I just wanted to post about my experience last week. We decided to take my 2 year old daughter to the water park that is near my house. I have never been there because I have been extremely overweight for the past 4 years of my life. I always worried about climbing and things falling out and just being totally uncomfortable.

Over the past 5 months I have lost 80 pounds and boy has it made a difference. I don't think it is just the weight loss, but my strength training as well. I lift weights 4x a week at a bare minimum and I really think that it has made a world of difference.

I had it planned in my head that I could only make it for 3 hours because I would be tired and I ended up staying there for 6 hours!!! I had no problem with stairs, slides, swimming, climbing, and I even carried this massive tube up the mountain!

All of this really hit me when I went down the lazy river. I hopped up on the tube and laid down in it and put my daughter on my belly. I didn't even give it a second thought...I just did it. As we started flowing down the river, I noticed this very large man behind me trying to climb in the tube like I did. Well, he tried over and over and over again. He didn't make it and eventually tried to stick his body in the donut hole part of the tube, but his body was too large. It made me sad that he was struggling. He eventually gave up and just walked the tube and himself down the river until the end. It was at that point that I realized that would have been me struggling, probably feeling embarrassed. I was very appreciative of my progress.

I am very proud of my 80 pound loss! I even more proud of myself that I go to the gym 6 days a week and can do 90 minutes of straight intense cardio. I used to think to myself, "why is everyone losing faster? Why are those people who don't exercise losing faster than me? or those who are older or weigh less than me losing faster?"

Now, I am truly at peace with my pace of loss. The scale does not reflect the muscle I have built. The scale does not show how much strength I have gained. The scale does not measure my progress.

The scale is an instrument affected by so many factors! It is affected by the slant of the floor, my sodium intake, my time of month, inflammation, water intake, water loss, female hormones. I think it is funny that I depend on an instrument that is so unreliable.