Tag Archives: changes

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NEW DAY 242: Talking body

The past full week tested me.

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 is was 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.

  1. 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. ↩︎
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NEW DAY 238: 100

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.

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NEW DAY 236: Stupor Bowl Sunday

Well, I had a pretty duh moment day yesterday.

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.

I can’t wait.

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NEW DAY 230: To beach their own

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.

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NEW DAY 221: Blizzard!

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

And that’s fucking transformation, baby.

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NEW DAY 217: Walk on

Today was my prescribed rest day for this week of Power 11. It came at a good time; each ankle had its own special little tantrum at different moments last night, so it was a well-timed moment for a break. I did end up doing 20 minutes on my walking pad at home after work, though, to make sure I hit my daily steps goal for the day. While doing that, I had a realization: my balance has crazy improved.

My first foray into the world of the walking pad was back in the fall when I was doing 75 Hard. My first walk, and all those I did subsequently, were unsteady. It wasn’t so much a walk as a stagger, like that fool at the office holiday party who had more than one too many trips to the spiked punch bowl and is in no way pulling off the ruse. I had to hold on to my raised standing desk just to make sure I didn’t tumble off backwards or sideways, even for a short walk at a low speed.

Today, for the first time, I didn’t have to hold on. I walked briskly (3.4 mph) for 20 minutes with zero contact — and, more excitingly, zero swerves or stumbles.

It’s not just that my balance has improved; my stamina and strength have, too. I am no longer the spitting image of a failed DUI traffic stop when I take to the walking pad; I’m a woman with purpose.

Fitting, after a year of staggering through uncertainty and hoping — and then working hard — to regain my footing.

Speaking of fitting, I used my lunch break today to take a tour of my “before” pieces. These relics of my most-enormous size are the equivalent of snacking on grapes when what you really want is M&Ms: because I am only weighing myself once a week on Power 11, I can’t sneak a peek at the scale on days when I’m feeling curious. (There’s a reason for this: I’m trying to break my obsession with that number so it won’t become my whole worth. I say this while actively working towards a rather aggressive goal with a deadline that’s precisely 3 weeks away, but I digress.) Instead of indulging my curiosity, I try on the couple of articles of clothing I’ve held on to that remind me of where I started, so I can see how far I’ve come.

Today, I fit into one leg of my size 24 “before” pants. And after stepping into it (still zipped) through the neck, my “before” dress slid off my shoulders and right onto the floor.

Funny how that instantly killed any interest I had in what the scale might have had to say.

And so I walk on… with purpose.

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NEW DAY 214: Power 11, week 1

Hello from Power 11, day 8! I just completed my weekly tasks and am taking a beat to catch up on some chores while my lunch digests, before I head to the gym for my half-marathon training session and then an early dinner with a friend. Since I started this challenge last week, I have lost 5.25 inches and 6.4 pounds. This may seem high, which is why context is important: I had period bloat when I weighed in last Sunday, as well as a cold — so that likely artificially inflated some of my starting numbers. There’s also a known phenomenon that the first week of any major diet and exercise regimen shows a huge change that typically levels out in a lower second week. The true reflection of what may be “normal” typically appears in week 3. That said, I put in the work this week and my effort mattered. I feel encouraged by these early signs of progress and am looking forward to continuing to chart my progress for the remaining 10 weeks.

I’ve kept on track with the rest of the challenge, too. Separating the selfies and metrics into a once-weekly task has been a notable plus for me so far, and I’ve had a manageable time with hitting my daily goals. Since I’ve been getting over a cold this week, it hasn’t been the most favorable moment to do any extra workouts, but I look forward to feeling more energized so that I can incorporate a few bonus outdoor walks into my days here and there; I found the fresh-air activity so beneficial to me during 75 Hard. Winter is wintering pretty hard out there, but I enjoy time in the elements, irrespective of the season (albeit with more whining involved during summer months)! My recovery should be complete pretty soon thanks to some extra rest I’ve been able to get, which I would not have been able to get on 75 Hard.

It hasn’t been easy to come up with the motivation to get my ass in gear every day, but I’ve found ways to do it. My commitment is firm, and it helps to know that I always feel good after a workout.

I’m excited to see what results this challenge yields on day 78! Until then, it’s go, go, go.

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NEW DAY 210: Probationary period

I started a new job this week. It’s been a wonderful experience so far, and has been living up to all my hopes and excitement from the interview process. As luck would have it, my body chose Sunday — the day before my first day and the actual first day of Power 11 — to come down with a head cold.

It chose today to start my period.

Last year, before June, I had exactly two periods. That’s it. For 5 months. They were long, heavy, painful, and obviously irregular.
Starting in (and including) June, I had 7. The first 3 were still irregularly timed and chaotic, but I’ve had one every month since October now, with only one of them being debilitatingly heavy.

This is a very big deal.

I have never had naturally regular periods, even as a teen or young adult. In college, I was diagnosed with PCOS, which — cruelly — both exacerbates and is exacerbated by obesity. For unrelated medical reasons, I’ve been off the pill for several years and can never again take hormonal birth control, so my body and I have been trying to navigate my erratic cycle on our own since then.

It has not gone well.
Until now…?

With my age (fertility-old), size (still big), and health (PCOS doesn’t magically go away), I never imagined that my periods would one day regulate themselves. I almost added the phrase “without intervention” to that sentence, but in fact, there has been an intervention: I broke up with sugar.

Sugar is a known hormone disruptor, and I’ve been poisoning myself with it for my entire life. Just 7 months into a drastic sugar reduction, and my grateful physiology was like “THANK YOU, I will now immediately repair decades of damage in a shockingly small fraction of that time!” I’m on a whole deep dive with this right now that I will spare anyone reading this from spiraling into with me, but suffice it to say this is a rich topic. The superstitious part of me hesitates to pronounce anything actually “healed” when it comes to my reproductive health, but something has been mended. Even if that’s not the case, all the symptoms of improvement are there, and the only thing that’s changed has been how I care for my physical health. Exercise has certainly been a positive factor contributing to this development, but I’m convinced it has a majority to do with nutrition.

Whether or not the return of my regular, naturally occurring periods is a fluke, I am happy and relieved about it. But I’d call 6+ months a pretty long probation. I hope my normal cycle still going strong by the time I’m no longer “new” in my job — and well beyond then.

Welcome back from probation, period. Most women won’t relate to this, but… I missed you.

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NEW DAY 206: Hindsight is 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s time to really heal.

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

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NEW DAY 169: Fuckin’ nuts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is.
It hasn’t.
It was.

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

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

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

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

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

Fuckin’ nuts.