Tag Archives: changes

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DAY 347: Getting changed

It’s amazing being able to walk into any store and know that there is something in there that’s gonna fit.  It’s even more amazing being able to walk into any store knowing that most things will fit.  I’m geeking out over discovering my personal fashion and exploring my tastes, now that I can actually do that.

After so long being in plus sizes and having to find attire by scouring the deep corners of the Internet or remaining a hostage of every big girl’s love-hate relationship with Lane Bryant, it still hasn’t fully clicked that I have options now.  I’ve even had the totally unexpected experience of browsing the clearance section of the Kohl’s website for workout gear, only to feel frustrated that only the plus sizes were discounted and they were all TOO BIG.  What an awesome problem to have!

Yesterday, as I was getting ready in the morning, I saw a sweater hanging in my closet that I didn’t recognize.  I wondered if I had ever worn it, and if not, why?  I pulled it off the hanger and immediately understood:  it’s a size L.  I don’t remember ever wearing it because it was an oh-honey purchase from years ago.  Well, it’s an oh-honey article no more.  It had its grand debut yesterday.  It was a pretty rad day.

As I was walking around in my L sweater, I peeped my reflection in every mirror I passed.  I kept thinking, “I look thin today!” That thought was validated early on, when I went to pick up a package from the mailroom at my office.  I was talking to the receptionist about I don’t even remember what, but told her, “I like it!”  One of the mail guys had strolled to the counter at that point and said to me, “I like that,” with at hand gesture that captured my general space.  “You like…?”  I asked.  He said, “That.  What you’re doing.  You’re going all the way, aren’t you?” Oh.  That.  I laughed and said, “That’s the plan!”  (Quick holla at 6-months-ago me who would have turned tomato-red and deflected the hell out of that compliment.)

Beyond changing the way I dress and the way I’ve begun to accept affirmations, I’ve also changed the way I change.  Before, when I would get to the gym, I would take my exercise clothes into a bathroom stall with me to change, out of modesty and embarrassment.  Somewhere within the last 10-15 pounds, I stopped doing that.  I change with the people now.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m never gonna be one of these fully naked people lettin’ it all hang out as I plod around the locker room, but I’m finally comfortable taking my shirt off with my back turned to the rest of the room as I change my sports bra over my bra-bra.  It may sound silly, but when you started in the realm of self-consciousness and self-body shaming where I did, you’d have to give me props for this tremendous progress.

So, less than 3 weeks away from my one-year anniversary on this wild ride, that’s where I’m at.  Can’t complain.

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DAY 339: Walk this way!

It may not always seem like it, but I try to keep this blog strictly focused on my experience with weight loss and getting healthy, not on my other personal experiences (unless they pertinently intersect).  I’ve been a little absent from the blog circuit the last two weeks because I’ve been dealing with a complicated situation at work that has taken up a lot of my energy and brain space, and as a result, I really haven’t had the drive to write about the  great un-fattening.  I’m getting a better handle on things now, and I think I have a pertinent intersection to exploit here.

Before I drag you there, though, I’ll cut to the chase:  I’m still dealing, and it’s not always pretty or perfect, but I am 100% still on the wagon.  Full disclosure:  I had three extra pieces of chocolate yesterday. *shrugs*  That was my only unplanned transgression throughout this entire ordeal, and I’ve been getting my burn on all the while, so I’m gonna go ahead and not berate myself over a few hundred extra — and, might I add, delicious — calories.  As someone who would have previously gone hog wild and capitulated to the pressure by buying up the entire post-Valentine’s Day candy clearance aisle  at the CVS down the street, I’m gonna call three extra pieces of chocolate a total NON-event.  I’m not kidding, guys.  I feel about chocolate the way Oprah feels about bread.  Three pieces in one night, instead of a bag of chocolate every night, ain’t no thing.

Now, on to the part where I’m somehow keeping myself from cracking.

I’ve made previous references in this blog to the hell that was January of 2015.  What I’m going through professionally right now is not comparable in terms of the events, but it gets damn close in terms of the pressure.  The big difference between last January and this February is that, after months of making myself into a better sharer of my struggles, I want to talk about it.  The trouble with that is that there are limits on being able to talk about it for practical reasons, especially with people at work.  The rest of the trouble is that talking about work with people who don’t work with you is a REEEEEEAL BORE for them.  Honestly, I’m a pretty good conversationalist and I care deeply about my loved ones, but sometimes when they start discussing their job woes with me, I can feel my eyes start to glaze over and I have to make an effort to stay invested in the conversation.  A person who doesn’t work with you is just never going to be able to relate to or share your level of outrage, frustration, gossipy awe, etc., because they aren’t in the game with you.  I know that rationally, and even as I’m reminding myself of those facts, I find myself bummed that the handful of people I’ve shared details with outside of work haven’t responded to my in-person dramatizations, scandalized e-mails, or heavily punctuated texts in a way that meets my satisfaction.  I keep it to myself and it eats away at me; I share it with others and it turns out not to be that constructive (even if it does mitigate some of the stress).  What’s a girl to do?

Move.  That’s what.

Last Thursday, I had a full-on breakdown.  It involved a type of crying I haven’t done in so long that I can’t remember, the corner of a dark room, and a call to my parents.  I walked my ass to the gym after work, determined to get my control back, and I punished that elliptical.  Steps, check.

On Sunday, I had a jam-packed day of social commitments, starting from before the gym opened and lasting through after it closed — damn you, restricted weekend hours!  To ensure that I got all my steps in, I walked 6 miles to my friend’s house in the morning so we could start the day together.  Steps exceeded before 9 AM.

Yesterday and the day before, we had monsoon-level rain storms.  On Tuesday, I went to the gym, anyway.  Yesterday, I saw a break in the downpour in the early afternoon and repurposed my lunch hour to an hour of walking in long circles around a park near my office.  I made steps both days.

I’m still on my perfect streak with hitting my daily steps goals for February.  I refuse to be stopped.  This is the real test, right?  What am I made of?

I’m made of the will to succeed.  I will NOT let work derail me.  Not this time.

I’ve done my best thinking about this whole situation during my long walks or runs.  I am so thankful to the me of last year for deciding to change my life.  If I were still that same person, before taking the literal steps that turned it all around, I wouldn’t be able to handle this.  Even now, I have a whole list of excuses available to me to backslide and stuff my face with sugar:  I’m tired.  I’m stressed.  I’m confused.  I’m frustrated.  I’m on my period.  (Not sorry that you know that.  Women menstruate.  Then they talk about it.  Be a grownup and get over it.)  The difference is, I’m finding that I actually don’t want to eat to feel better.  I want to move.  Moving to relieve stress is at least productive.  Eating to relieve stress is opening a door to the past that is better left cemented shut.

Anyway, there are a few people who read this who have reached out to make sure I’m OK because I’ve been conspicuously and uncharacteristically quiet on my blog and on Diet Bet.  Thank you so much for your concern.  I sincerely appreciate it, and I’m touched by your messages.  I am OK.  Really.  I may be a little inactive for a bit longer on the internet, but I promise you, I am not being inactive anywhere else.

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DAY 334: Winning winter

My body has changed a lot in the past 11 months.  The loss of weight has also meant a loss of insulation, and I’m feeling cold easily for the first time in many winters.  I need a higher temperature in my home and office, and more blankets on my bed when I go to sleep.  The silver lining is that I’m getting prolonged use out of those pants I’ve been shrinking out of:  I need the extra space at the waist band to accommodate leggings or a second pair of pants underneath!

To boot, I’m actually enjoying feeling so cold.  Not only is it a reminder of the pounds I’ve banished, but I’ve also read that being exposed to chilly temperatures increases calorie burns — and therefore weight loss — because of the extra work the body has to do to keep itself warm.  Its a win-win!

Keeping these things in mind has really helped me keep focused on staying active on days when it would be easier to stay inside, cozy on the couch, consuming some sinful TV shows and even more sinful food and drink choices.  On Presidents Day earlier this week, we got some snow and ice that I was tempted to use as an excuse to stay inside and indulge.  But I was on a 3-week streak of exceeding my daily VivoFit steps goal, and I was committed to making the streak last at least through the end of February.  When I thought about having to bundle up in my faux fur-lined boots, hat, gloves, scarf, and coat just to walk to the gym, remove it all, get sweaty, and then put all my winter gear directly ON that sweat to come back home, I wondered if it was really worth the hassle… for about 5 seconds.  The angry red arrow Jiminy was flashing at me didn’t allow me to entertain that silly question for long.  In an instant, I changed my thinking to the bizarrely positive reasons to trudge out into the harsh conditions (It’s cold out there [and that’s good]!  You need your steps!), and off I went.  My streak is still alive.

Working out has also become a stress release.  Instead of capitulating to stress like I used to, I now channel the negative energy into high-octane exercise that burns calories and frees my mind.  I have had surprising moments of clarity about confusing or nerve-racking situations I find myself in while testing the limits of the elliptical.  Physical activity as an outlet for emotional pressure: what a concept!  Here I am, living the myth.

This isn’t to say that all of this is suddenly rote or even easy.  I still have to convince myself that I have to work out on any given day, and then I have to internally cheerlead myself to the end of the workout for the majority of the time I’m moving.  I’m just getting better at it, and I now know I have reason to believe that the arguments I have for doing the hard things are good ones.  There’s certainly been improvement, and much positive reinforcement in the form of visible results, but it’s still hard.

Someone recently asked me what my “trick” was for the success I’ve had on my mission.  I had a negative knee-jerk reaction to that question; there’s no freaking trick to this, for cryin’ out loud.  It’s called I work hard.  All the time.  Weight loss and healthy living are NEVER not on my mind.  That’s not hyperbole, people; I am NEVER not thinking about those things.  They factor into every trivial decision I make throughout the day, from which way I will walk to the metro in the morning (long way or short way: which will fit best into my exercise plan for the day?) to what time I go to sleep at night (how tired am I vs. at what bedtime am I most likely to get a quality night’s sleep?).  It ALL ties in for me.  I’ve made it that way.  That’s the only way this works.  If it were as simple as having a trick, we’d all be thin and healthy.

The person who asked me that question probably just phrased it poorly and was only wondering if I had any tips.  At least, that’s what I’m choosing to believe.  But please, as a Recovering Fat Girl, I’m begging you:  don’t ever ask someone who is obviously in the process of dropping a lot of weight, what her trick is.  Semantics matter here.  Implying there’s some shortcut or some magic at work takes away from that person’s hard work and trivializes the act of drastically transforming her life as if it were some kind of effortless gimmick.  Affirmations and praise are fantastic, but if you’re uncomfortable asking the question you mean to ask, just don’t ask it.  Better that than to dishonor someone’s all-consuming, seemingly endless quest to save her own life.

Whoops!  Got a little hot under the collar there.

Fortunately, that kills calories, too.

Stay warm!

 

 

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DAY 331: Holy mole-y!

Welp, today was a day I’ve spent the past several weeks being somewhere on the spectrum between not looking forward to and dreading:  my first mole screening.

Moles, moles, moles.  I’ve got more moles than a bad cop show.  Of course, I grew up with my mom putting her loving spin on the terminology and calling them “beauty marks.”  Unfortunately, naming them something else doesn’t exempt you from potential associated health risks.

I wasn’t uncomfortable about this visit to my dermatologist because there’s anything alarming with any of my “beauty marks.”  It was the exam I wasn’t down with.  You have to lie on a table wearing one of those awful open-in-the-front paper robes with nothin’ but your skivvies and bra on underneath, while the doctor examines your skin inch-by-inch while he’s wearing all of his clothes, plus magnifying glasses.

I’d rather do almost anything else.

Except have skin cancer.

So, I did the screening.

Shockingly, it wasn’t so bad!  I mean, sure, I felt like a lab specimen, but that’s true of most doctor’s visits for me.  Everything is clear and my doctor isn’t worried about any of my moles.  So, that’s one unpleasant visit over and done.

The further good news?  I realized that life below 200 pounds means that those stupid examination robes actually stay closed around your body if you don’t want to let it all hang out.  I also learned that your heart doesn’t race with embarrassment the whole time the doctor is looking at the parts of your body you wish you could trade in for better models.  At the end of the visit, you get to leave with your dignity, and you don’t even feel like crying.  It’s miraculous.

Oh, and I’ll throw in a little milestone from last night:

P.S.  That’s not a mole on my foot, it’s a cut from breaking in some new boots that also broke in me.

Can you guess what that is around my ankle?

No, it’s not a house-arrest bracelet monitor.

It’s the large VivoFit band that used to fit my wrist, pictured halfway down my arm here in December:

FullSizeRender (1)

I’m too jazzed to expend mental energy putting an elegant little bow on all of that.  But you can see a bunch of my moles in that picture of my arm, so it ties together.  And maybe I’ll go watch a bad cop show for good measure.

Just roll.

 

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

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DAY 324: The big reveal

I issued myself a dare a while back.  The dare was that when this photo happened, I would stop being coy and secretive about the numbers.  I was REEEEEALLY pushing myself on the whole fearless thing.

OK, past-me.  Here goes.

 

 

 

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 8.31.24 PM

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my current weight.  I JUST SHARED MY WEIGHT.

And that’s ONEDERLAND.

That makes TWO BFDs.

Now for the rest of the numbers:

  • Starting weight (March 7th, 2015):  303 pounds*
  • Diet Bet starting weight (April 17th, 2015):  279.2 pounds**
  • Final goal weight:  140 pounds (doctor approved!)  (Well, the official line is that I’ll see how 140 feels.  If there’s more to do at that point, I’ll do it.)

Um, I haven’t been in the 190s since I was on my way up the scale in my sophomore year of college, which was the worst year of my life.  It’s when all kinds of horrible things happened and I coped with the sadness and stress by eating everything in sight.  No one who has met me since I was 19 has ever seen me this size.  Ever.  That’s BFD number three.

For the official record, I saw 199 on the scale for the first time 2 weeks back, but it was a morning scale read, which doesn’t count in my mind.  I’ve even seen 198 in the morning, but again, it doesn’t count.  I’m going to say something crazy now, which is that yesterday, I felt 199.  So tonight at the gym, I weighed myself, and for the first time in over a decade, I got to move the 50-pound weight to 150 instead of 200.  I’m in the 150 club.  That’s BFD number four.

Finally, I have unhidden my Diet Bet weight chart on my profile.  Don’t believe me?  Here’s the proof.  That’s BFD number five.

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 8.36.19 PM

 

And now that that’s all out in the open… rest of sentence.

If you need me, I’ll be walking in a winter onederland.

🙂

FOOTNOTES/DISCLAIMERS/FURTHER EXPLANATIONS:

*I remember my weight on this date because it was the night before I left on an international trip and I weighed myself for the first time in weeks because I was worried about spending hours in an uncomfortably small airplane seat.  It was my heaviest weight in my life.  Yeah, that ride did suck; not only was I physically uncomfortable, but I had that number emblazoned on my brain the entire time.  Luckily, I came back having magically shed nearly 10 pounds (without trying), and I let that be my momentum.  The conscious choice to lose it all forever was on March 23rd, a few days after getting home from said trip.  At my doctor’s appointment on March 26th, I was at 289.

**This may look like a lot to lose within a short period, but it just falls the fuck off when you’re 303 pounds and suddenly adopt the healthy lifestyle your body has always wanted.  It’s also a lot of water weight.  I wasn’t doing anything extreme; I’ve always been level-headed and healthy in my approach.  I’m going to do this right from start to finish.  Promise.

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DAY 322: Monu-MENTAL

I’m taking an improv class.  The people are upbeat, fun, silly, and just looking for a good experience.  I find myself smiling throughout the class from the great creative outlet and clever social exchanges with peers, and I leave feeling energized and happy.  (Thanks for bankrolling my fun, Diet Bet!)

The sort of strange thing is that the class meets in an elementary school library.  (The school is, of course, closed during our sessions.)  It’s probably good juju for us to be subliminally reminded of our free-spirited inner children by the colorful decorations and toys around the room, but some of the set-up is a little impractical.  When our instructor wants us to do seated scenes, the only chairs at our disposal are meant for 5-year-old butts, not adult ones.  For someone who used to love ass-planting, the idea of sitting in one of these flimsy little seats was an, um, uncomfortable prospect.

This weekend, there was no way around it:  chair games galore.  I couldn’t shake the gif-style image my brain conjured up of me sitting on one of these children’s desk chairs and having it crumble to smithereens beneath my mass, and the thought of that horrified me.  I really wanted to participate in everything, but I was hanging back and hoping to abstain unnoticed to avoid busting a chair and embarrassing myself beyond redemption.

And then I realized:  I am a 31-year-old woman afraid of a piece of furniture.  CHILDREN’S furniture.

Dafuq?  That’s not how a fearless person acts.

So I shook it off.  I stopped thinking about how I’m probably the heaviest person in the class — certainly the heaviest girl.  I reminded myself that I’ve lost over 100 pounds, and if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t even be in this class entertaining the possibility of putting my ass on that tiny chair.  I put my mental gif into my “mind vice,” à la Jack Donaghy, and crushed it.  I told myself it would be fine.

And I sat in a chair, like I’ve done a million times in my life, and did not crush it.

It was fine.

I will be fine.

But I still keep having nuisance thoughts creep into my mind.  It’s such a weird psychological place to be in, suddenly feeling a spike of nervousness about things I can do now, but that I used to not be able to do when I was at my biggest.  When I took a bath last week and could lie in the tub with both of my arms at my side because they fit now — that was a weird naked triumph.  When I was charging to work this morning and realized I was flying through the turnstiles to get to the train without making contact with the sides of it, I had an involuntary flashback to when that was impossible.  When a stranger sat beside me on the train and spent the whole ride trying to gingerly keep her body piled on her side of the line separating our seats, I remembered when that girl was me.  I don’t think people who have never dealt with significant weight loss ever think about this stuff.  I wonder if I always will?

Later today, I caught my reflection in the mirror of the bathroom at the office and saw a cheek bone on my face.  A cheek bone.  I started whipping my face around back and forth, averting my eyes and then quickly zooming them back to look at my reflection, as if trying to catch my cheek bone off-guard before it could run away.  It was still there.  And it has a twin on the other side of my face.

I couldn’t believe it.

I was about to reach up and touch my cheek bones to make sure they were real, when someone came out of one of the bathroom stalls. It was a co-worker I rarely see, but who has made a few subtle remarks on my weight loss before.  She caught me in a weird moment, posed with my hands half-raised to my cheeks and a strange grin on my face.

Instead of commenting on what must have been an odd thing to see, she looked at me and paid me an awesome compliment, with a huge smile of her own:  “You look great!”

It turned into a 5-minute conversation about her own struggle with weight loss.  She asked me how I had been feeling since I’ve been changing, and I told her I felt better than I looked, and that my doctor was looking forward to not recognizing me soon.  She shared a doctor story of her own:  her doctor recently told her that she needs to lose 30 pounds.  She took hearing that really hard; she had a baby last year and is now back to her pre-pregnancy weight and happy with her size.  I told her she didn’t have 30 pounds to lose and she looked wonderful to me!  She said she didn’t think so, either; she agreed with her doctor that she could stand to lose maybe 15 pounds, but 30 sounded extreme to her.  It was deflating.  She said that ever since then, she’s really struggled with motivation.  She started asking me how I got started, so I shared a few things with her.  Even when she was describing her tough experience at her doctor’s office, she was smiling at me.  She ended the conversation with, “What you’re doing is inspiring me.”

That was AMAZING.  Honestly, I thought she didn’t even like me; turns out, she was kind of… studying me?  All this time, I was misinterpreting her glances and expressions.  I never would have known she was quietly cheering me on if not for that conversation.

That’s when I thought of the biggest change in myself:  being able to talk about it.  I am now talking about it with real people, in real life, out loud.  I don’t get all awkward or squirmy, and I don’t avoid the compliments anymore.  And guess what?  That makes people share more of their own experiences, and it becomes a way to help them.  It leads to conversations where you learn something more about someone you were previously making bad assumptions about, and it teaches you something about your place in your environment.

The personal growth during the physical shrinking is the best part of this.  It’s better than losing 100 pounds, it’s better than collar bones, it’s better than running a mile without stopping, it’s better than facing down a child’s chair, it’s better than breezing through a turnstile untouched, it’s better than fitting on less than half of a bench on public transportation, and it’s better than visible cheek bones.  But it took achieving all of those milestones to get here and finally start to see something I’ve been trying to find all along:  my true self.

The next person who asks me how I feel may just make me cry, and that’s the most open and honest answer I could possibly give to that question.

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DAY 315: Drastic measures

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

Then, I spotted my measuring tape.

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

 

People.

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

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

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

I’ve shrunk by my full height.

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

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DAY 308: Snow daze

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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DAY 303: The 10 Commandments of Gymnasia

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

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

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

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

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

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF THE GYM MACHINES

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

 

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

Happy workout!

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DAY 301: New York times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

stairs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s what makes me a winner. 😀