Tag Archives: healthy

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DAY 286: Fun with food

One of the ways I’ve found of making this whole weight-loss racket enjoyable has been through trying new recipes.  I’ve always liked cooking, but I got away from it for a long time because of a combination of no time (full-time job + grad school is a BAD idea), a presumed lack of logic in preparing full meals for one person, and sheer laziness — Hot Pockets are easier.

In 2015, long before any weight-loss efforts commenced, I had the idea (NOT resolution style!) that I would try making at least one new recipe every week.  I can gladly report that I was successful in that endeavor.  I doubled up on new recipes a few times, which made up for weeks when I was traveling and not doing any cooking.  It was a great experiment, and it led me to become more creative and adventuresome in the kitchen.  It also helped me discover that there are foods I didn’t think I liked that — hey! — I do like!  (I’m looking at you, Brussels sprouts.  I’m sorry I stalked you.  Please repeal your restraining order against me.)

When I threw in the added element of trying to lose weight, my food preparation routine was a true gift.  Not only did it ensure that my meals were already planned, pre-portioned, and ready to grab and eat, it also made it virtually impossible for me to get bored of what I was eating.    To keep up with the need for at least one new recipe every week, I subscribed to the paper editions of Cooking Light, Clean Eating, All Recipes, Eating Well, and Bon Appétit.  I also started following a few cooking blogs at Brussels-sprouts levels of obsession.  I can’t get enough!  I’ve loved this accidental culinary eduction, and I’ve even grown to love my ritual of cooking pretty much all day Sunday in preparation for the week ahead.

Through my forays into the wide world of recipes, I have developed a particular appreciation, and knack, for picking apart several recipes and Frankensteining them with my own strokes of inspiration into formulas that I think would add up to something yummy.  It has not led me astray yet.  I was particularly proud of what I concocted for this week:  spiced butternut squash soup.

I used to shy away from making very involved soups like this.  All the recipes I’ve ever seen for butternut squash soup call for roasting the squash, then cooking it stove top for a while with all the seasonings and other ingredients (which usually include heavy cream, a no-no for me), THEN putting the whole mess into a blender fresh from the hot pot, and serving.  That sounded like a poorly sequenced series of steps to me, and it also daunted me to think about handling a hot mixture and putting it directly into my finicky blender.  Finally feeling confident enough to tinker around with this myself, and since the eastern US has finally decided it should start acting like winter here, I went for it this week.

Luckily, my local grocery stores carry pre-sliced, pre-seeded chunks of butternut squash, so that spared me probably an hour’s worth of work.  A pound and 4 ounces costs a surprisingly reasonable $2.99, so I was able to pick up 3 packs for what I would normally spend on a large package of chicken breast.  I cut the squash cubes into slightly smaller chunks, then tossed them directly into a pot of boiling water as if getting ready to make mashed potatoes.  Ain’t nobody got time for roasting.  Once the chunks were tender, I strained them, let them cool for about 20 minutes, and then blended them with coconut milk and vegetable broth until smooth.  Finally, I poured the contents of the blender back into the pot and seasoned the hell out of it with savory spices, then let it cook at a simmer until the thickness just kind of looked right.

It.  Tastes.  AWESOME.

I will admit that much of the reason I’m posting this is that I just want to broadcast my soup success to anyone who will listen.  Beyond that, though, it’s a great example of how this process of losing weight can go when it goes well.  It’s ALL an experiment.  It’s about forcing yourself to be brave enough to try something new and knowing that there’s no wrong way to do a good (read: healthy) thing for the right (read: healthy) reasons.  It boils down to one thing:  TRY.  You might even have fun.  🙂

So, I’m extra into soups now, and have learned through one of my aforementioned recipe magazine subscriptions that “souping” is the new juicing.  It’s just what it sounds like.  You heard it here first!  Maybe!  Anyway, I think I’d like to try a new soup every week for January.  If anyone out there in the DietBet crowd/blogosphere has a beloved soup recipe they’d be kind enough to share, please post it here or send it to me in a message.  I’d really appreciate your help in building my ever-expanding recipe arsenal!

Many thanks and happy souping!

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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!

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DAY 262: Once an addict…

Some people, like me, have addictive personalities.  I’ve been this way ever since I was a small child who obsessively watched the same movie over and over again on repeat until I got sick of it.  I’ve done this throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, with everything from movies to TV shows to songs to books and even to people.  It’s an odd pattern of novelty becoming comfortable, then too familiar, then boring and/or annoying, which triggers a need for something new… until the pattern itself gets annoying and I return to something old and known until I again wear out my interest in that and need to go back to the new again.  I don’t know what it is that makes me this way, but I know it’s always been how I am, and I therefore have no expectation of changing it.

Obviously, the worst place where this special little cycle of mine pops up is with food.  Remember Oreo Cakesters?  You don’t?  Well, you must have been sleeping during that period where they existed, and I ate them all before you had a chance to try them.  (They have since mercifully been discontinued.)  I also had a Papa John’s phase, a fried chicken phase, even a freaking Hamburger Helper phase, just to name a few.  These were all bad food-addiction/compulsion-fueled habits I had before I had the thing that changed it all:  a routine.

Now that I have a framework within which to conduct my daily life, everything else is so much easier.  I’ve learned to adapt my addictive personality to a healthy way of life, which means preparation, preparation, preparation.  I’ve also learned that you can apply a potentially dangerous pattern to a positive endeavor by simply replacing the addiction.  (Simple in concept, of course.  It’s certainly a challenge in practice!)  I’m no longer obsessed with filling my belly; I’m obsessed with shrinking it.  I’m addicted to exercise.

Yesterday was the first time I’ve attempted my (formerly) usual elliptical run since before I got sick, which was well before Thanksgiving.  I’m still not entirely recovered, and my body is not keeping that a secret; I was coughing and my nose was running from just a couple of minutes in.  In the end, I was only able to do one mile of my usual 3+, but I’m happy to report that my speed is still intact (under 12 minutes!), and DAMN, it felt good to sweat from something besides a fever!

I’ve amped up the fitness addiction by signing up for more Diet Bets.  As of yesterday, I am now committed and paid into a total of FIVE (one of which I’m hosting — join me!) between now and mid-February.  I’m still trying to recover the lost ground in my Transformer, and it doesn’t look like I’ll quite get there in time for the round 4 weigh-in a week from now, but I WILL win the game.  I’ve also set a pretty ambitious goal to hit for the end of the year.  I won’t be crushed if I don’t hit it, but I WILL totally redeem myself — and be a total fucking champion — if I do.

Finally, I set up another follow-up appointment with my fabulous doctor for January 19th, 6 months after my last visit with her.  I can’t wait to hear what she’ll have to say at that visit!  It gives me extra motivation to reach my goals.

Through replacing the addiction, I’ve become so singularly focused on achieving my fitness goals that I’ve gone back to not even caring about my old trigger foods.  Those plates of temptation are just masses of needless calories that will sabotage my plans and make me mad at myself.  Why go down a path of destruction?  I’ll pass.  Gym, please.

Sorry, Christmas cookies.  Maybe next year!

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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.

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DAY 198: Fat girl, skinny jeans

That’s right, y’all.  Mama’s rockin’ skinny jeans today.

Probably not uncoincidentally, I got 4 more weight-loss affirmations — one from a new person, three from previous commenters — and was aggressively hit on by a stranger at Panera when I was in the middle of a business lunch with a co-worker.  (Do guys try to pick up girls by asking for their Facebook profile pages now instead of their digits?  Because that’s what happened.  Zero smooth points, Panera Lurker Guy.)

And yeah, that’s right:  I wore skinny jeans to work.

This has been a weird day.

I am finally starting to get comfortable with accepting compliments from people on my progress.  It took a long time, but I’ve reached a place where I can actually own their praise and feel like I deserve it, and it has become part of what motivates me to keep going.  The male attention, well… that’s always been uncomfortable, and I can feel it’s going to be a long while before I’m anywhere near OK with it.

My co-worker who was with me for that odd interaction laughed about it with me on our way back to the office, where we bumped in to another work friend who asked what was so funny.  We told her what had happened, and then, the girls both started telling me I’d better get used to it, it’s going to keep happening, blah blah blah.  I’ve always sort of felt on the outside of the whole “male gaze” phenomenon.  I sympathized with my girlfriends who experienced unwanted attention, harassment, assault, and/or feared these things or worse.  I always felt immune to it because who in their right mind was going to have any interest in directing any of that at a fat girl?

I guess that all changes when you start fitting into skinny jeans.

Of course, most of it is harmless and probably even well-intentioned.  I’ve just always been an observer of it rather than the object of it.  It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that random men are going to openly hit on me in public.  I don’t really believe that yet, I just keep hearing from my (biased) girlfriends that it’s going to happen more and more.

This is why they should only make skinny jeans for skinny people!  RFGs (Recovering Fat Girls) aren’t prepared for this part of the thin experience yet!  Well, if it does continue to happen, I’ll have to start somehow programming my brain to think of it as another version of the flattering comments I’m finally starting to get used to.

Next up:  leggings!

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DAY 189: De-acquired tastes

The first time I seriously tried to lose weight, I never really kicked the sauce.  I continued to binge-eat brownies, cookies, ice cream, cupcakes, candy, etc., that I bought on the sly at the grocery store.  I also never fully kicked microwaveable meals out of my rotation; I toted Lean Cuisines, Lean Pockets, and other purportedly “healthy” frozen meals to work for lunches or ate them at home for dinner when I felt too lazy to cook.  I was working just as hard at the gym as I am now — well, that’s arguable — but I was blowing it all up in the kitchen.  It’s not surprising, then, that I used to go to bed at night and REGULARLY dream about stuffing my face with the “forbidden” stuff.  It’s hilarious to admit it now, but I would routinely dream of gorging myself on endless banquet tables of cookies, and wake up feeling physically and mentally sick, but also relieved that it didn’t really happen!  I just couldn’t seem to give up my sugar.

I don’t have a sweet tooth.  I have a mouth full of ’em.

Or so I thought.

Something weird has happened over the past few months:  I am suddenly less drawn to the dessert table.  The few times that I do venture over there, I find I’m not as satisfied as I expected to be by what I consume.  As recently as last week, I found myself completely uninterested in the wedding cake at the reception I went to.  I just… didn’t eat any.  (I’m pretty sure it’s a crime not to eat cake at a wedding, so the bride can never know I rebuffed her celebratory sweets!)

I DID partake in four other desserts while away:
-Gourmet chocolates
-Peanut butter-chocolate rolled oats bar (it was basically a no-bake cookie in bar form)
-3 mini cookie sundaes (“pizookies,” if you’re curious), split 50/50 with my friend
-A blizzard from Dairy Queen

The lab results were mixed:
-The chocolates were unsatisfying.
-The cookie bar was love in my mouth.
-The pizookies were heaven on earth.
-The blizzard was a disappointment.

It made me remember other surprising discoveries along these lines:
-My mom’s brownies suddenly tasted WAY TOO SWEET.  I used to think that was only possible with port wines.
-My former TV companion, chocolate-peanut butter Häagen Dazs ice cream, also suddenly tastes a little too sweet.
-Tonight, I tasted a serving of goodies from my latest Nature Box order, and I can only describe them as funky-ass, crunchy cough syrup pellets.  That’s not what I expected from whole-wheat chocolate chip cookies.

This made me wonder:  Do tastes change with weight loss?

My infinitesimal internet research seems to imply that they do.  Certainly, this is pronouncedly the case with people who had gastric bypass surgery.  As someone who has not had that procedure, I’m not entirely sure how or why I might be experiencing this, but it does seem clear to me that there’s a correlation.

My completely unfounded, untested, and unresearched theory is that this is a byproduct of the initial detox period.  Maybe what I was eating never really tasted good, and it was all chemical reactions happening in my brain’s pleasure center rather than a true enjoyment of food.  Now that I know what actual food tastes like, the sugar-loaded stuff tastes all wrong to me.  Or, maybe it tastes right, like what it actually is:  mounds of sugar and unnatural compounds.

Regardless of the explanation — which I will continue to investigate — I am cool with it.  I no longer feel like I’m missing out because I didn’t taste EVERY SINGLE CONFECTION in a given bakery.  I don’t feel compelled to eat the cookies some courteous bastard brought to my meeting at work.  I pay no mind to the cupcake place right next door to my office, the donut shop directly outside of my metro entrance, or the bag of white-chocolate-pumpkin-spice-covered pretzels sitting in a bag on my kitchen counter right now.  My tastes changed, and so did my mentality.

Oh, and I’ve been sleeping like a baby.

I’d call that a win.

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DAY 188: A tale of two weddings

Exactly one year ago today, I went to a wedding.  I looked like this:

Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 8.23.59 PM

Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 8.24.18 PM

Last week, I went to another wedding.  I looked like this:

IMG_2424

Today, I tried on the dress from the wedding I went to last year.  I looked like this:

FullSizeRender

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I’m looking forward to trying on both again on the one-year anniversary of starting my weight-loss mission.  I think I’ll look like this:

ecstatic

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DAY 185: Oy vey-cation

I got back yesterday from a week-long trip to the highest, driest places in America:  northern Colorado and Salt Lake City, Utah.  It was a lot of fun seeing friends, dancing at a wedding and not caring that I am an abysmal dancer, and exploring new places.  Along the way, I managed to not only hit the gym 3 times (which is hard to do when traveling with a friend!), but also to complete two different hikes.  One hike was 3.4 miles, and the other was 1.3.  At that altitude, I was really not sure of my comfort level with the activity, both in terms of huffing and puffing in front of other people and actual ability to complete the trails.  I surprised myself on hike #1 (the longer one, which was 2 days before the other):  not only was I NOT the slowest of the group, but I found I am in a lot better shape than I thought.  The few times we stopped as a group to collect ourselves, I caught my breath pretty quickly compared to the others, and I wasn’t ready to stop as soon as they were.  I couldn’t believe it; I was easily the largest person hiking, but still among the fittest.  Riddle me that.

The second hike was just a friend and me, and she’s an avid and frequent hiker and rock climber, so she kindly adapted to my slower, less conditioned pace.  Regardless, I was still happy with my showing on that endeavor.  I should also add that I was doing both hikes essentially one-handed because I was carrying water and my camera.  Totally worth it.  Plus, I felt like a boss the rest of the day on both days.  It’s so empowering to realize that 6 months ago, I would have barely been able to do this, and it would have been entirely out of the question at this time last year.

Between the Colorado and Utah adventures, I snuck up to Wyoming for a few hours to meet up with my brother, who happened to be there in the midst of his cross-country move to California with his girlfriend and dog.  It took a lot of juggling, coordinating, and rearranging of itineraries to pull off that get-together — who meets up in Wyoming?! — but it was really important for me to see him.  I don’t know how long they’ll be living on the West coast, but I know I have no money after all these trips (and one coming up next month), so it will be a long time before I’ll have the chance to see that part of my family again.  I’m also strangely obsessed with my dog-niece and she’s super into me, too; I think my brother may have left questioning my motives for making him drive off course to see me, cuz the pup and I exchanged more hugs and kisses than any of the humans did.  Anyway, the purpose of this aside is to share that when his girlfriend was away from the table at brunch, my brother just looked at me and abruptly asked, “So, you’ve lost a lot of weight, right?” I was a little taken aback by his directness, since, as I’ve said before, most guys beat around the bush and awkwardly tap dance around the subject.  Also, my brother and I aren’t particularly close (though we have been getting better in the past year or so), so I didn’t expect him to bring it up.  I managed to return his directness with a smile, a nod, and a “yeah.”  He immediately followed up with, “How much?”  Yeah, I abandoned the directness at that point and told him frankly that I didn’t feel comfortable announcing my number, but maybe I’d tell him in a few months, when it’s all (hopefully) over.  He appreciated that and then asked a question no one else has ever asked me throughout this entire mission:  “How do you feel?”

Only someone who really cares about me would ask that question, and I had no answer prepared for this question as I do for the standard battery of them that I usually get in this type of exchange.  Of all the questions that the gamut of close friends to inconsequential co-workers have asked me over the past 6 months (!), not a single one has ever asked me that question.  I myself never even realized it should be part of the package!  How do I feel?  I feel happy to have been asked that by someone who has always been healthy, and therefore knows this is less about the question I didn’t answer and more about the one no one ever asks.  Guys, I think my brother loves me.  That 60 seconds of conversation alone was worth the trip.  😉

Now, for the stumper.  In spite of keeping my eating in check and logging some respectable physical activity that included hitting my miles EVERY DAY but one while I was away, the scale in Colorado showed that I had mysteriously gained six pounds since my last weigh-in, and the one in Utah showed a gain of four!  What dark magic is this?!  I thought that if anything, the high altitude would fudge the number in the other direction.  I’m not sure whether it’s related somehow to the altitude (which I did research briefly, and showed that my original theory was actually the more likely scenario, so that’s not it) or water retention in an arid climate when my body is acclimated to the polar opposite of that, or something entirely different that I’m not thinking of.  Of course, I also spent almost 4 days constipated (sorry, I don’t believe in TMI, so deal with it like a grown-up), so that is a likely factor.  I was also running a massive sleep deficit from the go-go-go nature of my travels, and sleep is an inviolable tenet of my phil-LOSS-ophy.

No matter the cause(s), that freak “gain” was super frustrating, and it made me not want to weigh myself at all at home.  I did in spite of myself, though, and in a fashion that breaks my rule of only checking once a week:  I have weighed myself 4 times in the past 24 hours since being back, and the weight has steadily been dropping from the Western numbers.  As of last weigh-in, I was only 1.6 pounds over the weight I recorded just before leaving, so I’m relieved that the inflated numbers weren’t reflecting an actual gain.  With any luck, I’ll even manage to post a loss by my regular Sunday weigh-in.  I’d still like to understand what that was all about, though.  Have any of you ever experienced this, or do you have any insight into that strange, unsettling phenomenon?  Please enlighten me!

My C25K training has hit a bit of a snag.  In Colorado, I did complete one of the week 5 workouts, but the next one was something ridiculous like “do a 5-minute warm-up, then go ahead and jog 2 miles.”  I managed 1.3 before throwing in the towel.  If I’m honest, yes, I could have kept going, but I don’t know for how much longer.  I’m thinking/hoping the tougher haul had more to do with the toll of the altitude and my exhaustion than with my ability, but I’ll find out during tomorrow’s workout, I guess.  I may have to invent my own workout as a stepping stone to that part of the C25K curriculum.  If I could just jog 2 miles straight, I wouldn’t need a training program.  (This is why this program is so frustrating!  I like realistic goals, not ones like Day 1: jog for 60 seconds and then walk for 20 minutes; Day 2: run a marathon.)

On that note, I’m gonna hit the sheets.  I have a series of 10-mile days ahead of me, so I need my delicious, delicious sleep.  Whew!

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DAY 171: Measurable success

I don’t really have enough content for a full blog post, but a lot of notable moments in my weight loss have happened just all of a sudden.

On August 30th, I signed up to run in a 4.01K (cute, huh?).  This will be my first outdoor run event ever.

On September 2nd, I jogged on a treadmill for 5 minutes for the first time in 5 years.

On September 6th, I bought a shirt — that fits — in size L.

On Tuesday (September 8th), I wore a skirt to work.

Yesterday (September 9th), I jogged on a treadmill for a full mile without stopping (12 minutes) for the first time ever at that pace.

Today, I moved the closure of my ever-looser VivoFit band so that only one last notch is visible.  After I make that final move, I’ll have to switch to the smaller band when this one becomes loose again.

All of these are HUGE milestones for me, and I have consistently surprised myself in the best possible ways as I’ve hit them.  Oddly, the one I’m most stoked about is the VivoFit band.  As I’ve mentioned several times, I am terrible at measuring myself.  I do it once a month, and somehow, it doesn’t really reflect the changes I know are there through the losses on the scale, the way I look, the way I move, and the way my clothes (don’t) fit.  One of the things I measure is my wrist, and since I started taking my measurements back when Vivo showed 4 notches, my incompetent measuring reflects only 1/4 inch lost.  Clearly, that’s wrong; here’s the size the band was when I started:

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Sooooo… not so much with the quarter inch.  My ruler tells me the distance covered in the notches I moved over is actually close to 3/4 inch.  My measuring tape tells me lies.

It’s nice to know that when I feel like my arms are slimming down, it’s because they are.  Now, if only I had a VivoFit band for my calves, thighs, forearms, biceps, hips, waist, chest, butt, and neck.

Happy first day of football season to all, by the way!  Can I interest you in one of the pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I made and then brought to work like a good girl instead of devouring them all in the secrecy of my kitchen?  🙂

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Cheers!

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DAY 168: Forget me not

It can be really easy to lose sight of who you were once you’ve lost so much of yourself physically.

Sometimes, I’ll be in the middle of one of my hours-long cook-a-thons during meal prep for the week, and I’ll have a sudden flashback to what that was like when I first started.  I would have to take a couple of breaks to sit down and give my muscles and joints a rest.  If I stood in one position too long, my left leg would start to go a little numb around the knee area and I’d either have to walk it off for a bit or just deal with it until I was done.  (I probably should have talked to my doctor about that, but it stopped after I lost about 30 pounds, so I assume it’s nothing I should worry about now.)  After my few hours in the kitchen, I would be down for the count for the rest of the day, usually with swollen feet and sore hips.  That’s just from standing there!

I also sometimes remember the feeling of first getting up in the morning, not really feeling rested, and the discomfort of those first few rigid steps after coaxing myself out of bed.

I remember my walk to the metro taking 8-10 minutes longer in the morning because I had to stop and catch my breath at the top of those stairs on my route, and because I moved so much more slowly in general.

I remember trying to hide being winded while walking down the hall with anyone at work, and avoiding walking any more than down a hall with someone at work because it was too hard to hide being winded.

I remember getting out of the car after even just a short time driving and having to take the first several steps very, very slowly.

I remember always sticking to the shower curtain because there was no way to be in the shower without a part of me touching it.

I remember never untying my shoes because it was too much effort to get into a position to retie them.

I remember hating going shopping because nothing fit except the most horrendously ugly articles of clothing ever created.

I remember getting irritated when people would stop and hold the door open for me if I wasn’t that close to the door, because it made me feel like I had to rush to get to there, which made me lose my breath and feel embarrassed.

I remember driving to the grocery store two blocks away because walking was too exhausting.

I remember not wanting to go out on weekends because I only owned one pair of pants that fit, and I washed them on weekends so I could wear them to work again all week.

I remember not taking pictures when I really wanted to, because I didn’t want to see myself in them.

I remember avoiding travel, which is something that makes me happy, because it was too uncomfortable to sit on a plane or train.

I remember not wanting to go to the movies with anyone because I NEEDED both arm rests unless I wanted to twist myself up and feel the pain for hours afterwards.

I remember coming up with excuses not to see my friends or family whom I don’t often see because I was too ashamed of the weight, even though it would have made me happy to see them.

I remember hiding from the world because I had failed and therefore didn’t deserve to be happy.

I remember feeling guilty for not being happy.  I had everything set up right so I could be, and I ruined it.

I remember feeling hopeless, like someone looking back on a life she hadn’t even lived yet.

I remember I never wanted to die, but I didn’t want to live.

—

I’ve only been at this for shy of 6 months, and I’m sure there are already things in this vein that I’ve forgotten.  After all, none of this was pleasant to experience; who would want to remember it?  I can’t believe I got myself into a situation where the above was my daily experience of life.  Of course I was miserable.

Now, I’m replacing the bad memories with good ones.

—

I remember the first time I felt my bath towel close the whole way around my body.

I remember the first time a pair of workout pants became loose, then entirely too big for me.

I remember the first time I cracked 3 miles on the weight loss setting of the elliptical.

I remember the first time I flipped my mattress and changed my sheets, and realized I hadn’t changed my breathing at all.

I remember the looks on various people’s faces when they saw me for the first time since before I started losing weight.

I remember the first time I painted my toenails without straining.  They were bold blue.

I remember the first time I rocked a dress at work.  It was bold yellow.

I remember the first time I donated BAGS of old fat-girl clothes to charity.  And now, the second.

I remember the first time I was walking with a co-worker outside of the office to get coffee, and I had to slow down.

I remember the first time I up and jogged for 5 minutes.

I remember the first time I felt capable of participating in an outdoor race.  So I signed up for one.

I remember the first time I recognized myself in the mirror after all this time.

I remember the person I always was who’s been desperate to come out.

I remember she’s worth it.