Wow!—pant—do I—pant—feel good! I just exercised for about ten minutes. I need to work up to thirty, but even ten minutes makes my heart rate rise till I tingle all over. I feel so exuberant right now, I’m amazed it’s so difficult to start exercising each day.
It finally happened today, my first, unsolicited “You look like you’ve lost weight.” “Oh, yes,” I answered casually, as if I hadn’t been waiting for this comment for a million years. “I’ve lost twenty-one pounds.” Almost ho-hum. As if I didn’t expect the heavens to open then and there, with angels breaking forth in a glorious “Hallelujah Chorus.” I acted nonchalant, but inside I was shouting for joy, jumping up and down, patting myself on the back.
Finally, someone noticed! People will soon start watching closely to see if I’ll keep on losing, or if I return to my old Miss Piggy self. I’ll show them all. I don’t think anyone believes I’ll do it.
I can show people when I really want to. Take Allen, for instance. When we were first married, I was a size ten, five feet eight inches, about 140 pounds. But Allen used to complain that I was too fat, that I should go on a diet. He was one person I showed. Yup. I showed him what fat is! Believe me, after living with a 263-pound raving maniac for twelve years, he is going to think 140 pounds seems just fine; he might even call me skinny.
While I was exercising tonight, I started laughing out loud. Picture me, a mere 229 pounds, sitting on the floor in my exercise clothes, legs stretched out in front of me, trying to touch my nose to my knee. That mental picture alone is hilarious. The fat on my stomach makes it impossible to bend over very far, but the thing that made me laugh out loud was my inability to breathe when I tucked my head down. I kept being smothered by my own bosom. One does have to keep a sense of humor as a fat person. If you couldn’t occasionally laugh at some of the problems fat causes in your life, you would continually be crying. I must say, it’s a lot easier to laugh while on the way down the scale. If I were gaining at this time, nothing would be funny.