My pants aren't any looser, but my skin is...does that count?

Hello my friends!

So my twelve week body challenge at Gold's gym is over as of Saturday.  My final numbers aren't as impressive as I'd quite hoped back in January when Dee and I swore we were going to win the big honkin' cash prize.  (Okay, Dee might just win...she's lost so much weight she looks like a completely different person, and I'm sooooooo proud of her...and jealous.  But mostly proud...and a little jealous.  Okay, I'm way jealous because she's been really sucessful, but I'm mostly proud.  Really.  I am.  Honest.)

I also have to give a shout out the to the trainers at Gold's.  There's been a little misunderstanding about how I feel about the trainers and about Gold's in general.  So I'll clear it all up by saying this:  The support I get from the folks that work at Gold's could NOT BE BETTER.  I have my emotional ups and downs, like everyone, but KRAM has been pretty awesome at not taking my general whiny crap.  If I actually paid for acutal sessions, he'd probably beat me over the head with something, but I'm sure I would deserve it.  And I have to say, since I'm one of those folks who only consults a personal trainer when the session is free, I am so pleased at the amount of attention I've been given by the trainers.  I adore KRAM  (can't wait 'til his wife has her baby so that he understands what I'm talking about when I say my time is not my own.)  and Dixie and Kira  (Not their real names of course) have been literally cheerleaders through this process.  While I haven't met all the trainers at the Gold's in Waukesha, I get the feeling, just in my contact with these three, that N.B. M., the gent who manages the place, has a talent for finding excellent trainers.

Too much?

Well every word is true.  If it weren't, this blog would not be nearly as much fun to read.  Then it would just be fiction and hey, you can get your fiction anyplace.  Here you get my real life in blazing color.  Or whatever.

Back to my weight loss.

So I'm not super thin yet, still, I'm happy that things are moving in the positive direction.  I lost 6 pounds, most of them in the last 10 days, which brings my total weight loss since 11-1-10 to the big 20 pounds.  I've also managed to firm up my fat enough that I'm a total of 14 inches smaller.

Where those 14 inches went, I'm not sure.  The biggest thing, people tell me, is that I should notice my clothes fitting better.  I'll be honest.  I don't.  But that's not anyone's fault really.  Maybe I'm just not that observant.  Or maybe Hubby's been switching out my normal clothes for skinnier versions so that I keep thinking I'm fat and I stop eating the ice cream during "Biggest Loser" and then he can have some. 

What I have noticed, is that my skin is looser.  This is something women of a certain age start to fear when talking about weight loss.  So you lose the weight, but your skin is no longer as springy as it used to be and then you're stuck with a lot of skin that just hangs on you like a very weird, sort of ugly sweatshirt. 

I actually had a conversation the other day with someone who decided it was just better to be fat.  Oh wait...I think I may have said that.  Let's NOT share that with anyone at Gold's...okay?

You know what I'm talking about.  You get to a certain age where you realize that if you truly do lose that pesky 90 pounds you've spent the last 10 years building up, your skin might not read the memo. Then what?  Then you're one of those people who goes on Discovery Health  (Oh, wait, there isn't a Discovery Health Channel anymore because Oprah took it over. Thanks Oprah.  Thanks a ton.)  or The Learning Channel and get one of those full body lifts where they just carve chunks of loose skin off of you like some weird Captain Ahab/Moby Dick nightmare.  And then they make a fake belly button for you because the skin you're using as belly skin now is actually from you ankles, and I haven't met a person yet who has belly buttons on their ankles.

I don't love my belly button, but it is one of the few body parts I'm not that interested in replacing.

Oh yeah...you think you have a hard time finding jeans that fit?  How about jeans with the "excess skin" pocket?

So I noticed the other day, as I was drying my hands at Gold's, that the skin on my hands and arms is definitely looser than it was 12 weeks ago.  See, Gold's doesn't believe in paper towel.  A lot of public bathrooms have gone through the air drier/paper towel/nasty cloth ring thing that never gets changed argument when it comes to folks drying their hands after using the facilities.  I know there's a section of the population that might go for optino 4, no hand washing at all, which is why it's a good thing the country isn't run by 8 year old boys. 

At Gold's they've gone with the hand drier.  But, because it's Gold's, we're not dealing with any sissy half power electric drier that will blow for ten seconds and you wind up drying your hands on your pants anyway.  Oh no, Gold's has a hand drier that will, under the right circumstances, send a light weight person into orbit.

Since I am not a light weight person yet, I have to be satisfied with the fact that the powerful hand drier at Gold's ripples my skin sort of like those beach pictures where the sand is the shade of a lovely tan and has measured ripples where the tide has left its mark.  Yes, that's what I think of when I'm drying my hands at Gold's.

AT first I thought it was funny...now I'm just scared.  How long until I'm able to star as the skin dress in "Silence of the Lambs II:  How to Make a Dress of Your Own Skin?"  Honestly, if my arm skin, and my hand skin, both of which are still pretty firm becuase I do pay attention from time to time and put lotion on them, are rippling like that, what's going to happen when my weight loss reaches the less elastic skin of, say, my butt?

I haven't had the courage to hoist my hamhocks up under the hand drier to see if I get the same ripple effect on my fanny as I do on my hands. I haven't done this mostly because just picturing how awkward that would be makes me laugh out loud.    You know, the type of laughing you do when someone you already don't like too much falls down into a pile of snow?  There's no injury, so a deep down belly laugh is okay.

Well, I'm on this planet to make people laugh...I'm just not sure I'm ready to be that funny yet!