Tag Archives: determination

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DAY 161: Ready for fall

We had a lovely teaser of fall weather last week:  low humidity, bright sunshine, comfortable temps, and general pleasantness.  I took a few extra walks outside, opened all the windows in my apartment, hit the pool, traveled home the long way from work, ate on patios, and rotated through almost my entire robust collection of sunglasses.  It was pretty much perfect.

Now, it’s all gross and humid again, and it’s like… I JUST WANT IT TO BE OVER.

Which is kind of how I’m starting to feel about this whole losing weight thing.

My progress has been excruciatingly slow these last 3 weeks.  I always knew that would happen — I’m actually surprised it didn’t happen sooner — so I’ve been braced for it for months, actually.  I’m also a little skeptical that this is the slow-down; I think it’s a fake-out.

  • The week of 8/10 was my first week back from Seattle, and I was dragging ass like whoa.  I didn’t hit the gym at all, so no wonder I dropped under 2 pounds.  I’m lucky I dropped anything.
  • The week of 8/17, I picked my gym routine back up, but it was also restaurant week, and I indulged.  Three times.  Again, no wonder I dropped under 2 pounds.  (Really, it’s kind of surprising I lost any weight either of those weeks.)
  • This past week, I again lost a modest amount of weight, even though I can’t account for why.  (Then again, this process makes sense less often than it doesn’t, so I’m not twisting my brain into a pretzel trying to figure it out.)  I was in the gym exactly as planned, 5 of 7 days, and exceeded my steps by a lot every single day.  It’s probably just my body readjusting to this pace of exercise, or that I wasn’t eating enough on the fruit/veggies/fiber fronts.  I’ve tweaked my meals for this week to account for that in hopes of upping my game a bit.

So, to recap, I have lost exactly the same amount of weight each week for the past 3:  1.8 pounds.  The three-week grand total is 5.4 pounds, which I dropped in a single week early on.  Thinking about it that way is frustrating (which is why I haven’t thought about it that way until typing this), but a loss is a loss is a loss.  I’m not going to complain for having lost 1.8 pounds, especially considering the fact that for 2 of those 3 weeks, it came at very little cost of effort.

AND YET…

I just want it to be over.

The lifting and the ellipticaling and the treadmilling and the perfect food balancing and the OBSESSIVE step monitoring and the weight checking and the pushing through the foot paining and the UGH.  Make it STOP.  I’m TIRED.

I have valued this experience in ways I haven’t shared.  I have learned so much about myself, about other people, about health, and about life from my little self-overhaul, and I never imagined the volume of profound lessons I would learn simply by going all in on losing weight.  I am a better person for it in every way, and I know that.  I’m also not done in any sense.  I’m not done on the scale, I’m not done mentally, and I’m not losing focus or otherwise checking out.  If anything, I’m more committed to this mission every week than I was the week before.  So, still going strong?  Well, yeah.  No plans to change that.

The thing I think I’m really grappling with is, now that I’m entering territory I haven’t seen in many years, am I going to be able to master the post-weight loss?  I was getting in the shower after a long day outside, which included a lot of exercises inside and outside of the gym, and I just thought to myself, “I never want to do this again.”  Not the work I’d done that particular day, but this process.  This process whose infinite value I just raved about.  Don’t want to repeat it.  Ever.

It’s great and it’s rewarding and it can even be fun, but for the love of EVERYTHING, it is TEDIOUS.  It is TAXING.  It is PERSONAL.  It is HARD WORK.  It rewires your thinking to put yourself first, and it makes you feel conflicted for being selfish while knowing you’re doing the right thing.  It takes SO MUCH TIME away from the other parts of your life because there’s the getting to the gym, and the working out at the gym, and the getting home from the gym, and the meal planning, and the meal prepping, and the meal eating, and the BLAHBLAHBLAH.

And, while I’m actually enjoying myself in real time, I’m starting to get a little bit nervous about what happens next.  Am I going to have to give up all of my free time for the rest of my life, just to maintain health and fitness?  Am I going to be so focused and obsessed with that that there’s no room for anything or anyone else?  I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but this whole process has only worked BECAUSE I’ve gotten ahead of myself.  So, the question is:  How the hell do you prepare for thin life when all you’ve ever known is fat or working on it??

I guess it’s like anything else and you just figure it out.  So I will.  But ugh.

Is it fall yet?

P.S.  I’m hosting my first Diet Bet game!  As a group, we’re pooling our daily miles to travel around an exotic part of the world together.  This is the second in our series of as many DBs as it takes to “see” everything we want to see in the world.  If you’re getting a little restless like me and need more community support than you do monetary motivation, this is the group for you — it’s just a $10 bet.  We start tomorrow!  Join We Run the World here!

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DAY 153: Halftime

I can hardly believe it, but not too long ago, I reached the halfway point of my mission.

I had originally envisioned reaching this significant milestone sometime around my birthday in October, but I hit it more than two months ahead of schedule.  (As a lifelong overachiever, I’m pretty stoked about that.)  I had long planned to commemorate hitting the halfway point with something equally meaningful and that, like getting healthy, I have also always wanted to do:  get a single piercing in a non-lobe part of my ear.  Very early into my weight loss, I decided that for my birthday this year, I would give myself halfway-to-goal weight as a present, and finally put that coveted extra hole in my head.

Well, my body had other ideas.  It decided to scorch that timetable and reassign some of the meaning of the piercing.  (NO PROBLEM THERE!)

In July, when I knew halftime was imminent, my BFF from high school and I had a conversation in which we organically decided to go together so that she could get the two new tattoos she wanted and I could get the new piercing I wanted.  By coincidence, her two tattoos are each behind one of her ears, so there’s a bit of a friendship-bracelet aspect to my piercing now, too.  Between our competing and overbooked traveling schedules this summer, the soonest we could get in for our planned body defacements was this past Friday.  And we got ‘er done.

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This piercing represents a binding contract:  No turning back.

This jewelry represents a binding contract:  Live with strength.

When I was choosing the stud for the piercing, I was torn between this one and a white-gold star.  The star had obvious symbolism (I’m a star! *eye roll*) and was less expensive.  I was drawn to this triangular cluster of three circles immediately, though.  I ultimately chose it over the star because I think it best represents the person I want to be and believe I am becoming: feminine and strong.  There’s nothing dainty about this earring, but it’s classic, elegant, and distinctly feminine.  In terms of the shape, circles have no beginning or end, they just keep going — I’ve got to just keep going.  My favorite thing, though, is the triangle that those circles form.  I recently heard an interview with an architect on a podcast I listen to, where the architect said that the triangle is the strongest shape because each side can bear an equal load, and even when one side bears more, its other two legs are capable of supporting it so it won’t collapse.  I found that interesting at the time — interesting enough to remember it many weeks later — but I didn’t attach any additional meaning to that sound byte until it came back to me as I was selecting my jewelry.  I smile every time I catch a glimmer of my new earring in the mirror and I think of that.

So, I have pierced the moment at halftime.  I’m never going back to that pathetic train wreck I was before.  In femininity and strength, I have been reborn.

The best part about being halfway there is, I know I’ve got this now.  When I first started, I had no idea if I would be able to see it through to the end this time.  There was a great deal of ground to be covered, and I had to completely change everything about the way I was living to make it possible to cover any of it.  It was a daunting task, and one I’ve run from before.  For whatever wonderful reason, though, I got down this time.  I got strong.  I got disciplined.  I got tough.  I got fearless.

I know I can lose this last half of the weight because, well, I’ve already done it once.  “I can’t” is the least valid it’s ever been.  I can’t NOTHING.

That’s pretty damn exciting.

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DAY 149: Sore loser

Somehow, I have lost a respectable amount of weight over the past two weeks of ZERO GYM TIME WHATSOEVER.  Now that things are calm again and I am home bound for the next month, it’s past time to reincorporate and reprioritize my workouts into my daily routine.  So, last night, I went to the gym for the first time since August 5th.

WOW, you can lose strength quickly.

I did my usual self-designed circuit of arm weights, and everything felt noticeably heavier.  On top of that, I am sore today!  I haven’t been sore since the very first week I started doing strength training, and that was when everything was considerably lighter and I was considerably more out of shape.  I hope the weight I got rid of in gym absentia was really fat and not muscle mass!  (I mean, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t, but still.)  I’ve actually felt strangely guilty for having lost weight during my two weeks of vacation brain and OKCupid-ing, like I was somehow cheating by managing to drop the pounds while putting in almost no effort.  There’s fun, satisfaction, and pride in having earned it, ya know?  It feels a little cheap when it just goes away because you hit your steps goal.  NOT THAT I’M COMPLAINING.  OH MY GOD, BODY, DON’T CHANGE A THING.

Well, my arms have exactly one day to recover, because they’re getting werqed tomorrow, too.  Also tomorrow, I’m reuniting with the elliptical for the first time in 2 weeks.  I copped out yesterday because I had to get home by a certain time to meet a friend, and I avoided losing time to the shower by choosing strength over cardio.  😉

Incidentally, the friend I met up with last night has been effusive lately with the weight-loss praise.  She’s been telling me I’m pretty, I look great, I’m inspiring her, I’m this, I’m that, blah blah blah.  Well, it’s no secret that I don’t accept compliments well, particularly when it’s in person and from someone I care about, so she called me out on it when we were hanging out.  This is someone who usually struggles with being direct, and says it’s something she’s learning from me how to do.   This is also someone who has allowed me into her scary spaces, and I have not done the same with her.  I was cognizant of all of that in the moment, and thinking that I owed her the chance to understand me the way I understand her, and I thought, “You know what? It’s fearless time. Let’s go there.”

We ended up talking about the weight loss, the emotional sides of it, and why I’m so miserably awful at taking praise.  We also talked about dating, and how she couldn’t understand why I was shutting down and not trying harder with guys.  She kept saying I would have to get comfortable with attention from men because I’m only going to get more attractive as I lose weight and gain confidence, so why not get used to it with someone I’m not that into so the stakes stay low?  She said that in her experience, it’s empowering to snag a man when she’s not feeling that great about herself.

When she finished her rap, I explained that I know myself, and her approach is not gonna work for me.  First of all, I’m not gonna play with someone’s emotions to temporarily feel marginally better about myself physically (and that actually doesn’t do it for me, anyway), so that’s off the table.  Second of all, I told her I’ve been busting my ass the last few months trying to fall in love with myself.  It sounds corny as hell, but I need that to come from me, not from some man.  I’m the only one who’s gonna be with me until the day I die, and if I can’t truly say I love myself, what does it matter how many men said they did?  I haven’t felt like my real self in years.  YEARS.  I’m just now rediscovering my own worth.  It’s too fragile and too delicate for me to be misdirecting that emotional energy into another person, and getting my self-perception all tangled up in his perception of me.  I am NOT there, and I’m not gonna force myself to get there.  When I’m ready, I’ll know.  I trust that.  When I’m ready but I’m dragging my feet, I’ll know that, too, and I’ll push myself.  I trust that.  I’ve taught myself how.

Somehow, I got through that entire conversation without crying.  I got dangerously close, but I didn’t cry.  Crying is for people who are sad.  I am not sad.  I am hopeful.

When that part of the conversation came to a close, my friend looked at me, smiled, and said, “I’m not worried about you.”

I distinctly remember touching my collar bones when I replied, “I’m not worried about me, either.”

So, the emotional muscles are also getting werqed, but at least it doesn’t hurt anymore.

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DAY 146: I’ll double-take that

You know those Magic Eye images that were huge in the ’90s?  I could almost never see them.  If I did, it was because someone with the patience of a saint who had found the hidden picture 20 minutes prior wouldn’t give up sitting with me until I was able to see it, too.  I could certainly never find them on my own.  Just keep that in the back of your mind for now.  This is going somewhere, I promise.

I made it home from my beach trip just in time to weigh in for round 4 of my Transformer Diet Bet.  As of this evening, I am down some more weight AND a confirmed round winner!  That’s actually not the point of my post tonight, though.  It’s an answer to Day 94.

A little under 2 months ago, I got all bent out of shape because I saw a photo of me that did not seem to accurately reflect all the progress I’d made on my mission up to that point.  It crushed my morale for most of that day, and even though I rallied, it’s something I continue to think back to sometimes.  Why is it that you can feel so (comparatively) small and hear constantly how small you look, yet still not look the way you think you should in pictures?  It’s one of the most baffling parts of this whole thing.  I know that even if I were a skinny bitch, there would be certain photos of me that didn’t square with my version of reality, but come on.  This is like EVERY PICTURE.

Well, today, for the first time — in a weigh-in photo for DB, no less — I finally saw myself in a picture.  I mean, it probably helps that I’m all sun kissed and have flowy beach hair, but I actually look the size I feel in my submission picture from tonight.

The Magic Eye tactic that many tried to impart to me, but that I could never practice, was to relax my eyes and stop looking so hard.  If you refocus your vision and try to look at the real image instead of searching obsessively for the hidden one that you can’t even picture because you don’t know what it looks like, it’s much harder to find it.  That’s true here, too.  I keep thinking, madly, that I should look like I’ve lost 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 pounds, but I don’t.  I’ve only now realized that it’s not because I still look big, but because I’m getting into sizes I haven’t seen in years.  I don’t know what that looks like on me, so I don’t know what I’m looking for in pictures.

Tonight, I wasn’t looking for the secret image; I relaxed my eyes and saw the picture for what it was for the first time.  Not coincidentally, for the first time, I liked what I saw.

For those of you who read my ramblings regularly (smooches!), you might know this is a poignant message for me to suddenly grasp at this moment.  I immediately took the leap with this thought to my life in the dating desert.  I’m not going to be a totally passive Disney princess who sings “Someday My Prince Will Come” to her running shoes, but I’m also not going to be an aggressive dating ninja who pounces on every rare specimen seemingly worth the time on OKCupid.  Hell, I’m still learning to work these heels.  I can’t be falling too hard right now.

Sorry, boys.  I’m gonna keep my eyes intently focused on the hidden image of myself when it comes to you.  See ya in 6-8 months when the picture becomes clear.

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DAY 142: Sleeveless in Seattle

I got back from the West Coast late Monday night.  I had a WONDERFUL time making new friends and reconnecting with old ones, all while exploring a couple fantastic cities I had never seen before.  I made a concerted effort to get my steps in while I was out there to counteract the ridiculous food indulgence I participated in, and even though I fell short for 3 of 8 days and I only made it to the gym ONCE in the past 10 days, I’m labeling the trip a success in the weight-loss chronicles.

When I weighed myself Monday night, I fully expected to see my first weight gain since I started this mission in late March.  Instead, what I somehow saw was a two-pound loss.  (Thank you, surprise Seattle hills!)  I mean, I ate pretty well in terms of meals: most meat was salmon, I had a few salads, and I ate as close to normally as I could — with the exception of the bacon EVERY MORNING at breakfast.  It was the desserts, though.  What I REMEMBER is splitting a decadent piece of chocolatey something with 3 people, a Snickers ice cream bar, an Oreo ice cream bar, half a piece of tiramisu, half a serving of panna cotta, a piece of lemon coconut pie, gelato, more ice cream, a square of fudge, a Godiva chocolate bar, more ice cream, and whatever else I’m forgetting.  Of course, there were also the endless treks across Seattle, the seven flights of stairs, and that 3-mile hike up a proper mountain in British Columbia.  So, as with all the other components of the weight-loss experience, it all comes down to balance. This week, the scales definitely tipped more towards the consumption than the burn, but because that has not been the norm in the past 5 months, my body was like, “Relax, girl.  I got this.”

I love you, body.

Digression:  I also got a couple of affirmations during the work part of the trip.  Someone I only see at the conference I attended (read: annually) said when she saw me for the first time this year, “Every time I see you, you look different.  You’re thinner and you changed your hair.”  (It’s funny, everyone thinks I’ve gotten a hair cut because I’ve been wearing it down more.  No, guys; I haven’t had a hair cut since May.  If anything, it’s a hair growth.  Does a thinner face make your hair look shorter?  Life’s little mysteries.)  Someone I work with but haven’t seen since winter said when she saw me the first day of the conference, “You look so GOOD!  You’ve lost a ton of weight, right?!”  Then, she proceeded to ask me how and started telling me that she was going to try and lose some before her wedding next year.  She brought it up with me again later in the trip.  Since I’ve been back, two people have made a point of letting me know that they’ve noticed, too.  One has told me two days in a row, very pointedly so I’d know exactly what she meant by her comment, “You look good.  Really good.”  The other is a few months pregnant and said to me, “Are you disappearing, lady?” to which I responded, “I’m having a reverse pregnancy.”  That’s four people in a little over a week.  I guess the fat’s out of the bag.  (OHHHHH!)

Anyway, I also rocked a dress I bought online and was too tight to wear 3 weeks ago, but uh…

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Again: I love you, body.  My “work for it, and it will work for you” mantra is in full effect.  (And yes, that’s a bra on the floor behind me.  Whatevs.)

So, after a week where I was sure I was going to gain enough weight to knock me out of contention on my two pending 4-week DietBets, I’m now poised to win both.  I have a weigh-in for my Transformer bet (which I have to be careful not to disqualify myself from through losing too much) over this upcoming weekend, when I will be in Atlantic City.  At the top of my packing list?  Scale.  Oh, life on a mission.

I’ll have another rambly post tomorrow, or possibly the day after, about another pretty weird part of what life is like these days.  For now, it’s all good news.  I hope the same is true for you guys!

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DAY 94: Delusions of non-grandeur

Damn all the cameras.

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

Well, cool it wasn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…And maybe no more pictures for a while.