Visit to the Doc

Here are some more before-and-after pictures. The "fat" pictures were from the summer of 2005 and the "current" pictures were taken just today.

Speaking of today...I visited my doctor today, just to check out how he thinks I've been doing. I've been going to him since 1992. He has seen my weight go from about 215 at that time, all the way up to the 295+ I found myself at last summer.

Anyway, he is VERY pleased with my weight-loss so far. In fact, he's tickled pink. He bragged about me to one of his collegues in the office.

The good part of my visit, you ask? I've been on medication for my BP for several years now. Well, my blood pressure was 112/63. When I described to my doctor that I've been exerpiencing some minor dizziness when getting up quickly after sitting for a while, he was not surprised. He said that I should immediately discontinue the BP medications, as I no longer need them!

Pretty Unbelievable!

He also said that I should spread out my reflux medication further, taking it every THIRD day instead of every OTHER day. I used to take it EVERY day, so that's quite an improvement.

And hopefully, when I get my blood test results back, I'll be able to either discontinue or at least decrease my cholesterol medication as well.

One more piece of news...he took a good look at me and told me that my goal weight of 170 seems too low at this point. He would prefer that I stop, at least for now, at 180, so instead of 22.6 pounds from my goal, I'm now only 12.6 pounds away! Pretty cool!

When trying to find some new "before pictures", my wife and I went through some old photo albums...The one phrase that kept coming out of my mouth was..."Oh, my gosh!" Boy was I ever big! I didn't want to post pictures with my daughter in them, but I've gotta tell ya...I was HUGE! I simply MUST HAVE cracked 300lbs in some of those pictures, because, oh, my gosh...I was HUGE! It was fun and horrifying at the same time. It was quite encouraging, though.

Oh...one more thing. Last week, a friend loaned me some weight-lifting plates...90lbs worth, to be exact. I put them into 2 nap-sacks and added some additional weight to equal the then-101lb weight that I had lost to that point. I put one nap-sack on backwards (payload in front) and the other on normally (payload in back). So, at that moment, I was back at my 295lb weight. Oh my. It's hard to imagine what 101lbs actually feels like, but it's HEAVY, to say the least.

I walked up my stairs to the 2nd floor and back down, and man, was I winded...me...the guy who can jog 3 miles pretty easy these days, winded from going up and down 12 steps with the weight that I once carried everywhere with me. What an eye-opener.

I highly recommend, when you need some encouragement, putting your current "weight-loss-total" together in a bag/sack/whatever and really feeling what your lost weight feels like. You'd be surprised how heavy even 20lbs is...it's nothing to sneeze at!