I got reminded last night of two things: why I write here, and why I haven't written here lately.

It's been a damn hard week. It's not over yet, and next week may well be just as tough as this one's been.

* * * * *

The simplest version of the statement is this: women weigh more than men would really like to think we do. I am living proof that the 5'2", 120-pound woman is a stereotype, and not one that is always based in reality. (Jessica, you may be that woman … but I'm just not.)

I have a mother who is 4'11", and who rarely, if ever, weighs over a hundred pounds.

I am 5'1½", and right now I am fighting to drop under two hundred pounds. From measurements and assessments, I carry approximately 130-135 pounds of lean body mass; in other words, even at zero percent body fat (which is unattainable and unhealthy) I will never, ever see 120 pounds. A frighteningly fit and muscular version of me, a version that could probably run 5K races and play any sport she wanted, would be around 160 pounds.

That number sounded wrong to me when I first calculated it, wrong and off and bizarrely high, and it took a couple of trainers and a few friends to remind me that I am disproportionately strong for my sex and height, and that such power does not come without some degree of increase in mass.

* * * * *

Crossing the 200-pound mark is extraordinarily important to me. More important than I let on for a long time. It's just a quirk of numbers; it's no more important than 201 or 199, but the turning of the first number made hitting it on the way up one of the most depressing events of my life.

Going above 200, when it originally happened, confirmed everything I ever believed about myself - that whatever was inside me didn't matter a damn - because somehow, that number (which no one else even knew about!) somehow trumped everything else in my personality.

A tiny, quiet part of me curled in on itself and cried every time I saw my weight on the scale, and it saw nothing past that first, awful '2.' For a long time, I didn't even know what I weighed. I knew the first number, and that was enough.

* * * * *

I have been between 202 and 204 pounds since the end of July. A lot of that time can be ascribed to having to miss workouts for a month around dragon*con, and then tiptoeing off to Colorado for a vacation, but on the plane home from Colorado, I realized I was sick of 'almost.'

I also realized I was willing to do damn near anything within my power to restart my weight loss. Even though I understood that it was just a windmill, and that I was tilting madly at it, I decided it was time to throw everything I had at getting past this one psychological goal.

I asked myself what "everything I had" was, and I realized that if I kept control over my daily schedule, I could do two-a-day workouts: 30-45 minutes of swimming early in the day followed by 45 minutes of heavy-duty cardio in the evening.

Life's like that. You want something bad enough, you get off your ass and you work for it.

Yeah, I want it that badly.

Do I enjoy it? Yes and no. A perversely competitive portion of my psyche likes proving that I can work harder than virtually everyone I know. I enjoy the swimming, because there's something inherently calming about being in the water, but the cardio is a 45-minute slog that takes out the last bit of my energy each day.

The 'twofers,' as I've begun calling them, eat up a good portion of my day, and leave me a truly one-note conversationalist. I'm not hurting, but I don't have a lot left over at the end of the day, either.

I'm planning on giving this kitchen-sink approach one more week to see what kind of results emerge.

Why am I having to wait so long to find out if this is working?

* * * * *

Well, while I'm popping some myth bubbles, let me take a nice pointy stick to this one, because it's trying to elbow me out of this chair.

For nearly two weeks out of every four, I have to completely disregard what the scale says about my weight, because it may or may not be based on reality. Those silly, pesky menstrual cycles cause cyclical water weight gain and loss, and for me, I see spikes of anywhere between four and seven pounds. They show up in the middle of the night, like the worst of houseguests, and then quietly vanish about ten days later.

When you're trying your hardest to lose weight, and charting your results every day to get a trendline, there are few things more crushing to your spirit than watching your weight spike seven pounds in the course of two or three days.

Here's the kicker: I'm overdue for a weight spike. My calendar says it's time, and that it should have happened two or three days ago. I saw a spike of about a pound, but that's all. In the time I've been charting my weight loss, I have no explanation or precedent for this.

It's very, very possible that this means I've got some weight loss going, weight loss that I can't currently see because of the weight spike I see every month. It's such a simple answer, and I want so desperately to believe that it's true, because it means that I might be about to see a rather spectacular payoff if I can just keep going for a little while longer.

Humans will do a lot of work on just a bit of hope.

* * * * *

200 is a milestone that's as big to me, and maybe a little bigger, than the nebulous goal of 'finishing up.' 198 marks 30 pounds lost since January, and is as close to a halfway point as I'll likely get.

I want to hit these goals, not just for the girl I was, too scared and full of self-loathing to ask for help, but for the woman I've become, who has had to acknowledge the girl she once was in the hope of becoming the woman she wants to be. I will publicly celebrate the changing of this number as privately I mourned it years ago, because I have earned this, and I will do whatever it takes to make it happen.

Cross your fingers if you want. I'll be in the gym.

In the meantime, please forgive me, and understand if I'm a little quiet.