Category Archives: weight loss

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DAY 319: Protein shake-up

I’ve noticed something strange this week:  I’m hungry.

Ever since I got myself to within a limited daily range of calories, I have not felt hungry except when it’s time to eat.  My body is accustomed to the 7-7:30 breakfast, 10-10:30 AM snack, 1-1:30 lunch, 4-4:30 PM snack, and 7-7:30 dinner schedule I’ve been on since late March, and it’s been a dream.  I’m programmed now, both mentally and physically, to expect food at these 3-hour intervals, so I don’t fall for trick cravings or get hungry at unusual times.  I know when the food is coming, I get hungry for it right before my meals, and I feel satisfied afterwards.

Annoyingly, this week has been different.  I’m voracious when I wake up, which is really strange.  Mornings are typically the time when I’m hungriest, but this week, I’ve been waking up with the appetite of someone who hasn’t eaten in days.  I feel OK after breakfast until AM snack, but then the intervening time up until lunch is a real slog.  Normally, I’m impervious to the smells of other people’s lunches in my office if they eat earlier than I do (which is most of them), but I’m painfully aware this week of how jealous I am that they’re eating and I’m not as soon as I pick up the scent of someone else’s food.  I finally eat lunch, and I’m not satisfied with it, so it’s misery until PM snack, which is also not satisfying.  I leave the office, internally whine my way through a workout at the gym, and go home all crabby because I’m hungry, sweaty, and tired, with no expectation of being satiated by the dinner I’m about to consume.  That prophecy fulfills itself and I end up eating another snack, which also fails to make me feel full, so then I’m mad at myself for taking in extra calories that did nothing for me in the end.  It pretty much sucks.

Last night, with my mind and stomach both churning as I was lying in bed hoping to fall asleep, it hit me:  I didn’t allot for enough protein in my meal planning this week.

Wow.  Rookie mistake.

I think I got a little too cocky with my planning game ever since I stopped using My Fitness Pal religiously to calculate my food for the week.  In my defense, it’s been working, but things have changed a bit since I’ve been on my souping kick.  Until this week, I was getting enough fish or chicken from my lunches to account for what is often an absence of meat in my soupy dinners in terms of my protein intake, but this week, I missed the mark.  My lunches are a VERY small portion of beef and broccoli (in which the ratio of broccoli to beef is very much higher on the broccoli side) with whole grain rice, and my dinners are a smaller-than-usual portion of puréed bean and parsnip soup with a side of Brussels sprouts (surprise, surprise).  My cooking this week yielded enough for maybe 4 real servings, but I portioned out 6 to last me through the week.  It isn’t enough in that respect alone, not to mention the very limited amount of protein I’m getting from it because of my poor macro planning.  Result:  hunger.

Soooooo, I’ve already concocted a much more robust meal plan for next week, which WILL give me the appropriate amount of protein and will hopefully get my hunger back in check.  I’m looking forward to my honey-curried chicken salads and turkey meatball soup with farro and kale.

This weight-loss scene, man.  So much to learn.

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DAY 317: ME WANT COOKIIIIIIIIIIE

I’m gonna give away the ending here:  I ate 3 cookies today.  Three delicious, dense, perfectly-textured cookies from a caterer for a meeting that was not even mine.  One was chocolate chip, one was white-chocolate-dipped chocolate-chocolate chip, and one was white-chocolate-dipped gingerbread.

I am SO GLAD I did that.

You know, it’s not often that I really want to indulge these days.  When I do feel a craving, I can usually identify it as a passing fancy entirely brought on by the power of suggestion, i.e. yumminess simply being there.  Before I knew there were sinful foods around, I wasn’t thinking about them, and therefore I didn’t actually want them.  When I performed the superhuman feat of resisting my mom’s legendary chocolate chip cookies while holed up at my parents’ house for 4 nights and 4 days last month, I was really working on conquering cravings and mastering will power.  I know I won’t always be perfect, but I sure was for those hours of constant temptation.  (My medal should be arriving any day now.)

So how can I possibly be glad that I went on what some would consider a binge on cookies mere hours ago?  Well, here’s why:

  1. I really fucking wanted cookies, and I am a human in a world where cookies exist, and giving up treats for life was never part of my deal with myself.  So I ate cookies and promised myself I would enjoy every bite, and that’s exactly what I did.
  2. This was not some slippery slope into reversion to the girl I was 100+ pounds ago.  I ate my 3 cookies, finished the day of work, and went to the gym before coming home.
  3. Counterintuitively, the cookies are the reason I worked out, AND the reason I did my full workout.  In fact, the intensity with which I wanted those cookies earlier matched the intensity with which I did NOT want to go to the gym tonight.  But the cookies are what got me there.  And when I wanted to quit 10 minutes into my hour, as I was staring at the seconds ticking down to the 10-minute mark and preparing to stop my run and hop off the elliptical, my eyes scanned left and saw that I had only burned 198 calories.  That’s not even one cookie gone.  That settled that; I wasn’t going anywhere.  5.24 miles and 798 torched calories later, it’s safe to say those cookies are history.  Even if that’s all I burned off today, the fact that I did HIIT for an hour means that my body is going to spend the next several hours attacking other calories.  I still created my caloric deficit today and got in a quality sweat.

 

Thank you, cookies!  You were everything I wanted and more, and I will always think of you fondly.

I’m just gonna piggy-back off of that and give a shout out to my body.  It’s doing wonderful work lately.  Last week, I gave it both pints of the Häagen Dazs that spent several weeks in my freezer, and my body basically laughed at me by giving me a four-pound drop on the scale — my biggest drop since early October.  Like, “Really?  You think I’m scared of a little ice cream?  I remember this stuff.  Nice try.”  I’m so glad my body and my mind have the same defiant streak.

Then yesterday morning, for the sheer hell of it, I decided to try on my purple oh-honey pants that were more than a size too small at the time of purchase less than a month ago.  BOOM!  Those suckers fit.  When I got them, they didn’t even make it up around my hips; they now zip and fasten fine.  They are NOT ready for public display because they give me some bulge spillage (sexy), but they will be soon enough.

So it seems my doctor was right:  my body loves me right now.  And I love it!

Moral of the story:  I’m not endorsing a Häagen Dazs diet here, but don’t let anyone tell you desserts are always a bad idea.  Sometimes they’re exactly what you need: mind, body, and soul.

 

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DAY 315: Drastic measures

I’m open about my pitiful self-measurements skills.  In fact, I’m so hopelessly rotten at it that I gave up and stopped taking them after August.  Tonight, after deleting two half-written blog entries out of frustration, I realized I am out of material.

Then, I spotted my measuring tape.

Neck:  -2.2″  (since 4/18/15)
Chest (above breasts):  -2″ (since 7/19/15)
Bust:  -8″ (since 4/18/15)
Waist:  -9.5″ (since 4/18/15)
Hips:  -11″ (since 4/18/15)
Butt:  -12″ (since 4/18/15)
Tricep (left):  -4″ (since 4/18/15)
Bicep (left):  -3.3″ (since 4/18/15)
Forearm (left):  -1.7″ (since 4/18/15)
Wrist (left):  -0.7″ (since 4/18/15)
Middle Finger (left):  -0.4″ (since 4/18/15)
Thigh (left):  -6″ (since 4/18/15)
Calf (left):  -1.5″ (since 4/18/15)
Lap (left):  +4″  (since 4/18/15)

 

People.

I’ve lost just shy of two and a half feet from my mid-section (waist+hips+butt).  I’ve lost a full foot from my ass.  (There’s an image!  ASS FOOT!)

Consequently, I’ve gained four inches of surface lap space.

Most strikingly?  I’ve lost a total of 62.3 inches.  That’s over five fucking feet.  That’s almost my full height.  In fact, it’s more than my full height, adding in the lost inches from the right side of my body and the parts I didn’t measure.

I’ve shrunk by my full height.

The end.  (Except I’m not even done yet!)

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DAY 308: Snow daze

Snow my god!  Snowtastrophe!  SNOWBLIVION!!!!  I’m more tired of tortured snow puns than I thought possible.  Snowzilla?  REALLY?  I thought it couldn’t get worse than Snowpocalypse and Snowmageddon.  How about snowverreaction?  Tossing “snow” in to replace the first syllable of some cataclysmic word is not clever.  I can handle the transportation paralysis and forced hibernation; it’s the criminal level of forced portmanteaus I can’t handle.

Please stop.  You’re doing unspeakable things to English.  What did English ever do to you?!  SNOW YOUR ROLL.  (That’s how it’s done.)

Anyway, back to my life as a fat girl, which I realize is the actual purpose of this blog…

I’m pleased and a little shocked to report that after 4 nights surrounded by mountains of homemade cookies at my parents’ house, I had not a single one.  NOT ONE.  I should emphasize that I was not only surrounded by the cookies, but surrounded by people eating them.  FOUR DAYS OF PEOPLE EATING DELICIOUS COOKIES AND I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE A BITE.  I leave here in about an hour, and I have no plans to break that streak.  It was so difficult, and I wanted to eat all of them, which is why I knew I couldn’t have one.  I can’t believe it.  I escaped without surrendering!

A huge reason for that is that I took a few minutes to make preparations, like organizing a snack survival kit for all 4 days, before leaving my place.  I also made sure I got in all of my steps according to Jiminy in spite of being off routine and needing to make an extra effort to work out.  This involved scoring a week-long pass to a local gym so I could get legitimate workouts in since exercising outside wasn’t really on the menu this time.  So, yes, it took a lot of additional work to pull off what is second nature to me when I’m in my natural habitat, but make no mistake:  it was still overwhelmingly a mental struggle.  I had to constantly remind myself that I’m on a mission here, and there is no pause button.  I have impending weigh-ins and momentum that should not be compromised.  I haven’t had that much trouble with temptation since before I started losing the weight, and I couldn’t believe how hard this was.  I had to tell myself over and over again that I had a choice:  have a cookie and be mad at myself, or resist them for this entire visit and be immensely proud.  I chose pride, and I feel AWESOME!

Along the way, I had a couple of memorable weight-loss moments that impacted me and became part of my arsenal of resistance.  (WOW, that sounds militant!)  First, when the snow stopped on Saturday, my mom and I shoveled out the driveway and de-snowed my and my brother’s cars that were parked there.  Even with two of us, it took an hour to finish because of how much snow we had to clean up.  With all that work, I never got winded or tired, and I kept thinking to the last time I had to dig out my car and how laborious it was.  All I had to do was clean the snow off of my car and shovel a little bit behind the rear wheels so I could back out of my outdoor parking space at my apartment.  That’s something that shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes with the quantity of snow I was dealing with at the time (maybe 2″), but it took nearly a half hour.  I went inside afterwards feeling completely exhausted and was covered in snow from being so big that there was no way to brush off my vehicle without leaning against it and getting snow all over me.  That was then.  This year, my body never made contact with the cars when I was cleaning them off, and I actually enjoyed shoveling for the productive workout it gave me.

At my grandfather’s party yesterday, I made the mistake of wearing a sleeveless dress in the dead of winter.  At a certain point, one of my mom’s cousins, who’s a massage therapist, came up to me privately to say hi.  He didn’t waste a lot of time getting to,  “I don’t know if this is a polite thing to bring up with a woman, but…” and went into how amazing and toned my arms look.  He said that as a massage therapist, he notices these things, but I must be doing some work on my arms.  He asked more about it and said to keep doing whatever I’m doing, because the effect is obvious and looks great.  That made me feel pretty rad!

Beyond that, people kept telling me how happy and confident I seemed, and that kind of threw me because I don’t really think I was doing anything to give anyone that impression.  It’s not like I was front and center, but pretty much everyone I talked to make some remark about that.  No one asked about the weight loss, but I could tell that sometimes they were waiting for me to say something about it (and I didn’t).  I guess I’m carrying myself differently and just projecting this stuff.  And the 3″ heels that made me a respectable height probably helped and would give the illusion of confidence to most people.  😉  Oh, and then I ate a piece of the birthday cake, and was fine with that choice/had planned to do it, anyway.

It’s about time for me to be getting ready to hit the road, so I’m gonna wrap this up here.  Not an earth-shattering update this time, but I had to record for posterity that it is in fact possible for me to spend this much time in an environment inundated with my trigger foods and not cave to them.  It’s possible because IT HAPPENED.  Woo!

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DAY 305: ‘Snow big deal

Loooooooooong story short, I skipped town ahead of the massive, massive blizzard expected to pummel the eastern seaboard this weekend.  I was going to be visiting my family this weekend anyway for my grandfather’s 90th birthday celebration (!), so I just left two days earlier than planned to get out ahead of the snow.

When I realized the weather was going to be bad enough to make me need to change my plans, my biggest concern was figuring out how I was going to manage to work out while away.  I can manage 2 days (per the original itinerary) away from the gym without panicking about losing my routine, but five days with no gym time at this particular moment, when working out outside will be difficult or impossible and I had no mental preparation for such a stretch without exercise, was really stressing me.  But not for long — I didn’t have time for that.

Quickly, I got organized.  I traveled to my parents’ house with my homemade soup for every day I’d be here, AM and PM snacks measured out in baggies for each day, and some perishable food items that I can cook for all of us that would’ve gone bad if left in my fridge.  I optimistically tossed my gym clothes and shoes, along with my fitness journal, into my bag and sped away yesterday afternoon.

Today, while sitting on my butt in front of the TV with my dad, I got really antsy.  I could feel that I needed to move.  I have a suuuuuuuuuuper old one-week guest pass at the gym I used to go to when I lived here and was attempting weight loss several years ago, so I thought I’d dust it off and see whether I could use it myself since I’m no longer a member there.  I took it to the gym, and even though they knew it was an old pass that was really no longer valid, I was able to finagle one week of access out of them.  Gym conundrum resolved.

I did my arm weights and my old cardio staple today.  Because this gym is laid out differently from the one I belong to where I live, the mirrors allow me to see myself from unusual angles.  When I was pumping that iron, I couldn’t believe how many muscles I could see in my arms and shoulders!  Then, when I was powering through on the elliptical, I worked up a sweat I haven’t achieved in months.  It was a very satisfying workout, and I’m proud of myself for listening to my restless body and figuring out a way to get in my burn while totally out of my element because of the elements.  I have such peace of mind knowing that I have a way to exercise every day, and that I removed the option of excuses from my path for how ever many days  — well, up to 7 — before I can safely go back.

When I got back from the gym, my dad gave me a strange look and said, “You look taller.”

Yeah, I thought I was talking taller today.  Stride of pride.

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DAY 303: The 10 Commandments of Gymnasia

I have a love/hate relationship with my gym:  I love what I get from working out, but man, I hate being there.  My gym is a jungle.

For some reason, during the winter months, my gym allows a local high school’s girls’ crew team free rein of the facility.  They overrun the locker room, hog the machines, and strut around the place gossiping with each other in their tiny shorts that are more like underwear.  It immediately transports me right back to high-school phys ed, which I disliked enough the first time around.

There’s also a heap of resolutioners making the place feel crowded, and the worst of these are the men who think they’re gonna Hulk out.  They select weights on the machines that they struggle to handle (which is the wrong way to work out), and it makes me nervous to see it because they’re clearly going to hurt themselves.  They do like 4 reps of an inappropriate weight setting, and then they sit there for 3 or 4 minutes between sets, of which there are like 8.  It’s infuriating.

Far and away the most annoying character at my gym these days is the tech addict.  The people who walk around while looking at their e-mail and almost collide into me are right up there with the ones who sit for 5 minutes on the chest press machine without using the thing because they’re too busy texting.  It makes me absolutely crazy to have to wait for these people to quit socializing and focus on their workouts just so I can take care of mine.

When these frustrations reach boiling point, I like to fantasize about what would happen in my perfect gym, if I made the rules.  All that time I’ve spent tapping my foot waiting for a machine or giving disapproving side-eye to the hoards of high schoolers has resulted in this:

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF THE GYM MACHINES

  1. THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER MACHINES BEFORE ME.  Drop your freaking cell phone off in the locker room and do what the hell you came to do.  Your social life can spare you for a measly hour of the day.  I mean, do you suddenly start jogging or doing bicep curls in the middle of a business meeting or a date?  Didn’t think so.  Be where you are and stop making other people wait for you to stop distracting yourself when you should all be at the gym to work out, damn it.
  2. THOU SHALT NOT USE THY GYM IN VAIN.  Lose the make-up, the jewelry, and the perfume/cologne.  No one is impressed with how cute you look, only with how much sweat you drip with at the end of your workout.  And folks would prefer it if you didn’t reek of dead flowers while working up that sweat.
  3. THOU SHALT COMMIT ADULTERY.  As in, you must be an adult:  18 or older.  Furthermore, do not come to the gym with your varsity sports team to monopolize space and fill the air with your idle chatter.  Grown-ups are here, kids.  Shouldn’t you be doing your homework?  Go home.
  4. THOU SHALT NOT BOGART ME.  Everyone around you paid just as much to be here as you did.  Don’t be grunting and panting all over me using unrealistically heavy resistance in service of some misguided delusion that you will become brawny and muscular in a single workout.  Step aside for the lady waiting for your stupid ass to finish.  Or at least let her work in with you, even though that shit is hella annoying.
  5. THOU SHALT NOT STEAL.  If someone is clearly using a machine but steps away for a moment to refill a water bottle, leave that machine alone.  You know your gym comrade is coming back if they left their stuff draped on the machine.  However, if they leave their stuff on a machine you’ve been waiting for for a while and they are gone for several minutes, fuck them and their presumptuous entitlement and go get your burn on.  Gyms are tiny colonies of renters, and throwing your stuff on something doesn’t make you an owner.  It’s a fine line, but err towards not stealing for the good of the community.
  6. THOU SHALT MURDER.  Calories, that is.  If you took one of the ellipticals with the moving arm handles and you aren’t using them, you’re wasting an opportunity to burn.  If you aren’t here to murder, go use a machine without that option so that a real murderer can hit it hard.
  7. HONOR THY SURROUNDINGS AND EQUIPMENT.  Don’t trash the locker room, and for the love of all that is holy, wipe down your sweat-drenched machine after you’re done with it.  It’s a badge of honor for you, but no one else is reveling in that.
  8. REMEMBER THE WORKOUT SESSION AND KEEP IT HOLY.  Attention all gym staff:  interrupting a gym-goer’s workout to try to sell them personal training sessions is truly bad form.  No one wants to talk with you when they’re out of breath from physical exertion, least of all about spending more of their money to spend time with someone who doesn’t understand that.  Step the hell off.  Not cool.
  9. THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR’S MACHINE.  Stop looking at the screen display of the person working out next to you.  It’s awkward and creepy.  Eyes on your own paper, stalker.
  10. THOU SHALT SHAKE THY GROOVE THING.  Move your body, gym-goer.  Focus on getting fit and healthy, and have fun!  Pump your fist when you amp it up, raise your arms over your head when you break a personal record, and whisper words of encouragement to yourself when you need to persevere.  Find a way to make the process enjoyable.  It’s essential to your mentality, and the positivity is contagious.  Go get ’em, tiger!

 

Now, who wants to spot me ten thousand dollars so I can open up my utopian gym??

Happy workout!

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DAY 302: A shot in the arm

I had my follow-up appointment with my doctor today for a progress check on my weight loss.  Again, she commended me for my efforts and affirmed that they were paying off.  She told me she didn’t think we needed to do blood work to check on anything; my weight was going down, my vitals were strong, and from our conversation, she knew I was doing everything right.  “Your body loves you right now,” she told me with a massive smile.

We talked a little bit about what I was doing, how many steps I’m getting these days, and whether I was sticking with my goal weight as my target.  She updated my file on the computer and recommended another check-up in another 6 months.  I know that in that moment, we were both imagining where I’d be at that point.  I said, “I’ll be just about done!”  She said, “I won’t even recognize you!”

When I told her I had lost 100 pounds since starting this madness, I received another high-five and another “I’m proud of you” to go with the ones I collected from her last time I was there.  She complemented those with commendations for checking in with her as an accountability measure rather than to ask for diet pills or other prescription shortcuts.  As we were wrapping up, she asked me if I had gotten the flu shot this year. I told her I had already been sick with something flu-adjacent this year, and she said something like, “There are several strains this year.  It would still be good to get one.  It’s the only thing I can offer you!”  I laughed, decided it was a good idea, and indulged her need to feel like she had helped her patient.  And man, for the first time I can remember, the shot actually kinda hurt.  Thanks a lot, enormous arm muscles/possibly sadistic nurse.

Talking about this in medical terms, from a purely scientific standpoint, really helps me.  My doctor is able to confirm from a whole other angle that what I’m doing is working, and she tells me with amazement in her voice how great I’m doing by not looking for quick fixes.  She’s proud of me for tackling my problems head on, for not going on crash diets, and for pushing myself physically without endangering my health.  I went straight to the gym after seeing her, and I KILLED it from start to finish.  That woman always reminds me how powerful I am!

So, once again, my doctor gave me a shot in the arm.  And then, she gave me a literal shot in the arm.

This whole little weight-loss gamble?  Worth a shot.

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DAY 301: New York times

This was a monumental weekend for me, so I’m just gonna go ahead and overshare the whole thing.

If you follow my posts on DietBet, you may know that I spent the MLK Day weekend in New York. I have a handful of NYC-based friends who are all from different parts of my life, but each is dear to me in a special way. Before life became a monomaniacal weight-loss revolution, I used to visit New York several times a year to see these special people, but until this weekend, I hadn’t been there since the summer of 2014. This was my first totally free weekend in a while and will be my last for the next 3 months, so I decided it was high time I catch up with my favorite New Yorkers.

I left work early on Friday to hop on my bus outta town. As a Recovering Fat Girl, I traveled in a totally mad fashion, sacrificing luggage space most people reserve for clothes so I could instead fit cold lunch to eat during the trip and my snack staples for every single day I’d be gone. (Traveling light is a lifestyle impossibility for me these days, but I’m posting this from the train back and not at all regretting that choice – just ask those carrots I’m about to tear into.) During the bus ride to New York, I had no Internet service and couldn’t concentrate on the magazines I’d brought along to read because the dude next to me was distracting me with his endless phone calls. That’s when I remembered that my lifelong friend, the daughter of my dad’s friends since college who truly grew up with me and has shared so many experiences and family memories with me that we think of each other as sisters, had been trying to get a hold of me. I sent Sis a text and asked if she could talk now, and a few minutes later, we were on the phone. (Two can play that game, noisy seat neighbor! / I have become the enemy.)

Long story short, her reason for trying to reach me was to ask me to be her maid of honor in her wedding next year.

I had figured and hoped that she would ask me to be a bridesmaid, but I didn’t see MoH coming, even in spite of our close relationship. I was so moved when she asked me that I couldn’t even speak. She of course knew why and said, “DON’T CRY, you’re gonna make ME cry!” My response was, “Fuck you, I’m on a bus!” Sweet story, huh? More for family lore. 😉 We both laughed, gushed about how much we love each other, and then she re-asked me so I could accept without profanities, like a fucking lady.

This means a lot, lot, lot to me. I can’t wait to stand beside my only “sister” on the happiest day of her life. I’ve also never been anyone’s maid of honor before, so honored is exactly how I’m feeling.

And to take this in a completely selfish direction, I can’t help thinking that I actually might not be that sad, fat, single girl whom people assume was put in the wedding party out of pity when Sis’s wedding day comes. I’m going to be able to buy my dress from the same store as the other bridesmaids. I’m going to wear it without being self-conscious. I’m going to walk down the aisle without getting winded. I’m going to be able to stand around in heels all day without thinking about it. I’m not going to ruin her pictures. I’m going to eat her wedding cake without fearing that people around me are looking at me and thinking, “ooooh, she really shouldn’t be eating that.” And I’m going to dance my ass off at that reception without breaking a sweat.

The remainder of the bus ride passed pretty quickly, as I was lost in my excited thoughts.

Once I arrived in New York, I subwayed it to meet a friend for dinner. He looked up from the table where he was waiting when he heard the door open, but did a double-take because he didn’t realize it was me. When I got to the table, he stood up and just said, “Hi! You look great!” And then I ate my face off and it was awesome.

When we reached his building, I hoofed up these stairs all the way to his 5th-story walk-up and wasn’t winded until the 4th floor instead of the 4th step.

stairs

I weighed in for a round of a Transformer DietBet at his apartment the next morning. Later, I met his boyfriend and wasn’t the slightest bit shy.

After that, I met up for brunch with a friend, my cousin, and his girlfriend whom I was meeting for the first time. We stayed chatting and laughing for hours. I ate my face off and it was awesome.

That night, we watched a mind-blowingly awful AFC divisional game and then went to my friend’s favorite Indian restaurant for dinner. I ate my face off and it was awesome.

Yesterday was day 300 of my mission. I commemorated it with a banana for breakfast, then brunch at a restaurant where another friend works in the Flat Iron District. I hugged the shit out of him and laughed harder than I have in ages with him and the girlfriend who came with me. He sent essentially the entire menu to our table for free. I ate my face off and it was awesome.

We stumbled through our food coma daze back outside to watch the other AFC divisional game, and it was the first snow. I felt my inner child surge back to life as I caught giant snowflakes in my mouth while zigzagging around the tourists on 5th Avenue and feeling the cold wind whip around me while we waited for our transfer on a platform outside. We got home, watched the game, and concluded the day with pierogies. I ate my face off and it was awesome.

This morning, I peeled my calorie-soaked, sleep-deprived self off my friend’s sleeper couch and staggered to the train station to go home. I took a banana with me, then chose a cup of watermelon and a bran muffin from among the donuts, pastries, and bagels for breakfast, and a hearty salad from among the sandwiches, pizzas, and fried chicken for my on-board lunch for later. I know how to not eat my face off, and it is awesome.

Experiencing New York without that extra hundred pounds was a completely different way of doing it. I wanted to walk everywhere and I exhausted my friends with my nonsense. I tackled all those subway and apartment-building stairs with reckless abandon. I wove in and out of gawking tourists in Midtown with the speed and agility of an aggressive ballerina. I ate shitty stuff, but not a gluttonous amount of it. I fit comfortably onto the subway, inside of elevators, and into restaurant booths. I felt like I got to fully participate in every part of the weekend, and it’s all because of how different my life is now, after all this weight loss and what comes along with it.

I’m seeing my doctor tomorrow, and even though I didn’t hit the weight I was hoping to in time to see her, I am really looking forward to the check-up. I can’t wait to tell her how much I ate my face off, and how awesome it was do it with the joy in my heart that comes from knowing it wasn’t a big deal because I’ve got this. I can’t wait to tell her I’ve lost 100 pounds and am gonna finish the job this year. I’m so excited to eat the healthy meals I spent the first part of my last morning at my friend’s house planning out today. I can’t wait to see what the scale says on Sunday. I can’t wait to pick out my MoH dress.

And yet, I’ve somehow learned to be patient enough to permit indulgent brunches with loved ones here and there. That’s part of being fearless. I’m practically giddy with the knowledge that I almost definitely gained weight over the last 3 days, and I’m about to work it all off and then some. That’s part of being confident.  I’m anxious to get the hell off of this train so I can go to the gym today.  That’s part of being healthy.

Am I a little crazy? Hell, yeah. Am I emotionally high from quality social contact this weekend? No contest. Am I a giant nerd about this whole weight-loss thing all of a sudden? For sure. Want me to say it? OK: I’m a total loser.

That’s what makes me a winner. 😀

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DAY 300: Milestones update

 

As promised, here is a long-overdue milestones update to commemorate day 300 of my mission!

Even though it’s been 100 days between updates rather than the usual 50 I’ve tried to stick to, there are fewer notable milestones that I hit this time.  HOWEVER, they are much more significant.  Among these major accomplishments, which I view as probably my most important, #6 is the one I’m proudest of.  I’m getting over some of my awkwardness around how fat I used to be/still am.  I still haven’t gotten to the point where I feel OK with sharing my starting weight or my goal weight, but I have un-redacted all of my goals, and that’s a pretty big step (and also pretty big clues as to what those numbers are).  The personal growth is an amazing byproduct of the hard work and physical changes.

I won’t completely spoil it all in the preamble.  Check it out for yourselves.  (Skip to the end if you’re not interested in reliving my first 200 days.)


Achieved within first 71 days

  1. Found a sports bra that fits so I can even work out. When I first started losing weight, I couldn’t get into any of the ones I could find.
  2. Grabbed my foot from behind when my leg is bent at the knee in order to stretch out my thigh.
  3. Walked at a 3.0 MPH pace without struggling.
  4. Made it up one flight of stairs without getting winded.
  5. Stopped snoring and start sleeping better.
  6. Lost 10 lbs.
  7. Lost 25 lbs.
  8. Got under the weight limit to stand on the step stool.


Achieved between days 72 and 100

  1. Sat on my own furniture.
  2. Painted my own toe nails without contorting myself.  
  3. Closed my towel the whole way around me when I get out of the shower.  
  4. Wore the oh-honey pair of pants I bought on April 11th.
  5. Wore the oh-honey shirt I bought on May 2nd.   
  6. Walked a mile at 3.5 MPH.
  7. Got 3 miles on the fat burn setting on the elliptical.   
  8. Tied my shoes without having to sit down.
  9. Went down a notch on my Vivo Fit band.   
  10. Lost 50 lbs.
  11. Lost 10% of starting weight.
  12. Stood for prolonged periods of time without numbness in my leg.  (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
  13. Put ankle on opposite knee without having to use hands.   
  14. Fit into a restaurant booth.  
  15. Wore shirt size XL.
  16. Did 200 miles in a month.


Achieved between days 100 and 150

  1. Fit into my plaid rain coat.
  2. Went down a half shoe size.
  3. Wore a dress.
  4. Fit comfortably into airplane seats.
  5. No longer in “extremely obese” category (BMI <40).  (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
  6. Got away from pre-diabetic sugar levels.
  7. Folded down the tray table from the seat in front of me on a plane.
  8. Lose 25% from heaviest weight.
  9. Lose 75 pounds.
  10. Wore my ring on my middle finger.
  11. Wore a swimsuit in public.
  12. Hiked up a mother-effing mountain, with mother-effing company.
  13. Reached halfway point of weight-loss mission!**
  14. Laugh-cried while trying on the “before” dress, which I put on by stepping through the neck hole.**
  15. Purchased and wore high heels!**


Achieved between days 150 and 200

  1. Fit into my red jacket.
  2. Jogged 5 minutes without stopping.**  
  3. Jogged a mile without stopping.
  4. Jogged 1.5 mile without stopping.**
  5. Wore shirt size L.
  6. Wore skinny jeans.**
  7. Bent over and touch my toes without bending at the knee.** 
  8. Wore a skirt.**
  9. Got too small for an oh-honey item of clothing.**  
  10. Crossed my legs.
  11. Fit into only my side of the bench on Metro.
  12. Did 225+ miles in a month.**
  13. Hosted my first Diet Bet!**


Achieved between days 200 and 300

  1. Switched to the small Vivo Fit band.
  2. Got out of plus sizes.
  3. Wore two oh-honey rings that have never fit before.**
  4. Lost 30% of starting weight.**
  5. Lost 100 pounds.
  6. Got the hell over myself and some of my weird privacy hang-ups.**


Goals to be achieved

  1. Jog in and complete a 5K.
  2. Fit into one leg of my fat-girl gray pants.
  3. Wear a single-digit dress size.
  4. Wear a single-digit pants size.
  5. No longer be in “overweight” category (BMI <25).
  6. Wear shirt size M.
  7. No longer be in “obese” category (BMI <30).  (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
  8. Reach final weight goal.
  9. Reach 50% of starting weight.  (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
  10. Lose 150 pounds.  (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
  11. Wear a belt.
  12. See my feet over my belly when I look down (standing still).
  13. Fit into roller coasters. I couldn’t do it at a theme park 2 years ago, and had to wait around for my friend to go through the line and ride it by herself — sucked for both of us. — I’m absolutely sure I could cross this off now, but I haven’t had the chance to test it yet, so it stays on the to-do list.
  14. Do 250 miles in a month.
  15. Fit large VivoFit band around my ankle.

Watch this space.

 
**These were not on my list of goals, but they were notable milestones that I hit during this period.

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DAY 296: Sinking to a new low

…on the scale, that is.

I strategically do my weekly weigh-ins on Sunday evenings before dinner.  It helps me temper the back-to-work blues as a way to see what my week’s worth of fitness efforts produced and as a baseline for what I’ll have to put in for the week ahead.  I do it at that time of day because it feels like the most accurate reflection of my weight:  not first thing in the morning after a night’s digestion and dehydration, not just after exercise with the same factors, and not too soon after eating with a full stomach.  Weighing myself just before dinner reflects most of a day’s exercise and eating on the scale, but with enough space in between those things to show me what my “true” weight is.  (Note:  this is based on no science or recommendations, just my own rhythms and personal logic.  Weighing in first thing in the morning as most people do feels like cheating to me for some reason, even though weight on the scale is “real” at any time of day.)

This post is delayed from my most recent weigh-in 3 days ago, but it’s happy news that’s worth sharing:  I’m at my lowest weight in 5½ years.  I’m also within striking distance of several Diet Bet goal weights and personally — maybe universally, in the world of losers — meaningful milestones.

It’s a drastically different life from the one I had a year ago today.

On January 13th, 2015, I was in a work situation that was so truly chaotic, it would be difficult to hyperbolize.  I was in the middle of euthanizing a close friendship of 15 years.  I was missing my family after the holidays.  I wasn’t sleeping well.  I wasn’t eating well.  I had no free time because of the work disasters, which meant no social time.  I was carrying around unquantifiable emotional baggage and an extra person’s body weight worth of physical baggage.  I was exhausted, stressed, angry, frustrated, depressed, confused, and miserable.  I felt hopeless and alone.  At no point in my life have I ever truly thought about wanting to die, but at that time, I didn’t truly want to live.  I was at my highest weight ever, and I don’t think I’ve ever been lower.

On January 13th, 2016, I am on my way to being the person that the person sitting at this desk last year wanted to be.  I can handle work, and when it gets worse than the usual amount of bad, I can leave the office without taking the emotional toxins with me.  I have moved well past the death of the friendship that had run its course.  I sleep well.  I eat well.  I protect my free time with the resolve of the Secret Service, and I make sure it includes socialization.  I am emotionally and physically lighter.  I am rested, calm, steady, flip, amused, lucid, and content.  I feel hopeful and supported.  And on the scale, I’ve found the best possible way to be lower than I was a year ago.

This is for you, old me.  I got you.