, for the past ten, I’ve had to get WW. This severely limited my choice of style. Lots of pretty shoes are only made for people with M width feet. Well, I’m happy to report that a few days ago, I bought four pairs of cute, medium-width shoes!
I also fit into size 16s—not all 16s—some pants are still too tight, but I’m probably only about a month away.
And then there’s the airplane seatbelt….
Those of you who have never been severely overweight may not realize that it is possible to be able to fit in an airplane seat but not be able to cinch the seat belt. I made this embarrassing discovery on an Air France flight to Paris several years ago. I was traveling with a friend who convinced me I had to admit my problem to the flight attendant. I finally did—deciding that a psychological harm I might suffer by asking for help was nothing compared to the physical harm that I might experience in the case of a rough landing. The kind flight attendant seeing my consternation, surreptitiously handed me a seatbelt extender and I buckled myself in. Realizing that it was unlikely that I would be significantly thinner after a week in Paris and so would likely need that device again, I slipped it into my purse and have carried it on every flight since. Sometimes, I’ve needed it. Sometimes I haven’t.
I usually need it on flights outside the US—I always needed to use it on domestic carriers in Mexico and Nigeria and sometimes on KLM. However, I have never used it on a US flight. I guess that says something about the average waist size of Americans.
At any rate, the news is that I now easily fit into the seatbelt. In fact, when I pulled it tight, I had about seven inches left over!
Just goes to show you that you can measure progress in lots of ways.
- Cheryl
How do you measure your weight loss success?
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