Mirror Mirror On The Wall...

Who's the fattest of them all?

I am extremely frustrated. Beyond. I don't even know where to begin with this post. Oh, I know.

I've been at this for 17 months and have lost just 60 pounds.

There, I said it. I am a horribly ungrateful human being with unrealistic expectations and little to no patience to speak of.

Still, seriously...minus a few months last winter where I admittedly fell off of the wagon and gained a few pounds (not that many though, I think it was 8 altogether), I've been a good weight loss warrior. Over the past few months, I have been extremely diligent about tracking calories, working out and all the rest.

In fact, I work out, on average, at least an hour a day, 5-6x per week. For at least three of those days over the past month, I've been working out 2x a day and over 90 minutes a day.

So, imagine my frustration when the scale doesn't in any way reflect all of this hard work. My energy reflects it. My clothes are definitely starting to fit better - but they're still my fat clothes. (I have at least four sets of fat clothes to get through before this is all said and done.)

Speaking of reflections...

One of the things that really set me back psychologically happened this weekend. I stayed at a family friends' home downstate and was introduced to a new and more truthful set of mirrors. Is it just me, or do we know exactly how to stand in front of the mirrors we have in our own homes for maximum effect? And, by maximum effect, I mean minimal truth? Well, these new mirrors - wall to wall in one of the bathrooms no less - also featured an abundance of truth-telling natural sunlight. Ugh. I can't even describe the image that stood before me. It was like I was looking at someone else.

I had no idea how I looked. How I REALLY looked.

Of course, this is just one mirror and I was probably standing two feet away from myself, completely exposed. Maybe how I look is somewhere in between my sandwich board mirror and this evil mirror on the wall. It's not as though I look skinny in my home mirror! Far from it. Still, I swear, you'd never know...or if I'd been struck with amnesia at that very moment, I'd never know...that this was 60 pounds and hundreds of hours of working out later. Thousands of salads, hundreds of smoothies, and tens of thousands of squashed temptations later.

I think it's time I faced the fact that there's more going on with me than just the fact that I got fat; that I am fat. I am being completely honest with myself and all of you when I say that I am doing things right. I have my days where I cheat, but I also make sure those days come after a really good workout so it's a wash. And, I don't have many of those days at all. I'd venture a guess that they're about 30/365. Seriously.

So, if I were to put a mirror up to this situation, I think it's fair to say that there's more going on with my body beyond the bulge. I've discovered that I'm sensitive to gluten - something that's only come to light as I've started shrinking my fat cells and releasing the trapped toxins into my body (or so I'm guessing). I'm lactose intolerant all of a sudden - but that's probably just developed over time. I gain five pounds if I even think about eating something decadent - well, not really - but those cheat days I mentioned can set me back weeks.

Adding all of these things up leads me to believe that my thyroid is not at all normal. That's a medical issue and it's not the least bit surprising considering my family history. Sigh. I really don't want to start going down that road...a road of even more "you can'ts" and "you shouldn'ts" on top of tests, drugs and more problems caused by the drugs. There's always homeopathy...and I'm more inclined to go down that path first...but I'm seriously conflicted.

Would love some completely biased and opinionated thoughts on the subject. ;-)