Tag Archives: control

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DAY 732: Cheater, cheater, healthy eater

It’s day 9 of Whole30.  According to the timeline, my pants are supposed to be feeling tighter on days 8-9.  They’re not.  Everything is feeling looser, including the ring that slid off my finger yesterday and had to be relocated to a neighboring digit to preclude a repeat event.

“Fuck it,” I thought to myself around 9:00 last night.

And I headed to the scale.

And I weighed myself.

Now, there was the inherent risk in this of being completely crushed by the number I saw.  What if it was higher?  What if it was infinitesimal?  What if — heaven forbid — it was completely unchanged?!  I figured it was worth knowing, even though it wasn’t the final Whole30 weight-loss number.  I stood on the scale, looked down at my toes, and saw…

…

…a 10.6-pound loss.

Yes, honey.

I’ll repeat that:  As of 9:00 PM on day 8 of Whole30, I had lost 10.6 pounds.

Here come ALL THE DISCLAIMERS and a BUT STILL:

  • The first week of any diet change is the best week.  It’s the body’s freak-out-and-adjust period, where it sheds tons of water weight and other crap you don’t need.  So, it’s not like I’ll be dropping 10.6 pounds per week here.
  • My period started yesterday.  (I have a vagina and corresponding lady bits.  I discuss my period sometimes like a grown-ass woman.  If this bugs you, go read someone else’s blog.)  All my period bloat happens during PMS week, and then I lose weight the week of the actual perioding.  So, that’s a factor.
  • I had several bouts of diarrhea on day 8, leading up to the scale reading.  (I have an anus and corresponding human bits.  I discuss my bowels sometimes like a grown-ass adult.  If this bugs you, go read someone else’s blog.)  So, that surely had an effect.
  • I’ve had whatever this illness is since Saturday night, which is often a dehydrating force.  So, that likely showed up on the scale.

BUT STILL…

TEN POINT SIX POUNDS, Y’ALL.

I’m not sorry for weighing myself.  In fact, I’ll probably stick with doing it once a week for the duration of the time I stick with Whole30 (and I phrase it that way because, as of right now, I’m seriously considering just sticking with it through the wedding I’m in in May).  Furthermore, I’m cheating on Whole30 in a couple of other ways that Melissa Hartwig would probably have my head for:

  • I’m snacking between meals.  Yeah, that’s right, I’m intentionally snacking.  I am not changing my usual eating rhythm of eating every 3 hours, even though Whole30 stipulates that you should restrict yourself to only 3 meals per day and not snack unless you’re desperate.  Welp, not this chick.  I’m sticking to my 5 meals because I know it works for me, body and soul schedule.  I don’t think it’s worth veering off of that, so I chose not to from the outset.
  • I’m not perfectly balancing my proteins, fats, and carbs at each feeding.  I mean, I mostly end up doing it just by luck, but I’m not melting my brain trying to make that happen.  I am not adding almond butter to every apple I eat just because I must have healthy fat.  I mustn’t.  I wantn’t.  So I willn’t.  (Coincidentally, I do happen to eat an apple and actual almonds at the same scheduled snack time, but the point stands.)  The balance will mostly work out over the course of the day.  Mainly, I just want to get enough veggies, so that’s primarily been my focus.

I don’t think these two grievous modifications will drastically skew my results in any direction, nor am I quite that inclined to care.  The big point of Whole30, which I am adhering to 100%, is the elimination.  Here’s what I *AM* doing:

  • No added (refined) sugar
  • No legumes
  • No alcohol
  • No grains at all
  • No soy
  • No dairy
  • No coffee (not a part of the program; added by me)

Therefore, the intended anti-inflammatory experiment has room to run, and I’m still doing it “right.”  I hereby absolve myself of my sins.

Deal with it, Melissa.

P.S.  10.6 pounds.  Just sayin’.
P.P.S.  Someone even commented today in reference to Whole30 that “it’s working.”
P.P.P.S.  Shut up, Melissa.

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DAY 728: Timeline, shmimeline

the-whole30-timeline-ol6w5a

Well, it’s the start of Whole5, and  I’m still on track.  Thing is, my Whole30 Timeline experience is syncing up, um, in almost no way.

I read and re-read the timeline numerous times before starting Whole30, and many more again since.  I obviously expected and planned for some variation, and I’d say my days 1-3 were more or less in keeping with the timeline (What’s the Big Deal? and The Hangover), although the 3 days combined were more like a hybrid of the two phases merged into one.  Since I’d mostly been eating clean already, the only sign of detox I had was a daily headache, which I’ve concluded is caffeine withdrawal from kicking coffee completely rather than from Whole30, although I’m not a scientist or a doctor, so will concede that it could be a factor.  I’ve mostly been a little nonchalant and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

On Saturday (day 3), I was watching a live show in a theater and suddenly started sneezing in a way I recognized as not allergies.  Over the course of the rest of the day, I became draggier and felt my nose and ears clogging.  By the time I got home at 11:00 PM, it felt like a full-on cold, complete with a sporadic wet cough.  Thanks to the congestion, I got my sleep in small increments that night and finally got out of bed yesterday morning feeling unrested.  I puttered around the house the rest of the day, canceling my Sunday plans and not even making it to the grocery store, let alone the gym.  I crawled back into bed around 4 in the afternoon and napped off and on, then got up around 7 to eat dinner, and got right back into bed as soon as my last dish hit the drying rack.  I slept even less last night, and the crap I’m coughing up has gotten more… non-nondescript.  I guess I’m officially sick, although certain sources on the web suggest this is a bodily reaction to the detox (which was my guess/hope) rather than a proper cold.  (The Whole30 website categorically rules out this possibility.)  I so rarely succumb to any type of illness that I’m always ready to attribute symptoms like this to something else.  Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s the detox, or maybe it’s some cruel joke of a joint effort of the two.  In any event, it’s fucking annoying to be getting even less sleep!

Here on day 5, I have to say I’m really not feeling the bloodlust that the timeline’s Kill All the Things phase portends (even in spite of the sleep deprivation).  I’m more in the I Just Want a Nap phase, which I’ve been in since before starting Whole30.  Haha.  I’ve been having food dreams again, which is characteristic of a later phase as well as something that happens to me anyway, but I have no cravings or desires to murder anyone.  I haven’t had another headache since Saturday, so The Hangover feels safely over.  Staying off the scale has been the true test of willpower so far.  I’m a bit incredulous about the effectiveness of this program right now, which is mostly because I’ve been so tethered to the scale as THE metric of results and I haven’t weighed myself since before I started this whole endeavor, and since right now, I feel markedly worse, not better.  I have no temptation to quit, though.

DISCLAIMER:  If I’m making Whole30 sound easy, don’t be fooled.  A lot of work goes into this in terms of planning and meal preparation, not to mention real-time adjustments.  (I did great on my day away from home all day Saturday!)  I was also already eating clean before starting this, so it wasn’t too much of a shock to my system to cut out the alcohol I wasn’t consuming, the grains I was eating in moderation, the added sugar I was restricting, the legumes I enjoy but scarcely eat, or the dairy I took nearly exclusively in the form of milk or cheese, nearly exclusively in the early part of the day.  Also, it is only day 5; that’s not enough time for any kind of thorough analysis of anything, especially not a drastic dietary modification.  That said, the scientific part of my brain is curious and eager to see how the full effects will bear out.  This detox flu/head cold needs to GTFO, though.

In the meantime, however, I can’t plot myself on the Whole30 Timeline.  I’m traveling without a guide, I guess.

Off the edge of the map, mate.  Here there be monsters.

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DAY 716: Judge Pudge

Sometimes during my health mission, I catch myself being kind of judgmental of others.  I think it’s rooted in trying to keep myself on track mentally, like if I make judgments of other people, it’s a check on the possible hypocrisy of my doing the same thing.  For example, someone I see every day who I know is trying to lose weight, was eating a jelly donut and drinking a sugary smoothie for breakfast today.  My brain was like, “ooooooooh…!”  Like a tattle-tale 5th-grader.  I’m not going to have a donut, I thought to myself with a silent scold towards my acquaintance.

I’ve also done this in certain instances when people start describing their new diets to me.  People come up with stuff that completely throws off their nutritional balance so they can give in to fad diets that will drop the weight quickly, but aren’t conducive to lasting success.  I keep my opinion to myself because I want to support people in their efforts to lose weight, and at the end of the day, it’s none of my business, anyway… but man, the things people will do to themselves!

And strangest of all, in large crowds of anonymous people, I am always involuntarily scanning the area for the fattest and thinnest person.  The fattest, so I can take comfort in knowing that, PHEW!, it’s not me (this time)!; the thinnest, so I can ask myself, does that look healthy?  How would I look at that size?

I didn’t realize this was something I did until earlier this week on my commute to work.  Once I caught myself in the act, I wondered how long I had been doing this.  Since I started losing weight in earnest?  Since I became officially morbidly obese?  My entire life?  Would I be doing it if I were average size?  Do other people do this?

The psychology of this whole deal is fascinating.  In my case, there’s always some proximal thought rolling around in my brain of size, health, weight, and/or appearance in every context imaginable.  That’s not an exaggeration:  every. Context. Imaginable.  It’s so omnipresent that it’s difficult for me to believe that it’s not the lens through which everyone sees and thinks about everything and everyone. When people say they don’t notice how big I am/was, I’m like, come on.  That just can’t be true.  It’s not a thing you can just not notice.

Anyway, taking account of all of my private thoughts and behaviors lately has gotten me thinking about the danger of comparisons when trying to lose weight.  I have learned and practiced not measuring my progress against that of others; all paths are unique and individualized to the point of complete impossibility and irrelevance where comparison is concerned.  If I were to constantly judge my own success against someone else’s, it would only lead to frustration and disappointment on one side of the coin, or smugness and satisfaction on the other, and the worst thing is, it would all be baseless!  There are too many variables between my mission and, say, yours.  We don’t have the same goals, the same physiology, the same genetics, or the same eating, sleeping, or exercising habits.  Making comparisons between two people’s weight-loss statistics is not a worthwhile activity.

Nor is it a worthwhile activity to compare how I look to how those around me look, or to feel any kind of way about it.  I might not be able to flip a switch and suddenly stop subconsciously trying to spot the biggest and smallest people in a crowd, but I can remind myself that it’s a meaningless thing to do (and also just not very nice).  The focus is here, with me, and that’s where I’ve got to keep it.

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DAY 690: Stark craving mad

I’m a guest at a wedding, and it’s dessert time.  The banquet table is piled high with every variety of cookie I could have imagined, and I want all of them.  I squeeze as many as possible onto the small dish in my hand, still staring longingly at the ones I had to triage out of selection and save for my second trip.  In the back of my mind, my conscience screams, “STOP!  You’re going to mess up your weight loss!  That’s too many cookies!”  In brash defiance of this warning, I reach out and grab 3 giant chocolate-chip shortbread cookies that I just carry in my hand back to my assigned table.  I sink my teeth into one of the cookies in my hand and immediately feel guilty… so I keep eating.  I’m about to plow into the plate of cookies before me, when…

I wake up.

And now I’m angry.  Not only am I angry at my subconscious self for not making it through all those cookies when I could have and it wouldn’t have actually mattered, but I’m also angry that The Mission has crept into my sleeping time.  It’s bad enough I have to deal with constantly combating cravings during my waking hours, but now I have to do it in dreams, too?!

Ahhh, yes, I remember this: the taunting food-dreams stage.  This phenomenon is apparently common among dieters who are going hard.  Even Neil Patrick Harris mentions in his autobiography that when he was on a grueling fitness regimen in preparation for his role in Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway in 2014, the period was marked by “the most vivid food dreams” of his life.  Avoiding nutritional pitfalls in favor of sticking to meal plans becomes so ingrained in a loser’s mind that it burrows into the subconscious and haunts the person’s dreams.  It’s evidence of dedication and the huge importance of The Mission for the person in question, which is all good stuff — but damn, what a tease it is!

My cravings during the day have been mostly in check lately, but I find that when I let myself think for too long about what it would be like to let a spoonful of ice cream or a bite of a thick, chocolaty brownie with rich, gooey frosting cross my lips, things start getting dangerous.  That’s when the evil voice in my head says, “It’s just one indulgence, who cares?  You deserve it!  It tastes soooo good!”  I have to remind myself that no, actually, what I deserve is a healthy life.  I can’t give in to that temptation and expect to succeed.  Not right now, anyway.  The taunting food-dreams stage comes at a time too early in the process for me to safely veer off my nutritional course without A) cursing my own name, or B) stumbling the whole way down the slippery slope instead of feeling certain about regaining my footing.

I have DietBets to win and multiple bridesmaid’s dresses to fit into.  This is no time to be messing myself up.

The person who brought in the box of Tagalongs to my office, however… if I find out who that was, I will mess THAT person up.  And I don’t even like Girl Scout cookies.

If memory serves, these dreams mark the death throes of the tentative phase.  The more-confident phase of momentum is coming.  My sanity and I are waiting for it with open arms.

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DAY 680: Going against the (mi)grain(e)

This past Saturday, I had possibly the worst migraine of my life.

At some point after all the vomiting, a new sense of resolve overcame me.  It’s well past time for me to have found a way to kick myself in the ass hard enough to get back on the fitness express, but I just haven’t been able to really tap back into the feelings that gave me so much strength and power to go hard around this time last year.  Maybe it was all the incidental cleansing from the migraine-induced yakking, but somewhere in my mind, the right synapse finally fired and reanimated those atrophied senses.  I finally felt truly recommitted to The Mission.

On Sunday, when I was back to feeling 100%, I prepped my week’s worth of meals and portioned them out along with my snacks.

Yesterday, I hit the gym for the first time in months.

Today, I signed up for 2 new DietBets.

I’m back, baby.  Go time.

P.S. WordPress tells me that, quite fittingly, this is my 100th blog post!

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DAY 409: Change of a dress

The crime:  overindulging and under-exercising for several weeks.

The punishment:  sizing out of a garment in the wrong direction.

Welp, that’s done.  I won’t be wearing the dress I had bought for the wedding this weekend, to the wedding this weekend.

I guess I’ll have to find some other occasion, because damn it, I will rock that dress.  I will wear it somewhere fabulous with the hot-pink heels that sass it up even more.  Then I will post (faceless) photos of it and everyone will be like, “OOOOOH, I get it now.”

…Probably.

Anyway, I have been doing well with making up lost ground ever since I snapped out of my awful lapse on my mission, and I’ve already undone a significant amount of the damage.  I won’t feel over it until I’m under where I had been, but I am very pleased with the progress.  It’s never a bad time to remind yourself that you’re awesome.

I’m awesome.  Awesome and fearless.

And I’m coming for you, sexy dress.  I can’t wait to get inside you.  #clothesporn

*drops mic*

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DAY 408: Wake up and smell the regret

I think I got a total of 45 minutes of sleep last night.

Why?  Because I went on an epic binge before bed.

Why?  No idea.

What I do know is, it wasn’t worth it.

However, I can say that for the first time ever, I was at the gym at 4:58 in the morning with the early risers.  I got my pick of the machines without needing to wait for the meatheads to get out of the way.  I even, for the first time in a while, got on an elliptical for the long haul.  It was awesome, but frankly, very gassy.  Every time I started up a “hill” on the work-out setting, I was like that thing your car does when it’s low on fuel:  putputput pfffft.  With only 12 minutes left of my hour, I had to jump off of the machine and succumb to runner’s trots and last night’s mistakes.  (Listen, I know it’s not lady like to talk about farting and pooping, but I am not a lady at the gym.  I’m barely human.  I’m a freaking red-faced, sweat-drenched animal.)  You’re welcome for this story.

I’m not really a morning person; my VivoFit shows I get my deepest sleep in the hours before my alarm goes off at 7 AM.  Maybe I’m pampered, but I really bank on my 8-9 hours of sleep, and in order to get up early enough in the morning to work out, shower, and get ready for work, would require me to go to bed at like 9 PM in order to get enough rest.  But, given how much less stressful it actually was to work out because the gym was virtually empty, and how much quicker I was able to get through my weights circuit for the same reason, it may be worth trying a change in routine for a week to see how it goes.  It may also shake up my body’s rhythm enough to spark a drop in weight.

Walking home afterwards, “The Climb” by Miley Cyrus came on my iPod.  I downloaded it last year as an unlikely weight-loss song I would listen to on long walks around my neighborhood in the cool evenings after hot days in the summer.  It’s a kind of sappy song from the days in Miley’s career before she came in like a wrecking ball and started dancing with Molly.  Cheesy though it may be, it does ring true:

There’s always gonna be another mountain


I’m always gonna wanna make it move

Always gonna be an uphill battle

Sometimes I’m gonna have to lose

Ain’t about how fast I get there

Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side

It’s the climb

So, I’m gonna put the terrible choices of last night and rumspringa and everything else behind me where they belong, and keep on climbing.  It’s hard, but it’s the good type of hard.  I think I’m finally feeling in control again.

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DAY 395: The Skinny on Obesity

One of my tried-and-true tricks for helping myself refocus when I need a reminder of why losing weight is THE priority, is to watch some of the videos that helped positively reinforce my mindset at the very beginning.  I’ve mentioned this before in specific reference to the British series “Fat Doctor” and the role it played in shaping my work early on.  (I still recommend that one, particularly the episode I’ve linked to in my 12/1/15 entry.)  My current rut is the first time I’ve gained back a great deal of weight, and it feels the worst because of the milestone(s) I undid by allowing that to happen.  So, I’ve been doing a lot of self-cheerleading to recreate my positive attitude and remind myself that I’ve done it before, therefore, I can do it again.

Several weeks ago, I discovered a series of documentary-style videos by the University of California called The Skinny on Obesity.  I watched the whole set in the dead of winter when it was hard to convince myself that going outside was really necessary, and the motivation I got out of it was enough to last me a few weeks.  Not only was it interesting and informative, but it was presented in a very clear and matter-of-fact way that was easy to follow.  I learned a lot from these videos and have already returned to them many times for more inspiration and education.  Altogether, the entire suite takes just about an hour to watch, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.  However, if I had to recommend only one video, it would be this one.  More than anything I’ve ever read, watched, or heard, this presents information in such a clear way that it made me feel like I understand food at a basic level for the first time in all of my years on Earth.  Watching this video in particular, it was like a series of light bulbs going off.  Just eye-opening stuff.

Soooo, partially in thanks to the lessons these shorts have re-taught me, I’m on a vegetarian diet this week.  I’ve done this a few times since beginning my mission over a year ago, and it’s consistently yielded good results.  I’m not totally after just a drop on the scale this time, though; I’m in a position where I actually need to re-detox — which I remember the symptoms of and can feel happening — and reset the way I think about and consume food.  My plan of attack in the gym this week is light:  just arm weights and maybe a mile here or there on the elliptical if the mood takes me, or in the unlikely event that I don’t make my steps on a given day.  Next week, I intend to ramp it up.

One reason I’m letting myself off the hook physically is that I don’t want to overwhelm myself with so many readjustments that I’m setting myself up for further frustrations when I fall short, which is bound to happen when you try to change every single thing in one fell swoop.  Unfortunately, though, the self-hook-letting-off is primarily out of responsibility:  I have a knee injury.  I say that without knowing what it actually is; I just know I have some occasional shooting pain and there’s a lot of cracking and sustained soreness going on.  I want to get below the lowest weight I had hit and see if that’s enough to alleviate it, but without overexerting it in the process.  So, elliptical only so it doesn’t put too much pressure on my joints, and not until next week once I’ve got the food part on lock.  Also, I’m in a really shitty mood this week, so it’s just not the time to be forcing myself into stuff I know I’ll be too petulant to actually do, which will only create disappointment in myself.  (Ahh, self-awareness.)

Something that was reinforced to me through this whole lost month I just had is that all the pieces I had delicately set up to keep myself on track are very important.  It’s not just the big, obvious parts, like meal planning and working out; it’s also the small forms of positive reinforcement through podcasts, articles, videos, and writing in this blog.  It all matters, so it all needs to happen.  Lesson re-learned.

On that note, I hope you’ll watch the videos I plugged and find some motivation in them for yourself.  If nothing else, the educational value is incredible, so share far and wide!

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DAY 343: The longest shortest month

Leap Day, you reeeeeeeally had to prolong this cruel month?  Well, thanks a fuck-ton.

Silver lining:  at least all the mess will live within the confines of the same month and not spill over into March.  My work drama is, for all intents and purposes, resolved as of today.  (Phew!)

Tarnished edge around the silver lining:  that’s one more day of making all my steps that I was calendar strong-armed into.  Maybe I’ll keep the streak alive just to break my own VivoFit PBR.

It looked like I wasn’t going to hit my 4% goal in the kickstarter Diet Bet I did this month.  I was dropping a piddly average per week in the first 3 weeks of February, thanks in part to my lackadaisical performance in the gym all month, and thanks in part to the stupid, stupid stress I’ve been putting up with.  My food choices were still almost entirely clean, it was just the sustained level of nerves messing with my peace of mind, which showed up in hits to my sleeping and to my hormonal balance.

Then somehow, mercifully, the scale coughed up 4.2 pounds last week.  That’s my best week’s worth of results since my October 11th weigh-in (-4.4 pounds).  And that’s another Diet Bet win all sewn up.

I believe I have changed enough that I would have been proud of having lost any weight at all under these circumstances instead of surrendering to the pressure this month, even if I had not hit my DB goal.  I gotta say, though, that somehow pulling out a victory in the face of all that was a pretty sweet surprise (and reward) for making it through without falling apart.

If this were a video game, I would have just leveled up in mental toughness.  Skill unlocked: crisis management.

Now, on to the next BFD: my impending one-year anniversary on my mission.  I have big plans for March.

I have big senioritis for February.  Good riddance, ya little jerk.

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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.