I thought that four months in the gym had gone a long way toward conquering my fear, my embarrassment, my (dare I say it?) loathing of my appearance, but that wasn't the case as I headed down Hughes Road toward Dublin Park. As I was stopped at the next-to-last red light before turning left onto Old Madison Pike, I stopped for a moment and gave my thoughts their objective, silent, frightening due:

Ages ago, Suzan said to me that the number sixteen was magic, and so far, I'm inclined to agree. For women, dropping back down into the sixteen-and-under range brings you back into the land of the living, the normal, the everyday.Sometimes, what's utterly normal and everyday for the rest of the world is terrifying and magical and scary for me.

How do you make the guest bed when it means interrupting this?

More importantly, how do you get the eighteen pounds of white kitty belly fur off of the dark green comforter without a trip to the dry cleaner's?

There was a time several years ago, here in Huntsville, when many of the names that appear now in my daily life had yet to appear in my life for the first time. It began, as these things are wont to do, with a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere over the coast of Thailand; two years later, it ended with me taking a web design job in a farm of fresh grey cubicles.

Two cubes down, there was someone about my age. Her name was Kat and she said, "I'm a wondergeek."

"What's a wondergeek?" I asked. She showed me the answer: her roommates. Powerpuff Girls, even: Heather the brunette, Jessica the blonde, Kat the long-haired redhead.

Somewhere along the way, she came to our house for the first time, and Jeff laughed and I laughed and she laughed and I began to suspect that there was something potentially okay about these Huntsville folk after all.

I went shopping today.

It doesn't sound like much, until I tell you that I went to Victoria's Secret, and for the first time in nearly a decade, I didn't just stand outside the window, look in, and wish for that far-off, mythical 'someday' to come in which I'd be able to fit in their clothes again. It's been nearly a decade since I shopped in Victoria's Secret. A decade of looking in that window and knowing that people like me just weren't welcome there.

So much about being overweight isn't just about the extra poundage you carry. Sometimes it's as simple as looking in the window of a store and knowing, just knowing, that you can't shop there. For me, I felt bad enough about myself already, and trying to shop for clothes only made it worse.

So how'd meeting #2 go with Val? Let's see. Since March 19 (that's 48 days), I have:

• lowered my body fat percentage by 2.3%.
• lost 5/8" off of each arm.
• lost 1½" from my chest.
• lost 2" from my waist.
• lost 1½" from my hips.
• lost 2" from my thighs.

Ok, so I technically gained a quarter of an inch on my calves, but it's so obviously muscle development that Val instructed me to ignore it.

I was summarily informed that these results are somewhere between spectacular and insane.