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Today, for the first time in my life, my BMI is the in normal range.  Normal.  Me.  Bwah?

I don't feel normal.

But now, according to 'the man's' charts, I am now officially normal.  If I were to go see a doctor today, he or she would actually have to treat what was wrong with me instead of telling me to lose weight and it'll probably go away.

If I robbed a candy store today, eye-witnesses would describe me as a normal-sized, raving lunatic woman brandishing a Whatchamacallit bar like a samurai warrior. 

But...I don't feel normal.

July 2nd, 2009.  9 months and 18 days after I had surgery, I am finally at goal.

Thank you, God.

Ten pounds left.  I can't believe it.

There's a million reasons why this has got me a little freaked out.  Mainly, I'm still the same person.  I keep waiting for my pumpkin to turn into a carriage.  I keep waiting for the *poof* and then my life becomes totally different.  But it hasn't and it won't.  This surgery worked exceedingly well.  By that, I mean it did exactly what it was supposed to do.  In ten pounds, I will be at my goal weight.  I'll be able to check my last little box for "goals accomplished" and that will be that.  Kind of anti-climactic, isn't it?

So, in honor of my last ten pounds (this morning, I weighed ten pounds shy on the dot) I have decided to do two top ten lists.  First, top ten things this surgery actually accomplished.  Secondly, top ten things I secretly hoped the weight loss would fix, but didn't.

Top 10 things the surgery did for me
1.) I have lost 120 pounds.  Yeah, I know.  It's insane.  I can't even comprehend it.
2.) I no longer have any pain whatsoever related to my joints, weight, bones, et cetera.
3.) I no longer have a hypoactive thyroid, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or acid reflux disease.
4.) People treat me better.  Specifically, men don't look mortified when they have to talk to me.  They even talk to me of their own free will, sometimes.  People will come up to me and smile and act like I'm an actual person.  People no longer avoid eye contact because I make them uncomfortable.  In short, I am no longer ostracized from society.
5.) I no longer have problems physically fitting into my world.  Chairs, doorways, hallways, sidewalks, seat belts, you name it.  I now am a size sufficiently small to be accommodated just about anywhere in the US.
6.) I can now purchase clothes for myself from any store I choose.  Related, I can wear any type of clothes I like, not just plus size wrap-you-up-in-spandex-at-outrageously-high-costs clothing.
7.) I can now feel and see all those bones I desperately missed.  First the clavicle, then my knees, slowly the bones in my fingers, wrists, and elbows, next my ribs, then my jaw, then finally my pelvis.  The gang's all here.
8.) I can now do any physical activity I want to do.  From activities as simple as tying my shoes or drawing my knees up under my chin, to activities like dancing and yoga.  I can do it.
9.) I am now no longer dependent on food for anything but nourishment.
10.) I am now smaller than my husband.

That being said, now it's time to be honest and admit to myself all the things I thought gastric bypass surgery and losing weight would accomplish for me, but didn't.

Top 10 things I thought weight loss would fix, but didn't
1.) I still have trouble making friends.  I don't know what I thought, like maybe once I got small enough people would finally be able to get me and I wouldn't be shy anymore.  But that's not the case at all.  People have difficulty relating to me partly because I'm super smart, have an unusual sense of humor, have led a pretty strange life, and have a pretty weird personality.  Losing weight did not change my personality.
2.) I am still painfully intorverted.  Once again, losing weight did not change a single thing about who I am.
3.) I still really care what other people think, and become (semi-) panicked if I suspect someone is mad at me or I have made a mistake.  Why did I think this one would change?  Who knows!  Clearly has nothing to do with fat, and yet I find myself surprised that I'm still the same old high-strung, perfectionistic me.  Once again, again, my fat had nothing to do with my identity.
4.) I still feel fat.  I still think of myself like a fat person would.  I still run through that same laundry list of embarrassments when I do things like eat, talk to waiters, try on clothes, etc.
5.) I still think other people can see the fat, as though it hangs around me like an aura.
6.) I still have trouble eating like a sane person.  I have a hard time giving myself permission to eat, feeling okay about it afterwards, and knowing when to start/stop.  It's all or nothing with me.  Even when I eat right, I still feel like I ate wrong.
7.) I still have big problems with my gut and my digestion.  I was hoping the surgery would fix it, but it looks like it may have actually been the only thing that got worse.  It still keeps me sick sometimes and I'm definitely less portable than I used to be as a result of it.  Oh well, nothing without sacrifices.
8.) I still have problems.  I think, somewhere in the back of my mind, I figured I'd lose a bunch of weight and the sun would rise on a day that was all rainbows and unicorns.  I would be happy, tap dancing all over downtown in a gauzy sundress with bluebirds singing my backup.  But my day-to-day life didn't change when I lost weight.  More to the point, if my life were going to change, I'd have to make changes to it.  What I look like didn't really change my life all that much aside from added convenience, health, and pain-free-ness.  Don't get me wrong, that's awesome, but it wasn't what I secretly hoped for, you know?
9.) I haven't had any fantastical vengeance yet.  No ex-tormenters have bumped into me on the street, and then fallen to their knees in adoration of my beauty, groveling for forgiveness of the way they had wronged me in the past.  Did I actually secretly picture this happening?  Yes, yes I did.  It's completely absurd, but I did.  I wanted people to realize that I've been a beautiful human being all along and that I didn't deserve what they did to me.  But, despite my weight loss, the jerks are still jerks.
10.) Emotionally, I don't feel any different.  This one's hard to explain.  For example, I can't get upset and eat a pizza anymore.  So I get upset and have to just sit and be upset.  With that has come some emotional independence and maturity.  Also, I feel happy and very surprised when I look in the mirror now.  Don't get me wrong, there have been some emotional changes.  But, overall, the emotional baggage I had before is still the same emotional baggage I have now.  I still have to deal with it.  When I lost weight, I didn't lose any problems but the problem of my obesity.

The point of this is not to be down about the surgery or the huge accomplishments I've made.  It's to be very clear with myself that I had some pretty weird ideas about what life would be like if I were thin.  I think that's important for me to come to terms with.  Also, it's to try and explore the deflated feeling I have when I realize that the weightloss is going to come to an end, soon.

One thing I am very pleasantly surprised to note is that I'm much happier with my life, now.  It's not because my weight loss has made my life happier, although the quality of my life has definitely increased because of it.  It's because now that I'm not using food to medicate myself all the time, I've actually had to sit down and deal with my issues.  I had no other choice!  And, well, I've come to some conclusions that make me really happy.  Truly happy, not the "happy" you feel when you eat a whole birthday cake.

Anyway, I'm excited about life.  I can't wait to see what happens next.  I have terrific friends and an outrageously awesome husband.  I've got everything I need to survive, now.  So, bring it on, finals week.  I've got this.

I am so happy today because I have finally broken through into the 100s, baby!

This has been my goal for forever and it feels so awesome to finally have made it.

I'm not going to write much because I can't wait to get this fantastic day started!

Bah, what a day!  Big stress stuff.  I really need to take some time and majorly relax tonight or I'll never make it through my long lab tomorrow, with the exam review chaser.

Weight loss stuff is good...fine...normal.  Nothing new to report.  You get the picture.

I'm feeling super lonely lately, though.  Very isolated.  What's going on with me?

Finally a break!  I'm down to 205 today and it couldn't have come a moment too soon.  I spoke to the college of physical therapy and nearly had a heart attack when I heard how competitive it is to get in.  Last year, there were 522 applicants.  There are 48 available seats.  I'm kind of freaking out about it.  Frantic, that's a good word for my current mood.

There's an exam this week and homework up to the wazoo.  I'm beginning to buckle under the pressure and it's not pretty.  If only I could relax a little bit.  Letters of recommendation, GRE scores, blah blah blah!

I only hope that my anatomy exam isn't as difficult as every available piece of evidence suggests it will be.  Yipes!

Seriously, I could really stand to go shopping right now.  Need to relax...

I have been pulling out my hair this last month because my weight loss has slowed waaay doowwwn.  Well not literally because the hair is none too thick lately, you know? :)

I suppose this is what happens when you start to get further out after the surgery.  I'm just panicking because I'm so close to goal.  I'm a mere 36 pounds away and while I'm eating great and exercising, my weight just isn't decreasing.  It's not increasing, but it's not decreasing, either.  I just keep thinking, "I didn't go through all of this to get close to goal.  I did this to get to goal!"

Also frustrating is how tantalizingly close I am to the 100's.  Wouldn't that be heaven?  It would be fantastic, and I'm so close!  Every time I weigh, I think this is going to be the day, and then every time I weigh, I'm just about the same weight.

I'm having trouble with my nails growing.  In fact, all they want to do is break and split.  I'm working on that, but without much success.  For a while there it was so bad I had to wear fake ones because the tips of my fingers were so torn up it was hurting too badly to do anything.  We're out of that stage, though.

The hair loss hasn't slowed down as much I would have liked it to, but it's slowed down quite a bit now that I'm trying this new protein shake.  It's BariCare.  They're fantastic, perfect for post op, and so delicious it's like I'm cheating.  Gotta plug them..

My energy isn't as great as I was hoping it would be by now, but that's okay.  I also have a cold, so I'm sure that's a contributing factor.  The only other thing of note is how easily and severely I bruise.  I bumped my calf the other day and in a minute or so I had a bruise the size of an apple.  It's really big and painful and it's not going away, although it is changing colors pretty steadily.  Not sure if that's a good sign or a bad sign..

School is hard.  I mean, really hard.  And to top it all off, I'm going through one of those horrible "What does it all mean" phases.  I'm second-guessing myself about everything: choice of major, choice of career, decision not to go to med school, decision to have kids instead, worrying about money, worrying about being able to find a job I like...I'm basically driving myself crazy.

I really hope that the pace in weight loss picks up soon because my morale could really do with a boost.