Category Archives: weight loss

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DAY 115: Doctor! Doctor! Give me the news!

I’m not even sorry for getting that song in your head.

At the end of March, I went for my first doctor’s appointment in about 12 years.  I had already dropped about 15 pounds from my all-time heaviest weight in January, but this was obviously a drop in the bucket.  I had put off visiting a GP for so long because of the overwhelming embarrassment and shame I felt at going in there and having my weight read, not to mention what other bad news may have been revealed.  I was finally in the right mindset to go by then, though, and so my outward adult dragged my inner child in for a long-overdue check-up.

I spent the appointment fighting back tears while complaining of incredible stress, nerves, anxiety, fear, and sense of worthlessness.  I expressed to the doctor that I knew my weight was the main source of all of these things, even if there were additional external contributors.  She listened to everything I said, spoke with me as if she had all the time in the world, and provided support instead of lectures.  Even though I still had the expected sense of shame for being my size, it felt good to actually unload all of that on someone who didn’t have an emotional stake in it (and therefore wouldn’t tell me things weren’t that bad), but who could still be sympathetic and easy to talk to.  After the appointment, my doctor ordered a full blood panel for me.  Not surprisingly, my numbers could have been better.  My sugars were at pre-diabetic levels and my bad cholesterol was a little elevated.  Immediately after sharing this information with me, my doctor suggested I work on my weight as we had discussed, and come back and see her in July.

This morning was the follow-up appointment.  I have never, ever, ever, ever, in my entire life, smiled so much in a doctor’s office.  That includes when I was little and used to get pretzel rods and lollipops for getting those shots I was never afraid of.

First, the nurse took me back to take my blood pressure.  Then, it was scale time.  I guess she was using my previous weight as a starting point, because she moved the 50-pound weight into a category I haven’t been in in a while.  I almost told her that was too high, but figured it would be more fun to let her discover that on her own.  (I’m a smug little thing sometimes.)  Once the nurse notated my weight, we went back over to the exam table and she entered it into the computer, where she kind of froze in place.

“When you were here last time, we had you weighed in at XXX — is that RIGHT?!” she asked.

“Yup.” I said.

“GO ‘HEAD!” she exclaimed.  She continued about how hard I must be working, that I was doing great, and keep up the good work.  That was pretty cool.

Then, I was in the exam room alone and waiting for the doctor.  Usually, I check my phone or read something while I’m waiting around, but this time, I just kept staring at things around the room.  My hands.  The extra expanse of lap I could see on the exam table compared to the last time I was there.  The scale weights, which the nurse had left in place, reflecting my weight loss over the last 3.5 months.  My reflection in the metal paper towel holder.

When my doctor came in, she greeted me, asked how I was doing, and whether I was experiencing any new pain since our last visit — she was in the process of pulling up my file on the computer screen as I answered her questions.  Suddenly, she furrowed her brow and stared very seriously at the computer screen.  Then, she murmured, “Wait…” and inched her face closer to the screen.  I was actually worried, and said, “Oh no, what’s wrong?!”  The doctor’s face immediately broke into a huge grin as she looked at me and asked, “Have you lost fifty-one pounds since your first visit?!”

The woman did not stop smiling the rest of the time she was in the room.  Before she’d come in to see me, the nurse had told her I’d lost weight, and she was expecting it to be 10, maybe 15 pounds.  She kept repeating how proud she was of me, how impressed she was, how I had made her day, how I was doing this the right way.  She wanted to know what I was doing, if everything felt right while I was moving, what I was eating, how often I was working out, if all of the weight loss was intentional, how my anxiety and stress were, and how I felt overall.  She kept nodding and smiling throughout the conversation.  She asked what my goal weight was and approved of it.  When we came to the point of the conversation about the purpose of this doctor’s visit, and she realized it was for follow-up blood work, she scoffed out loud and said, “Well, you’re not gonna be pre-diabetic now.”  She said we could skip the blood draw unless I wanted to do it, and I said I actually did want to see the change in numbers, and she was even excited about THAT.  At some point, she mentioned that their office is going to move to a big building where they’ll have a training center, a demonstration kitchen, seminars, support groups, etc., and said she would want to bring me around as show and tell for all her patients who insist they’re doing everything they can to lose weight, but she knows they’re not because “the numbers don’t lie.”  She high-fived me early in the visit and hugged me at the end.  It was like getting a report card full of As and being so excited to go home and hang it on the fridge tattoo it on my forehead.  She wants to see me again in 6 months to see how I’m progressing.  As soon as she finished saying that, she added in through her plastered-on smile, “I probably won’t even recognize you by then!”

The nurse who first escorted me to the exam room came back after the doctor left to do my blood work.  I’ll have the results in 2-3 days.  Even if the numbers aren’t in normal ranges or better, I will still be flying high from how fantastically that appointment went.  I’ve had a spring in my step all day.

Guys, I know that a lot of the time, my posts sound really confident, positive, and dangerously close to obnoxious with self-congratulation.  I’m sure it gets irritating, so I feel the need to explain that there’s a reason I let myself go on like that, and it’s beyond the simple “because it’s how I feel.”  It’s because I haven’t always felt this way, and as I continue along my mission, the positive emotions may stop or become harder to reach.  I’m allowing myself to talk to death about how accomplished and successful I feel for that girl in the doctor’s exam room 3½ months ago whose self-doubt and self-abandonment landed her there in the first place.  I’m also doing it for the girl 3½ months from now whose weight is taking longer to come off and who is tired of working so hard all the time.  I have to honor the past version of myself to keep me going in the present, and I have to bank my triumphs in the present to keep me going in the future.

Thanks for letting me do that.

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DAY 112: Vacation revelation

I just got back from my first trip of the summer.  It was full of things I couldn’t have done last summer, or even a few months ago:

  • Doing the look-what-I’m-trying-on ritual while shopping with a girlfriend
  • Wearing a bathing suit
  • Wearing a bathing suit in public 
  • Riding a zip line (I didn’t actually do this because we ran out of time, but I would have been under the weight limit this trip, when I wouldn’t have been a few months back)
  • Climbing up monstrously steep hills to get to the line for EVERY slide at the water park
  • Riding water slides in inflatable inner tubes (I would have been over the weight limit before)
  • Share a hotel room with another person and not be self-conscious that I would keep them up by snoring all night

…Which is why I gave myself permission to do a few things I haven’t allowed myself to do much of during the past few months on this mission of mine:

  • Eat a sandwich and fries from Wendy’s (it was the only option on the road, and I chose this over salad)
  • Eat a personal pizza from a popular restaurant at the vacation site
  • Eat free ice cream from the random ice cream social our hotel threw the first night there
  • Eat onion rings.  Yeah, that’s right.  Onion rings.
  • Eat a piece of cheesecake from a hyped-up cheesecake place near the vacation spot
  • Fall short on steps for 2 days (not consecutively, at least)
  • Eat homemade no-bake cookies (not more than 1 a day, at least)
  • Make my own MASSIVE chocolate bar and take 3 bites of it before sticking it in the freezer until after I win my 2 pending Kickstarter Diet Bets
  • Eat 7 Milano cookies

It may sound like I am getting borderline passive about my habits of late, but I’m not on a slide.  I’m still 100% committed to getting healthy, and still 100% confident that I can.  This is part of the practicum of adapting to real life permanently.  I’m not going to deprive myself of food when it’s part of an experience of being in a new place, and I feel comfortable partaking because I fully know — and stay within — my limits.  I am strong enough not to bow to group mentality.  When my friend splurged a little extra, like when she got a milkshake in the middle of the day and offered to treat me to one, I passed.  When the meal I ordered at the water park included chips in the price and they insisted they couldn’t give me a reduction if I didn’t take the chips, I still chose not to have them.  I am keeping it all in check.

I only lost .4 pounds this past week as a result of my slackened grip these last few days, but I can honestly say I have no regrets.  A loss is still a loss, and I made calculated decisions to deviate from my usual plans with full knowledge it would yield lower weight-loss numbers on the scale this week.  I feel at peace with that, and I feel pumped to see how much I can work off this week.

I’ve talked before about feeling in control of this, so that’s nothing terribly new or exciting.  The reason this was a big deal for me is that the friendship I ended in January reared its ugly head the day before I left on this trip.  My ex-friend sent me an e-mail saying sorry, blah blah blah.  I had to search my soul about whether or not I wanted to pick off that scab by resuming contact, even if only to say “too little too late, fuck you very much” and call it a day.  Do I respond at all?  If no, will the unsaid things eat me alive?  If yes, what do I say??

Instead of responding right away, I decided to practice this patience thing I’ve been working on and cool my jets about it.  I thought it over during my long walk before the drive to the destination the next morning, and I could feel my blood starting to boil just gaming things out in my mind.  Realizing that, and thinking of what a toxic relationship that was, and thinking about how quickly I said “I don’t think I do” when the friend I was traveling with asked me later if I wanted to be friends with that person again, it occurred to me that anything I said in response would be an invitation for all that negativity and stress to enter my life again.  I’ve come too far for that.  After four full days of thinking it over, I ultimately opted for sanity and decided to say nothing in response to the ghost of that dead friendship.

I did all of that, while on vacation, without surrendering to the mild anxiety of the decision that lay before me by pigging out.  I’m still nursing a damn heel spur, too, mind you.  I had every excuse in the world lined up in a neat little row for me to play like a poker hand in the name of over-indulgence, and I purposely left those cards on the table.  I feel proud and satisfied, and I completely stand by all of the choices I made over the past several days.

Nice try, old life, but you lose.

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DAY 107: Taking the good with the less good

You know those times where you catch your reflection in the mirror and think, “Hmm — I look thinner today!” and wonder if it’s true?  They are a precious thing.  They happen so rarely for me that I can remember each isolated incident.  I never weigh myself those days because the scale may not validate my observation, and I’d rather cling to my illusions.  (I know, I know, measurements and shit, but am I gonna bust out the tape measure every time I feel thinner?  No.  I am lazy.  I am also the world’s most inept measurer.  Every month when I take my inches, they’re barely different from the last time, yet I have cycled through 3 pants sizes [and counting!] since I started this mission.  Riddle me that.  And count your blessings I’m not building America’s bridges.)

That long-winded intro was a means of announcing that I had one of those I-look-thinner moments this morning.  I decided to wear a shirt I bought 2 months ago that was already starting to fit loosely, because it’s a shirt I really like and I may not be able to wear it much longer before it starts to hang and look silly.  Sure enough, it was a little roomier on me today, so I’m gonna have to start its farewell tour.

In the middle of the day as I was walking through the office, someone walking past me stopped in her tracks and said, “GIRL!  You are looking SLIM!”  I smiled and said thank you, and she asked, “So, are you doing it?” (her tone implied “Are you going for it??  The long haul?  The THINNESS?!”)  I responded, “Hell yeah, I’m doing it!”  Cuz, well… I’m doing it.  She said, “Yes, get it!”

That’s person #4.  🙂

The end of the day was a little les of a yippee moment.

Yesterday afternoon, I noticed a weird popping sensation in my foot with every step.  It didn’t hurt, just felt weird, and has never happened before.  For some reason, medical health professionals love me, so my podiatrist’s office got me onto the doctor’s schedule today.  Long story short, they did some x-rays and found that I have a little bone spur on my heel.  It’s not debilitating, and it’s not even painful, just something I’m very aware of when I move.  The doctor said if it didn’t hurt, we shouldn’t worry about it, but to make a follow-up in 2 weeks if there are any changes and we will try a cortisol shot.  I had sort of suspected that it was a bone spur from what I knew about them, and as an (almost formerly!) obese chick who all of a sudden started spending a lot of time on her feet, it’s not unusual that I would end up with one.  My doctor thinks it’s likely to go away on its own, and he said there’s no need to change anything I’m doing, so at least I can keep doing my usual work-outs and getting in my daily steps.  I’m so relieved about that.  I think if I had been advised to stay off of it or anything, I would have had a minor panic.  I hope it goes away soon, though.  It’s uncomfortable and just annoying.

Anyway, I have 2 Diet Bet weigh-ins coming up later this month, so I’m taking the good with the less good and continuing to work towards knocking off those goals.  Here’s hoping I can quickly heal my heel!

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DAY 106: The best thing I ever did

Every time I see an article like this, I get a little self-congratulatory satisfaction.  I kicked the sauce 15 years ago.

As you can tell from the link, I’m not talking about liquor.  Luckily, I’ve never had much of a taste for most alcohol, so that hasn’t been a source of weight gain or an impediment to weight loss for me.  What I’m talking about is the equally dangerous, harmful, and addictive substance known as the soft drink (which I will refer to primarily as pop, because I grew up in a part of the country that calls it that).

For background, let me go on record and say I used to drink a TON of Coke.  We always had it in the house, and I would have 1-2 glasses with dinner every night as a kid.  Over summer vacations when school was out, I would come in from outside and pour myself a refreshing glass of not water, not lemonade, but Coke.  When my family would go to a restaurant for meals, I got endless refills of Coke.  I never. Stopped.  With.  The. Coke.  No one ever told me I should.  So, for my entire childhood, it was Coke everywhere.  Coke constantly.  Always Coca-Cola.

I was one of those kids who really trusted everything authority figures told me, especially my parents and my teachers.  Sadly, this means that if someone had told me when I was younger and impressionable that Coke was actually terribly bad for me — and probably if I hadn’t had such regular, easy access to it — I would not have been a pop guzzler during those development years.  When I finally did get un-hooked, it was kind of a happy byproduct of a different lesson I learned from an adult.

In my mandatory 9th-grade health class, it was the first time a teacher explained the benefits behind the then-recommended 8 8-ounce glasses of water per day tenet.  I decided I wanted to challenge myself to try and drink those 64 ounces of water a day, so I bought a 20-ounce bottle of Aquafina from the vending machine in the cafeteria one day and carried it around with me to classes.  I refilled it during the day from the water fountains in the hallway and aimed for 3 bottles a day, figuring that 60 ounces was just as good as 64.  I would make it through about 2 bottles in school and do the third bottle in the evening at home.  Boy, did I pee a lot all of a sudden.  I instantly became the girl asking for the hall pass in every period.  And my pee was no longer yellow, but clear.  I had never known that was a sign of good hydration.

When I first began that little experiment, I still went straight for the fridge for a glass of Coke when I got home from school.  Pretty early on, though — about 2 weeks in — I discovered I actually wasn’t thirsty for Coke; I was thirsty for more water.  (I now know that I was never thirsty for Coke; I was chemically craving it.)  I gradually, unintentionally, eliminated Coke from my diet.  Before long, I started learning how toxic pop is, and became intentional about my decision.  I avoided Coke almost entirely and drank exclusively water.  Not purely coincidentally, I was the only one of my friends who never had acne problems.  I was also the only one of my friends who didn’t have stained teeth when my braces got removed.  After a while, I didn’t even miss or think about Coke, even though it was still always in the fridge at home.  My little experiment that was supposed to be a short-term thing has turned into a permanent life style practice that I have carried on throughout my entire adult life.  In my early twenties, I graduated to a 32-ounce BPA-free bottle that I fill at least 4 times per day.  I take it with me everywhere.  I am never thirsty.

Almost everyone I know still drinks the fizz.  There are some who think it’s cute to constantly refer to their Diet Pepsi addictions, as if they don’t believe that’s actually a thing while they trumpet their dependency on that shit.  My friends, it ain’t cute.  I know I kind of got off that crap by happenstance, but I am thankful to my teenage self for that every day.  Giving up pop was the best thing I ever did for my health.

I’m not saying I’m better than anyone — I don’t believe that and I certainly don’t mean to imply it.  What I am saying is, that stuff IS addictive, and that’s the goal of soft drink manufacturers.  Our dependency on their product keeps them in business.  I believe that the reason Coke’s recipe is locked away in a vault guarded by dragons and rabid dogs is not because the Coca-Cola company is afraid of replication or corporate espionage, but because if the full list of ingredients were ever revealed BY the company, they would be admitting to guilt of willful and knowing participation in contributing to a public health epidemic.  If the series of links I shared at the beginning of this blog post didn’t illustrate the point finely enough, maybe this will: soda is extremely fucking bad for you.  That these companies are able to profit from marketing poison to the masses in an age where we know how terribly unhealthy this product is, is unconscionable.

I really hope that in the future, we will look back on the days of Coke and Pepsi with as much horror and condemnation as we look at tobacco companies now.  They’ll probably never go away completely, but they can be shamed and stigmatized into regulation the way cigarette companies largely have been.  Just as tobacco products are only available for purchase by consenting adults and labeled with warnings reminding you that what you’re consuming is killing you, so should pop be.  If that sounds extreme, I don’t care.  That shit is unhealthy, addictive, unnatural, a body pollutant, a contributor to disease and obesity, and pure trash.  Should that be in the bodies of children?  Should that be in the body of anybody?

I guess I’m feeling a little angry today about this.  I see people chugging carbonated sugar like it’s no big deal, and it worries me.  Diet-branded drinks do not make it better; in fact, they are likely even worse.  As I’ve mentioned previously, learning about food addiction has been a revelation for me.  In that light, I see the beverage addiction even more harshly.  I can’t believe we willingly put this stuff into our bodies.

That’s what this is all about, though, isn’t it?  We have to have that set of realizations that make us say, “Hang on a sec — what am I doing to myself?”  Whether that realization comes after a heart-to-heart with a loved one, through self-education, or by a complete accident, it has to come if you want to be healthy.  You are the only one who can make these choices for yourself.  You are in control.  You decide what goes into your body.  You.  That’s what I’ve always heard, and what I finally understand.

Funny, for all my youthful reverence of adult authority figures, it’s grown-up me who learned from my teenage self.  Seriously, high-school me:  thank you.

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DAY 104: Off track(ing)

For the past 2 weeks, I violated one of the Dieter’s Ten Commandments:  I abandoned tracking.

At first, it wasn’t intentional. I was out of town two weeks ago and not preparing my own meals, so it became impossible/too annoying to do my usual food logging on My Fitness Pal.  After I got back, I used it once to calculate if I would be within my calorie restrictions based on my meal ideas for that week, then didn’t touch it at all the rest of the week.  (I do the same exact meal plan every day over a 7-day period so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day, and so I can cook once a week and just reheat like a champ the other days.  This is definitely the way to go.)

This past week, I didn’t log a single thing.  I didn’t even nutritionally test drive my meal plan before the weekly cooking extravaganza like I usually do.

I don’t consider this falling off the wagon because, well, I didn’t fall off the wagon.  In fact, the second week was more of a conscious decision from the I-wonder voice in my head.  “I wonder if you could keep control of yourself without tracking every single thing you ingest this week,” it taunted me.  That voice has evicted the one that used to tell me I could eat whatever I wanted today because it was the end of the world; the diet would start on a tomorrow that never came.  The I-wonder voice challenges me with things like, “I wonder if you can make it 150 steps in the next 60 seconds” when I’m on the elliptical and “I wonder if you’re ready to add 5 pounds of weights to this machine now” when I’m lifting.  I always pass its little tests.  So, I accepted this challenge, too.

Here’s your full disclosure now:  I had a mini ice cream on Thursday night and I had 3 cookies at a rooftop fireworks viewing party yesterday evening.  I would have admitted this, anyway, just via tracking rather than in long form.  (Writing it out still took less time than tracking it on My Fitness Pal would have!)  The ice cream, I would have had, anyway.  I bought it 2 weeks ago and planned to have it on the 1st of the new month *if* I nailed my mileage goal for June.  I did, so I did.  Oh, and I have a second container waiting in my freezer for some future time when I feel like it.  The cookies, I had only planned on having one and I ate three instead.  Here’s how worried I am about that, by the way; the old me would have kept eating them until she couldn’t remember how many cookies there were.  Translation:  I trust myself, and I’mma swagger about it all over this blog post.

So, did I get too cocky?  Did I give myself too long a leash too soon?  Is this the beginning of a slippery slope?

Well, I lost a total of 6.6 pounds during those two weeks, so… no.  Another victory for the I-wonder voice!

That said, I am now returning to tracking.  I still trust myself, and I clearly still have an appalling amount of ego about it, but I actually kind of like tracking.  Besides, it’s another metric and another piece that fits into the overall process.  I like knowing what I’m taking in every day, and I especially like being able to look back at previous weeks where I had exceptionally high or low weight-loss numbers and being able to tell between food and exercise what contributed to that.  However, thanks to this little experiment, I have developed a new muscle, which is the mental muscle of being able to gauge what an appropriate portion is, approximately.

I plan to continue tracking to the bitter end of this “journey” (God, I hate that euphemism — I’m sure I’ll over-explain that in some future post), but at least I’ve proven to I-wonder that I can go without that crutch when necessary.  For this to be a success long after the losing process is over, that’s an important thing to know.  Yay!

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DAY 103: Clothes’d for business

Now that I don’t have to keep cycling through the same handful of shirts and 3 pairs of pants that fit, I can’t seem to stop shopping.  My mental math tells me I have bought close to 30 articles of clothing in the past 2 weeks (including one skirt and one dress!), and I’ve also rediscovered a bunch of former oh-honeys and things I outgrew on the way up the scale that now re-fit me.  Between the new clothes and the old ones I’ve brought back into rotation, I’ve run out of closet space.  So… I got to clean out a bunch of stuff.  I have quite a pile going.  Hopefully, I can donate this stuff to Goodwill and they can clothe some other fat girl on her way out of fat-girl clothes.

IMG_1643

The closet purge made me recall the giant duffel bag full of gym clothes that has been sitting on the floor of my closet since… um… the dawn of time?  There are enough clothes in there for me to stay clothed for weeks without repeating.  Seriously.  In rifling through the bag, I found 13 sports bras alone.  Some of the stuff in the bag had been in there too long and is already too big for me.  Apparently, I am a fitness clothes hoarder.  Who knew THAT was a thing?

IMG_1644(none of the sports bras are pictured here; those are all shirts and pants)

Anyway, a huge portion of my day yesterday consisted of me trying on old stuff from my closet and from my Mary Poppins-esque bag of work-out clothes, and making room in my closet for the new buys.

What might be the best part about having reached a more human size is that I don’t have to keep things just because they fit.  I also don’t have to buy clothes just because they fit.  I have options now, which means I get to wear things that reflect my taste.  I don’t have to wear the god-awful rejects from the Lane Bryant couldn’t-sell-it sale rack because the proper size is so hard to find; I get to actually choose clothes I like from a variety of stores!  (AND I get to stop setting foot in Lane Bryant.  No offense to anyone who enjoys shopping there, but for me, that place is a den of soul-crushing sadness with shame-faced shoppers avoiding eye contact with each other while trying to find the least ugly, least overpriced shit they could deign to wear in public that wouldn’t automatically reveal itself as something bought from a big-girl store.  [Or maybe that was just me.])

Approaching normal sizes has taken the desperation out of shopping and made it fun instead of a daunting chore.  I’m having to constantly fight the impulse to go purchase more to wear, because somehow I’m still losing rapidly enough that even the things I’ve bought since dropping my first 40-50 pounds are loose on me.  I’m sure the good people at American Express will be making me customer of the year any day now.

Girly side activated.

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DAY 100: Milestones update

I’ve made it 100 days.  In 100 more, I’ll be at my lowest weight in 5 years (if I keep up the pace).

I could get reflective. I could get pensive. I could get emotional. I could get wistful. I could get speculative. I could prognosticate about the future and list all the things I look forward to doing in the next hundred days.  I could start spouting off personal pearls of wisdom and over share my phil-LOSS-ophies as if I’m some kind of expert.  Or, I could say a bunch of things I could do, ultimately NOT do any of them, and instead opt for a simple list of my updated milestones*.

Achieved within first 71 days

  1. Find 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.  I’ve gone down a size since first meeting this goal.
  2. Grab my foot from behind when my leg is bent at the knee in order to stretch out my thigh.
  3. Walk at a 3.0 MPH pace without struggling.
  4. Make it up one flight of stairs without getting winded.
  5. Stop snoring and start sleeping better.
  6. Lose 10 lbs.
  7. Lose 25 lbs.
  8. Be under the weight limit to stand on the step stool.

Achieved between days 72 and 100

  1. Sit on my own furniture. The dining chairs and patio seating I own have weight limits that I have exceeded since before I purchased them.
  2. Paint my own toe nails without contorting myself.  
  3. Close my towel the whole way around me when I get out of the shower.  
  4. Wear the oh-honey pair of pants I bought on April 11th.
  5. Wear the oh-honey shirt I bought on May 2nd.   
  6. Walk a mile at 3.5 MPH.
  7. Get 3 miles on the fat burn setting on the elliptical.   
  8. Tie my shoes without having to sit down.
  9. Go down a notch on my Vivo Fit band.   
  10. Lose 50 lbs.
  11. Lose 10% of starting weight.   
  12. GOAL REDACTED.
  13. Put ankle on opposite knee without having to use hands.   
  14. Fit into a restaurant booth.  
  15. Wear shirt size XL.
  16. Do 200 miles in a month.

Goals to be achieved

  1. Jog in and complete a 5K.
  2. Go down a half shoe size.
  3. Fit into my red jacket.
  4. Fit into one leg of my fat-girl gray pants.
  5. Wear a single-digit dress size.
  6. Wear a single-digit pants size.
  7. GOAL REDACTED.
  8. GOAL REDACTED.
  9. No longer be in “overweight” category (BMI <25).
  10. Wear shirt size L.
  11. Wear shirt size M.
  12. Lose 25% of starting weight.
  13. GOAL REDACTED.
  14. Reach final weight goal.
  15. GOAL REDACTED.
  16. GOAL REDACTED.
  17. GOAL REDACTED.
  18. GOAL REDACTED.
  19. Get out of plus sizes.
  20. Switch to the small Vivo Fit band.
  21. Wear my ring on my middle finger.
  22. Wear a belt.
  23. Wear a dress.
  24. Jog a mile without stopping.
  25. Fit into only my side of the bench on Metro. I’m too wide and my body encroaches into the space beyond the dividing line.
  26. Cross my legs. I’ve never done this in my life.
  27. Fit comfortably into airplane seats. I can usually suck it in long enough to pile myself into my chair on a plane, only to find that my legs spill onto the passenger next to me underneath the dividing arm rest and the seat belt can barely stretch enough to contain me.
  28. Get out of pre-diabetic sugar levels.  I’ll have new blood work after a doctor’s appointment later this month, and I’m expecting good results here.
  29. See my feet over my belly when I look down.
  30. Fold down the tray table from the seat in front of me on a plane.
  31. 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 haven’t been to an amusement park since, so haven’t had the opportunity to test this out yet, but I suspect I could cross this off now.
  32. Do 250 miles in a month.

Watch this space.

*Some goals are too personal/embarrassing to publish, so I’m curating selectively.

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DAY 99: Dedication & education

June, like my stumpy legs, was short yet powerful.  These were my big moments of the month.


What I did
Went on a work trip for 5 days.  To get in all my steps and stick to my healthy eating, I got a little… creative.  I hoofed up and down 8 flights of stairs anytime I wanted to go to or from my hotel room and never strayed from clean foods or gave in to the very tempting buffet meals.  I met or exceeded my daily steps and lost 2 pounds while away.

What I learned
I can survive outside of my element because I am stronger than I think.

salad  possible

What I did
Added measurable non-scale goals to my focus for extra motivation.

What I learned
Achieving those goals feels fucking awesome.

towel

What I did
Had a minor meltdown when I saw a photo of myself well into my weight-loss adventure, still looking like a fat cow.  Hours later, I dragged myself to the gym and, without intending to, snapped myself out of it.

What I learned
No one and nothing has power over me.  I’m in charge, and I’ve got this.

got this

What I did
Almost visually sexually harassed a colleague when the weight of my cell phone in my pocket pulled my pants all the way off of me at work.

What I learned
Weight loss is hilarious and replacing clothes gets expensive.  I say both of these things with a smile.

pants

What I did
Started — baby steps — sharing my weight and weight-loss issues with people I care about.

What I learned
There’s a fine line between embarrassment and pride (in both senses).  I have to let go of my over-protective reflexes and let people into the scary places with me.

Screen Shot 2015-07-01 at 12.09.04 AM

What I did
Worked like a mad woman to get my steps in every day.  I missed only once all month.

What I learned
Gym shoes come in unexpected styles, and it doesn’t matter how askance the people on the machines around me stare at the girl working out in a T-shirt, business pants, and flip-flops.  It also doesn’t matter how late I got free that day; my gym time is more important than my ass-parked-in-front-of-the-TV time.  Finally, I don’t have to choose between socializing and getting my burn in.  The gym is open until 11 for a reason, and I can close it down with the night shift guy whenever I need to.  At least no one will be on the machine next to me when that happens.

image1

What I did
Stayed home, got in only a third of my daily miles goal, and took three (!) naps on a stormy Saturday.

What I learned
Falling short one day is not failing the entire mission, and listening to my body when it’s telling me what it needs is just as important as sticking to my goals.

IMG_1442
What I did
Set a goal of getting in 200 miles in June, and eked it out just under the wire.  And I threw in two bonus miles to grow shrink on.

What I learned
Those pounds I have to lose are in big trouble.

image2

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DAY 94: Delusions of non-grandeur

Damn all the cameras.

I took a co-worker to lunch for her birthday today, and she was all giddy and wanted to commemorate the day with a photo.  Sure — now that photos are less embarrassing to take, I was entirely on board.  I even thought it might actually be kinda cool to see myself in a picture after such a long evasion of anything with a photographic lens that could be pointed at me like a weapon.

Well, cool it wasn’t.

So much weight lost, and I still look like shit.

Have I been imagining all the changes?  Or is it just that they’re so subtle, only I can notice?  I mean, who the hell else is gonna notice my fingers are smaller?  Ugh, and I had been walking around all, “I feel pretty!”  God.  No wonder only 3 people have realized I’ve lost any weight.  It’s not like I’ve moved the needle from fat to thin; I’ve only moved it from fat to marginally less fat.  Looking at that picture was such a deflating moment.  It made me feel hopeless.  And crazy.  And stupid.  Still fat, and now hopeless and crazy and stupid to boot.  Needless to say, I hid that cursed photo from my wall when the birthday girl posted it on Facebook.  I’m not quite ready for prime time, I guess.

I felt a little draggy the rest of the day.  I ended up staying late at work, so late that it derailed my normal routine of going straight to the gym after my commute, then coming home for dinner.  Somehow, I convinced myself to walk a mile to the gym after dinner, do a mile and a half on the treadmill, and walk back home.  (Getting my miles in has become a dissociated obsession at this point, so I was going to do that regardless of my never-ending fatness.)

During the treadmill slog, something magical happened:  I looked in the mirror, and it was not what I had seen in the photo.  All I could see of myself that wasn’t obstructed by the actual machine was my chest and points north.  I realized I was staring at the way my shoulders were moving with my swinging arms.  I snapped out of it and kind of forced myself to look myself in the eye.  I was wearing an expression I’ve never seen on my face before:  defiant determination.

Fuck that photo.  It does not define me.  What I do in reaction to it does.

Did I have a diva moment where I didn’t want anyone to see that picture of myself?  Sure.
Did I slip into a negative space and allow myself to feel defeated for several hours?  No doubt.
Did I throw my hands up, pick up a pint of ice cream on my way home from work, and spend my night crying into it on the couch?  Hell no, I didn’t.  My defiantly determined ass walked itself to the gym and kept moving right along.

That chick I saw in the mirror at the gym?  I want to always be her.  Her narrower shoulders were high with confidence, her slimmer neck was strong, and her single chin was up.  No one else in the gym knew it, but that chick is a bad-ass.  It took the treadmill to literally block out the “bad” parts so I could focus on the positive progress I’ve made.  It’s NOT all in my head.  It’s so easy to lose that focus if you let yourself.

Thirty-six miles to go to reach 200 miles for June.  I think I’ll focus on that instead.

…And maybe no more pictures for a while.

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DAY 93: My villain beard

Now, if we’re talkin’ body, I’ve got an imperfect one.  Still, so far on this voyage down the scale, I’ve noticed a few changes in certain parts of it.  I can see the bones in my hands now.  I don’t have to contort myself to hit THE angle that hides my face fat in pictures.  My arms are slimming down.  My back — yes, my back, of all things — is getting super toned.  (And yes, I check this in mirrors.)  And I can’t really see it, but something is happening in the waist/hips area, because my underwear sag and my pants hang or fall off altogether.  But the most satisfying, captivating, exciting change so far?  My clavicles are back.

Yeah, that sounds super crazy, but there it is.  I am so excited to see the presence of bones between my shoulders, you’d think I’d just been told I’d be paid to sit around and breathe.  It gets even weirder, too:  I keep catching myself touching them.  It doesn’t matter if I’m completely alone or in the middle of a conversation with another person who can see me, I am CONSTANTLY running my fingers over my clavicles.  They’ve basically become my villain beard.  “Hmm…” she thought, stroking her newly prominent bones, “if I stop doing this with one of my hands, how long will it take me to blog about the fact that I do this now?”  **evil laugh**

Appropriately, the third person has officially noticed and said something to me this morning (probably mid-clavicle rub).  It was a co-worker of mine.  She kind of stood in the doorway of my office, seeming a little hesitant, and then finally blurted out, “Have you lost weight?”  And I said, “Yes.” She followed up with, “Like… 40 pounds?”  I smiled, probably touched my clavicles, and said, “Maybe a little more.”

Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.