Tag Archives: healthy

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DAY 721: Whatever floats your bloat

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New bed: check.
Podiatry issues addressed: check.
Allergic  chaos handled: check.
Exercise routine: check.
Meal planning and preparation: check.
Sticking with meal plans: check.
Solving the mystery of persistent fatigue and blah-ness: ???

Coupled with this STILL-abiding exhaustion enigma is a recent incident of occasional digestive discomfort after eating, and rather chronic bloating.  I haven’t been able to pinpoint the source(s) of these incidents, but they’re obviously unpleasant and disruptive to my day.  Ain’t nobody got time fo’ dat.

I have an IRL friend (who actually knows about my weight-loss mission and even reads my blog sometimes — hi!  *waves*) who did Whole 30 not too long ago, and she had a lot of really positive results and interesting findings.  I’ve been researching it, and late last week, I decided to take the plunge.  I had friends visiting over this past weekend, and I have a meeting this Wednesday where I won’t be able to prep and bring my own food (and I want to eat the yummy catered food, if I’m honest), so I’ve chosen the start date of Thursday, March 16th.  I’ve even gotten 2 co-workers to go in on it with me, and my IRL friend will be joining for her second time!

I’m typically disinclined to do anything that resembles a fad diet like I thought this did at first.  However, having a friend vouch for it and reading about the numerous positive effects it can have — plus, better understanding my body’s reactions to foods and being able to tailor my diet to its true needs — are very enticing prospects for me.  The oversimplified version of Whole 30 is it’s a very restrictive elimination diet that is meant to help determine what foods may be causing inflammation (not to mention a host of various other undesirable effects on the body), so that a person can ultimately design a daily diet that will work best for his/her specific needs and balance of all things.  You achieve this by reintroducing the eliminated food groups one by one to your diet after the 30 days, then carefully monitoring your body’s reactions.   I expect and hope to also achieve some weight loss during this experiment, but along with the added sugar, alcohol, all grains, legumes, and dairy, I have to give up the scale for 30 days — so it will be a long time before that particular outcome is revealed.

The adjustment phase looks pretty intense, but I’m hoping the fact that I’ve been eating clean for a long time already will help mitigate some of the withdrawal symptoms.  It looks pretty daunting, but I can handle it.  I’ll be bitchy, but I can handle it.  😉

My goal is to really make it the “whole 30” days without any missteps or cheats.  Now that I’m actually trying to put together meal plans for the upcoming start date, it’s feeling quite challenging — I’m already realizing how many no-no foods sneak their way into my recipes!  It’s going to be quite the… uh… adventure.  Whether you want it or not, I will be reporting back and likely updating (read: ranting) pretty regularly throughout the process.  Please wish me luck!

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DAY 715: Not drawn to scale

Getting back on the horse has been so exhausting and challenging, I can’t help but curse past-me for having gotten off in the first place.  That was dumb, past-me.  SHAME ON YOU/ME/US.

As I’ve most recently lamented, sleep has been a problem lately.  Just when the remedy to that arrived (my new mattress and box spring finally came at the end of last week!), I had a nasty allergic flare-up amid a sudden onset of spring that has woken me up persistently throughout the night so I can give in to full-body coughing fits.  It’s really just the loveliest.  I can only imagine how much worse it would be without my Rx antihistamines and allergy shots (though I really don’t have to imagine)!

This, and a slightly indulgent Saturday (two meals out that included mostly healthy choices, with the exception of one cocktail and one pastry, and zero gym time although I still made all my daily steps), converged to stall my weight loss.  My scale has been showing me wildly inconsistent numbers that seem like they’re just being randomly generated by some gremlin living inside the scale, and I’ve given in to weighing in often multiple times a day just to try to identify what my real weight might be.  Foolish and counter-productive, is what I’d call that venture.  I am now swearing off the scale until the end of this week.  I know for my own sake I can’t weigh in more than once a week.  Back to that.

Also, I’ve been generally slacking at the gym.  I still go for the most part, but I’ve been letting myself off the hook of really pushing myself.  I know the pounds aren’t gonna drop off for free; I have to pay for that shit with my sweat.  What I’ve been doing hasn’t been cutting it.  I know that, and yet I haven’t been pushing myself.  Come on, self.  Scale gremlin lives off this kind of laxness.

I’m also wearing orthotics now, as prescribed by my podiatrist.  As my body adjusts to their correctional effects, there’s some stiffness and soreness in random joints up and down my legs.  I know it’s temporary, but it is a bit of a hindrance.

Things are finally trending toward equilibrium, though, and I’ve slowly noticed I’m feeling more rested when I first get up in the morning.  I’ve even dared to let myself believe that the slimmer neck and shoulders on the body I’m seeing in the mirror might be real.

During my Sunday visit to the gym, I did some interval jogging on the treadmill for the first time in ages, maxing out on 3 minutes straight at 5.0 MPH.  Last night at the gym, I self-insisted on my arms circuit and event tried a new machine that had always been a little intimidating to me (the rower) before pushing myself on the elliptical (which only exists in models I don’t like at my gym).   Still not a profuse sweat, but a good start.  And honestly, the post-workout soreness from the two days combined is highly satisfying.

This morning, walking down the stairs to leave my building, I felt more energetic and lighter on my feet.

And then when I arrived at work today, I got the affirmation of a co-worker.

Her:  “You look like you’ve lost some weight.  Have you been losing weight?”
Me (out loud):  cheshire

Me (internally):  “Why, yes.  Yes, I have.”  (HEAR ME, SCALE GREMLIN!  HEAR ME!  **shakes fist**)

In your face, container of brownies that mocked me at the grocery store last Friday.  You can bite me.

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DAY 690: Stark craving mad

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

I wake up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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DAY 686: Healthy competition

All right, I’ve officially done it: I’ve taken my mission to the streets.  And by “the streets,” I mean real life.

A friend and I have been gradually falling into a rhythm of accountability partnership for a few months now.  When I first got securely back on the wagon post-migraine, I announced to her on the following Monday morning that I was in an iron-clad agreement with myself to go to the gym that night.  She said she was planning on going to her gym that night, too.  We agreed to check in with each other later that evening about whether we had both met our obligations.  I told her when she asked me if I went, that if I said no, I wanted her to immediately follow up with, “Why the fuck not?”  Anything less than “because my legs fell off” would be an unacceptable excuse.  Fortunately – perhaps even consequently – when she did check in with me that evening, my answer was yes.

At the end of last week, we were talking about wanting to do a friendly steps challenge, but we have two different fitness trackers: I have Jiminy (commonly known as a VivoFit), and she has a Fitbit.  The idea seemed like a non-starter until we realized, hey, there’s an app for everything – there’s surely an app for competition between incompatible brands of fitness trackers.  Sure enough, I found an app/website called Stridekick, which we both immediately joined and created a private challenge on.  That challenge starts today.

While I do have a competitive streak that tends to become pretty fierce sometimes, the real driving force in this for me isn’t the pride points I’ll score when I mercilessly kick my friend’s ass; it’s from knowing the accountability is going to be instantaneous and displayed in hard numbers.  Jiminy will immediately betray me if my numbers aren’t up to scratch, so I’ve gotta earn those steps.  You can do challenges other than total steps on Sidetrack, and also against as many people as you want instead of just 1:1, but this seemed the best place to start.  My friend and I have similar schedules, so it’s a fair fight in terms of possible time investment.  There’s a bit of competition in DietBet, of course, with monetary stakes, but I like the personal element the head-to-head competition adds.  Plus, this brings positive reinforcement to my potential to succeed in my DietBets, and in my overall mission in the long term.  It seems a worthwhile experiment, at least.

Both my Stridekick challenge and my DietBets end with this month, so a lot will be revealed on February 28th.  No time to lose, so if you’ll excuse me, I’d better… uh… get to steppin’.

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DAY 655: Take your medicine

I enjoyed both health and flavor benefits of it last year, so I decided I would try souping again this winter.  So far, I’ve stuck to tried-and-true recipes that were nutritious, comforting, and yummy in my tummy.  Off to a great start!  And then…

I got an immersion blender for my birthday in the fall.  I was itching to finally use it, so I chose this week for its maiden voyage into the soup pot with a recipe I somewhat improvised for a pumpkin-and-butternut-squash soup.  I’ve made it exactly twice before, both times with different spices and in differing amounts.  The first time, I loved it.  The second time, I hated it.  I felt confident that I remembered enough about what worked and what didn’t to achieve success on lucky time #3, but… well, you see where this is going.

My immersion blender performed admirably — nay, heroically! — but a good soup was not  in the cards.  It ended up being quite a thick consistency, so it’s really more of a bisque, but that isn’t ordinarily something that would put me off a soup.  It’s just a little too… earthy.  Or something.  I can’t really explain what the problem with it is, but no matter how much I’ve been adding pumpkin seeds to or seasoning my nightly dinners (4 of 6 downed to date!), they’re progressively more unappetizing.  I have to reheat the soup 2-4 times as I’m eating because as soon as it loses heat and approaches tepid, it reminds me too much of baby food and I want to gag.

BUT…

I’m eating it anyway.

I typically subscribe to the credo that if you aren’t excited about your healthy food, it’s a backfire waiting to happen.  When something just doesn’t hit the spot for whatever reason and you force yourself to choke it down, it makes you extra aware of the things you’d rather be eating, and 9 times out of 10, those things are diet destroyers that kick your ass all the way down the shame spiral.  In this case, however, I’m doing it as a favor to past-me, who labored over a Crock Pot with an immersion blender to prepare this sad soup, and as a favor to current/immediate-future me, who is experiencing direct benefits of this week’s meal plan of which my kitchen misstep is a part.  This is the end of a detox period for me, and I can feel that closing down and moving into real power-lady mode.  The signs:  glowing skin, quality sleep, vanished bloating, increased energy, more-positive mentality, and — TMI alert — truly excellent poops.  Yeah, man:  post-detox, shit gets real.  😉

Soooo, I’m sticking with this unappealing soup until the bitter end.  I just have to take my medicine until the prescription runs out, and then I never have to touch the stuff again.

And next week’s menu will be better.

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DAY 460: Feeling some kind of weigh

That’s right… I’m still here.  And I’ve been feeling some kind of way.

Without wasting your time or mine with a long, detailed essay about how I’ve been busy and fighting off lack of motivation when my free time is constantly being compromised by some circumstances within my control (I’m buying a place!) and some that aren’t (my job owns me lately), suffice it to say, there have been too many distractions from my mission.

Over the past few weeks of my regrettable absence from my blog and from DietBet, I’ve had inconsistent focus.  I don’t want to say this, but for accountability purposes, I’m going to:  I gained.  I gained enough to get me pretty far back over the wrong side of 200.  It cost me the possibility of winning in my third Transformer bet, which would have been a very nice pot had I made it to the final round.  Failing is not fun.

BUT, I have learned that wallowing in shame and avoiding talking about it is what got me to over 300 14 months ago, and I won’t let that experience be for nothing.  I have to get back at it.  So, this is me, crawling out from under my embarrassment rock and trying to fix things.

I don’t have any insightful reflections I feel up to sharing at the moment.  It’s just being busy and having trouble carving time into my days when I can do an hour of cardio at the gym, and/or that 30 minutes of strength training.  Mostly, I’m frustrated with myself.  It’s no good when I don’t get along with me.

Enter Ira Glass.  The June 17th episode of “This American Life” was previewed at the end of the previous week’s podcast — this is one of the many podcasts I listen to avidly — so I knew it was coming.  I had eagerness and anxiety in anticipation once I saw it in my iTunes downloads last weekend, and I put off listening to it until yesterday.  Now that I’ve heard it, I want to recommend it to anyone who hasn’t heard it yet.  Go check out episode 589:  “Tell Me I’m Fat.”  It’s a bit longer than the length of a typical TAL episode by about 10 minutes, but such a worthwhile listen.

As expected, I had a complicated reaction to listening to those stories.  I think I’ll have to explain that in a future post — that gives anyone reading this the chance to hear the episode before I spoil it, too –but it was interesting.  A lot of it resonated strongly with me.  More importantly, though, it was the last push I needed to snap out of my fog.

More entries to follow soon!

 

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DAY 395: The Skinny on Obesity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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DAY 358: Fat week

It snowed on March 4th and reached 80 degrees on March 8th.  Springtime appeared practically over night.  I was so giddy from the sudden delightful weather last week that I decided to lose my damn mind and run OUTSIDE.  It was just the square block around my apartment (about a half mile), but damn it, I was gonna do it.  I was gonna run, outdoors, in plain sight, among the people.

And I did it.  It felt spectacular.

Until it didn’t.

A thousand knives in my lungs.  Pins and needles in my throat and ears.  It was like I was allergic to running!

Oh, wait…

I am allergic.  To spring.

Every year, the same thing happens:  the world comes back to life, and I spend a week in a hay-fever fog of insufferable misery.  That sounds dramatic, but if you don’t deal with seasonal allergies, you can’t possibly understand how bad it is.  I’d rather have the flu for a month.  I really would.  Seriously, sign me up.

Even though the same thing happens every year, I never seem to be prepared for it.  We’ve had a few fluke days of sudden temperature spikes since winter really set in, so my mind wasn’t geared towards real springtime yet.  So, like a fool, I took a run through the active pollen of everything my body hates, inhaled it deeply during my aerobic exercise, and then slept with a nose, lungs, hair, skin, eyes, ears, and god knows what else full of what may as well be poison.  I did all of that with zero antihistamines in my system.  Needless to say, I woke up the next day in ROUGH shape.

And so fat week began.

No gym — can’t breathe.

Almost no sleep — can’t breathe.

Daily steps goals unmet — can’t breathe and too tired.

Lots of ice cream — because no gym plus no sleep equals perpetual temper tantrum.

I’m too irritable to even give much of a fuck about any of that.  That’s how bad this shit is.  I hate it.  Hate it, hate it, hate it.  I’ve scarcely logged in to DietBet and haven’t weighed myself at all this week.  I haven’t met my steps goals since the night of my ill-advised outdoor run.  The best night of sleep I got was on Thursday night, on the heels of a night of 3 hours’ rest, when I had ice cream for dinner and chased it with a cocktail of two Rx allergy pills (drowsy kind), 2 NyQuil, and 2 melatonin.  It worked so well, I did that shit again last night after a shitty weekend of sleeplessness.  I had hell getting up this morning, but it was worth it to have slept.

The week of torment is almost over.  I can feel my internal armor of antihistamines reaching their optimum level, and even though my nasty cough would suggest otherwise, I’m finally starting to feel some relief.  My energy and strength are returning, too.  I may even be up for some light strength training at the gym tomorrow.  I’ll definitely be getting my steps in no matter what.

In case it was unclear, I’ve hated this week.  Not only was it physically painful, but it’s reminded me what life was like before my thintervention.  My sleep quality was lousy, I was always out of breath, and I was just generally ragged.  I felt constantly frustrated and irascible.  That person was so unhappy for so many reasons, and even more unhealthy.  This week, between reliving some of that experience and eating like a maniac, the idea that I could slide back into being that way was too real.  Ain’t gonna happen.  If tests of willpower, snow storms, and work stress didn’t break me, I’ll be damned if allergies do.  They came the closest, but they’re not gonna win.

My symptoms are worse every year, so my allergist is starting me on injections this month.  (HOLLA for good insurance!)  With any luck, 2017 me will be at her ideal size and experiencing no spring allergies.

Future me:  when you read this, remember how easily you could’ve blown this all up for yourself, but you chose not to.  Don’t ever be the reason you fail again.  Ever.

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DAY 350: From hair to eternity

Last winter, I noticed my hair was thinning.  Clumps of it were coming out in the shower, flyaway hairs would be all over my clothes throughout the day, and I couldn’t run my fingers through my hair without bringing several hairs along when I retracted my hand.  I tried dismissing it as part of getting older — my father was completely bald by the time he hit my age — or told myself that it was attributable to stress, of which I had plenty to deal with at that time.  Deep down, though, I knew that it was because I weighed 300 pounds.  My hormones were absolutely out of whack, and the nasty chemicals coursing through my body from what I was eating were surely not helping the matter.  Stress and aging played a role, I’d say, but they weren’t the culprits.

In late spring and early summer, well into my weight-loss mission, I could see my scalp in the front-center of my head, beyond my hairline.  I had to wear hats at the beach or pool; the pony tail wasn’t thick enough to cover my head and protect it from the sun anymore.  I had hoped that maybe my situation was reversible and I could go back to having a normal amount of hair, but it didn’t seem to be happening.

In late October, I got the first hair cut I’d had in perhaps a full year, and went shorter than I’d gone in perhaps a full two decades.  (Having a neck is fun!  You can do stuff like wear your hair short!)  It looked better than I had anticipated; I did have some apprehension that it would look scraggly since my hair has gotten so fine, but it worked.  The only thing I didn’t love about it was that I couldn’t pull it into a pony tail when I worked out.

Since mid-February, that has changed.  I could not only get my hair into a pony tail, but I didn’t even need a sweat band anymore to hold down the ones that were short enough to shake loose.  I decided I wanted to keep my hair shorter (about chin length — work-out pony tails be damned!)… and get bangs.

Now, someone with thin hair isn’t usually the best candidate for bangs, but I didn’t care.  I had found my photo inspiration and I had booked an appointment, so the train was leaving the station.  Worst case scenario, the bangs would turn out awful and I’d just have to spend the next few months pinning them back.  I could live with that.

Except I think I’m kinda rocking ’em.  🙂

My face has slimmed down enough that the extra volume at my forehead doesn’t make my face look squat and shapeless.  The cut of the bangs actually flatters my features in a way I was a little dubious about going in.  But best of all?  My hair has recovered.  I mean, it’s never going to be as full as it was when I was in my teens and early twenties, but I don’t look in the mirror and see my scalp looking back at me anymore.  I’m no longer convinced I’m balding and will be completely hairless within the next 3-5 years.  I have enough hair for bangs.  They aren’t super thick bangs, but they’re bangs, damn it.  And they’re mine.  And I love them.

It might seem silly to feel such an emotional pull from something as superficial as a hair style, but to me, it’s a representation of the self-transformation I’ve effected over the past  350 days.  My face is totally different now.  The blackheads on my nose have vanished.  The perpetually wary, exhausted, desperate expression on my face is not the default anymore.  My smile looks real instead of wan and constrained by facial fat.  I’m even getting new dimples, now that they aren’t plumped out into flatness!  NEW DIMPLES!  Who knew that was even on the menu?

So, yes, my hair is a big deal to me right now.  I have hope that this summer, while I’m lying in the sand or floating in the pool, there may not even be a hat on my head.  Just hair from now on.

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DAY 343: The longest shortest month

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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