Monthly Archives: September 2015

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DAY 189: De-acquired tastes

The first time I seriously tried to lose weight, I never really kicked the sauce.  I continued to binge-eat brownies, cookies, ice cream, cupcakes, candy, etc., that I bought on the sly at the grocery store.  I also never fully kicked microwaveable meals out of my rotation; I toted Lean Cuisines, Lean Pockets, and other purportedly “healthy” frozen meals to work for lunches or ate them at home for dinner when I felt too lazy to cook.  I was working just as hard at the gym as I am now — well, that’s arguable — but I was blowing it all up in the kitchen.  It’s not surprising, then, that I used to go to bed at night and REGULARLY dream about stuffing my face with the “forbidden” stuff.  It’s hilarious to admit it now, but I would routinely dream of gorging myself on endless banquet tables of cookies, and wake up feeling physically and mentally sick, but also relieved that it didn’t really happen!  I just couldn’t seem to give up my sugar.

I don’t have a sweet tooth.  I have a mouth full of ’em.

Or so I thought.

Something weird has happened over the past few months:  I am suddenly less drawn to the dessert table.  The few times that I do venture over there, I find I’m not as satisfied as I expected to be by what I consume.  As recently as last week, I found myself completely uninterested in the wedding cake at the reception I went to.  I just… didn’t eat any.  (I’m pretty sure it’s a crime not to eat cake at a wedding, so the bride can never know I rebuffed her celebratory sweets!)

I DID partake in four other desserts while away:
-Gourmet chocolates
-Peanut butter-chocolate rolled oats bar (it was basically a no-bake cookie in bar form)
-3 mini cookie sundaes (“pizookies,” if you’re curious), split 50/50 with my friend
-A blizzard from Dairy Queen

The lab results were mixed:
-The chocolates were unsatisfying.
-The cookie bar was love in my mouth.
-The pizookies were heaven on earth.
-The blizzard was a disappointment.

It made me remember other surprising discoveries along these lines:
-My mom’s brownies suddenly tasted WAY TOO SWEET.  I used to think that was only possible with port wines.
-My former TV companion, chocolate-peanut butter Häagen Dazs ice cream, also suddenly tastes a little too sweet.
-Tonight, I tasted a serving of goodies from my latest Nature Box order, and I can only describe them as funky-ass, crunchy cough syrup pellets.  That’s not what I expected from whole-wheat chocolate chip cookies.

This made me wonder:  Do tastes change with weight loss?

My infinitesimal internet research seems to imply that they do.  Certainly, this is pronouncedly the case with people who had gastric bypass surgery.  As someone who has not had that procedure, I’m not entirely sure how or why I might be experiencing this, but it does seem clear to me that there’s a correlation.

My completely unfounded, untested, and unresearched theory is that this is a byproduct of the initial detox period.  Maybe what I was eating never really tasted good, and it was all chemical reactions happening in my brain’s pleasure center rather than a true enjoyment of food.  Now that I know what actual food tastes like, the sugar-loaded stuff tastes all wrong to me.  Or, maybe it tastes right, like what it actually is:  mounds of sugar and unnatural compounds.

Regardless of the explanation — which I will continue to investigate — I am cool with it.  I no longer feel like I’m missing out because I didn’t taste EVERY SINGLE CONFECTION in a given bakery.  I don’t feel compelled to eat the cookies some courteous bastard brought to my meeting at work.  I pay no mind to the cupcake place right next door to my office, the donut shop directly outside of my metro entrance, or the bag of white-chocolate-pumpkin-spice-covered pretzels sitting in a bag on my kitchen counter right now.  My tastes changed, and so did my mentality.

Oh, and I’ve been sleeping like a baby.

I’d call that a win.

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DAY 188: A tale of two weddings

Exactly one year ago today, I went to a wedding.  I looked like this:

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Last week, I went to another wedding.  I looked like this:

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Today, I tried on the dress from the wedding I went to last year.  I looked like this:

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I’m looking forward to trying on both again on the one-year anniversary of starting my weight-loss mission.  I think I’ll look like this:

ecstatic

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DAY 187: The right to bare arms

Somewhere along the line, losing weight stopped being my singular focus.  That goal now shares equal billing with becoming athletic, being healthy, and feeling great.

I’ve only come to realize that recently.  It’s been great that my mindset has shifted that way; it has allowed me to notice and appreciate the changes in my body beyond the shrinking I’m looking for.  My legs are leaner and stronger.  My shoulders are defined.  My complexion is clear (and I’ve been told my skin is “glowing”).  My butt is developing a more booty-licious shape.  (Oh, yeah.  I said it.)  The coolest part, though, is what’s happening to my arms.

Remember my villain beard?  I still absently stroke my collar bones, but I’ve added a new target:  my arms.  I run my fingers over the newly toned muscles that are poking out of them.  I twist them into unnatural positions to admire their contours.  I even gawk at them in mirrors on the rowing machines to marvel at the way the definition changes as different muscles are engaged.  I’m probably gonna have bat wings the rest of my life, but the changes I’m seeing are so pronounced (to me) that I can’t help but stare at them.  It’s like if I blink, they might go back to the way they were.  What’s crazy is, they aren’t even done yet!

This may seem an unlikely transitional point, but it brings me to a frustrating experience I had at my new gym yesterday.  I was doing my customary 15-minute warm-up on the elliptical, which usually nets me about 1.3 miles.  I tend to speed up as I go, but it’s become my natural, comfortable pace rather than pushing.  My legs just go.  I had my normal gym gear on, the most important component of which is my headphones.  Those are usually the universal symbol for DO NOT APPROACH, but they misfired last night.  All of a sudden, I had a trainer standing beside my machine and moving her lips at me in a way that annoyingly did not sync up with what was playing in my ears.  To be polite, I took out an ear bud and asked what she had said.

Trainer:  You’re moving really fast!  Do you always go that fast?
Me:  I guess so.  It doesn’t feel that fast.
Trainer:  Do you keep up that pace the whole time?  How do you do that?
Me:  Well, I mean… have you SEEN these beastly legs?  (Subtext:  Go appreciate them from the other side of the gym.)
Trainer, missing the joke and the subtext:  What else do you do at the gym?
Me:  After this mile, I’ll go to the treadmill.
Trainer:  The elliptical and the treadmill?!
Me:  …Yeah…
Trainer:  What else?
Me:  …
Trainer:  What else do you do at the gym?
Me:  …I do arms every other day.
Trainer:  On the machines?
Me:  …Yeah…
Trainer:  That’s it?!
Me, annoyed at this point from the prolonged interruption and then the inferred insult following the earlier praise:  Yeah.  That’s it.
Trainer:  Wow.  Well, come find me when you’re ready to do more.
Me, putting my ear bud back in:  Oh, yeah, I’ll do that.

Interestingly, the gym happened to contact me via e-mail this morning with a random member satisfaction survey specifically about yesterday’s workout.  They limited the “other” comments field to only 500 characters, so I had to sum up that entire interaction in an unreasonably small space, but I communicated that they really need to discourage their trainers from chatting people up while they’re working (not working OUT — working), especially if it’s to attempt to solicit new training clients by backhandedly insulting them, unintentionally or not.  I’m sure this woman was well meaning and just misguided in her attempt to “help” me, but that was highly annoying.  I told the gym that I found her approach aggressive, offensive, and inappropriate.  I know she has no way of knowing it, but I’ve spent the last 6 months working hard at losing weight on my own, and I know what the fuck I’m doing.  I don’t need some “expert” rando — who knows nothing about me — coming up to me and critiquing my apparently inadequate fitness regimen, least of all mid-workout.  It’s bad enough when other gym people try to talk to me while I’m working out.  Trainers should know better.

/end rant/

That being said, though, I think I’m doing just fine.  My arms and collar bones certainly think so.

*smug villain-beard stroke*

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DAY 185: Oy vey-cation

I got back yesterday from a week-long trip to the highest, driest places in America:  northern Colorado and Salt Lake City, Utah.  It was a lot of fun seeing friends, dancing at a wedding and not caring that I am an abysmal dancer, and exploring new places.  Along the way, I managed to not only hit the gym 3 times (which is hard to do when traveling with a friend!), but also to complete two different hikes.  One hike was 3.4 miles, and the other was 1.3.  At that altitude, I was really not sure of my comfort level with the activity, both in terms of huffing and puffing in front of other people and actual ability to complete the trails.  I surprised myself on hike #1 (the longer one, which was 2 days before the other):  not only was I NOT the slowest of the group, but I found I am in a lot better shape than I thought.  The few times we stopped as a group to collect ourselves, I caught my breath pretty quickly compared to the others, and I wasn’t ready to stop as soon as they were.  I couldn’t believe it; I was easily the largest person hiking, but still among the fittest.  Riddle me that.

The second hike was just a friend and me, and she’s an avid and frequent hiker and rock climber, so she kindly adapted to my slower, less conditioned pace.  Regardless, I was still happy with my showing on that endeavor.  I should also add that I was doing both hikes essentially one-handed because I was carrying water and my camera.  Totally worth it.  Plus, I felt like a boss the rest of the day on both days.  It’s so empowering to realize that 6 months ago, I would have barely been able to do this, and it would have been entirely out of the question at this time last year.

Between the Colorado and Utah adventures, I snuck up to Wyoming for a few hours to meet up with my brother, who happened to be there in the midst of his cross-country move to California with his girlfriend and dog.  It took a lot of juggling, coordinating, and rearranging of itineraries to pull off that get-together — who meets up in Wyoming?! — but it was really important for me to see him.  I don’t know how long they’ll be living on the West coast, but I know I have no money after all these trips (and one coming up next month), so it will be a long time before I’ll have the chance to see that part of my family again.  I’m also strangely obsessed with my dog-niece and she’s super into me, too; I think my brother may have left questioning my motives for making him drive off course to see me, cuz the pup and I exchanged more hugs and kisses than any of the humans did.  Anyway, the purpose of this aside is to share that when his girlfriend was away from the table at brunch, my brother just looked at me and abruptly asked, “So, you’ve lost a lot of weight, right?” I was a little taken aback by his directness, since, as I’ve said before, most guys beat around the bush and awkwardly tap dance around the subject.  Also, my brother and I aren’t particularly close (though we have been getting better in the past year or so), so I didn’t expect him to bring it up.  I managed to return his directness with a smile, a nod, and a “yeah.”  He immediately followed up with, “How much?”  Yeah, I abandoned the directness at that point and told him frankly that I didn’t feel comfortable announcing my number, but maybe I’d tell him in a few months, when it’s all (hopefully) over.  He appreciated that and then asked a question no one else has ever asked me throughout this entire mission:  “How do you feel?”

Only someone who really cares about me would ask that question, and I had no answer prepared for this question as I do for the standard battery of them that I usually get in this type of exchange.  Of all the questions that the gamut of close friends to inconsequential co-workers have asked me over the past 6 months (!), not a single one has ever asked me that question.  I myself never even realized it should be part of the package!  How do I feel?  I feel happy to have been asked that by someone who has always been healthy, and therefore knows this is less about the question I didn’t answer and more about the one no one ever asks.  Guys, I think my brother loves me.  That 60 seconds of conversation alone was worth the trip.  😉

Now, for the stumper.  In spite of keeping my eating in check and logging some respectable physical activity that included hitting my miles EVERY DAY but one while I was away, the scale in Colorado showed that I had mysteriously gained six pounds since my last weigh-in, and the one in Utah showed a gain of four!  What dark magic is this?!  I thought that if anything, the high altitude would fudge the number in the other direction.  I’m not sure whether it’s related somehow to the altitude (which I did research briefly, and showed that my original theory was actually the more likely scenario, so that’s not it) or water retention in an arid climate when my body is acclimated to the polar opposite of that, or something entirely different that I’m not thinking of.  Of course, I also spent almost 4 days constipated (sorry, I don’t believe in TMI, so deal with it like a grown-up), so that is a likely factor.  I was also running a massive sleep deficit from the go-go-go nature of my travels, and sleep is an inviolable tenet of my phil-LOSS-ophy.

No matter the cause(s), that freak “gain” was super frustrating, and it made me not want to weigh myself at all at home.  I did in spite of myself, though, and in a fashion that breaks my rule of only checking once a week:  I have weighed myself 4 times in the past 24 hours since being back, and the weight has steadily been dropping from the Western numbers.  As of last weigh-in, I was only 1.6 pounds over the weight I recorded just before leaving, so I’m relieved that the inflated numbers weren’t reflecting an actual gain.  With any luck, I’ll even manage to post a loss by my regular Sunday weigh-in.  I’d still like to understand what that was all about, though.  Have any of you ever experienced this, or do you have any insight into that strange, unsettling phenomenon?  Please enlighten me!

My C25K training has hit a bit of a snag.  In Colorado, I did complete one of the week 5 workouts, but the next one was something ridiculous like “do a 5-minute warm-up, then go ahead and jog 2 miles.”  I managed 1.3 before throwing in the towel.  If I’m honest, yes, I could have kept going, but I don’t know for how much longer.  I’m thinking/hoping the tougher haul had more to do with the toll of the altitude and my exhaustion than with my ability, but I’ll find out during tomorrow’s workout, I guess.  I may have to invent my own workout as a stepping stone to that part of the C25K curriculum.  If I could just jog 2 miles straight, I wouldn’t need a training program.  (This is why this program is so frustrating!  I like realistic goals, not ones like Day 1: jog for 60 seconds and then walk for 20 minutes; Day 2: run a marathon.)

On that note, I’m gonna hit the sheets.  I have a series of 10-mile days ahead of me, so I need my delicious, delicious sleep.  Whew!

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DAY 174: A-O-(C25)K!

No, that title is not a math problem.  Well, hopefully not.

My first-ever race, the 4.01K, is coming up in just under 3 weeks!  Mind you, I have only JUST started running.  When I signed up for this thing, I figured I would power-walk it rather than actually dare to jog it.  The problem with that now is that I have revealed to myself that I actually am capable of jogging the whole thing — 4.01 kilometers is only 2.49 miles — and my superego is not letting me off the hook for that.  So, I somehow find myself training for this silly little “race.”

I had always planned to switch from the elliptical to the treadmill at a certain point in my mission.  I am NOT at that point, but my body doesn’t seem to give a shit.  It’s all, “check me out, I’m healthy and limber and I can RUN now!”  Show-off.

Well, it may think it’s ready for this jelly, but it actually hasn’t ever sustained a run outdoors of more than, oh, two minutes.  Once.  Five years ago.

Enter Couch to 5K.

I hatched this scheme at some point over the past 2 days that I could modify the popular C25K plan to my level and my very attainable goal, even in this compressed timeline.  I can enter to the program at a more advanced step because I’ve trained up to a level of cardio that’s far above “couch,” so much to the pleasure of my over-achieving self, I fast-forwarded to week 4 (of 9), workout 3 (of 3).  I successfully completed that workout tonight in my new gym (!):

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Between now and October 4th, I have to knock out this series of workouts:

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That’ll be SUPER easy, considering I’m about to enter into a week of travel, almost all of which will be gymless.  I’ll be lucky if I even get all my steps in.  Honestly, self, why do you?

The good news is that week 7 of the training program IS to run a 4.01K, so really, it’s getting through weeks 5 and 6 before I’m all of a sudden ready (in theory).

What.  The.  Hell.

In a past life, I actually attempted this program, but I never even made it to week 4.  In fact, I think I quit just before getting there.  How does this program expect a bona fide couch potato to just get up and be running a quarter mile in one go within 4 weeks?  It doesn’t work that way.  It’s a totally intimidating regimen if you haven’t actually been moving in some way for a while.  Elliptical to 5K, sure.  Couch to 5K, my ass.

That said, I think I might actually try to see this one through.  After my “race,” I might as well continue the whole way through week 9 and complete a 5K run, right?  Maybe I’ll even… do a 5K race.

WHO AM I?!  (I’m Jean Valjean!)

By way of another mild update, I have somewhat returned to tracking.  I’m not going to actually log my food every day, but I am using My Fitness Pal again to calculate the calories in my recipes for the week to help me plan my meals.  There’s no sense in spending the time with entering in my food every day when it’s going to be the same thing every day until the next week, so as long as I know I’m in range heading into the week, I’m good.  I am going to a wedding at the end of this week, hence the travel, so I’ll sort of be in vacation mode for a week, but I still feel like I’ve got this on the food front.

It’s the whole training for a weird public “race” I’m not as sure about.

Better get sure, huh??

Wish me luck!

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DAY 171: Measurable success

I don’t really have enough content for a full blog post, but a lot of notable moments in my weight loss have happened just all of a sudden.

On August 30th, I signed up to run in a 4.01K (cute, huh?).  This will be my first outdoor run event ever.

On September 2nd, I jogged on a treadmill for 5 minutes for the first time in 5 years.

On September 6th, I bought a shirt — that fits — in size L.

On Tuesday (September 8th), I wore a skirt to work.

Yesterday (September 9th), I jogged on a treadmill for a full mile without stopping (12 minutes) for the first time ever at that pace.

Today, I moved the closure of my ever-looser VivoFit band so that only one last notch is visible.  After I make that final move, I’ll have to switch to the smaller band when this one becomes loose again.

All of these are HUGE milestones for me, and I have consistently surprised myself in the best possible ways as I’ve hit them.  Oddly, the one I’m most stoked about is the VivoFit band.  As I’ve mentioned several times, I am terrible at measuring myself.  I do it once a month, and somehow, it doesn’t really reflect the changes I know are there through the losses on the scale, the way I look, the way I move, and the way my clothes (don’t) fit.  One of the things I measure is my wrist, and since I started taking my measurements back when Vivo showed 4 notches, my incompetent measuring reflects only 1/4 inch lost.  Clearly, that’s wrong; here’s the size the band was when I started:

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Sooooo… not so much with the quarter inch.  My ruler tells me the distance covered in the notches I moved over is actually close to 3/4 inch.  My measuring tape tells me lies.

It’s nice to know that when I feel like my arms are slimming down, it’s because they are.  Now, if only I had a VivoFit band for my calves, thighs, forearms, biceps, hips, waist, chest, butt, and neck.

Happy first day of football season to all, by the way!  Can I interest you in one of the pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I made and then brought to work like a good girl instead of devouring them all in the secrecy of my kitchen?  🙂

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Cheers!

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DAY 170: Sense of direction

There’s an idea — and a law of physics — that time only moves in one direction:  forward.

And yet, our clocks and watches reset every day.  Each morning, we get a new set of hours containing hundreds of chances for change.  If you’re reading this blog, the thing you’re trying to change is probably measured on the scale.

The scale, commonly thought of as the enemy, is actually a nifty little device.  It can — and does! — move backwards.  Oftentimes, its moves backwards can feel a hell of a lot like time travel.

As the needle has moved a little less to the right every week that I weigh myself, I’ve gone back to old clothes, old feelings, and old memories associated with the number the scale shows me.  I’m fitting into things I haven’t dared to even try on since my first job, since college, or since high school.  I have all kinds of associations with different garments, like remembering  seeing something on me in an old picture and wondering what the friends in the photo with me are doing now, or recalling when I bought the item, but never actually wore it anywhere.  Going back through my closet takes me back to moments in my life when I was younger and more optimistic, and it strangely conjures up not feelings of nostalgia, but feelings of hopefulness.

I started my weight-loss mission with the goal of running away.  I was going to put as much distance as possible between me and that ugly, ugly number the scale showed me when I stepped on it at my heaviest.  I never wanted to see the needle anywhere near it, ever again.

Now, a very comfortable number of pounds past my halfway point, I am running towards something: my goal weight.  I find I’m not looking at the distance between the needle and the weight of shame anymore; I’m looking at the distance between the needle and the weight of victory.

My thought is that this process compares nicely to the perspective you have when driving a car.  The rear view mirror is very important because it shows you where you’ve been and what might be coming from behind that may put you in danger.  The side mirrors are important because they let you look around and take stock of what’s happening in your periphery as you process and react to the changes in your environment.  But there’s a reason the windshield is the largest viewing surface, and the one the driver is oriented towards: life only moves in one direction.  All of the different views inform your **cringe** journey, but none of that matters if you don’t know where you’re going.

That’s why I’ve stopped running in evasion and started running in pursuit.

I’ll remember where I came from, but forget the way back there.

I’ll look around, but I’ll keep moving.

Eyes on the horizon!

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DAY 168: Forget me not

It can be really easy to lose sight of who you were once you’ve lost so much of yourself physically.

Sometimes, I’ll be in the middle of one of my hours-long cook-a-thons during meal prep for the week, and I’ll have a sudden flashback to what that was like when I first started.  I would have to take a couple of breaks to sit down and give my muscles and joints a rest.  If I stood in one position too long, my left leg would start to go a little numb around the knee area and I’d either have to walk it off for a bit or just deal with it until I was done.  (I probably should have talked to my doctor about that, but it stopped after I lost about 30 pounds, so I assume it’s nothing I should worry about now.)  After my few hours in the kitchen, I would be down for the count for the rest of the day, usually with swollen feet and sore hips.  That’s just from standing there!

I also sometimes remember the feeling of first getting up in the morning, not really feeling rested, and the discomfort of those first few rigid steps after coaxing myself out of bed.

I remember my walk to the metro taking 8-10 minutes longer in the morning because I had to stop and catch my breath at the top of those stairs on my route, and because I moved so much more slowly in general.

I remember trying to hide being winded while walking down the hall with anyone at work, and avoiding walking any more than down a hall with someone at work because it was too hard to hide being winded.

I remember getting out of the car after even just a short time driving and having to take the first several steps very, very slowly.

I remember always sticking to the shower curtain because there was no way to be in the shower without a part of me touching it.

I remember never untying my shoes because it was too much effort to get into a position to retie them.

I remember hating going shopping because nothing fit except the most horrendously ugly articles of clothing ever created.

I remember getting irritated when people would stop and hold the door open for me if I wasn’t that close to the door, because it made me feel like I had to rush to get to there, which made me lose my breath and feel embarrassed.

I remember driving to the grocery store two blocks away because walking was too exhausting.

I remember not wanting to go out on weekends because I only owned one pair of pants that fit, and I washed them on weekends so I could wear them to work again all week.

I remember not taking pictures when I really wanted to, because I didn’t want to see myself in them.

I remember avoiding travel, which is something that makes me happy, because it was too uncomfortable to sit on a plane or train.

I remember not wanting to go to the movies with anyone because I NEEDED both arm rests unless I wanted to twist myself up and feel the pain for hours afterwards.

I remember coming up with excuses not to see my friends or family whom I don’t often see because I was too ashamed of the weight, even though it would have made me happy to see them.

I remember hiding from the world because I had failed and therefore didn’t deserve to be happy.

I remember feeling guilty for not being happy.  I had everything set up right so I could be, and I ruined it.

I remember feeling hopeless, like someone looking back on a life she hadn’t even lived yet.

I remember I never wanted to die, but I didn’t want to live.

—

I’ve only been at this for shy of 6 months, and I’m sure there are already things in this vein that I’ve forgotten.  After all, none of this was pleasant to experience; who would want to remember it?  I can’t believe I got myself into a situation where the above was my daily experience of life.  Of course I was miserable.

Now, I’m replacing the bad memories with good ones.

—

I remember the first time I felt my bath towel close the whole way around my body.

I remember the first time a pair of workout pants became loose, then entirely too big for me.

I remember the first time I cracked 3 miles on the weight loss setting of the elliptical.

I remember the first time I flipped my mattress and changed my sheets, and realized I hadn’t changed my breathing at all.

I remember the looks on various people’s faces when they saw me for the first time since before I started losing weight.

I remember the first time I painted my toenails without straining.  They were bold blue.

I remember the first time I rocked a dress at work.  It was bold yellow.

I remember the first time I donated BAGS of old fat-girl clothes to charity.  And now, the second.

I remember the first time I was walking with a co-worker outside of the office to get coffee, and I had to slow down.

I remember the first time I up and jogged for 5 minutes.

I remember the first time I felt capable of participating in an outdoor race.  So I signed up for one.

I remember the first time I recognized myself in the mirror after all this time.

I remember the person I always was who’s been desperate to come out.

I remember she’s worth it.

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DAY 163: Working out is working out for me!

I had two BFD-NSVs at the gym today:

  1. I hit a personal best on the weight loss setting of the elliptical.  The weight loss setting is intervals for 28 minutes:  4 minutes on cross ramp 4 at low resistance, 4 minutes on cross ramp 10 (the highest level) at high resistance, repeat until a 5-minute cool-down (which I use as an opportunity to run like hell instead of to wind down).  It makes me sweat like a mofo while getting in cardio AND some toning in the legs, butt, and arms.  I usually net around 3 miles in the 33 minutes of exercise.  Tonight, I shattered my “usual” and beat my former personal best of 3.19 by .02 of a mile.  My new personal best:  3.21!  I’d love to work up to 3.25 by the end of the year.  It sounds like it should be easy, but it won’t be.  That extra .02, I KILLED for it.  I’m surprised I didn’t make the elliptical take off and fly away for all the noise it was making going at the top speed I hit!
  2. I jogged tonight.  I mean, REAL jogging.  I haven’t jogged more than 90 seconds in at least 5 years, so this is HUGE.  In the spring, I was doing a little jogging on the treadmill, but it always left me sore the next day — I was still too big to be putting that kind of stress on my joints.  All these pounds later, I’m finally working up the nerve to start visiting the treadmill in a non-walking capacity again.  Tonight was apparently the night.  I don’t know if it was the adrenaline from reaching my new elliptical PB or just that I was excited that I got the gym earlier than usual and had some extra time to squeeze in more cardio before it was time to go home, but I looked at the treadmill tonight and had a you-don’t-look-so-tough moment.  “I’m gonna jog for five minutes,” I told myself.  And then, I just did it.  WHAT?

Something kind of weird/cool linked my workouts tonight.  First of all, it’s worth noting that they almost didn’t happen; I let myself fall victim to gymtimidation more often than I should.  Tonight, there was a row of skinny girls casually using the ellipticals while flipping through fashion magazines and not breaking a sweat, all without headphones in.  I might have immediately abandoned my plans for the elliptical tonight had the ONE that was still available not been one with the moving handlebars.  I told myself, “You know what?  Let’s show these pretty girls what a real workout looks like.”

They were gone 5 minutes later.

Then, of course, a headphoneless DUDE got on the machine RIGHT BESIDE ME and started his work-out.  I started feeling self-conscious again, but then I thought, “Oh, you wanna get all up next to me while I’m working here?  OK, fella.  I’m gonna outlast you.”

And I did.

In the last 2 minutes of my run, which were the most intense because I had decided to break my previous PB at that point, another pretty girl hopped on beside me.  This time, I grinned smugly to my sweaty reflection in the machine and amped my legs into overdrive.  At the end of the workout, all self-consciousness was gone.  When I saw 3.21 on the display, I raised my arms in the air in a victory pose.  I didn’t even notice if anyone looked at me funny for doing that.

Right after that, I grabbed a treadmill all the way against the wall, with one person directly in front of me doing her own run.  I noticed 2 minutes into my jog that that person was raising her arms in a victory pose every 60 seconds.  Oddly, that helped me keep going.

Oh, and the patron saint of women was watching me the whole time from the tray on my treadmill:

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Someone had left a Rosie the Riveter sticker behind — with the backing still covering the adhesive portion.  After my successful jog, I stuck it in the front cover of my exercise log book (pictured).

OK, universe.  I hear you!  I’m raising my own bar.

Let’s lose some more weight, shall we?

by

DAY 162: Thanks again, universe

Five.  That’s how many people commented on my weight loss today.  FIVE.

Co-worker #1:  “Have you lost more weight?  You look so good!”  (woman)
Co-worker #2:  “Are you getting smaller?  You look like you’ve lost weight!” (woman)
Co-worker #3:  “You’re looking so good lately.  I’m jealous.”  (woman)
Co-worker #4:  “Hey, girl, you look GOOD!  Whatever you’re doing, it’s working.  How much weight have you lost?”  (woman)
Co-worker #5:  “So… uh… have you been doing something different lately?” (man)

Side note:  It’s so funny how differently men and women broach the subject.  Women just go for it, like, “Work it, girl!” Men speak in euphemisms.  I think weight is the ONLY conversation topic where I can say I’ve experienced that.  It’s typically the reverse.  (I know gender dynamics in the workplace are the main factor here, but I can still find that amusing.  It’s adorable to watch my male colleagues squirm while trying to find a way to compliment me without risking a breach of HR policies.)

Anyway, the universe once again heard my outcries of frustration and sent me five reminders of why I’m doing this.  I need to not get tripped up on what may or may not happen in the future chapters of my weight loss.  I did that on a previous go-around, and I let it derail me.  Not this time.  What happens in the future is up to me, just like everything that has happened up until this point.  I let my exhaustion get the better of me yesterday, and ever since I had my little ranty moment, I haven’t given it much further thought.

What was it about today, though?  It’s so funny how I go for stretches of time with no one making a peep about my weight loss progress, and then, BAM!, five in one day.  I have officially lost track of how many people have remarked or what they’ve said (unless I wrote that stuff down in this blog).  I mean, I look like I’m wearing my big sister’s clothes these days because the most recent duds I bought are now hanging on me, but I don’t know why that just suddenly happened.  Case in point:  that oh-honey shirt I bought back in May is now loose to the point that the torso fabric no longer hugs my stomach and my bra is now visible through the arm holes when I move my arms.  Maybe this is a classic case of proportion shifts happening in the place of significant weight loss, and it’s my trade-off for the small losses on the scale recently.  Too bad I’ll never know because I’m such an inexplicably incompetent body measurer!

Either way, whatever.  I’ll take it.  I’d like to once again thank the universe for patting me on my pretty little head when I felt like an ugly little mess.