A Milestone Hit!

Welcome to the 200's to me!  This may make skinny girls recoil in horror (to which I flick your feather like body off into the stratosphere) but to a girl who was tipping dangerously close to the 500 lb. mark, this is a big deal.  I haven't seen the 2's since 1999.  At that time I lost 85 lbs. and was feeling pretty friggin' awesome.  But due to the fast weight loss (it was just melting off then, no fads), my gall bladder gave me issues and it took 6 months of pain, dizziness and horror to finally get diagnosed that it was shutting down.  That was the beginning of the end and then add coping with family illnesses, deaths and work stress with food got me to where I was at my worst.

When I hit the 300's, I said when I hit the 200's I wanted to hike this hill that is in a town that was a fun part of my childhood.  It's about 250 feet with a 45 degree slope in many spots and for about a decade there was just no way I could fathom doing it.  I could barely do the stairs or inclines at our local park.  But I longed to lookout over the town and declare my victory over this seemingly impossible hike.  As if by fate, I had booked an out of town trip to this area for this past weekend.

Friday before we left...I hit the 2's.

Saturday, I hit the top...

It was an amazing feeling!  Not only did I make it without really stopping (except to take a pic of a deer) but I felt like a normal person, a fit person.  There was a bit of a lung burn toward the end but I think it was because we actually did a WAY worse hike by accident earlier in the day that made this look like chump change.  I wore my heart rate monitor and over the course of those hikes, I burned 2200 calories that day. There is just no way I could've done that even a year ago.  I think about when we went to Memphis last April and my feet had really bad blisters all over them and I could barely walk without a hobble because of them the next day.  We walked a similar amount Saturday (though much more strenuous due to the amount of inclines and stairs) and I just had a small amount of soreness and no huge blisters on the bottom of my feet.  That's a 70 lb. difference between now and then and I'm so thankful for it.  I remember how frustrating it was then to feel like I'd lost so much but my weight was still holding me back.  This time, I felt like I wasn't held back at all.  There were quite a few groups of people with overweight and obese people that had to stop for a bit to catch their breath but I was glad to see they were still out there living despite it.  So many of us don't.  I so remember that feeling but was glad that we could go at a pace we were now comfortable with and that pace was comparable to what most consider a "fit"pace.  I told myself I would stop if I needed to but I could count maybe two full minutes added up even after going up flights and flights of stairs in a row.  Heck, even young boy scouts were sucking more wind than we were.  There's something to be said about awesome cardio!  So it was a great weekend of celebrating this new chapter on my path.

I need to think of how I want to celebrate getting into the 1's.  (I will NOT call it "one-derland" because I don't enjoy barfing from cheesy sayings)  I hope it doesn't take as long as that 100 lbs. did but I'm going to do it up right y'all!

Do you celebrate milestones?  Any suggestions for the next 100 lb. milestone?

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