Day 66: Happy St. Patrick's day!

I'm one that has a blood right to celebrate this holiday. I have Irish on my father's side. I don't think that I should be the only one to celebrate because of my bloodline, but I'm not one of the "Irish for a day" crowd, either. Thanks to some work done by my grandmother about 20 years ago, we have a very good idea of our heritage. I'm proud to be of Irish descent.

However (getting back to the primary focus of this blog), that same Irish heritage is one of the reasons that I have an issue with putting on weight easily. I am genetically programmed to retain weight. However, I now have the tool to combat that genetic programming. I can't stop it entirely, but with the sleeve, I have a lot better control over the situation. As I said earlier in the week, I'm down 70 pounds since the surgery and 97 pounds overall since last June. Between the sleeve and my normal exercise program, the weight is finally coming off, hopefully for good.

I made a composite photo of then and now so I could see the difference, and the difference is huge. It was kind of a wake-up call for me that it really is working for me. I posted this picture to facebook and I had several of my facebook friends (mostly women) telling me how good I'm looking now. I had the same thing happen at work. Women telling me how good I'm looking now. It really makes me wonder what will happen when I hit my goal weight. It brings to mind a line from Linkin Park's "In the end":

Things aren't the way they were before
You wouldn't even recognize me anymore

That's not going to be just my body, it's going to be my mindset and emotional outlook as well. No more fear, no being afraid of losing something precious to me. Starting today, I am not going to allow my melancholy to drag me down. I will change the melancholy into something else. If necessary, I will turn it into anger and then channel that anger into a workout. Drain it off of me that way.

I'm not changing what I want. I'm changing my reaction to not having it.

See ya!