It took eight weeks, but I can finally say it: the size 14 jeans button and zip. As usual, just because they button and zip doesn't mean that they're public-ready, but getting in them at all is plenty of a victory, given how much I've struggled since mid-May.

(Need a refresher course? Take a look at the 'weighty issues' category page for a listing of all entries on the subject.)

To retrace my steps:

From an email I sent to Val today:

I'm really struggling with the weightlifting, and something just doesn't seem right. I've had to lay off lifting a bit this month because of Atlanta trips, but I'm getting exhausted during weightlifting sessions and it's not the kind that I get a second wind and bounce back from. Something's not right, and I don't know what.

There was more said than that, but it's unimportant. Val's response was unequivocal:

When I slid the weight counters across the scale's slide and realized what the numbers meant, I didn't feel joy or excitement, or even my usual urge to get sniffly and teary. Just relief. I didn't care that it might've been - in all truth, probably is - partly due to water weight fluctuations. I'd finally made my second weight goal. Twenty pounds down.

I've been trying to grind my way through an ugly, nasty plateau since mid-May. By June 3rd, I was frustrated enough to write what became the entry "a knot in next week's rope," an entry that's gotten me more privately-emailed feedback than just about anything else I've ever written here.

(Those of you who have written - and I have not answered all of you - thank you. You know who you are.)

"Oh, it can't happen to me," I said. "My trouble's eating enough calories to sustain my workouts, not paring down my calorie intake enough to make my exercise actually mean something."

Well, if I've learned nothing else from the month of May, I've learned that those statements are full of crap.

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.