Tag Archives: gym

by

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.

by

DAY 317: ME WANT COOKIIIIIIIIIIE

I’m gonna give away the ending here:  I ate 3 cookies today.  Three delicious, dense, perfectly-textured cookies from a caterer for a meeting that was not even mine.  One was chocolate chip, one was white-chocolate-dipped chocolate-chocolate chip, and one was white-chocolate-dipped gingerbread.

I am SO GLAD I did that.

You know, it’s not often that I really want to indulge these days.  When I do feel a craving, I can usually identify it as a passing fancy entirely brought on by the power of suggestion, i.e. yumminess simply being there.  Before I knew there were sinful foods around, I wasn’t thinking about them, and therefore I didn’t actually want them.  When I performed the superhuman feat of resisting my mom’s legendary chocolate chip cookies while holed up at my parents’ house for 4 nights and 4 days last month, I was really working on conquering cravings and mastering will power.  I know I won’t always be perfect, but I sure was for those hours of constant temptation.  (My medal should be arriving any day now.)

So how can I possibly be glad that I went on what some would consider a binge on cookies mere hours ago?  Well, here’s why:

  1. I really fucking wanted cookies, and I am a human in a world where cookies exist, and giving up treats for life was never part of my deal with myself.  So I ate cookies and promised myself I would enjoy every bite, and that’s exactly what I did.
  2. This was not some slippery slope into reversion to the girl I was 100+ pounds ago.  I ate my 3 cookies, finished the day of work, and went to the gym before coming home.
  3. Counterintuitively, the cookies are the reason I worked out, AND the reason I did my full workout.  In fact, the intensity with which I wanted those cookies earlier matched the intensity with which I did NOT want to go to the gym tonight.  But the cookies are what got me there.  And when I wanted to quit 10 minutes into my hour, as I was staring at the seconds ticking down to the 10-minute mark and preparing to stop my run and hop off the elliptical, my eyes scanned left and saw that I had only burned 198 calories.  That’s not even one cookie gone.  That settled that; I wasn’t going anywhere.  5.24 miles and 798 torched calories later, it’s safe to say those cookies are history.  Even if that’s all I burned off today, the fact that I did HIIT for an hour means that my body is going to spend the next several hours attacking other calories.  I still created my caloric deficit today and got in a quality sweat.

 

Thank you, cookies!  You were everything I wanted and more, and I will always think of you fondly.

I’m just gonna piggy-back off of that and give a shout out to my body.  It’s doing wonderful work lately.  Last week, I gave it both pints of the Häagen Dazs that spent several weeks in my freezer, and my body basically laughed at me by giving me a four-pound drop on the scale — my biggest drop since early October.  Like, “Really?  You think I’m scared of a little ice cream?  I remember this stuff.  Nice try.”  I’m so glad my body and my mind have the same defiant streak.

Then yesterday morning, for the sheer hell of it, I decided to try on my purple oh-honey pants that were more than a size too small at the time of purchase less than a month ago.  BOOM!  Those suckers fit.  When I got them, they didn’t even make it up around my hips; they now zip and fasten fine.  They are NOT ready for public display because they give me some bulge spillage (sexy), but they will be soon enough.

So it seems my doctor was right:  my body loves me right now.  And I love it!

Moral of the story:  I’m not endorsing a Häagen Dazs diet here, but don’t let anyone tell you desserts are always a bad idea.  Sometimes they’re exactly what you need: mind, body, and soul.

 

by

DAY 308: Snow daze

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by

DAY 305: ‘Snow big deal

Loooooooooong story short, I skipped town ahead of the massive, massive blizzard expected to pummel the eastern seaboard this weekend.  I was going to be visiting my family this weekend anyway for my grandfather’s 90th birthday celebration (!), so I just left two days earlier than planned to get out ahead of the snow.

When I realized the weather was going to be bad enough to make me need to change my plans, my biggest concern was figuring out how I was going to manage to work out while away.  I can manage 2 days (per the original itinerary) away from the gym without panicking about losing my routine, but five days with no gym time at this particular moment, when working out outside will be difficult or impossible and I had no mental preparation for such a stretch without exercise, was really stressing me.  But not for long — I didn’t have time for that.

Quickly, I got organized.  I traveled to my parents’ house with my homemade soup for every day I’d be here, AM and PM snacks measured out in baggies for each day, and some perishable food items that I can cook for all of us that would’ve gone bad if left in my fridge.  I optimistically tossed my gym clothes and shoes, along with my fitness journal, into my bag and sped away yesterday afternoon.

Today, while sitting on my butt in front of the TV with my dad, I got really antsy.  I could feel that I needed to move.  I have a suuuuuuuuuuper old one-week guest pass at the gym I used to go to when I lived here and was attempting weight loss several years ago, so I thought I’d dust it off and see whether I could use it myself since I’m no longer a member there.  I took it to the gym, and even though they knew it was an old pass that was really no longer valid, I was able to finagle one week of access out of them.  Gym conundrum resolved.

I did my arm weights and my old cardio staple today.  Because this gym is laid out differently from the one I belong to where I live, the mirrors allow me to see myself from unusual angles.  When I was pumping that iron, I couldn’t believe how many muscles I could see in my arms and shoulders!  Then, when I was powering through on the elliptical, I worked up a sweat I haven’t achieved in months.  It was a very satisfying workout, and I’m proud of myself for listening to my restless body and figuring out a way to get in my burn while totally out of my element because of the elements.  I have such peace of mind knowing that I have a way to exercise every day, and that I removed the option of excuses from my path for how ever many days  — well, up to 7 — before I can safely go back.

When I got back from the gym, my dad gave me a strange look and said, “You look taller.”

Yeah, I thought I was talking taller today.  Stride of pride.

by

DAY 303: The 10 Commandments of Gymnasia

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

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

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

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

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

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF THE GYM MACHINES

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

 

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

Happy workout!

by

DAY 302: A shot in the arm

I had my follow-up appointment with my doctor today for a progress check on my weight loss.  Again, she commended me for my efforts and affirmed that they were paying off.  She told me she didn’t think we needed to do blood work to check on anything; my weight was going down, my vitals were strong, and from our conversation, she knew I was doing everything right.  “Your body loves you right now,” she told me with a massive smile.

We talked a little bit about what I was doing, how many steps I’m getting these days, and whether I was sticking with my goal weight as my target.  She updated my file on the computer and recommended another check-up in another 6 months.  I know that in that moment, we were both imagining where I’d be at that point.  I said, “I’ll be just about done!”  She said, “I won’t even recognize you!”

When I told her I had lost 100 pounds since starting this madness, I received another high-five and another “I’m proud of you” to go with the ones I collected from her last time I was there.  She complemented those with commendations for checking in with her as an accountability measure rather than to ask for diet pills or other prescription shortcuts.  As we were wrapping up, she asked me if I had gotten the flu shot this year. I told her I had already been sick with something flu-adjacent this year, and she said something like, “There are several strains this year.  It would still be good to get one.  It’s the only thing I can offer you!”  I laughed, decided it was a good idea, and indulged her need to feel like she had helped her patient.  And man, for the first time I can remember, the shot actually kinda hurt.  Thanks a lot, enormous arm muscles/possibly sadistic nurse.

Talking about this in medical terms, from a purely scientific standpoint, really helps me.  My doctor is able to confirm from a whole other angle that what I’m doing is working, and she tells me with amazement in her voice how great I’m doing by not looking for quick fixes.  She’s proud of me for tackling my problems head on, for not going on crash diets, and for pushing myself physically without endangering my health.  I went straight to the gym after seeing her, and I KILLED it from start to finish.  That woman always reminds me how powerful I am!

So, once again, my doctor gave me a shot in the arm.  And then, she gave me a literal shot in the arm.

This whole little weight-loss gamble?  Worth a shot.

by

DAY 284: You say you want a resolution

Well, you know, we all want to change the world.

Have you ever made a resolution that actually stuck?  Probably not.  I can think of only one person in my own life who has made one successful resolution:  When we were kids, my brother resolved to eat exactly one potato chip the entire year.  For what it’s worth, he nailed it.  So much for the betcha-can’t-eat-just-one myth.

Apart from that sole example, these things are basically giant pillars of fantasy.  People tend to create lofty, overblown objectives — ostensibly for self-improvement — that are unattainable, grandiose, and inherently unexecutable.  Either their resolutions are not specific enough (“I’m going to lose weight!”) or far too specific (“I’m going to go to the gym EVERY DAY and never eat sugar and go paleo and gluten-free and lose 100 pounds by June!”), and we have ourselves to blame for the impracticality.  (Learn your SMART goals, people!)

It’s an honorable effort to create things to strive for in any situation, but making resolution-setting A THING is exactly the problem, especially when it’s for losing weight.

First of all, the time of the year is a trap.  It’s a freaking trap.  From Halloween to New Year’s Eve — two SOLID MONTHS — we stuff our faces with candy and pie and cookies (among other things) under the code of holiday conduct.  That’s two months of steadily gaining weight just through the interruption of whatever routine you have in place, in combination with the calorie fests accompanying each holiday in the forms of parties, receptions, and the celebratory meals that mark the occasions themselves.  So all the while, we have in the back of our heads that we’ve got to get right… but might as well wait until this holiday-laden time of year has passed, cuz it’d just be a lost cause before then.  *shrugs and eats another cupcake*

Furthermore, those two months of splurging on enough sugar and carbs to destroy a doctor’s soul, are two months wasted on regression when they could be spent maintaining, if not making progress.  It’s digging yourself into a deeper hole to work out of when the arbitrary date of January 1st finally comes and you can make your precious resolution.  Honestly, think of the damage!

So New Year’s Day becomes THE HOPE.  We don’t set goals, we set RESOLUTIONS.  (Those are more serious, y’know.  *eye roll*)  The ball drops at midnight on January 1st, and BAM!  You’re magically different and inspired to go lose the weight you haven’t to this point been motivated enough to tackle because… wait, why again?  Because NEW YEAR’S!  That bizarre top-hat-wearing New Year’s baby is your spirit animal, and he will guide you to win!  OO-RAH!

Next on the list of pitfalls is the delusion of time.  You figure, “hey, I have all year to hit this (fucking insane) goal I’ve set for myself.  Totally gonna happen, brah.”  But have you thought it through?  Do you have a plan for how to eat right, build muscle, and work off fat so that you can even get close to hitting that likely bonkers goal of yours?  Or were you just putting it on future-you in the midst of all those holiday smorgasbords to deal with current-you’s horrible decisions so you could continue eating and drinking your way into oblivion without feeling too guilty?  Was it ever a serious decision, or was it a sugar-fueled pledge made in the throes of a mad jones for more of the sweet stuff?  The amount of time you have to hit any goal is meaningless if you haven’t figured out how to spend it on achieving that goal.

Finally, the amount of pressure from this HUGE demand you’ve put upon yourself is crushing.  You have formally resolved to lose weight, and you must succeed!  It’s A THING, after all.  A THING!

No.  It’s too much.  The stakes are too high.  Resolutioning for weight loss is the prime example of the all-or-nothing approach, and unless you’re a wiry 9-year-old boy with a weird defiant streak against potato chip advertisements, ALL OR NOTHING DOESN’T WORK.  It’s why people fail. It’s why I’ve always failed in the past.  You kill it and kill it and kill it until you have one little slip-up, then it’s THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD and you’ve totally ruined everything and you might as well just stop exercising now.  Better luck next year.  Pass the cake.

If you’ve made any resolutions relating to weight loss, I highly recommend you try them the SMART way so you aren’t set up for failure from the jump.  I also sincerely wish you luck — some people do respond well to the magnitude of SUCCEED OR BUST, but those individuals are rare.  Prove me wrong.  Please.

For my part, I resolve to try very hard not to lose my mind when my gym is suddenly overrun with starry-eyed resolutioners who are all up on my elliptical starting tomorrow.  Other than that, my resolution is to make no weight-loss resolutions; just to make more weight-loss progress.

Happy and healthy 2016!

by

DAY 259: Personal weight-loss soundtrack

This is the music that got me through the last 9 months of killing it to bring myself back to life.  I would not have made it through a single workout without these beats!  Now that I’m finally well enough to resume my demanding cardio routines, I’ve busted out the ol’ play list on my iPod again, and it’s given me quite a trip down memory lane.  Here are my favorite memorable selections from my weight-loss mission so far, in song-of-the-month fashion.

 

April:  “Get Busy” by Sean Paul
No one brings it quite like Sean-a-Paul.  This was the first song I jogged for a solid minute to.  Shake.  Dat.  Thing.

Girl get busy, just shake that booty nonstop
When the beat drops, just keep swinging it

POUNDS LOST:  21.6

May:  “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child
This is kind of an obvious choice for work-out music, but I was feeling it in May while working on reclaiming endurance on the elliptical.  This song is what brought me through that final intense 4-minute interval on numerous occasions.

I’m a survivor!
I’m not gon’ give up!
I’m not gon’ stop!
I’m gon’ work harder!

POUNDS LOST:  12.8

June:  “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten
Another obvious choice, but it happened to be both the message I needed AND the BPM I was running at — well, as much as one “runs” on the elliptical — back in June.  BOOM!

And I don’t really care if nobody else believes
Cuz I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me!

POUNDS LOST:  11.6

July:  “Bailando” by Enrique Iglesias ft. a bunch of other dudes (English version)
Ahhh, July.  I was so tan, so warm, got so much lighter so fast, and started getting sooooo into dancing.  This was my jam of preference for all that dancin’ around my apartment I did after my first shopping spree in normal-people stores while checking myself out in all those new duds.  And while cooking.  And while doing the dishes.  And while brushing my teeth.  And while walking down the street.  And while sitting in my desk chair at work.  And everywhere else.  While doing everything.  All the time.

I wanna be contigo, and live contigo,
And dance contigo, para have contigo
Una noche loca…

POUNDS LOST:  12

August:  “Bang Bang” by Jessie J. ft. Nicki Minaj & Ariana Grande
Out of nowhere, this song from a full year earlier bang-banged into my headphones and made me run faster.  It would sneak up in my play list and give me a sudden burst of energy.  A month after making it part of my regular workouts, it played while I finished running my spontaneous first-ever full mile straight.

See, anybody could be good to you
You need a bad girl to blow your mind!

POUNDS LOST:  10.6

September:  “Love Myself” by Hailee Seinfeld
I know this song is about, er, something else, but whatever.  Some double entendres start dirty and work to a cleaner second level.  Good beat, right (scrubbed) lyrics, solid sweat.  This shit makes me wanna fist pump fo’eva.

I love me
Gonna love myself
And I don’t need anybody else!

POUNDS LOST:  7

October:  “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind
The radio edited version of this song is only good.  Without the killer ripple of an extended bridge, it’s just another fairly monotonous song about being high on meth.  In the full version, the music kind of gets a second wind in the middle of the song, and it’s contagious when you start adapting your cardio to the treadmill after months of straight elliptical.  As a work-out song, this version is surprisingly SPECTACULAR pavement-pounding music.

And when the plane came in,
She said she was crashin’
The velvet, it rips in the city
We tripped on the urge to feel alive

POUNDS LOST:  4.6

November:  “Exes and Ohs” by Elle King
I’m afraid this is another song where my terrible dancing doesn’t care about making public appearances.  Holy shit, if you can’t move your ass to this song, you might be half dead.  It’s also excellent for power walking insanely steep, never-ending hills.  It’s awesome to belt out, too.  (Thank God I live alone.)  ENERGIZE!

I get high, and I love to get low
So the hearts keep breaking, and the heads just roll
You know that’s how the story goes

POUNDS LOST:  2.4

December:  “Runaway Baby” by Bruno Mars
I am not ashamed to admit that I had never heard this song until a pair of dancers did a routine to it on Dancing with the Stars.  Which I watched this season.  No shame.  Anyway, the first verse hadn’t even ended before I was downloading it and putting it onto my “Move!” play list.  Tonight, I did something I have never done:  I jogged to it OUTSIDE.  In doing so, I discovered it’s my new BPM jogging speed.  Mama’s getting fast.  🙂

Run, run, run away,
Run away, baby!

POUNDS LOST:  ??

And one that ALWAYS does the trick:  “More” by Usher
This is my classic go-to jam that I put on to pump up my cardio when I need it most.  The beat, the bad-ass lyrics, the self-assuredness I can’t help but feel as soon as it starts… this is my quintessential exercise song for all of time.  WOOOO!

Leave it on the floor, bring out the fire
And light it up, take it up higher
Gonna push it to the limit
Give it MORE!
It’s good to be back.

 

**Note:  I started at the end of March by dropping a crap ton of weight through only nutrition-based changes, so March work-out songs and pounds lost are not included here.

by

DAY 238: Peek-a-boo!

I’M ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!

Full disclosure:  possibly the biggest reason why I haven’t posted in so long is that counting the days since my last update was such a chore!  How sad is that??

It’s been a super, super packed last 5 weeks.  Fall is always my busiest season because it’s my favorite season, so I tend to fill it with more things that make me happy.  First of all, my birthday was in mid-October, so that happened.  A few days after that, I left the country for two weeks of travel.  I returned from that to a VERY full plate at work which fully consumed me up until even today, and over the weekend that just ended, I hosted a dinner party at my house whose menu was entirely pumpkin-themed — and homemade.

Needless to say, between the complete lack of time, the travel, and the general overbookedness of my life the last month plus, my fitness routine pretty much jumped off a cliff.  I have weighed myself once since I got back, but I really don’t even remember what number the scale said; I only registered that, not surprisingly, I had gained a few pounds since the last time I weighed in for anything.

I am stressed and tired.  I haven’t seen the inside of a gym in over a month.  I have gorged myself on desserts, café drinks, and unhealthy restaurant food.  I have dropped the ball with meal and snack prep (until this week — phew!).  I’ve spent a fuck-ton of money on all of the above.  And, oh yeah, it bears repeating that I GAINED WEIGHT.

Now here’s the really weird part:  I’m OK with that.

I knew what I was doing as I was doing it.  I consciously chose to eat cupcakes, ice cream, chocolate, and so on instead of being extra vigilant with my diet to compensate for the impossibility of going to the gym.  I had a burst of uncontrolled living life as it happens, and ya know what?  That’s what typical people do, I hear.  It felt great to feel like a normal human for a bit.

It also felt pretty gross.

My energy levels are SOOOOOOOOOOOOO low.  I found that while I was on vacation, I consistently got exhausted — not a little bit tired, but honestly just completely wiped out — around 2 PM every day from A) not eating at consistent intervals throughout the day, and B) having totally erratic bouts of exercise.  Being off of that game for 2 weeks and returning to a moment where I’d so overcommitted myself to professional and personal events that it prevented me from taking care of myself and returning immediately to my healthy lifestyle meant I started eating on the fly again, which meant the return of those nasty chemicals.  I’ve started experiencing cravings again, and having to fight with myself not to indulge.  I’ve felt desperately hungry from irregular eating, which makes me eat too much when the time for food finally comes.  I’ve been short tempered and irritable.  The inertia from inactivity makes me feel lazy about going to the gym, and makes me actually not WANT to go.  The combination of not eating or working out properly has affected the quality of my sleep.  I’ve been feeling draggy and getting headaches.  I feel a step away from disgusting.

That’s exactly why I know I must resume my routine.  NOW.

Because of the weight gain, I won’t win my transformer round that weighs out today/tomorrow.  I hate that.  Hate, hate, hate that.  I liked looking at my DietBet profile and seeing a perfect streak of nothing but wins.  I’ve ruined that.  I can still win the 6-month bet, though… and I fully intend to.

I came to work today with my survival kit all prepared:  lunch box packed with AM snack, lunch, and PM snack; backpack filled with gym clothes.  As the old cliché goes, this whole thing is more mental than physical.  All I have to do is physically act on what my mind knows will lead to success, and I can fix this and still hit my year-end goal for the weight loss.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…

by

DAY 200: Milestones update

Welcome to the fourth installment of my milestones updates!

This is occurring at an opportune time in my progress, because I’ve hit the dreaded slowdown.  Ironically, the changes I’m seeing in my body have never been more pronounced, but the scale has never been less cooperative.  Good thing I have other ways of measuring the victories!  You can skip the first 3 sections if you’re not into the recaps from the first 150 days.  Otherwise, let the self-horn-tooting begin!


Achieved within first 71 days

  1. Find a sports bra that fits so I can even work out. When I first started losing weight, I couldn’t get into any of the ones I could find.
  2. Grab my foot from behind when my leg is bent at the knee in order to stretch out my thigh.
  3. Walk at a 3.0 MPH pace without struggling.  This feels SO SLOW now!
  4. Make it up one flight of stairs without getting winded.
  5. Stop snoring and start sleeping better.
  6. Lose 10 lbs.
  7. Lose 25 lbs.
  8. Be under the weight limit to stand on the step stool.


Achieved between days 72 and 100

  1. Sit on my own furniture.
  2. Paint my own toe nails without contorting myself.  
  3. Close my towel the whole way around me when I get out of the shower.  
  4. Wear the oh-honey pair of pants I bought on April 11th.
  5. Wear the oh-honey shirt I bought on May 2nd.   
  6. Walk a mile at 3.5 MPH.  This is now my normal walking speed.
  7. Get 3 miles on the fat burn setting on the elliptical.   
  8. Tie my shoes without having to sit down.
  9. Go down a notch on my Vivo Fit band.   
  10. Lose 50 lbs.
  11. Lose 10% of starting weight.   
  12. GOAL REDACTED.
  13. Put ankle on opposite knee without having to use hands.   …wow.
  14. Fit into a restaurant booth.  
  15. Wear shirt size XL.
  16. Do 200 miles in a month.


Achieved between days 100 and 150

  1. Fit into my plaid rain coat.  This sucker is baggy now!
  2. Go down a half shoe size.
  3. Wear a dress.  I am officially a dress lover.
  4. Fit comfortably into airplane seats.  No problem.  🙂
  5. GOAL REDACTED.
  6. Get away from pre-diabetic sugar levels.  You know something’s wrong with your head when you look forward to going back to see your doctor in four months with hopes of getting more blood work done.
  7. Fold down the tray table from the seat in front of me on a plane.
  8. Lose 25% from heaviest weight.
  9. Lose 75 pounds.
  10. Wear my ring on my middle finger.
  11. Wear a swimsuit in public.
  12. Hike up a mother-effing mountain, with mother-effing company.
  13. Reach halfway point of weight-loss mission!**
  14. Laugh-cried while trying on the “before” dress, which I put on by stepping through the neck hole.**
  15. Purchased and wore high heels!**


Achieved between days 150 and 200

  1. Fit into my red jacket.
  2. Jogged 5 minutes without stopping.**  On a total whim.
  3. Jogged a mile without stopping.  On a total whim.
  4. Jogged 1.5 mile without stopping.**
  5. Wore shirt size L.
  6. Wore skinny jeans.**
  7. Bent over and touch my toes without bending at the knee.** 
  8. Wore a skirt.**
  9. Got too small for an oh-honey item of clothing.**  BFD!  BFD!
  10. Crossed my legs.
  11. Fit into only my side of the bench on Metro.
  12. Did 225+ miles in a month.**
  13. Hosted my first Diet Bet!**
  14. This progress on my first Transformer (which I’ll be winning next week!):
    Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 10.21.09 PM


Goals to be achieved

  1. Jog in and complete a 5K.
  2. Fit into one leg of my fat-girl gray pants.
  3. Wear a single-digit dress size.
  4. Wear a single-digit pants size.
  5. No longer be in “overweight” category (BMI <25).
  6. Wear shirt size M.
  7. GOAL REDACTED.
  8. Reach final weight goal.
  9. GOAL REDACTED.
  10. GOAL REDACTED.
  11. GOAL REDACTED.
  12. Get out of plus sizes.
  13. Switch to the small Vivo Fit band.
  14. Wear a belt.
  15. See my feet over my belly when I look down (standing still).
  16. Fit into roller coasters. I couldn’t do it at a theme park 2 years ago, and had to wait around for my friend to go through the line and ride it by herself — sucked for both of us. — I’m absolutely sure I could cross this off now, but I haven’t had the chance to test it yet, so it stays on the to-do list.
  17. Do 250 miles in a month.

Watch this space.

*Some goals are too personal/embarrassing to publish, so I’m curating selectively.
**These were not on my list of goals, but they were notable milestones that I hit during this period.