Tiny Victories

This week has been a good week for tiny victories.

Tiny Victory #1:  Wearing a smaller jacket.

I wore my new jacket to school today, as it was a bit chilly out this morning. I had to buy a new jacket last weekend as my previous season’s jacket was 3 sizes too big and looked pretty ridiculous on me.  Each time I put it on, I’m floored by the fact that the tag inside says “XL” and not 4X.  It’s like I don’t believe that it’s even real.

Tiny Victory #2:  Cafeteria seating.

I work in a high school, and periodically we have staff meetings in the cafeteria, which has lunch tables that look much like this:

The seats on our tables are rectangular, rather than circular. From http://www.longoschools.com.

Today I had a meeting down in the cafeteria, and I noticed that they’d set out four of these tables for all of us to sit down at.  Normally, whenever we have meetings down there, I’ll grab a regular chair and pull it up to the end of one of these tables and pop a squat.  Or if there aren’t any regular chairs available, I’ll sit on the little seat, facing away from the table because my belly won’t let me sit facing forward comfortably.

Not today.  I decided to give sitting at the cafeteria table a try to see if I could do it.  I slipped into the seat, and faced forward without any problems.  I could actually swing my legs around in front of me to sit!  And I wasn’t terribly uncomfortable.  My gut didn’t push me away from the table like it used to.  I wasn’t stuffed into the gap between the seat and the tabletop!  One thing I did notice was that my butt hurt a little more since I’ve lost some of my cushioning.  But I fit at the table!

It’s these little things that keep me going and that reinforce the behaviors I’ve adopted that are helping me slog along toward my goal.  I had the realization today that I’m less than 70 pounds from my surgeon’s goal and that by the time I see him again in January, I might just be only 50 pounds from his goal.  I sure hope I am.

I was at the low end of my daily protein goal today at 81 grams. But I did eat quite a bit of fish, and got in some good fiber.