Forrest Gump, rediscovered bones, and the weirdest form of Tourette's ever: Just a few added perks to losing weight

This may be hard to believe, but it's not all about the scale for me. Yes, in true frenemy fashion, I do have a passionate love/consuming hatred for the scale, all depending on one little number. For evidence of this disturbing relationship, please read Holding my scale hostage under the bathroom sink. But losing weight for me has meant a lot of other kinds of victories too. So really as much to remind myself of them as to tell you about them, here they are:

• Run, Kristen, run!--No, I'm not Forrest Gump. I'm also not that Olympic track guy with the awesomely appropriate last name Bolt. But I'm pretty proud of how far I've come with running. I could maybe run 2 minutes when I started, and that was with an end result of me looking like I might keel over and/or die. This past Friday, I ran 5k on the treadmill without stopping with a time of 26:47. I know that time wouldn't win me any races, but I no longer feel like I would look like a fool for entering a 5k. Plus no keeling over or dying! Always a plus.

• No pain, no gain (only half true)--Let me be the first to say that I have definitely had my fair share of soreness from working out. But that is a good type of pain (usually after I pop a couple of ibuprofen) because it is a reminder of how hard I've worked that day. This type of pain is totally different from the pain I had before. Because I can say from experience that the pain I had before, pain in my hips and knees purely from carrying around over 300 lbs, in no possible way ever feels good. It felt like old age, which is ridiculous at age 27. I haven't felt that pain in quite a while, and I never plan to feel it again. Well, maybe in 4 or 5 decades. 

• Food is food--This statement may seem idiotically simplistic. I mean, duh. But to emotional eaters like me, food has never been merely food. Food was a crutch. It was what I turned to during happy times, sad times, stressful times, angry times, pretty much any time. It was comforting, but that comfort came at a heavy price. I'm finally able to say that my first urge when I'm stressed is not reaching for a bowl of ice cream or a bag of chips. Now my first urge is to work out! Oh no, I sound like I've crossed over to the dark side or something. 

• No need for a therapist when clothes shopping--Clothes shopping is happily no longer a dramatic ordeal where I end up feeling like a fat failure. I sometimes even feel like I look pretty, which is a feeling I haven't had in a while. For a reference to the horror that shopping was for me before, please read Shrinks in the dressing room: Something Target should have added along with all the mirrors.

•  Haven't seen those bones in a while--I've recently been able to be reunited with a couple of friends I have not seen for a while: my hip and collarbones. They have been in hiding. It's been so long that I actually suspect they may have been in the witness protection program. I mean this in the least freaky way possible, but sometimes at night I just like to feel those bones. Yes, I know how that sounds, which I why I wrote the disclaimer before. 

• Just call me peppy (on second thought, please don't)--I can't quite say exactly what the cause is of my consistent good mood lately. Probably a combination of feeling great and the knowledge I am doing something so positive for myself. I don't actually care all that much what the cause is, just as long as it keeps up. All I know is that I wake up with tons of energy and feeling great about the day. I may have a bad mood every now and then, but it's quickly gone. It is really awesome.

•  Self-esteem without the Kool-aid-- My self-esteem has gone up a ton. Along with my physical changes has come the emotional feeling that I may actually not be a fat sack of garbage. While having so much extra weight was not the sole cause of this feeling, it played a large part. Now, I think I deserve to be happy. I think that I have worth as a human being. And I think that if I want something badly enough and am willing to work hard enough, I can achieve anything. People who have not lost a large amount of weight may just see weight loss as a physical change. But I think it would be very difficult to lose a lot of weight without having a lot of different emotions. It's just an emotional process, one that all of you lucky people get to experience right along with me (you better count yourselves lucky, lol). I recognize that the above paragraph may contain phrases that sound like they come out of a bad self-help book. I assure you, I have not had any self-help cult Kool-aid (or sadly, any Kool-aid at all lately). It's just like all these corny phrases just burst out of me on their own accord. Please regard it as an odd form of Tourette's, just instead of profanity, I spout inspirational phrases.

Maybe I should write this stuff on my scale. Seriously, it may not be a bad idea for off weeks weight-wise.