GGGOOOOOOAAAAAALLLL! (Read in the booming voice of a Mexican Univision TV soccer announcer, duh!)

As you might gather from the ridiculously overwrought ALL CAPS title of this blog entry, I *finally* reached my goal weight at Weight Watchers last night. I needed to lose 6/10ths of a pound to reach goal, but when I stepped on that scale I had actually lost 1.6 pounds so I was a full pound UNDER my goal weight, with a total loss of 101 pounds! My group of friends who've attended WW with me for most of the 2 1/2 years ( the "No Pudge Posse", made up of myself, my BFF of 35+ years Lisa, our other friend Lisa and my husband John) it took to get there came with me to the scale to celebrate. My original goal weight was 143, but since I weighed in at 142 I set that as my official goal weight to start my 6 weeks of maintenance. I'm still freaking out that 142 is too high, but since I've worn size 8 pants to work every day this week and I can *just* get into size 6 capris, I think that I'm still seeing the "old" me that weighed 101 pounds more when I think about my weight, I might actually BE at a healthy weight. My best friend Lisa took the picture that is on this post, neither my husband or I were organized enough to *bring a camera* so Lisa did the honors with her cell phone camera. I got my 100 pounds lost charm, my goal weight charm and my maintenance book and instructions at the meeting, then the leader called me to the front of the room. I told how much I'd lost, then the leader
sat down and told me to talk. I said "I thought that's what I just did!"...I'm SO not comfortable talking in front of people. So, I talked about my 9 5K runs, how long it took to lose the weight, etc. Then she asked if anyone had questions for me as I frantically tried to retreat back to my seat, lol. A man asked "so what are you going to eat now that you've reached goal?", I answered that on WW I can eat whatever I want as long as I plan for it- I really think he thought I was going to freak out and eat gallons of ice cream now that I'd hit goal, I'm hoping that's not his plan once he gets there! :) Then a woman said "with an over 100 pound loss there has to be some issue with...loose skin, right?" I fear that I overshared, because I vaguely recall telling the 30+ people at WW that my stomach was "not pretty, and just plain gross". Ug. Thank goodness they didn't ask me anything more embarrassing than that, because I was sort of in a haze of anxiety from being in front of all of those folks, who KNOWS what I might have said! :) I have 6 weeks of maintenance, I increased my WW points range by 3 points and I'll weigh in next week and see how that works. If I maintain, I'll stay in that range- if I lose, then the points are increased again, if I gain then the points are reduced. It's all a balancing act to keep the weight stable now. After 6 weeks, if I'm still within 2 pounds up or down from my goal weight of 142 (so, between 140 and 144 pounds)then I will become a free lifetime member two days after my 43rd birthday. That is especially sweet since I remember how upset I was to realize that on my 30th birthday I weighed over 200 pounds and by my 40th birthday I was over 240- I love (hopefully) making WW lifetime member so close to my birthday for that reason!
Tomorrow is my big day at the gym, I usually take 2 or 3 classes in the morning. The great instructor for my favorite class, Body Attack, says that they will be celebrating my weight loss goal at the class with some workouts of his choosing...I'll apologize in advance to the others in the class as I fear he will be inflicting some pain on us, lol. Then a week from this Sunday is the IronGirl 5K, I am very excited about enjoying that event with so many other women- and the awesome race bling at the end isn't bad either! Now that I've rambled on, I'm off to go catch up on everybody's blogs. I love reading your comments here, if you've suffered this long through the blog please drop me a comment. :)