Category Archives: mental-health

by

NEW DAY 293: Slow burn

My weight loss has been crawwwwwwling for the past 3 months. Yes, a slow-down is normal in drastic weight loss after months of quick drops. And also yes, I’m undoubtedly in body recomposition right now. And yes again, 23.8 pounds is still arguably a respectable amount to lose in 12 weeks. Yeses and valid justifications aside, this glacial pace is not my jam.

It got to the point that for the first time since June, I lost a DietBet. Like, it wasn’t even close; in 3 weeks, I only lost 3 lbs and missed my 4% goal of 187.5 by 4.9 lbs. I hadn’t even broken into the 180s.


Unfortunately, I was on a bit of a DB sign-up spree at the time I signed up for that March Mayhem Kickstarter, so two more were a week from closing — and I was even further from those goals of exactly 187.0.

Ugh. Now I was losing more money than weight.

What could I do but lose graciously? I thought of it as rebalancing the sheet of me taking other people’s money these past 10 months. Can’t win ’em all.

What I did not do was use this VERY minor setback as an excuse to go off the rails. The thought never entered my mind. I stuck to the plan.

What was the plan? The plan was to thwart this sluggish plateau-adjacent nonsense which has overstayed its (never-really-)welcome. Historically, my body has responded well to a bit of healthy, intentional upheaval, so I decided to mix things up with a zero-sugar week — not even any fruit (RIP reliable breakfast staple). In the process of designing that menu for this week, I noticed that I never adjusted my daily calorie intake down to account for my body’s smaller size. Since I’m being honest, I’ll confess one more cardinal sin: I haven’t been tracking my calorie intake at all. My plates have been filled with balanced whole foods and I’ve been training my body, so I never stopped to question if the food could be behind the stalling weight loss. I didn’t realize how small my deficit had become, but once I crunched the numbers from my past several weeks’ worth of meals, the fact was inescapable: I was just barely outside of the maintenance zone. That my body allowed me to burn any fat at all was a bit of a miracle. (THANK YOU, BODY!) I also decided to pump the brakes on intense cardio this week — a dubious call with a half-marathon less than a month away, but hey, I live on the edge — and switch to post-meal digestion walks coupled with a focus on strength and core work.

With all this in mind, I dutifully refined my week’s menu to stay within a daily deficit appropriate to weight loss, compiled my grocery list, made the haul, and batch-prepped all 3 meals in full food on Saturday. My exercise plan shifted immediately, even with erratic temperatures and weather conditions throwing wrenches left and right. With two impending DB weigh-ins with windows of Monday-Tuesday and Tuesday-Wednesday, it wasn’t looking good when the scale spat out 191.2 at my weekly weigh-in on Sunday — a measly half-pound down from the previous week. As someone who ignores the scale at every other time, it was a major departure when something possessed me to check that cheeky appliance on Monday morning.

And it was an even more-major departure when that little imp showed me 187.2.
As in, 0.02 lbs away from both DB goals, literally overnight.

I am not a fan of this type of suspense. I can barely tolerate it in a cozy mystery. I arguably can’t tolerate it at all cinematically. In real life, forget it. I am not built for drama.

This was a real test of mettle. I could go extreme and over-exercise and under-fuel and wring my hands for the ensuing 24 hours, or I could honor my commitment and trust my body and the process to respond well enough to result in DB victories. After all, this whole thing is about so much more than a few DietBets. Winning/keeping money is great, but it’s in no way healthy to go full nutcase at the possible expense of the broader arc. That type of compulsive behavior is the ugly cousin of what got me to over 300 lbs. So I chose responsibly and made my peace with the fact that the die was cast already, and all I had to do was stay the course — my body had just given me a loud and clear signal that it was happy with what I was doing. This was a moment to listen, not to hijack the convesation.

And, well…


I just love a story with a happy ending, don’t you?

by

NEW DAY 285: Power 11 report

Let’s get straight to the stats. (Rules here.)

Dates: January 11th – March 28th, 2026
Total inches1 lost: 17.75
Biggest change: -4.75″ from my waist
Total pounds lost: 22.4
Books read: 5
DietBets won: 4 Kickstarters (of 4) + 2 Transformer rounds
Treadmill running speed increase: 1.7 mph
Elliptical pace change: -2:26

And, as I predicted the day before the end of the challenge, the biggest difference is in the day 1 vs day 77+1 pics. My shoulders are narrower, my smaller waist brings my arms in closer to my body in a resting position, and my clothes fit the way they’re meant to rather than squeezing in the most unflattering of ways. My neck is leaner, which makes me look taller, and my jawline is more pronounced. My legs are slimmer, which balances my proportions better. And overall, there aren’t as many rolls and pudgy bits squeezing out from every angle.

I think I’m gonna continue with the measurements and progress photos, but more like every other week or maybe only every month. It’s truly jaw-dropping to see the side-by-side differences, especially now that the weight loss has started to slow. Those days of reliable weekly drops of 3, 4, 5 pounds may be behind me, but this recomposition phase is fascinating in a whole new way.

This next little stat extends beyond the Power 11 timeframe, but it’s a pretty gobsmacking one: blood pressure. My last BP was on September 16th at a dentist’s appointment, which I noted down because I was on 75 Hard at the time and had intended to record it again at the end… which I didn’t do. However, I’m glad I have that record to contrast with the reading I got from the doctor’s appointment I had today.

September 16th, 2025: 118/84 (weight: 247.8)
March 30th, 2026: 112/60 (weight: …I’ll tell ya in a second)

That’s a significant diastolic change! My doctor pronounced my BP “excellent” and proceeded to review the results of all the blood labs she had received from the work-up she ordered for me since my appointment with her at the beginning of the month and congratulating me on my “clearly healthy body.”

Since yesterday was the official close of the Power 11 chapter, it was an appropriate day for the scale to eke out just enough of a drop to land me at 192.6 pounds — which just so happens to be the lowest weight I reached way back in early March of 2016, before I lost my focus and that whole trajectory went up in smoke. And just when I started wondering if maybe I’d get stuck here like I got stuck in the 200s for 6 stupid weeks, the doctor’s office scale clocked me at 191.6 this morning.

I’m fully in body recomp right now, and the evidence is everywhere. Getting into the 180s is going to be where the emotional recomp begins. I don’t know exactly how to prepare for it, but I know I’m on a collision course with it. All I can say is, bring on the crash.

  1. Weekly measurements taken from bust, waist, stomach, hips, thigh, calf, ankle, upper arm, forearm, and ring finger. ↩︎
by

NEW DAY 281: Legwork

I haven’t always been the kindest to my legs.

In addition to — and in no small part because of — the heavy load they’ve had to haul for nearly the entirety of their load-bearing lives, I’ve derided them for their too-wide-for-boots muscularity and unfeminine appearance. Disrespecting them for the appearance they took on as a direct result of the abuse I inflicted on my body, which became their burden. Classic insult to injury.

Since I’ve been losing weight and training for a half marathon, the demand on my legs has anything but lessened, even as my body mass has. The musculature is even more pronounced as my calves slim down. My knees have taken on a knobbiness they’ve never had before. There’s definition and shape developing as the muscles, tendons, and ligaments in my thighs develop and strengthen. My ankles are popping, and not in the injury-adjacent way the normally do.

My legs don’t look different, exactly; they look more unabashedly themselves.
And I’m learning to love them.

They’ve done a thankless job for decades. They may never look conventionally attractive. They may never fit into a cute autumn boot. They may never stop a speeding cab with their irresistible curvature. But they have always held me. They supported me. They carried me.
They are strong, and they are tireless.
They are perfectly mine.

Before? Hide the legs! Keep them out of others’ view! Pants year-round!
Now? Electric blue workout pants. Highlighter pink tights. Dresses. Skirts. Dare I say, SHORTS… coming soon.

This is the type of change that matters the most to me. I’m getting healthier mentally — and that’s been the entire purpose of all of this.

If I can learn to love my legs…

.

by

NEW DAY 274: No rest days for the weary

I’m coming off of 2 successive nights of, to put it mildly, suboptimal sleep. Taken together, I’ve netted a cumulative single night’s worth of in twice that amount of time. I’m in the middle of a (self-conducted) multi-week experiment where I’m closely monitoring the variables that may be impacting my sleep and I’m very much anticipating the results, but until then, the erratic restfulness has me dragging ass.

Today was rough, but it was a prescribed Power 11 rest day that seemed well timed to help mitigate some of the fatigue from my sleep deficit. Instead of taking it easy, though, I racked up 5 (leisurely and spread-out) miles on the treadmill work station at the office today before coming home and completing a 15-minute core workout video.

It’s not just that I want to keep up my physical activity.
It’s not just that consistency matters more on high-exhaustion, low-energy days.
It’s not just that restoration comes in many different forms, including an alternative type of movement.
It’s that this is what my body told me it needed today.

Counterintuitive? Sure.
But I spent decades ignoring my biological and physiological signals. My body is working hard for me, and it deserves better care than a return to that nonsense.

Crucially, yes: I am physically depleted. My eyelids feel like they weigh 10 pounds each, almost every part of me is sore, and I have spent the day having elaborate fantasies about my pillow. I am T.I.R.E.D.
And yet…
I am not tired of this.

Taking care of myself, noticing changes in the mirror, feeling new muscles and shapes emerging from my physique, fitting into new (old) outfits, effortlessly moving in ways that were impossible 6 months ago, nourishing myself properly, and caring enough to do things like track my behaviors so I can repair my disrupted sleep? It’s work. It takes time, focus, commitment, and thought.

And I choose it every day — thousands of times a day — because it matters. Right now, nothing matters more.

True exhaustion was being twice the size I should be and still having to participate in life like a fully functional, healthy person. This right here is a bump on the road to regulation. Healing isn’t linear. Recovery isn’t smooth. Change isn’t straightforward. This is messy.

So I know it’s working.

Rest days will fall by the wayside. Sleepless nights will strike. I can handle that; I know how to care for myself now.

But I will not go back there. I will never return to true exhaustion.

by

NEW DAY 260: Downsizing

In a past life, when I was having success with weight loss, I used to do this thing where I’d buy a few articles of clothing a size down from where I was, every time I reached a new smallest size. Staying on top of the sartorial demands of slimming down is an expensive pursuit whose timing is unpredictable, so it helps to be prepared for it; my little gimmick helped not only to keep me motivated, but to keep me clothed. My big move was rifling through the sales and clearance racks for off-season finds that gave me a comfortable cushion, to the extent that the season-bound availability allowed. Every time I purchased a downsizing garment, I wrote the date on the tag, which remained attached until that piece fit. Once I could wear it and it became an official part of my wardrobe, it was a cool way to track the time between size changes that weren’t always congruent with the scale — and it came with a fun little ceremonial act of snipping off the tag.

Last night, while I was laying out my attire for today (to save me time in the morning), I found one such relic from that bygone era:

I tried on this skirt and it fit. With room to spare. (So yes, I wore it today.)

Seeing the date on the tag as I cut it off triggered a memory of a couple of other items I bought around the same time: two pairs of… shorts. 😱

I found them immediately, folded together in a tiny stack on a shelf in my closet: one a size 14, and the other a quixotic size 12. The tags aren’t dated, but I’m reasonably certain they were from around the same time as when I bought the skirt I wore today, if not from the same shopping trip.

These are the two smallest downsize items I have. This means two pretty big things:
1) I have never been as small as I am now.
2) I am about to enter a new frontier that I am literally not outfitted for.

I set both pairs of shorts out in plain view for subtle thinspiration. It was too soon to try on either of those sizes, having newly sized down into 16s. Maybe in another month or two, I’d be up for trying on those 14s. For now, those two pretty big things are a lot to absorb.

So when I got home from work today, in the skirt I was wearing for the first time since purchasing it more than 9 years ago — because I regained all the weight I’d lost before I got the chance to shrink into it — I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t also be the last. I picked up those size-14 shorts from their spot and held them up in front of me. The idea of fitting into them suddenly didn’t seem so outlandish.

And it wasn’t.

Because they fit.

Not perfectly. Not as flatteringly as they will after another few inches disappear from my hips and waist.
But the fastener closed.
The zipper slid right up.
Those shorts were on me.
And I was floored.

It’s truthfully a little nerve racking; I have no blueprint for this phase. I haven’t “been there before”. I don’t know what I’ll look like the next size down. I don’t know what I’ll feel like when those 12s are sliding on. I don’t know how things will fit me at clothing sizes I’ve never bought ahead, let alone worn. Most alarmingly, I don’t know for sure that I’m gonna make it to the next size below. There’s no precedent for any of that.

But I made the major choice at the outset that every minor choice I make in this process will support my overall health. I do know I won’t deviate from that, because there’s nothing but precedent for it — and a trove of powerful results that have come from it. I believe in what I’m doing. I may not be prepared for the next step down, but when I get there, I will be ready.

This is where the real emotional work begins. In the interest of always choosing my health, I’ve been laying track for months to support my psychological journey that will go right through the heart of this thing. It’s already been exhausting, and it’s not even at full speed yet. The beautiful thing I have going for me is the physical activity that keeps me mentally regulated. And that’s a full circle.

So I might as well complete another circle while I’m at it. New frontier sounds pretty great to me.

by

NEW DAY 244: The path

Months ago, I predicted that I would reach a point in my weight loss where the emotional dam would break, unleashing decades of emotions locked away behind body armor I’ve packed on as excess weight.

That time has come.

I have been going through it lately. I have cried every day since Saturday for one reason or another — or, more likely, for a nice big tangle of reasons knotted together by tenuous, anachronistic threads that barely make sense as part of the same weave.

Drastic weight loss? It’s… forgive me… heavy.

Seeing myself in the mirror feels like an elaborate prank. Sometimes I look so small, I can’t reconcile my reflection with the image of myself that lives in my mind. Other times, I still look so huge that the amount of work I have left to do seems nearly undoable.

Getting dressed is a gamble. If the pants fit my waist, will they be too tight in the calves and consequently spend the day being pulled down by the war between my limbs and my trunk? Will the underwear that sags in the ass still cling to my hips? If it clings to my hips, will my ass be too big for it? If the bra band is snug enough, are my boobs spilling out over the sides? If the neckline of my top looks right on the shoulders, will it still be too tight around my midsection when I sit down? If the dress hugs my curves, will it accentuate the bulge from my recently adjusted bra band and downsized tights squeezing my stomach? And don’t even get me started on the legs.

But the real mind fuck is the fucking mind.

I am approaching a size I have never been as an adult. The associations I have to that body are not positive. It was not a time when I felt safe, sure, or seen. I blame the grown people in my life for not helping me. I blame the people around me of all ages for not seeing what was going on. I blame society for normalizing the pressure on young girls such that the unhealthy ways they cope with it are easy to go undetected.

And I blame myself for letting things get so bad that it cost me.

It cost me my health. It cost me experiences. It cost me closeness. It cost me understanding of self-care and self-love. It cost me peace. It cost me good decisions. It cost me years of life I can’t change.

None of that resentment is productive. It might not even be entirely fair. But I feel it all the same. I feel it with the weight of decades and pounds of body fat that I did not put on consciously, but that I now am consciously taking off.
It padded me, but did not protect me.
It fucking hurts.

So I’m wandering around like an exposed nerve, hell bent on surrendering no ground on my half marathon training, because showing up matters to me. But today, after crying throughout therapy for the first time and wiping silent tears from my eyes for the rest of the afternoon in front of my work computer, I realized: this is not a knot I can untangle in an hour with a 7-mile run on the elliptical. Being low-key competitive with the people around me at the gym would not soothe this ache.

I needed to go outside.

It was nearly 60° today, and there was enough sunlight by late afternoon that it wound up being a great opportunity for my first trail walk of the year. It was treacherous; the foot+ of snow we got last month has not been cleared, leaving it to melt on its own. The freeze-thaw cycle and intermittent sun has created a soggy, muddy, slippery network of pathways that are clear in some places, frosted over in others, and wet everywhere else. The climb to the top of the trailhead was almost too much for my worn-in sneakers. With ankle concerns fresh on my mind, I nearly turned back; if the entire trail was going to be like this, it seemed imprudent to risk a fall.

But I thought, I’ll be careful. Maybe it’s not like this the whole way. Maybe it clears up later.

So I pressed on. I slid a little once or twice, but I was careful. It wasn’t like that the whole way. There were clear parts.

Then I got to this point.

And something about it struck me.

This was the thing:

Choose your metaphor.

The punctuation mark of this outdoor trek was at the very end. On my first venture to this part of the trail in the summer, I took a spill and did some damage to my knee — which also got infected. At that very same spot where I fell, there is now a 2.5′ x 4′ puddle of ankle-deep water from melted snow. The only way back to my car from there was either through that small lake, or all the way back up through the treacherous trail. I spent a fraction of a second verifying that there were no ways around the pool of melt, and then I trudged right through it. It was frigid and sloshy, but I didn’t care. A few minutes later, I was driving my soaked feet home to a warm shower, weighing the same amount yet unquantifiably lighter.

Emotional excavation is hard work. It requires a type of fortitude you don’t get by turning away from rough roads and uncomfortable obstacles on your path. It’s exhausting. It has no timeline. It fucking hurts. But if you keep going, carefully, it might not be like that the whole way. It might clear up later. You might even come out lighter.

by

NEW DAY 206: Hindsight is 2025

Last year was easily one of the worst of my life.

I spent the first few months of the year navigating sudden change, loss, and pain. I had concurrent health setbacks, financial hardship, and broken confidence that were exacerbated by that situation. I was completely demoralized and in absolute misery. It took months of hard work to get back on my feet, both figuratively and literally.

It was ugly.
It was painful.
I struggled through it.
But I did it.

Finally, in June, I had my turning point. I had put enough distance between myself and the traumatic events — as well as enough effort into recovering from them — that I was ready to take my power back. I embraced the idea of saying yes and dedicated the rest of the year to the things I wanted to reclaim: my story, my happiness, my strength, and my agency. The key to this was my mental health, and the key to that was my physical health. That’s how, just a little more than 7 short months ago, I found myself tentatively skulking back into the gym and telling myself I needed to make it through just 5 minutes on the elliptical. At the time, I could scarcely trek the distance from my parking space to the gym without getting winded, so that seemed like a tall order. And it was.

It was ugly.
It was painful.
I struggled through it.
But I did it.

And I kept doing it. For the rest of the year.

That has enabled me to experience a normal quality of life again. In the past 3 weeks alone, I have traveled internationally (via airplane in an economy class seat whose seatbelt I easily buckled for the first time in over a year), run 20 continuous minutes while on vacation, and completed a hilly outdoor 5K (walking). To say these things would have been impossible at this time last year is so true that it feels like it could somehow be an understatement. But in the here and now? It was a breeze, and I didn’t have to think about it at all in real time.

I can’t imagine myself ever being grateful for what happened to me as a result of others’ decisions in early 2025. None of it was logical, fair, or deserved. Part of me is still in disbelief about it. But I am grateful for what I ultimately decided to do about it. And I fully intend to continue along that path in 2026.

If the theme of last year was Reclaim and Recover, this year is about integration. All of the lessons I’ve learned and strides I’ve made for my health have been important, but isolating that progress from the precipitating events is not sustainable. I have to make peace with the past in order to advance towards the future I want. The only way to do that is by accepting and processing it all — not just from last year, but from all the years that came before it that I’m still carrying in the remaining extra weight on my body.

It’s time to really heal.

It might be ugly.
It might be painful.
I might struggle through it.
But I will do it.

by

NEW DAY 169: Fuckin’ nuts

It’s easy to notice certain behavioral changes during weight loss. At some point in the last 5 months, I started wearing dresses to accentuate curves instead of to disguise my whole body as an amorphous blob (and fooling nobody). I’ve become more comfortable putting my hair up in public and exposing the neck I suddenly have, which sometimes even sports a necklace. I now invite people to walk places with me in the absence of fear I’ll be panting for breath beside them the whole time, mortified. I no longer deflect positive remarks on my progress, and instead fully embraced my brother, along with his beaming exclamation when he saw me on Thanksgiving for the first time since early August. He’d had that look in his eye from the moment he saw me walk in that screamed I noticed!, and he couldn’t wait to tell me with full eye contact before he hugged me: “[Sister]! You’re so little!”

Other changes are harder to catch in action. Paradoxically, the biggest behavioral change I’ve made during my New Days is the one that completely failed to register until just a few hours ago: I’m no longer an emotional eater.

This is beyond monumental. It enters the realm of straining credulity.

Without going into a whole thing, I’ll state simply that the past month or so has been stressful, exciting, anxiety inducing, fun, sad, healing, deeply frustrating, and tiring. In short, it’s been taxing on the more-extreme ends of multiple points of my emotional range. I’ve felt it all. It’s shown up as tension in my arms and shoulders, a shorter fuse, and heightened restlessness, all exacerbated by insufficient sleep rooted in the intensity of how life is right now. How it has not shown up is in destructive behavior.

I cope by using my lunch break for a tour on the walking pad at my desk. I cope by venting my feelings in writing. I cope by commiserating with people in my support network. I cope by singing loudly while taking scalding-hot showers. I cope by running faster, or longer, or both.

I do not cope by consuming unhealthy things. (Anymore.) I don’t even have that impulse. (Anymore.)

When this realization struck me today, I froze in place. It had not occurred to me how much must have changed not only for that fundamental habit to have fallen out of my coping repertoire, but for me to have not even noticed that it had.

As if it’s not the biggest of deals.
As if it’s always been this way.
As if it was just that easy.

It is.
It hasn’t.
It was.

But here I am, reconstructed from the inside out. Because 168 days ago, I made a choice that created a chain reaction of subsequent choices that led to a change in me at the cellular level. In that tentative moment on that June day, without grasping the magnitude of what that one choice was setting in motion, I changed my life.

I am not the sad, broken, grayscale person I was for the first half of 2025. I am the centered, recovering, technicolor person on my way to becoming the happy, integrated, vibrant person I want to be.

Strength is a slow burn. You’re strong when you act on any choice you make, but it’s not until you one day realize how far you’ve come that you understand your strength now is only because of your strength then.

Anyone can make a choice: Stop eating the sugar. Train for the half marathon. Throw your hat in the ring for the opportunity. It’s every choice you make after that first one that will either honor that initial strength or not. That’s how you rebuild. That’s how you renew. That’s how you reclaim.

That’s how “never” becomes “maybe some day”, and “some day” becomes NOW.

Fuckin’ nuts.

by

NEW DAY 163: Thankful

Here’s a sentence that February-Me did not think my fingers would be typing in 2025: there are a lot of things to be thankful for this year. When it was my turn to share one of my points of gratitude around the Thanksgiving table this year, the one I went with was, “I am thankful that this year will be ending so much better than it started.”

It’s the healing emotional and psychological wounds from those violent first 3 months. It’s the tangible incoming changes I went after and earned in later parts of the year. It’s the exciting events on the horizon for myself and the people I care about. It’s the ability to believe in more good to come because of the good that is already here. It’s the way it all feels as a composite.

To keep the focus on health and weight loss, I took two grueling walks while staying with my parents for this holiday. The first was around their very hilly neighborhood: a 3-mile circuit I used to power walk in my late 20s that took about an hour, with some amount of difficulty. The last time I attempted it was on day 4 of 75 Hard this past summer. With the extra 48 lbs on my August body, it was a struggle; I truncated the distance to about half the full course and had to take frequent breaks to negotiate some of the most punishing hills, just to get through it a puffy, sweaty, depleted mess.
On Thanksgiving Day, I walked that full circuit without a single stop, including the final 20 minutes when it was lightly snowing. It was challenging and it demanded full cooperation from every muscle below my waist — and as a team, we met that challenge.

The second walk was from their house to the nearby park for a shorter but steeper set of hills. It’s been at least a month since I last trifled with the path that goes through the park, but more than 10 years since I tried to walk to the park from their home, which is also a hilly (and not super pedestrian friendly) route. This one’s total distance is about 2 miles, but takes about as long as the neighborhood one because of the unfavorable footing conditions and sharp inclines.
Today, I not only managed it in less than an hour — also in light snow — but I remained energized throughout the trek, which was not the case 5-6 weeks back when I last trudged that path.

This illustrates my notable progress on its own, but I also have to underscore what a big deal it is to have done so while still being a little cautious while still side-eyeing this bum ankle. Most importantly, though, I wanted to tackle those hills. I wanted to scale those steep grades. I wanted to conquer those paths.

A month ago, my attitude was still tentative, still hesitant, and still unconfident. Not anymore.

AND these exercise breaks were retreats and reward for myself, not annoying interruptions that I resented for cutting into my holiday family time and taking me away from an excuse to over-indulge in poor consumption choices. I looked forward to the walks for my mental recentering and welcomed the accompanying satisfaction and relief that came from completing them, and never thought about food at all.

Add to these little triumphs the experience of the meal itself, and it feels like a work of fiction. I had one normal-sized serving of each of the dishes I wanted rather than mounds of multiple helpings of sinful components at Thanksgiving dinner. When dessert came, I did opt for a little slice of my mom’s famous cheesecake — and I didn’t freak out. I spent zero seconds calculating calories or obsessing over sugar intake. Instead, I got to be present in the holiday moments with my family rather than trapped inside my head while I engaged in some sadistic battle of wits with temptation. And I got to go to bed feeling full, but not stuffed — and not at all deprived.

I had no temptation. I just had dinner.
And then dessert.

And then, no regrets.

Will I lose weight this week? I don’t know.

And for truly the first time EVER when I’ve been in Healthy Self Mode, I truly do not care.

What mattered to me this holiday was being able to enjoy it without the creeping anxiety of being surrounded by “dangerous” options.
Because I’ve spent the past 5 months learning how to trust myself, I got to do that.
And for that, I am deeply thankful.

by

NEW DAY 151: Milestones update

Today was unintentionally awesome.

I had a new DietBet to weigh in for, and a gym session planned for later, so I figured I’d get into my workout clothes and do the weigh-in right before it was time to head out. With my weigh-ins under more scrutiny these days, I wanted to make sure what I was wearing wasn’t too baggy. Since all of my go-to tops are laughably loose these days, I went into my workout shirts drawer and found a top that I remember fitting when I was last around my current weight many moons ago, although it seemed unlikely to fit when I held it up in front of me. I tried it on, and… to my complete and total shock, it not only fit, but it was also roomy! This top is more hanging off me than I am wearing it. I think that has to do with the way my weight loss has been working this time around: my shoulders narrowed at a much greater clip than the rest of my torso, so tops are a bit of a challenge right now. Work-out tops in particular tend to slide off my shoulders and feel flowy around my midsection, while somehow still also kind of fitting in that area. It’s tough to explain, but suffice it to say, nothing really fits at the moment. Anyway, even with that all going on, it was a fabulous surprise to have blazed right through the time when that top would have mostly fit, and right into looseness. I’ll wear it until it, too, becomes an almost-dress. (And good news: my DB weigh-in was accepted. Two more video weigh-ins to go!)

Then, it was off to the gym. Today’s workout in my half marathon training plan was scheduled to be cross-training, so I went to my old friend, the elliptical. I don’t know what had me all fired up, but I was immediately hitting the pace that it usually takes me the first 20-30 minutes to work up to — and I sustained or exceeded it for the entire time. Now, when I say “the entire time”, that wound up being far more than the 45-60 minutes I’d budgeted, because I had one of my classic evil elliptical thoughts within the first 5 minutes. And I fulfilled that evil thought by making today, the day I broke 8 miles.

To add some personal WOW to that, I notched those 8(.02, to be exact) miles in 76 minutes, which is a 9:29 pace. This is a personal best pace, elapsed time, AND distance.

I have never run a 10-minute mile on flat land, let alone under 10 minutes. As I am discovering through my treadmill trainings to work up to half-marathon-level endurance, what happens on the elliptical has virtually no bearing on what happens on an actual surface: the motion is different, the muscle coordination is distinct, and speed does not translate at all. Even with all that being true, it’s a BFD that I did this. That I can do this. Because 5 months ago, I couldn’t even keep the elliptical moving — at any speed — for 5 minutes, let alone 5 miles — or 8. I’m only now working up to sustain a full mile-run in one go on the treadmill. But my elliptical history tells me that when the half marathon is almost upon us 5 months from now, I’ll be ready for it.

The type of run I do on the elliptical may be dissimilar from the type of run I do on the treadmill, but the perseverance, self-coaching, and physical stamina apply across all types of fitness training. The beginning was slow on the elliptical, and I approached it intentionally and methodically, knowing it would take whatever time it would take. The result? I couldn’t hit a full mile for a while, and I unfortunately wasn’t recording these milestones yet — but I got there in a few hard-earned weeks. And then, it wasn’t long until I hit 2.
I hit 3.5 — breaking 3 for the first time — on August 19th, which was 2 months after I started my NEW DAYS.
I broke 4 just 2 weeks later, on September 2nd.
My goal at the time was to break 5 by the end of this year. Instead, I did it on September 19th.
Then I broke 6 later that same week, on the 23rd.
I thought that’d be plenty; I’d proven my point.
But then, on October 28th, I hit 7 — just a little over a month later.
And now, just under 3 weeks beyond that, 8.

Progress has a way of being self-perpetuating and exponential. I had no plan for hitting a certain mileage on the elliptical, and certainly no targeted date for doing it. I let the rhythm carry me, responded to my bursts of energy, and was realistic about checking in with my body and its radical ideas about taking me farther and faster. It hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

While I do have a training plan for running the halfer, I am still being agile and adjusting as necessary. I’ve already ratcheted things up a little here in the first week of training, but not in any kind of unrealistic or unsustainable way. It will still take me a while to be able to run an uninterrupted mile, and the pace will be unimpressive; but I’ll get there.
And then, it won’t be long until I hit 2.
Then 3.
Then 13.1.

I didn’t think I’d be genuinely excited about training for a half marathon, but… I am genuinely excited about training for a half marathon.

I missed the 50-day milestones update yesterday, so I’ll rattle off a few here:

  • Since February 20th, I have lost 80.4 lbs.
  • Since June 18th (the start of NEW DAYS), I have lost 60.8 of those lbs.
  • I’ve gone from being able to run barely 5 minutes, to 76 minutes (on the elliptical).
  • I’ve dropped from a snug 26 pants size, to a loose 18.
  • I’ve gone down 2 underwear sizes and 1 sports bra size.
  • I’ve dropped from a 3X shirt size to — depending on the manufacturer — L or XL.

But the most exciting stat is unquantifiable: I feel better. Actually better. In every way a person can feel any kind of way.

My theme for this chapter of my life is Reclaim. I am nowhere close to being done, but I am so proud of how well I’ve done with honoring that theme without wavering for the past 5 months.

I actually truly believe I can do this. I can see myself crossing the literal half marathon finish line, and the figurative finish line of this mission I have set for myself to reach a healthy size. It’s just… incredible. It’s a feeling I’ve never had before, and it has me absolutely floored. I don’t know what to do with it.

So I’ll just keep going.