Perfectionism at it's finest

     I am a perfectionist. Not with everything and certainly not for everyone, but I expect perfection from myself and I want to be the best at everything. My best friend since kindergarten (Jerrika) and I are almost identical in intelligence and academic strengths. If we both got A's on a test in school and her A was higher then mine, in elementary school, I was hysterical. It's totally ridiculous, I know. When I was dancing, there is no way to quantifiably be the best in dance, but I knew that I could hit milestones before everyone else...so I did. I had perfect splits way before everyone else. I worked on the for hours a day until they were perfect...I can still do a pretty mean split. I needed to be in the top band, top choir, top academic class, top everything. I lost some of that drive when we moved to Texas and I realized that people in The Woodlands were mutants academically and I wasn't going to be able to be the best of the best at everything, and I learned to live a little outside of my crazy expectations for myself. I was much happier and much more balanced once I learned to let some of it go. I have gotten some of those tendencies back as an adult, but not a whole lot. We have annual performance evaluations and if it's not marked as an exceeds expectations, it's not acceptable. I'm pretty confident it drives my assistant principal crazy, because she's well aware of my crazy.

    I was talking to a friend tonight and really charted my progression of weight gain for the first time. It's rough. I was about 140-145 my junior year of high school. I thought I was hugely obese. I had knee surgery my sr year (for the third time) and was completely immobilized for 6 weeks and on very limited movement for about 2-3 months. By the time I got married (a year and a half later) I was at 160 or so. When I was 19, I gained 60 lbs and hit 220. It's not abnormal for women with PCOS to gain 50+ lbs when they are about 19-20 when the hormone changes really kick in, it was actually one of the diagnostic questions my ob/gyn went through when he diagnosed me 6 years ago. So here I've gone from 140-220 in about 4 years. After a baby, and crazy life changes, and a ridiculous amount of steroids for my sinuses, asthma and allergies I added another 35 lbs in the last 4 years. I have now lost 20 lbs and am almost back down to pre-baby weight (which I only gained 8 lbs of the entire pregnancy, so I guess I can't really call it that).

    Here is where the perfectionism kicks in...I start school again tomorrow. I have made lunch, I have pre-made breakfast, I am making plans to avoid the eating out and junk school food and all that sort of thing, but I'm terrified that I will not succeed at continuing to lose weight. I am terrified that the positive changes that have happened for me and for my family will be wasted because I can't keep up with myself and my commitments and all that sort of thing. So there are my numbers that I have avoided putting out because I feel like in comparison to what I need to lose, my 20 lbs is insignificant. I want to be at 165 eventually, so I need to lose another 70 lbs to be at my goal and in a "normal" BMI range. I will be happy with 180, but 165 would definitely be nice! I'm putting out these numbers so I will have a   public commitment to continue finding success. I can fail myself, but I refuse to fail when others are involved.
   
     I SHOULD get released for exercise this week (from my sinus surgery last month and the awesome muscle ripping antibiotics I have to take since I'm allergic to the rest of them) which should definitely help, but leads to a whole new level of crazy.