Best Of

You lost 34+ kgs to get to your desired weight, over a third of your body weight. Then you spent 2+ years maintaining within a narrow 3kg range, until the last four months have gone up by 2.5 kg.

You already proved you have all the tools, whether to lose weight or to maintain. Even this recent raise is still only up 4kg from your lowest point. So while I understand your frustration at gaining anything at all, what I see is an opportunity for you to dust off your proven weight-loss strategies and flex those weight-losing-muscles. Based upon how fast you lost the first time, you could be back down to "normal" by mid summer.

You got this! You have already proven you can.

Now, for the underlying concern about why maintenance apparently failed to maintain, I can leave the psychology to somebody else. But IMHO, maintenance is not simply a "lock in place" situation, but a continuous wave, going up and down. Ideally, we encounter the little ocean waves with small magnitude, not the enormous tidal waves on the beachfront. But we're human, which means we'll forever have ups and downs. What defines us is how we respond to them. You didn't give up when you were way up a few years ago; don't give up now.

Carol, darlin' - Most of the things I've learned in this life have been learned by getting past my own trepidation and doing it anyway, from sewing to painting to playing basketball to posting videos on YouTube to, well, working with a tractor. Genuinely, the only activity that has EVER come naturally to me is writing.

Plus, we decided together that this is important to us, and I don't feel like my husband ought to have all the fun!😀 One thing I have learned is that I do learn things better, like how to use a bucket, if he's not around. When he is around, I have a fallback - he'll do it for me. When it's just me, I have to do it or not do it, because there's no one else to learn from.

The urge to do these things has led to many, many interesting places in my life. Well worth trying anything that you want to!

In all honesty, stuff is just that, stuff. I never did need whole rooms of stuff to remember my mother or father.💖. I think being dismissed hurt more, but I know it wasn't intentional. Their lives were in Oregon, and I was off in CA. I wasn't in their realm. Do you know my eldest sister was angry at my husband for many years? She said that he had taken me from the family, my personality changed. She was more just mad at the Navy but the Navy didn't have a face so it was easier to blame husband. Crazy, but I suppose I understand. I adapted to the Navy way, my actions more disciplined, I guess.⚓👍🏼

Rebecca Whidbey Wa

Yes, the keeper of historical family documents can be daunting. My sister has acquired a huge box of albums that historically are amazing, all from her husband's side of the family. She has no idea who anyone is. If her city was bigger, and maybe if they had a historical society, she could've donated them to it. I donated all my HS yearbooks to my city's historical society, along with a vinyl record of some of us choir members singing in the All State choir. They were excited to have it. But it is hard to figure out what to keep and what not to. There is a certain amount of obligatory feelings to things like that. I have my grandmothers hope chest and everything fits in there, except our family photo albums. That task is daunting to me. I have 8 albums and one day the boys will go thru them together, taking what they want, and discarding them. Or one of them will be the newly selected keeper of the albums and hope chest.😁💖

Rebecca Whidbey Wa