…you may be experiencing triple-digit weight loss.
For the past few weeks, my body has been doing weird new things that I would have expected at a larger size, but never encountered before. Now that I’m smaller, it’s thrown me to experience:
Intermittent lower back pain for stretches of days at a time with no clear trigger
Toenails on the big toe of each foot whose outer corners I’ve had to excavate from the nail bed every few weeks
Numbness on the balls of my feet setting in on long walks or runs
CALF SORENESS!!! Of all the strange symptoms, this has been most puzzling; my calves have always been extraordinarily muscular and never had a problem hauling wide loads all over the globe. You’d think they’d be quieter than ever now that they have 106 fewer pounds to carry!
Never one to let a mystery go unsolved, I logged these irregularities in my mental notepad and went about looking for a pattern that could link them together.
Then today, while seated at the bicep curl machine and dreading my cardio session because of the unrelenting back ache, I recalled how my feet were sliding forward into the toe boxes of the shoes I had on during my trail walk yesterday. They didn’t used to do that. It then struck me that my indoor gym shoes were making the same thing happen on the elliptical. That’s when the chain reaction of realizations connected all the recent exhibits of my body’s unusual behavior. If my shoes — every pair — are now too big, that means my feet have gotten smaller.
When there’s too much extra room in shoes, the feet slide forward against the edge of the sneaker and wreak havoc on toenails. Excess interior shoe space forces feet to try to gain traction within the shoe while also trying to use the shoe to gain traction on the ground outside of it, putting extra pressure on the balls of the feet and straining the midfoot. The legs (and ankles) have to work harder to maintain stability. Then it all travels up to the lower back, which is trying to compensate for all the shenanigans that the entire wayward muscle chain below it is causing.
No wonder my body is throwing a minor tantrum.
Needless to say, I have a pair of tennis shoes arriving soon — half a size smaller. This is such lucky timing; I have ALMOST bought new ones a few times in the past couple of weeks, and I’m so glad I didn’t because they would have been the wrong size. Even better, this gives me about 6 weeks to break in the new kicks before my half marathon the first weekend of May. It’s a shame my lower body had to mildly suffer to get my brain to figure this out, but at least it wasn’t in vain — and frankly, for the amount of avoidable silliness I put it through, its protests were quite tame (which I appreciate).
This revelation was a heckuva way to mark day 60 of Power 11.
I’ve never been a “let’s wear belts” girlie. Even if I’d had the figure for them, they didn’t fit.
Last night, a belt I’d had hanging on the inside of the closet door for several years that came as an accessory to a dress I’ve only ever worn beltless, almost literally jumped out at me. Out of curiosity, I picked it up and wondered if the new waist I have might now support this kind of flair.
I missed the window.
Somehow in the past 8 months and change — emphasis on the “change” — I’ve gone from not fitting into a plus-size belt, to a plus-size belt not fitting onto me. By quite a large margin.
This is the type of dangerous thing that has set an untenable precedent. Here at the 106.6-pound mark of weight lost to date, with the introduction of strength training, the drops are smaller. The finish line is closer than it was when I was 50% heavier, but shedding that last ~55 lbs is likely going to take at least the same amount of time as that first 106.6.
On the one hand, that’s daunting and demotivating. On the other hand, it’s motivating and exciting.
Being ⅔ of the way through the climb up a steep hill allows you to see how far you’ve come, and it’s a tough slog powering through that last third when you’ve expended a good amount of energy already getting to that point. But you don’t climb a hill unless you intend to reach the top. So maybe you have to slow down in order to conserve the strength you need to keep going. That takes a different kind of effort. So it’s time to strap in.
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.
Today was my first doctor’s appointment in more than 7 years.
I told her about my 105+ pounds of lost weight. I told her my menstrual cycles have become regular again. I told her I’m training for not one, but two half marathons this year.
She told me I was doing everything right. She told me maybe I didn’t need to drink quite so much water. She told me to get lab work and come back at the end of the month.
We talked about my complex medical history. We talked about my current nutrition. We talked about my future goals.
And we began a conversation about one big thing that’s been on my mind for the past few months: skin removal surgery.
Because in several places on my body where there used to be fat, my skin hangs low. It wobbles to and fro. Before too long, it wouldn’t surprise me if I could tie it in a knot and tie it in a bow. God forbid I should wind up with enough to do what’s described in the lyric that comes next.
I’m not done yet. There’s no certainty about much more time it will take me to reach my “end state” — but it could be about a year, give or take. Starting the conversation with my doctor is the right move strategically for insurance purposes as well as for my own psychological and logistical purposes. My doctor gave me a referral for a practice that has done good work for a past patient of hers for an initial consultation, as a first step, which I look forward to taking. And, if I’m being 100% honest, it motivates me to keep going. Yes, I am interested in the aesthetics of this because I’m a person with deep-seated body issues and some (probably standard-issue) vanity to boot; no question it’s unsightly. But also, it is physically uncomfortable. Loose skin hanging from my arms, belly, and inner thighs is in the way. It chafes. It bulges. It gets irritated. And it’s not the kind of skin that just burns off when you lose more weight; it gathers additional mass.
This is just the beginning of a longer discussion, but it’s the right time. A surgical option is a big decision with a lot to think about, and I’m ready to start doing that in a real way with professionals who can paint it all in practical terms. My body isn’t finished changing yet, but the progression has been so rapid — 92 lbs since mid-June — that the finish line is going to get here fast no matter when that is.
I want to be prepared for it, not blindsided by it.
So, yes: today was a big day. It felt like the start of a new chapter. Not the exit from an old chapter, but the beginning of a concurrent one that has never been foreshadowed in anything that has been written so far. It’s as grounding as it is exciting, because for the first time, I’m looking at something that feels within my reach. I believe I have a doctor who is on my side and is invested in my health. I don’t have to do it alone.
Going forward is going to get harder because it’s going to demand more and more from me. I’ve already had to persevere through the slog of the 200s, sticking to my plan without taking drastic measures out of desperation to finally cross that threshold. I’ve already had to work around injuries and modify training sessions. I’ve already had to creatively reconfigure my schedule to ensure my workouts and meals didn’t fall off. It’s nothing I haven’t been able to handle, but it is the type of demand that tends to produce fatigue that compounds with time and demand. I’m trying to be prepared for that, too.
I heard somewhere, in a different context, perhaps the most affirming and applicable quote that fits my whole approach to my self-improvement work: “Motivation is fickle; discipline is consistent.”
I’ve shown up. And I’ll keep showing up. Because god damn if I’m not disciplined.
I laughed. I said, out loud, “FUCK YEAH.” I took a few steps. I doubled over. And then I cried.
That’s how my weigh-in under 200 went today.
There was a lot of build-up to it. Six torturous weeks of crawling through the 200s while my clothes were fitting more and more loosely and my bones were getting more and more prominent. Just in the moments before my weight check, which was also for 2 DietBets, I slipped into scale-appropriate attire. I chose a sleeveless top that I knew would be too tight, because I last attempted to wear it a month ago and it was a no-go, but I wanted to wear something a little tight so that my size would be most accurately reflected in the pictures. (OK, and I also wanted that one for the color variety. Maybe even primarily for the color variety. I am what I am.) When it fit properly — perhaps even with a little wiggle room — I was pretty excited… but I knew better than to bank on due recognition from the scale after the heartbreak of last week.
But that nonsense was not to be repeated.
Today, on day 50 of Power 11, I became a resident of Onederland.
I saw the scale dip below 200 lbs for the first time in 10 years. I did this mid-week weigh-in specifically because I had my August 11th – February 10th weigh-out to do, which is *the* exception to my Power 11 rule about only doing once weekly weight checks (on Sundays). I handily won that Transformer, going from 268.4 pounds in August to 202.8 pounds on February 11th1 — nearly 2.5 times more than what I needed to lose. Even better, it was the most I’ve ever raked in from a Transformer bet: $343.70! Conversely, it was the smallest group of people I’ve ever played with in a Transformer bet, and possibly any DB at all — so it was a VERY pleasant surprise to clean up like that! My theory is that people signed up for it in August and either lost track of it with the calendar busy-ness between start and end dates, or they fell victim to it: back to school, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and all the functions, parties, events, and promotions that come along with all those occasions.
It’s always a great day to collect. And I felt pretty proud to review these 6 months of pretty fantastic effort and results.
But the good times ended there.
At the beginning of the week, I was contending with intense lower back pain that seemed to hit out of nowhere last Saturday when I woke up. It followed me into Sunday and Monday, and finally fucked off on Tuesday after some desperate interventions I made on Monday night that either paid off quickly or perfectly coincided with the natural ending of the pain. One of those was changing from sleeping on two pillows to sleeping on only one pillow. After losing 100 pounds, my shoulders are narrower, which means I don’t need a stack of pillows to properly support my neck as a side sleeper. I never thought about it until my back started complaining, but I made that adjustment and not only slept better, but woke up on Tuesday with no pain. I felt rejuvenated enough on Tuesday to hit a PBR on the elliptical in my workout that evening: 7.05 miles in one hour on the elliptical. Woohoo!
On Thursday, I had a bit of an emotional hangover from putting myself through some mental health processing work on Wednesday night. It was a positive development overall that came from that, but it did leave me wrung out on Thursday — which consequently felt like a VERY long day. Friday also kind of dragged, but it ended with dinner with a friend I hadn’t seen since the end of June. Catching up with her was lovely and a much needed top-off of my social cup. (And yes, she was floored to see how different I look now!)
Yesterday was the roughest, though. I woke up with my period, which is a bit of a mixed-bag way to wake up. Now that my cycle has seemingly regulated itself, I feel this intense relief, joy, and gratitude when it shows up… and I also feel a bit of apprehension about it. Will it be debilitatingly heavy? Will the pain immobilize me? Then this spins out into feeling that I don’t even have the right to complain about any of the downsides, because I’m lucky to even be having a period now. (Yes, I have managed to emotionally complicate menstruation. Welcome to my mind.)
Anyway, I went for my haircut and lunch with a friend as planned, and everything was fine. Unfortunately, it all took a turn into death by a thousand cuts when I got to the gym for what was supposed to be my half-marathon training session where I’d be running 25 minutes straight for the first time, after multiple missed attempts at this since last week. Spoiler alert: it didn’t happen again. I got on the treadmill to do the damn thing, and my ankle instantly started whining. I figured I’d try to run anyway; it’s about 50/50 whether the pain subsides or not when I give it a shot when this happens. In the final minute of my warm-up walk, someone decided that the machine beside mine was The One — out of all the unoccupied machines beside absolutely no one in the gym that afternoon — they needed to use. Um, no, ma’am. So I hopped off and changed to a different machine that was apparently not good enough for her. I started my run speed, and my ankle all but tea-kettle screamed at me. I tried a couple of minutes, a couple of foot placement changes, trying to see if it would loosen up… but it wouldn’t. So I had to stop.
I was pissed.
But I was at the gym, and the second half of my planned workout for the day was strength training. I was able to complete my circuit without event, but my earbuds did die two minutes into the first exercise. That’s annoying on its own, but I had JUST charged the suckers because this same nonsense happened earlier in the week. Between reps, I was rage-ordering a USB-C wired pair when I realized that not only was my ankle was still making its displeasure known, but my head had joined in. I suddenly felt the pain of a raging headache that was going precisely nowhere. I used to get headaches pretty regularly, but since I’ve started exercising every day, they’ve been a rare misery. When they hit, though… ugh. Right on cue, I moved to my next machine and felt violent cramps join the full-on assault my body was now waging against me.
This gym session was cursed.
That’s when I decided two things: 1) I was absolutely finishing this strength training, unless my limbs fell the entire fuck off; and 2) My evening plans were not happening.
I did finish the arm weights. With sincere apologies, I did cancel my dinner.
And then I went home, did the barest of minimums of prep work, ate what could passably be called dinner, dosed up on Excedrin PM, and promptly passed out on the couch with my ankle icing and propped up.
When I woke up some time later, my headache had not subsided at all. The recommended amount of time between doses had not passed, but I had no energy and no fucks left to give. I popped two more pills, crawled on top of the heating pad in my bed, and was asleep before 8 PM.
And there I stayed for the next 13 hours.
I woke up today feeling a million times better: no trace of a headache, an appeased ankle, and weaker cramps. I’ve been able to be as productive as I needed to be today to make up for the total unproductiveness of yesterday, and my whole list is now accomplished as of almost 6 PM: 2 loads of laundry, 3 meals prepped and snacks pre-portioned for the week, dishes cleaned and put away, and Power 11 Sunday tasks completed. I also went on a brief social call to atone for my last-minute jilt last night, got gas in my car, and transferred the contents of my work bag that broke this week (because of course!) into the replacement for it I ordered that arrived today.
After the weird week I’ve had, it’s no surprise that my total weight loss this week was 0.6 pounds. It’s frustrating, but not terribly; I am a walking skin sack of bloat, sleepiness, and emotional wear. I did the best I could at balancing my training against what my body told me it needed this week, and I can’t expect the scale to reflect that. And now, that week is over. I am letting this Sunday sunset with my yummy dinner, then taking my cramps to bed before they start biting again.
The most important thing I have learned over the past few months is that when my body talks, I need to listen. Feeling a little behind in my training is the price of admission for ensuring I don’t sideline myself for days or weeks because I was trying to prove the wrong point.
One positive thing I can say with full force is that even though this week tried my patience, disrupted my plans, and forced me into what feels like stalled progress, I have NOT fallen into past traps. I didn’t get angry and storm out of the gym, costing myself any amount of movement altogether. I didn’t push myself to keep plans — with myself or with others — that would have involved suffering for me. Most importantly, I never once reached for comfort in the form of sugar-coated sabotage.
I’ve said it before, and I repeat it for a reason: that’s how I know I’ve changed. Unhealthy food doesn’t solve my problems. It iswas my problems.
My body doesn’t want bad food that tastes good. My body wants care.
Some days go smoothly. Some days go roughly.
All I can do is keep going safely.
I trust myself now. Nothing feels better than that.
If you are reading this and noticing that 202.8 pounds is not below 200 lbs — yes. My below weigh-in at 198 was at 5:30 AM, after a pee, nothing new in my system, and buck-ass naked. This is not how I usually weigh in; my typical checks are between lunch and dinner, fully clothed. I have to submit photos for DietBet, so I follow their guidelines in my normal weigh-ins for consistency across my own records. Why the change, then? Because this milestone was important for me, and I wanted to do it this way. Enough said. ↩︎
We all know I could easily exceed a thousand words in this post, but I’ll do this instead:
I hit my goal of losing more than 100 pounds by today, AND entered the 100s in the same weigh-in.
I did not expect that.
Which is probably why the emotional surge hit so hard. I let it. I felt the huge rush of pride and excitement and relief and surprise and accomplishment overpower me.
A single sob. That’s all there was.
Then I slid into my red pants that haven’t fit in nearly a decade, noticed in the mirror how they made my ass look fire, and sashayed out the door, all smiles.
Somehow in the past 2 days or so, I managed to tweak my back. It hasn’t been debilitating, but it did inform my decision to take a rest day yesterday, opting instead to spend it and most of today laid up on top of my heating pad. After taking it easy today to not only treat my back, but also to bank on a crowdless gym during the Super Bowl when I went to complete my half-marathon running session as planned, I hit a snag: I failed to remember that the Sunday gym hours are shorter than on weekdays. By the time I got there, as the employee at the check-in desk informed me, they were 18 minutes from closing.
There went my planned 45-minute treadmill session and strength training circuit.
For a split second, I considered taking a second rest day in a row. What was the point of a 15-minute workout?
Consistency. Showing up for myself. That was the point. That’s the entire point of all of this.
So I dutifully took my place on a treadmill in the nearly empty gym, making it my purpose to log a mile. My treadmill pace has been a modest 4.3 mph; in under 15 minutes, I was not going to be able to pull off the distance I wanted, even with a truncated 1-minute walking warm-up. So my pace tonight — and from this moment until the next increase — was 4.5.
I got 1.02 miles in 14 minutes.
Seahawks. Patriots. Whatever. After snatching a victory from the jaws of defeat, I feel like the true champion of Super Bowl Sunday 😏
This coming week is going to be about some serious pushing of limits.
Six months ago, I was in the same vacation spot. But everything was different.
Then: heat of summer. Now: dead of winter.
Then: north side beach. Now: south side beach.
Then: could barely walk through the sand. Now: daily runs on the sand.
Then: 70 pounds heavier. Now: less than 70 pounds left to lose.
Those are just the easy-to-spot distinctions. It would take a lot more time to go into how very fragile, wobbly, unconfident, and ginger I was Then. Promising things were awaiting me at home after my summer trip, but I wasn’t feeling steady about them. I had lost trust in the universe, while slowly clawing my way out from under the pile of collapsed rubble that had been my worldview, and bargaining with myself to keep going.
I didn’t know why to keep going. I had taken the part of my brain that asks and tries to answer that question, offline. I just… did.
Running on the hardened sand at the very end of January was a much more meaningful experience than sunning on the gritty sand at the very beginning of August. It’s hard to compare two experiences that are so drastically different, but what makes it possible is me. I’m more different than any side-by-side pictures of the coast separated by seasonality. My seasonal changes are also visible, but it’s the ones only I can see that are the most pronounced, the most powerful, and the most profound. But the best part of all of that is the ownership I feel. I have rebuilt and reclaimed all of it, and used it to propel me forward.
That’s why in the Now, I had to frequently pause during my oceanside jogs. It wasn’t to catch my breath. It wasn’t to rest tired legs. It was to let the waves of months of emotion wash over me as I involuntarily recognized how far I’ve come.
I can’t wait to see what further developments come about by the next time I find myself on a beach.
I’m in the huge swath of the US that’s being pummeled with 24+ straight hours of falling snow. As I write this, my internet is verging on an outage that has lasted nearly half the day, so I’m tethering my phone in order to post this lest I fail my Power 11 tasks. BUT dropped wifi is the smallest inconvenience I can imagine of the many that had the potential to occur during this storm, so I am certainly not complaining!
Knowing that this crazy weather event was coming to paralyze us for at least a day or two, I reconfigured my half-marathon training plan to give myself a rest day today, and to make tomorrow a cross-training day so that I can do it from home. (Also, I’m considering the hours of shoveling I’ll be doing tomorrow as upper-body strength training, cuz clearing an entire driveway of a foot of heavy, wet snow is nothing if not a workout.) It kinda stinks to miss this stretch of days from actual proper running, but them’s the breaks. I’m adapting as best I can and staying active even if it looks different from “usual”. Between the snow and my end-of-week travel, this whole week is going to require some creative license, so it’ll be an adventure.
It can be a chore to coax myself out the door for a gym session sometimes, but truly the toughest piece of Power 11 so far has been limiting my weight checks to once per week. It’s been getting slightly easier, but sometimes the urge to peek is pretty strong, especially when I suspect I’ll like what I see. I’ve been noticing a lot of physical changes lately, which is usually an indicator of a friendly upcoming scale reading, so I was highly anticipating today’s weigh-in. Sure enough, I posted a drop of 3.4 lbs for this week!
This means a few big things:
I am currently at my lowest weight in 10 years. My all-time lowest (real-adult) weight was from March 1st of 2016.
I’m 12.6 lbs away from that number.
By March 1st of this year, I should be below it. (🤯)
I will be below it.
I am only 3.8 lbs away from being 100 lbs down from my highest recent weight, recorded about 11 months ago.
If I hit that milestone by a specific date within the next 3 weeks, it will be the ultimate redemption for me.
I’m comfortably on track to do it.
I’m gonna do it.
I’m within spitting distance of Onederland. (Actual pounds away: 5.2 lbs. And now you know how much I weigh. And have weighed. 🫣)
Yeah — I unhid my weight on DietBet the other day.
I don’t have a specifically meaningful date in mind for this, but it’ll be sometime next month.
Something’s getting pierced after that.
I’d say I can’t believe it, except I totally can. My body is sore all over in that satisfying way that whispers, “yes, you did run 5 elliptical miles and then do 30 minutes of strength training yesterday.” My obliques are the sorest part of me, and that’s purely from actual running.
It feels so good to feel sore. I’m getting smaller, yes, but I’m also getting stronger and fitter. THAT’S what this type of soreness means. It means results. It means effectiveness. It means payoff.
Since I got serious about my health in mid-June of last year, I have lost 76.6 pounds. When June rolls back around this year, I will have lost more than 100 lbs, completed 75 Hard, finished Power 11, and crossed the finish line of a freakin’ half-marathon — all since the previous June.
January-2025 Me wouldn’t recognize Present-Day Me — physically or otherwise.
Life Can't Weight 