Graduation time!

Even though my blog will document week 19 next, our final and 20th week of Optifast class will be held tonight. My companion dieters have been a lot of fun these several weeks, and I am guessing that tonight's meeting will be inordinately jocular. Judging from what my home scale tells me, I expect to weigh in tonight with another pound or so loss. If I officially lost one more pound, that would put me at exactly 65 pound loss for the duration. I am not disappointed, but I am not satisfied either. I still hope to lose 20 more pounds. In spite of my friends jesting remarks about barely casting a shadow and feeling light on my feet and all that, I still see a fat man when I get out of bed in the morning (and no, there is not a tubby guy secretly living in my closet. The dress shirt I wore last week was an 18 1/2 inch neck, and it was way too big. I think I could have removed the shirt without unbuttoning it.

So tonight is graduation time. We will congratulate one another and promise to watch what we eat, etc. There will be an official debriefing session next week where they once again weigh and tape measure my torso. I do not expect to be a candidate for advertising brochures or new video intros, but it will be interesting to find the exact numbers of comparison. Oh yes, they also took a photo of me, several in fact. I expect they will want to take another photo. Stay tuned for the statistics.

When I am tempted to feel a tad proud for my accomplishment, I realize three things. 1. I only graduated from "obese" to "overweight", and who has any right to be proud of being overweight? 2. Our friend, Steve, who we met in the restaurant, lost almost as much weight as I by simple self control. I had to use an expensive, radical diet to get there. 3. At a mere 800 calories a day, the diet was rather automatic. All I had to do was drink the shakes provided and nothing else.

I can remember that around week 6 I wondered if it would ever come to an end. But here we are! I have been transitioning to real food with shake supplements. I had a shake for breakfast this morning, but I anticipate two chicken tacos for lunch. They include Fage yogurt instead of sour cream and low fat cheddar, but they are absolutely delicious.