The Belt :: Visualizing Weight Loss

I wear the same belt every single day. It's a dark brown belt, and it goes well with jeans and matches my Sunday shoes well enough that my wife doesn't complain. I've been wearing this belt for the past two or three years. Last week when I had to punch a new hole in it, I realized that it tells the story of my weight loss pretty well.


You can see indentations in the belt right before six of the holes. The left most hole is the one I punched last week. That's the under 215 pounds hole. It's the first time I've needed a hole there since I got the belt.

Six holes to the right you can see a faint indentation. That's from when I weighted 240 pounds.

If you were to plot the depth of the indentations, it seems that it would create a bell curve representing my efforts (and lack thereof!) over the years to lose weight. It seems that no matter what I try I always end up back in the 225-230 pound weight range, as witnessed by the two deep middle grooves.

The newest hole is actually a little more snug than I would like it to be. It's not painful and doesn't cut of my circulation, but if I start eating it's tight enough to trigger the loosen-your-belt signals in my brain.

This is intentional in my part of course. My stomach doesn't want to cooperate and tell me when I've had enough until I'm about ready to heave; my waist and belt are more willing to tell me when to quit.

I realize that this isn't a conventional or normal way to help limit eating, but I'm willing to do whatever works to get down to a healthy weight. 200 here I come!