Tag Archives: emotional

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NEW DAY 168: Fuckin’ nuts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is.
It hasn’t.
It was.

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

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

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

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

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

Fuckin’ nuts.

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NEW DAY 125: Body armor

We have this idea that armor makes you stronger. It means you’re constantly ready for battle, and you sure don’t intend to lose. Suiting up with impenetrable metals to block attacks from deadly weapons sure does sound like a power move.

Or does it?

I’m not so sure.

True toughness requires vulnerability. True strength means not yielding to and masking your weaknesses. True power demands the risk of losing it.

Loading up with body armor isn’t a show of force. It’s a projection of fear. I know because I’ve done it all my life: I’ve worn my extra weight like a protective layer to prevent anyone from getting close enough to hurt me.

The problem with this approach — and the inherent irony in it — is that being heavy does precisely nothing to shield anyone from hurt. It only invites a different kind of externally inflicted pain, and the internally inflicted kind, too.

Loneliness.
Conspicuousness.
Mockery.
Rejection.
Othering.
Embarrassment.
Ostracization.
Discomfort.
Shame.
Isolation.
Regret.
Self-disgust.

That’s great insight to have in retrospect. Cruelly, having no consciousness of it until it’s damn near too late is perhaps the most painful consequence imaginable.

Now that I’m in the process of removing a lifetime of body armor, exposing myself to the potential for the type of pain I’ve hidden myself from since before I was old enough to recognize what I was doing feels like a scary move. But what is it they say about true courage? It’s feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Not just to prove your dominion over fear — but to prove something even deeper, even bigger, and even more meaningful to yourself.

I’m discovering a whole other person beneath the physical, emotional, and psychological layers through my weight loss mission. This is a veritable existential excavation that was not the intended goal of prioritizing my health, but it’s by far the most important one. I’m giving myself something no one else can give me: another chance at living the life I want, the way I want, as the person I want to be.

True fortitude, it turns out, is learning to live without the armor. It in itself is hard work that not everyone is cut out to handle without some grit.

I’m learning this lesson more profoundly every day — one pound at a time.

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NEW DAY 122: Where it’s due

A funny thing happens when you start saying yes to things. You become your own best friend.

Going straight to “yes” is not my factory setting. I overthink and overanticipate everything. It makes me an excellent planner, a cool-headed navigator of emergencies, and a strong leader. In equal measure, it also makes me an inadvertent self-saboteur of my own enjoyment. I not only look before I leap; I look towards the landing zone the whole way down, so much that I miss the full experience and thrill of the leap itself.

Or at least, I was that type of person.

My true nature isn’t suddenly erased and replaced, of course. I will still instinctively mentally map out every possible outcome in the name of contingency preparation for even seemingly inconsequential things, 90% of the time.1 The difference is that I now know that even if consequences other than the most-ideal ones happen as a result of my decision, it’s probably worth that bit of messiness for the trade-off of feeling enjoyment during the leap. Why should I turn everything into stakes-based choices full of weighted consequences? If it sounds good, why not jus say yes and trust myself to figure out how to go from there no matter what? Nothing is guaranteed; all my scenario planning is only a best guess, anyway. It makes more sense to believe that it — whatever it is — will work out as it’s meant to regardless of my decision, and know that I am capable of managing that — whatever that is — when the time comes.

This was not a choice I actively reflected on and then made, but rather my analysis of how my mindset shifted and my lived aftermath in the time since. I can honestly say that my life has improved as a result of it. I wasn’t consciously aware that I needed this change, but circumstances conspired that pushed me into it, and I’ve never looked back. I talked about it in elusive terms here and here, but as I’m feeling kind of wistful today, I’m going to expound just a little on some of those pieces now.

While I was aggressively job hunting this summer, I got to the final interview stage with what seemed like a good prospect. Unfortunately, that stage was a rather ludicrous task-based presentation I needed to prepare and then deliver to a 7-person panel before a Q&A. Concurrently, I was taking inventory of my relationships and re-evaluating their places in my life respective to the effort it required to maintain them. This was not unrelated to how people showed up (or not) for me when I was going through a very difficult time that had begun in February and from which I was still very much reeling. On top of this, I was plagued with self-doubt born of that struggle, and of my lifelong subpar but worsening physical health (and appearance) at a time when I desperately needed confidence to surmount the various hurdles on my path to a safe landing.

Enter: the external forces.

I found a professional support group of people who saw through my shaky veneer, to my true self. They supported me, they reminded me who I am, and they commiserated with me — but more importantly, they did so without coddling me and letting me avoid doing the work. They pushed me to tap into my strength, which wasn’t as inaccessible as I had made myself believe. Being a part of that community helped me rediscover my brand of personal inner magic that I needed not only to get through that season, but also to present to outside entities that needed to see it in order to find me an appealing candidate.

When I first started my tentative return to the gym, I was unsure of my ability, weak on my commitment, and hesitant to push myself in the way I needed to. Early on, I got an injury that worsened when it got infected, and the necessary pause from high-intensity workouts forced me back into my head when I had finally gotten back into my body. Knowing the risks that this presented, I took control by returning to playing instruments and starting to venture back into unstructured creative writing again. It kept things under control when my physical outlet was temporarily unavailable.

I gradually started getting out of the house more. I intentionally spent productive time in cafes on weekdays with a then-acquaintance who has a wfh job, who has become an actual friend as a result. We helped each other not only stay focused during those sessions, but we also encouraged and supported each other as we both grappled with getting through our respective tough situations.

There were also plenty of constants who were by my side throughout that wobbly chapter of my life. They checked on me, they lovingly imposed kind gestures on me, they found ways to give me space AND make sure I knew they were in my corner. I would be remiss to not mention that. I am, and have always been, as people-rich as it gets.

I finally found an insightful, competent therapist with true professionalism but also an actual personality, whose care and commitment I have never questioned. Working with her and being able to tell her things I have not talked about with anyone else has been a huge relief, not to mention a huge help in keeping a clear head. It’s the first positive experience I have had with therapy after several attempts over the years, and it came along at exactly the right time.

And finally… the doorstep deliveries. Not literal ones. Ones that showed up on my phone. In the form of completely unexpected and out-of-the-blue texts. Which were total context shifts from platonic to very much NOT that. From two different guys. Within the same week. The, um, charge of that got me going — interpret that however you want and you won’t be wrong — and gave me good distractions (enjoy the leap!), made me feel desirable when on my own I was feeling the opposite, and provided enough of an energy boost to kick my workouts into high gear. I almost don’t want to give this kind of credit here, but keeping it 100, it’s correctly placed. My motivation skyrocketed at the moment that turned out to be the most essential. Doorstep deliveries set the energy bar , which became the pivot point that has originated my inarguably successful recommitment to my health for the second half of this godawful year — and let’s just say the porch light is still on.

That all being said, the biggest share of the credit ultimately belongs to… me.

Saying that is not selfish. It’s not even bragging. It’s just true.

The universe could have lined up this same set of circumstances for anyone, and they might have done different things with them — or they might have done nothing at all with them.

I said yes.2

At every turn, I chose myself. I chose my actions and I enacted my decisions. I stayed on my own side. I respected my needs and what would give me something positive in the moment, promising myself to capitalize on it and bank on a high-yield ROI. Was it perfect? Of course not. Was it without hiccups, bumps in the road, weirdness, or twists and turns that produced entirely new challenges of different proportions? I mean, obviously not; that’s way too specific a list for the answer to this (clearly rhetorical question) to be anything but no. But the point is, I saw things clearly and for what they were, and did not let any undesirable potential or real outcomes deter me from my priorities. When I got stuck in my head, I knew how to get myself out safely. When I felt apprehension, I believed in my abilities to handle it and coached myself through it. When I caught myself wondering if I should have done something differently, I shrugged it off as a pointless internal debate because I was where I was; the only thing I could do now was move forward, with a little more insight and wisdom. And, importantly, when presented with any new challenge, I continued to say yes.

That’s how I wound up on 75 Hard. I’m currently on day 70. I’ll do a whole other long-winded post after I successfully complete the 75 days, so I won’t veer off in that direction now. What I will say is that it has not only solidified my path forward, but it may very well have helped me change my life.

I will end with this: being your own best friend isn’t sad. It’s a necessity. By saying yes to things outside of my head, I was actually saying yes to myself. That’s the true choice I am making every day. I choose fun. I choose joy. I choose quality interactions over quantity of friendships. I choose health. I choose laughter. I choose trying. I choose failure as a possible option, and I choose to not be afraid of that. I choose a fuller life. I choose me.

I say yes.

  1. Not including vacations. I am somehow a free spirit when I’m traveling. ↩︎
  2. The only “rule” I’ve set around this that it can’t be with the knowledge that anything I say yes to might be hurting someone — myself or anyone else. ↩︎
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NEW DAY 119: It’s all write

Sometimes when I have nothing to say, I end up saying the most.

I generally prefer to keep the parameters of this blog limited to weight loss, weight management, and physical fitness, with the occasional foray into related areas like mental health that directly connect to the experiences I have along my path. I’ll (perhaps annoyingly) refer, in vague terms, to parts of my personal life that have an impact on these things, simply because they inform my thoughts and/or feelings around a given topic — but without straying too far from the crux of Life Can’t Weight or revealing too much about myself. And to be completely honest, that can be really hard at times.

One lesson I have (re)learned this year for the gazillionth time is how absolutely essential it is for me to keep a good balance of systems in place that help in my overall picture of self care. Wellbeing is about the delicate, interconnected components of life and how they affect us as humans existing in our time and place. Precious little is within our control when you stop to think about it; how we manage our immediate environment is in many cases the extent of it for a given person.

My special combination that keeps me feeling in check is quality nourishment, meaningful socialization, productivity (through professional or personal work), creative output, physical activity, reflection-based expression, and sufficient sleep. When any of those things is absent or underrepresented for too long, the whole system breaks down. Lately, managing my physical health has been so overrepresented that it has dominated my schedule and, consequently, my thoughts. Although each day is still different, the routine and my thinking are more or less the same.

The effect this has is that it makes me less inclined to write here or anywhere else, and particularly when I have too much time between therapy sessions, my reflection-based expression time suffers. Because I’m not operationalizing that release valve, my sleep suffers. With less energy from a rest deficit, I have no interest in creative pursuits. Without a proper channel for my creative drive — on top of the lacking energy and sorted-out emotions — I feel ill-equipped to socialize; I’m less patient, more taciturn, and in the mindset that I’m poor company and should spare other people from that type of interaction.

You can see where this is going. One by one, the dominoes fall, and the whole structure topples. And that’s the state in which I currently find myself. I’m writing here right now because I have nothing to say — and that says it all.

There are so many thoughts constantly racing through my mind, it would stand to reason that I could simply grab a hold of one of them and use it as a writing topic, or a real-life conversation starter, or even an opportunity for creative expression. Instead, what happens is I fall through every mental trap door that leads to some tangential thought that spirals into something else entirely, and I get stuck in an endless web of overthinking that allows zero peace. The only time my brain is quiet is when I’m doing a challenging workout that requires my full focus. As much as that sucks when I’m not pushing myself through intense exercise, it’s such a gift that I can count on that time to convert the ceaseless frenetic nonsense into a physically healthy endeavor while also expelling it from myself, even if only for a brief period.

The story of this year has been just get through this. First, it was just get through this bad news. But before that could happen, it became just get through this loss. Concurrently for part of that, it was just get through this sickness and just get through this financial drought.
Just get through this uncertainty.
Just get through this horrendous job market.
Just get through this emotional pain.
Just get through this physical pain.
Just get through this relationship strain.
Just get through this boring book.
Just get through this unpleasant conversation.
Just get through this adjustment period.
Just get through this self-doubt.
Just get through this waiting for a response.
Just get through this waiting for an initiation.
Just get through this 75 Hard challenge.
Just get through this day.
Just get through this night.
Just get through this sentence.

Until what?

When does it get better? When is it enjoyable and not just an impediment on the way to something that is? More importantly, how do I activate enjoyment instead of just getting through waiting for it to happen?

There aren’t answers to these questions. As with many things, the only way out is through. I can decide one thing: whether to keep going or not. For now, I choose to keep going.

When I’m out of survival mode and my brain space frees up again, I can commit seriously to reclaiming my agency beyond that flimsy choice.

I have to just get through this first.

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NEW DAY 108: Hearty fatigue

I sound like a broken record, but I can’t believe how tired I am. I was so drained on Thursday that even after a pair of sweaty workouts during the day, I had insufficient energy to even take a shower before I went to bed. Yet my body is so accustomed to a certain rhythm that it won’t let me sleep any more than I’m sleeping.

I’m realizing that it’s not only my body that’s tired, though. Or my consciousness. It’s mainly my heart. (Metaphysically speaking, of course.)

After a rough event about a year ago, I said to a few friends that I felt like a balled-out melon. It was like someone had sliced me in half, scooped out my insides, and given away the good parts of me, leaving a discarded rind for me to somehow regenerate enough human essence to fill back up if I wanted to keep going.

In February of this year, I felt that same way. I’ve spent the intervening months trying to make myself whole again. I’ve had some success: I’ve produced creatively, I’ve landed a new job, I’ve re-established a few interpersonal connections, I’ve given myself a vacation, I’ve tried new things, I’ve had new ideas, and I’ve made huge strides towards improving my overall health. But underneath it all, I’m still feeling a lot of sadness and loss and hurt. I’m still grappling with a lack of answers that I know I’ll never get. As I’ve said to a similar arrangement of friends, it takes a lot of energy for the body to quietly run depression.exe in the background of everything else.

This isn’t to say I’m consciously miserable or actively struggling, or anywhere near the same spot I was stuck in 7-8 months ago; I’m not thinking about this all day, or even fleetingly every day. I’ve put a great deal of effort into recovering, and I have made progress. The full process simply takes an unknowable amount of time, and there are reminders in my life that are both animate and inanimate which keep some of the deeper cuts feeling fresh. Even the more superficial wounds aren’t healed; they’ve just entered a different phase of scabbing.

Hard things are hard.

I am certain that I’m focusing on the right stuff to restore my quality of life. It’s not — and can’t be — to the total exclusion of all else, though, so the dark stuff is going to creep in sometimes. Learning how to make space for that without allowing it to become consuming is another challenge for me to figure out. I will. I am.

But my non-anatomical heart could use some caffeine.

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NEW DAY 97: To heal, the six

Four days after I broke 5 miles for the first time in over 8 years, I hit 6 for the first time ever in my life. I hit 6.01, to be exact: that’s 6 miles and .01 to grow on.

My nasty hanger-on of a cold is still not all the way gone (!), but I’m putting nails in its coffin every chance I get. Breaking 6 miles tonight was not planned; I had a what-if spark early in my elliptical run and just felt I could get there — and then the feeling of what if and I could turned into I’m gonna make this happen. And I did make it happen! In 65 minutes exactly.

It was not as easy as that; I did almost stop at a few different points, and I did wonder if I was writing checks my body couldn’t cash. Would I potentially injure something in this mad pursuit? Would I be decrepit the next day? Well, to hell with the fear. There’s no place for that in this. Decide you want it, and then go get it.

I’m recovering not only from illness, but from trauma. The first half of this year was miserable, yes, but it’s deeper and longer than that.

I didn’t know if my legs — perpetually at high risk of ankle injury — could still do this.
I didn’t know if my lungs — 7.5 years removed from multiple massive pulmonary embolisms — could still do this.
I didn’t know if my mind — plagued by faltering, tentative confidence still in the process of rebuilding — could still do this.

Well… they could.

And they did.

With every step towards 6.01, I proved something critical to myself. It’s not just that I’m physically capable or mentally strong. It’s bigger than that. It’s that I’m healing. I’m learning to trust myself, to believe in myself, and to care for myself again. And even if it’s months before I see 6.00 on another gym screen, I will revel in the moment when I was still unsteady and took command of my story like never before anyway. Because I wanted to, I believed I could, and I decided to.

That’s fortitude. That’s resilience. That’s growth.

That’s recovery.

That’s what leads to peace.

I didn’t cry when it happened like I thought I would. Something even better happened: I got emotional, and I leaned into it. I let the waves of pride, surprise, impressed-ness, relief, success, joy, and accomplishment wash over me. I felt it all. After months years of self-preservation-based blunted feelings, I felt it all. It was the type of rush that is life-affirming. It was the type of rush I thought I was no longer capable of experiencing.

POSSIBILITY.

I may find a way back after all.

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DAY 007: Shaken, not stirred

Spoiler alert:  This has nothing to do with how I take my martinis.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to express how the last few months have been for me that led me to the point in my weight-loss mission where I find myself today.  In particular, the last 6 weeks of that have turned me into a raw, exposed nerve at times.  When I saw that today was #007 in my numbering scheme, a bit of an opportunity presented itself.  It’ll be a bit of a stretch, but hey, that’s been true for my pants of late; why should my writing be any different? 😉  So, let’s say I’ve been feeling existentially shaken, but somehow not stirred to action.  (It’s tortured, but whatever.  I’m sure I’ve done worse.)

Most of the year was pretty decent, just extra busy.  When things weren’t busy, I didn’t use my time the right way.  If I could go back to the summer and kick myself in the ass, let’s just say I would.  I did have an ankle sprain in there, but even still… I leaned hard into excuses that allowed me to stray from my healthy eating and abandon exercise altogether.

Zooming in on one cross-section of time, I take you to the period of late November through late December 2017, AKA the holiday season.  Call me over-analytical (and be correct), but a highly symbolic thing happened out of precisely nowhere.  The week leading up to Thanksgiving, the piercing I got to mark the halfway point in my mission got irritated.  It was slightly warm to the touch, and I could feel there was some sort of ball of nastiness between my earring and the hole in my ear.  I the area as best I could without taking the earring out, but after a few days of those attempts, there was no change.  I finally decided to do the obvious thing my body wanted me to do and remove the earring to give the hole a thorough cleaning.  The second the post left my ear, the nastiness ball got even larger and warmer, and the hole was imperceptible.  For the ensuing 2 weeks, it became a one-to-three-day cycle of cleancleanclean, scab slowly forms over site, scab falls off, repeat.  I haven’t been able to figure out what could have caused the sudden flare-up, but it was a week before I dared try getting an earring back in.  When I did, it was my sharp piercing stud from when I got my lobes pierced at age 11 — ohhhh, yeah, I still have those little pink studs in all their juvenile glory — and it hurt more than the original cartilage piercing did.  I’m pretty sure I partially re-pierced it.

That long-winded account is to say, I don’t view it as a coincidence that this happened at a moment in time where I’d solidly backtracked to the pre-halfway mark.  My piercing might as well have said, “You no longer have the right to this.  Come back when you’re serious.”

This saga is persisting even now, albeit to a lesser extent; but I am mostly leaving the earring out, periodically re-piercing the hole to drain it of blood (there’s a blood bubble that’s shrinking, but still present) and cleaning it.  I am not about to let that sucker permanently close.  At one point, I tried to insert the earring I got that hole pierced with, but my ear swelled up around it immediately and I had to take it right back out.  It was several days before I could do anything with it again.  I don’t know if I’ve developed a sudden allergy to sterling silver — is that a thing that can even happen?! — but it was wild.  I guess I’ll have to keep watching it.

Right after Thanksgiving, I had a minor car incident when a friend’s mom hit my car in her driveway.  No one was hurt, but it was enough that my car needed significant repairs, and I was without it, out of state, for over two weeks.  This meant a huge inconvenience at home; hours on the phone with insurance adjusters, rental car agents, and the auto body shop; and an unplanned trip back to my hometown that cost me 8 hours on the road and personal time off work to pick up my car when it was finally fixed.  It was an unwelcome bout of stress and annoyance.

Then, just before Christmas, my grandfather died.  I don’t think I need to expound on that.  Suffice it to say, I loved him very much and everything about letting him go was awful and painful, sometimes physically.

When I finally got back to my place after the unexpected, prolonged time at my parents’, I was drained.  I couldn’t get out of the terrible mental spiral of, What will they say about me when I die?  I need to quit my job and do something that matters.  Life’s too short.  I’m so unhappy.  Like a broken record, over and over again.  And I came damn close to doing something rash.  When I would re-pierce my ear during that period, I liked the pain.  I admit to doing it more than usual because I liked the pain.  The psychology attributed to cutters suddenly made sense to me:  giving myself this physical pain was a type of release valve for the internal pain I was feeling but didn’t know how to express, let alone work on solving.

I needed to get myself back into some semblance of control over the situation I was downward-spiraling myself further into.  That’s why I decided to do a fast to end the year.

After devouring breakfast on New Year’s Day, I signed up and weighed in for a new DietBet.  The pot is currently at $195,870 with 6,532 players.

This past week, I signed up for two additional DietBet games:  a Kickstarter that currently has 13,355 players and a pot of $400,650, and a Transformer that currently has a DietBet record (!) of 7,022 players and a pot of $932,400.  (Both are still open to new players — join me!)  These three new bets are in addition to the Transformer I joined in November that’s still in progress — and that I have lost both rounds of so far, but that I will come back and win!

Even after all the turbulence of the fall, I remained in a sort of helpless stupor where I knew what I needed to do, but I just couldn’t get myself there.  I’ve had to force myself back into meal prep and ratcheting up my give-a-shittitude, and the mental effort of babysitting myself has been tedious and exhausting.  It’s starting to take hold, though.  I’ve gone from being emotionally shaken to having finally shaken myself out of that rut.  I’ve gone from being emotionally not stirred to having finally stirred myself into taking charge.

I’ve already made some progress in spite of that, dropping 3.2 pounds since Monday night.  I’m definitely a long way from being all in, and I have yet to get a proper workout under my belt this time around, but it’s coming.  I’m going to get myself there.  There’s no alternative option.

Life’s too short for regret.

 

 

 

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Mean, not-so-lean 2017

For this entry only, I am ditching my usual format of numbering the days because, well, that saga is over.  To put it better, that chapter of the seemingly never-ending mission has closed.

I can’t believe that at this time in 2016, I was getting ready to weigh in at under 200 pounds for the first time since college.  I made it to that milestone, but lost my way in the middle of that year, and then, between a series of fits and starts and flirtations with getting back on the healthy track, I just surrendered at the end of last summer.  It was one too many punches in my ever-expanding gut, and I couldn’t be bothered.  Last year — OOOH, that feels good to put 2017 in the past! — pinned me to the mat and I quit trying to get up.

I steered into the skid so hard, I can’t believe what the scale told me when I forced myself to get on it today.  By rights, I really should have gained a metric fuck-ton of weight.  I devoured all the marked-down Halloween candy, all the yummy fall treats, too much Thanksgiving dinner and homemade treats while staying with family, and basically just kept going down that path until kingdom come.  It got worse when my grandfather somewhat suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly died the week before Christmas.  I went home to my family and we ate our feelings for a week, then I gorged myself on Christmas cookies and more discounted candy.  Once I came home to my empty house after all that emotional zig-zagging, I consciously continued the bender.  I truly don’t remember the last time I worked out, but I want to say it was… early October?  Ugh.

The night before my grandfather’s funeral, I got a punishing migraine.  I get them from time to time, but I thought I had identified the main cause of them — a too-tight hair tie around my wrist — and hadn’t had one since.  Well, turns out crying/fighting not to cry/not sleeping well/not eating right/getting no exercise/having crazy emotions can produce them, too… with a vengeance.  I was knocked off my feet in a cold, dark room for hours, finally throwing up so violently and forcefully I’m surprised it wasn’t coming out of my eyes and ears in addition to my mouth and nose.  That was only my third vomit-inducing migraine, and by far the worst.  I never want to feel like that again.

Yesterday, I decided the way I would end the year-long migraine that was 2017 was by fasting.  I just didn’t eat for 30 hours, from the time I went to bed on the 30th to the time I “woke up” this morning.  Why the air quotes?  Well, because fasting is — duh — a detox, and my body had a LOT to detoxify itself of.  (Yes, I am aware that I am not detoxified now after one day of not eating, but the process started.)  I got a nasty migraine again in the afternoon yesterday, and it didn’t fully dissipate until after I ate breakfast this morning, meaning I was essentially awake all night in mind-numbing pain, in spite of my perfectly lovely NYE plan of sleeping right through the stroke of midnight.  2017 just couldn’t let me go without one last kick in the head.  (At least I didn’t yak this time, although that at least would have provided some relief.)

Sooooo, when I got on the scale this afternoon (after 2 meals and 2 snacks), I was certain that I would see at least a 12-pound gain from my last weight check on December 3rd.  The proximal dehydration from my 30-hour fast, coupled with the month and a half of eating everything in sight and making zero effort to counteract any of that damage with physical activity, really should have ballooned my weight waaaaaay up.  And yet — don’t ask me how — I weigh 2 pounds less than I did on that date, and only 2 pounds more than I did when I weighed in for a Transformer DietBet on November 14th.

OK, body.  You came to play.

My meals for the week are prepped and portioned.  I stayed fully on my meal plan today and am on track with my water intake.  Yesterday was the reset.  Today is technically day 1.  Now let’s see about not stopping until the work is done.

And thanks, universe, for the solid of not making me 20 pounds heavier.  I’ll try to remember this when I’m working my ass off and the scale isn’t budging at all.  Mysterious ways, amirite?

Happy new year!

by

DAY 750: True come dream

Two nights ago, I had a major first.  While unconscious.

I was dreaming that I was at some sort of banquet-y lunch with a massive dessert table.  Of course, I gravitated directly towards the dense, chewy, chocolate chip cookies displayed on it.  I picked one up, studied its delicious mushiness, and placed it back on the table.  I picked up another, gave it the same inspection, and set it back down to examine another.  After the third or fourth time I put a dream-cookie back down, I shrugged and walked away.

No, no, no, you don’t get it — my dreams are the place where I relatively safely, albeit at the cost of fleeting waking guilt, stuff my face with nutritional contraband.  I always eat the illicit brownie, piece of cake, cupcake, ice cream, chocolate, or cookie.  But this time, subconscious-me chose not to eat that little piece of dessert heaven.

I still don’t think you heard me.  In my dream, which I have never been able to control, I opted out of a cookie indulgence.

It might sound silly, but this almost feels like a bigger deal than making the safe choices in real life.  Why?  Because DUDE.  This means that the lifestyle change has so deeply permeated my mind that it now lives in my subconscious.  I have embraced it so wholeheartedly that even in my dreams, which express my true desires, I’m going for the healthy option.  I truly, at all levels, want to be healthy.  The cookie, real or imagined, no longer has the hold on me that it used to.  Even at my strongest point of total weight-loss dominance last year, I never managed to achieve this level of mental strength and control.  I’m sure I haven’t dreamed my last food-binge dream, but I’m also sure that having dreamed my first opt-out-of-food-binge dream is a BFD.

Dream-me’s actions are rooted in my general lived experience, but they also come from a specific incident at the end of last week.  On Friday, I was stuck at a work conference for the third day in a row, and it was a Whole30 dieter’s food desert.  (Incidentally, on day one of the conference, The Sugar Association’s Board of Directors was meeting down the hall from my group.  I should’ve burned it down.  HISSSSSS!)  At lunch that day, I was wringing my hands over whether or not the cold-cut turkey set out was compliant.  I had hungrily taken three slices to cut up into my plate of lettuce and cherry tomatoes, but it seemed unlikely that the lunch meat was safe to eat because it almost always contains added sugar.  Finally, I decided not to risk it and pushed it aside in favor of my boring-but-safe rabbit food.

While this inner struggle was playing out, I was looking it up on my phone and wondering aloud to a co-worker who knows of my Whole30 endeavor about the predicament, and another co-worker overheard and asked what was going on.  I explained, and she was kind of horrified to learn what Whole30 was.  She asked, “What do you do when you have a bad day?!”  (Implication: what do you binge on when you want to eat your feelings?!)  I simultaneously appreciated the completely normal, honest reaction she had, and also felt a sudden click of recognition that this is what they’re talking about when they refer to unwitting, sugar-addicted victims of SAD (Standard American Diet).  It was the first time that struck me in such a crystallized way.  As I was processing my reaction to her reaction, I checked myself to make sure I didn’t come off like one of those goddamn judgmental, holier-than-thou dieters.  I took a beat and said, “One of the things Whole30 helps with is changing how you relate to food, so it gets you away from doing that.  I mean, it helps that it’s no fun bingeing on carrots.”  She chuckled, and that was kind of the end of it.

Leading up to this conversation was my walk along the lunch buffet line.  Coming away with a plate of greens and some puny vegetables was a big, fat bummer, even though none of the options looked stunningly awesome.  Passing the cookie-laden dessert table and sitting down to eat with my cookie-laden colleagues was a bigger, fatter bummer.  I really wanted a cookie.  I vocalized that I really wanted a cookie.  I even went back over to the dessert table, knowing that I wasn’t going to take one, just to look once more at what I was missing.  I told myself they probably weren’t as good as they looked, shrugged, and walked away.

And then a few nights later, my true came dream.

What’s funny is that when I’m all by myself, I could give a rat’s ass about a cookie.  I don’t think about junk food normally; I just go about my day and eat the things I’ve spent hours and hours planning and preparing for myself.  It’s these social situations that are murder.  Already, it’s hard even finding something that I’m confident will be compliant, but then watching everyone else be able to indulge in whatever without having to think about or care about what they’re eating, is extra hard.  I never feel like I’m about to cave in those instances, but I do feel resentful and envious of the people who get to eat things other than lettuce.  (Always prepared, I did have my home-cooked lunch with me that day, and at an odd hour of the afternoon, I snuck back to my office for the sole purpose of microwave access so I could eat it.)

I only have 4 days left (including today) on Whole30.  I’m starting to feel apprehensive about going off the program when it ends.  It’s like after spending all of 8th grade English being absolutely forbidden from ever writing with a being verb — sounds impossible, but is really just super challenging — I felt guilty when I started using them again in 9th grade, even with full permission of the teacher.  True story.  Even though I will have successfully stuck it out all 30 days, it will feel wrong to start consuming grains, dairy, etc., again.  I’m also nervous I’ll suddenly regain a lot of weight, and I simply can’t afford to do that.  Unfortunately, I literally can’t afford to maintain this diet fully, so it’s a bit of a conundrum right now.  At this point, I’m thinking I may end up going on for at least another week, to give myself a bit more time to figure it out with a little less pressure because the 30 required days will have passed.  In any event, I had anticipated feeling relief by the time I reached this point, so it’s a total surprise to be feeling hesitant about going off of it!

In non-Whole30 news, I’ve been good about sticking to my work-out regimen, even in spite of some scheduling challenges.  In addition to arms and cardio, I’m keeping my new core workouts on regular days, and I’ve noticed it’s been helping with my digestion (unless that’s just a huge coincidence).  On Sunday, I did back-to-back classes at my gym, and my legs still haven’t forgotten — but it hurts so good.  My sleep has been much better and more consistent, and I am feeling more energetic overall.  I know I said this was non-Whole30 news, but the truth is that it’s probably related to at least a small degree, of course.  I’m relearning more and more that all of this is a delicate balance, and every component of it matters.

by

DAY 743: To sleep, perchance to food-dream

OK.  It’s day 20, and I feel like I’m back tracking.

I have slept terribly the past two nights, in spite of taking melatonin on Sunday night.  Last night, after 2+ hours of trying and failing to fall asleep, I ultimately gave up and went to the kitchen to start preparing today’s lunch and tonight’s dinner.  Still not wound down from that, I went ahead and filed my taxes.  Finally, I trudged back upstairs around 2 AM where I lay awake for another hour before finally dozing off sometime after 3.  I also peed four times between when I first lay down and when I scraped myself off the mattress when my alarm went off for the 5th time this morning.  I usually only get up once or twice throughout the night.

I also had the worst headache yesterday that I’ve had since starting Whole30.  Two pills didn’t kill it during the day, and it clung on and on until I took another dosage before my first attempt at going to sleep at night.  It then took a while to dissipate, which at least it finally did.  As I sit here typing this, I can feel another one creeping on.

I continue to have inexplicable and frustrating stretches of constipation.  That just infuriates me.  In. fur. i. ates. Me.  Anti-bloat diet, my ass.

And to add injury to insult, I am all of a sudden having knee pain.  KNEE PAIN.  For the first time in my life, I have aching, stiff, sore knees through absolutely no strain or exertion.  I’ve been totally phoning it in on the physical activity, and what little I’ve gotten has been pretty non-strenuous.  Even at my heaviest weight of 303 pounds, my knees were fine.  I’m years and miles away from that point now, and partway through this healthy dietary tweak, I’m struck with it out of absolutely nowhere?  Not fair.  Also, not logical.

What the eff is going on here?!

This better be the death throes of toxins leaving my body or something.  I am SO irked about what I’m experiencing this far into the program.  The hardest shit is supposed to be over.  It’s been almost 3 weeks and I have experienced, mmm, approximately zero of the program’s touted health benefits.  For all the extra investment — and I do mean investment — of time and money to stick to the strident rules of Whole30, to experience nothing even close to “tiger blood” is outrageous.  Not only am I not feeling better, but I’m actually feeling worse.  I am so glad I’ve ignored the guideline about not weighing yourself; if it weren’t for my knowledge that I’ve dropped a lot of weight, it’s hard to imagine I could convince myself to stick out these last 10 days.

Oh, oh, oh!  But THEN!  I’m all skittish about stopping after day 30 because what if all the pounds that fell off were just water weight, and I instantly gain it all back during reintroduction?  I won’t fit into my MoH dress.  I’ll be miserable and inconsolable.  It will all have been an utter waste, in every possible sense.  Ugh, I can’t even let myself think about that, but the thought keeps popping into my head.

I’m exhausted.  What I wouldn’t give for a guilty food dream right now.