Tag Archives: lessons

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DAY 290: Sweet dreams

My subconscious is hilarious.  Between the competitive baking shows I’m now hooked on watching and the absence of sugary deliciousness in my life since leaving my family after Christmas “break,” I am constantly dreaming of desserts!  I wake up in the morning half-convinced that it was all true, and I really spent the past several hours pigging out on brownies, cupcakes, cookies, cakes, pies, fudge, ice cream, and solid blocks of chocolate.

I’ve had this type of strange dreaming happen before:  when I very first started losing, and over the summer when it started getting tiresome.  I’m not worried about it, I’m purely amused.  It’s like my inner child is screaming for goodies and the only way it can have them is in my nocturnal imagination.  OK, inner child!  Enjoy the fake calories!

One of the key things I’ve embraced from the start is not to practice absolute, categorical denial of anything.  I have sound reasons beyond the obvious “I don’t wanna,” and they’re my big 3:

  1. It’s unrealistic.  Eliminating entire swaths of food from your diet may yield drastic losses in the beginning, but it’s not sustainable in the long term.  Once you inevitably reintroduce your no-no food group, there’s a much higher likelihood that you will over-indulge like a fiend, and you’ll end up right back where you started.  Furthermore, are you really going to go through the rest of your life without ever having another slice of birthday cake, glass of champagne, or piece of candy?  No, you’re not, and you don’t want to.  Admit it now and you can work around it.
  2. It’s unhealthy.  The secret to all of this is balance.  If you cut out a whole brick of the food pyramid, you’ll have to figure out how to consume the good nutrients that were in that brick from somewhere else.  That’s math you’re not going to want to do.  Just eat less of the less-good stuff and you’ll be fine.
  3. It’s avoiding the real problem.  If you’re an over-eater, losing weight is extra challenging, and that’s because you don’t know how to eat just enough.  Without mastering moderation and portion control, you’re not going to truly change the bad habits that landed you in Fat Land in the first place.  You have to invest the time in training yourself to learn this new way of nourishing yourself.  Swearing off certain foods is not the way to do that.

 

***Of course, there are exceptions to this:  foods with no nutritional value, or that are chemical based rather than nutrient based, like pop.  I fully gave that shit up ages ago.  Everyone should!

In summary, the best approach — inherent difficulty notwithstanding! — is to keep everything in your diet, but learn how to control it.  It’s absolutely easier said than done, but it’s the only way.  Staying away from some foods entirely will only make your cravings for those foods harder and harder to resist until you eventually cave massively and end up hating yourself for the binge you go on.  It’s the oldest cliché in the weight-loss book, but it is a lifestyle change, and that means… CHANGING YOUR LIFESTYLE.

Meal planning and preparation solved almost all of that problem for me, and it’s why I can feel comfortable having a pint of Häagen-Dazs in my freezer right now.  I bought it two days ago and had actually forgotten it was there until I opened my freezer door this morning while putting my lunch together and saw it.  At this time last year, it would have been impossible for both of us to be in the same living quarters without me either constantly thinking about it or devouring the whole tub in one sitting.  This pint is for a special occasion, though, making it a low-risk temptation.  (Full disclosure:  There are 2 pints in there, but the second one will be for a later date when I feel like it’s appropriate.)

Conventional wisdom in weight loss is that you’re not supposed to reward yourself or celebrate milestones with food.  That makes perfect sense to me and I have adhered to it like a champ.  However, I’m making an exception for a few notable events coming up the week of January 17th:

  • The 17th is day 300 of my mission.  That’s a BFD, and it deserves recognition.
  • The 17th and 18th are also weigh-out dates for two of my DietBets that I have rather big numbers to pull in order to hit, but the fact that I was able to make it even a possibility that I could win after falling back around the holidays is reason enough to celebrate for me.
  • The 19th, I have a follow-up appointment with my doctor.  The last time I saw her was in mid-July, when she told me she bet she wouldn’t even recognize me the next time she saw me.  I had someone who recently came back to work from maternity leave actually not recognize me when we saw each other yesterday for the first time in 4 months, so I’m hoping my doctor’s prediction will be true.  And that will be after SIX months without seeing each other!
  • I’m closing in on losing 100 pounds, and if I keep up the pace, it’ll happen in time for that week.

 

So, yes.  Chocolate-peanut butter ice cream is in order that week.

I’m crazy enough to be looking forward to more sweet dreams tonight!

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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 281: ENTJ(-A)

I just got back from a week-long holiday fog.  For some reason, part of my family time included taking the (unofficial) Myers-Briggs personality test with 3 members of my family and 2 friends from high school.

I have a slight history with this test.  I’ve taken it a handful of times over the years, sometimes in professional contexts and sometimes in a spirit of what-the-hell.  I never committed my “type” to memory because every time I took it, I got a different result.  It was interesting to read, but it never felt entirely right.  Too many of my answers were really “it depends,” so I would give neutral answers, making it hard to type me accurately.  Furthermore, I’m generally a special combination of adaptable and indecisive, so I’m kind of just always ready to react and can figure my way through things in the absence of a plan, rare though those situations may be for me because I always need a plan.  The zodiac has me totally pegged; Myers-Briggs, not so much.  Go figure, huh?

Well, this time, I took a test modeled on Myers-Briggs 3 times on 3 different metrics and got the exact same type each time.  It was a type I’ve never gotten before.  How can I be sure of that when I JUST said that I never bothered remembering the type because it was different every time?  Every other time, the types had to do with being diplomatic, being solicitous, being dependable.  The results I got this time were different.  This I would have remembered.  I took it three times because I was so stricken by the result of taking it the first time, that I demanded a recount and took it a second time on a second site, and was so shocked by that that I found a third test to take.  I would have taken it a fourth if I wasn’t so exhausted from the incessant self-analysis (or if a link to another reputable measure had fallen directly into my lap).

Yeah, I got a little obsessive about all of a sudden being a solid ENTJ  (Extraverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging).

I had very strong reactions to reading the various synopses about type ENTJ.  Before I launch into this full throttle — and I’ll avoid detailing every single fee-fee I experienced so as not to annoy the hell out of anyone reading this — I will say that I know it’s useless to put too much stock into these things.  Our human idiosyncrasies make it so that anyone can be any type in any given situation, and these types are indicators of tendencies towards certain behaviors rather than a black-and-white classification of who one is at one’s core.  (And arguably, my reaction to discovering my type disproves the test results.  Meta enough for ya?)  Still, I was a little blown away at some of what I read about my typology.  Here are two snippets of the worst of it:

“Few other types can equal their ability to remain resolute in conflict, sending the valiant (and often leading the charge) into the mouth of hell. When challenged, the ENTJ may by reflex become argumentative. Alternatively (s)he may unleash an icy gaze that serves notice: the ENTJ is not one to be trifled with.”  —humanmetrics.com

My family and long-time friends found it hilarious that I was at once associated with fiery hell and icy gazes.  Someone in the room made a joking comment about my being “the icy mouth of hell.”  One of my good friends of 15 years, when I finished reading this page aloud with a completely baffled inflection and horrified look on my face, responded to my indignation with a pause and then, “This comes as a surprise to no one.”  But to me, it makes me sound hot-headed and cold-hearted.  The rest of the write-up basically called this type a callous, insensitive jerk.  There are a lot of things in the synopsis that are true, but I really struggled with the idea that I might be that hardened.  I expressed that, and my loved ones helped me understand that I could probably come off that way for people who don’t know me, especially in a formal/professional setting, but that I had never made any of them feel that way.  They reminded me that I’m the one they come to with their problems — why would they do that if I really were the icy mouth of hell?  Still, is this what strangers get from me, even if I’m not trying to project a don’t-fuck-with-me vibe (which, admittedly, I often am)?  Yikes.

My interpretation?  “You’re kind of an intimidating bitch with no regard for human emotion.”

Next nugget:

“[…]ENTJs are characterized by an often ruthless level of rationality, using their drive, determination and sharp minds to achieve whatever end they’ve set for themselves. Perhaps it is best that they make up only three percent of the population, lest they overwhelm the more timid and sensitive personality types that make up much of the rest of the world…” —16personalities.com

While ENTJs make up only 3% of the (US) population, only 1% are women (and this source says ENTJs are only 2% of the population, not even 3).  Next… ruthless?!  I’m rational, yeah, but SHIT.  Ruthless?  That word came up A LOT in all the different things I read while indulging my narcissism, and it was hard to ignore.  The only other word that came up with that frequency was “arrogant,” which to me is the most abhorrent trait in a human being, and I hate that I may be that way myself.

16personalities.com takes this typing a step further with a hyphenated suffix at the end of the 4-letter code, either the letter A (assertive) or T (turbulent [which I think would be better described as timid]).  Guess which one this ENTJ asshole got?  A, of course.  ENTJ-A.  Being ruthless, arrogant, and icy wasn’t quite enough.

Sigh.

Primarily, in my scouring of online resources on ENTJ, I found myself agreeing generally with a lot of the typology.  The biggest one that came up is a thought that I’ve had before, but never made the connection to the concept that it might have to do with my personality.  It’s basically that ENTJs crave criticism, need criticism, and respond well to criticism, but no one criticizes them, probably because they assume that based on their assertive/aggressive tendencies, ENTJs will lash out when they hear it.

People really don’t give me criticism; you’d think that for as awkward as I am about accepting praise and compliments, the reason would be that I’m used to the opposite.  Nope.  I’m bad at hearing positives about myself because, like, what do you do with that, then?  With criticism, you can respond with action (you can also ignore it if you’re self-aware and self-possessed enough to know when it’s BS) and use it to improve something unappealing about yourself.  With a compliment… what, your work is done?  That feels like a lopsided transaction.

I know, boo-hoo, no one criticizes me!   It’s sure as shit not because I’m perfect, so maybe the absence of criticism is the criticism:  I’m unapproachable.  I never thought that of myself, but maybe it’s what I project with all my icy-mouth-of-hell stuff.

Hmm.

Anyway, all of this got me thinking about my history with Myers-Briggs and why I scored so inconsistently until now, when I suddenly became a solid ENTJ, keeping company with the likes of Napoleon and Hitler (yes, seriously).  What’s up with that?

Well, I’ve changed a lot in the last year.  I’ve intentionally created a structure — a very RIGID structure — for myself so that I can do what I need to do and make sure I prioritize my time to allow myself to live healthily and lose weight.  This has meant intentionally acting selfishly and having to stop myself from feeling guilty about it.  It’s meant saying no to invitations to social gatherings because I didn’t want to be around the alcohol and the greasy food.  As a result, I’ve had to become my own best friend, and at least I’ve always been a good friend.  I’ve stuck up for myself, I’ve protected myself, and yeah, I’ve been assertive in situations with other people out of self-interest in defense of myself.  All of this has had the side effect of giving me some killer self-confidence, and I have less patience than ever for bull shit (because I have less time than ever to put up with it) and more faith than ever in myself.  Maybe all of this is a net positive, but it’s naturally changed the way I would respond to any personality-indicating questions on some standardized test based on introspection, and it’s no surprise if it’s hardened me.  I’m physically tougher, I’m mentally tougher, and I’m emotionally tougher.  It doesn’t make me heartless, icy, or even ruthless, though.  It just makes me prepared to continue what has been a very challenging process, and one that I can count on to only get more difficult.

So, as much as ENTJ is a pretty unattractive personality type, it has some positives, too:  tenacity, determination, commitment to goals, drive, focus, motivation, and strong will.  I need ALL OF THAT, so thank goodness I was able to cultivate it in myself.  I sure as hell wasn’t born with it, at least not this strain of it.

And hey, I even hope I get to keep some of it.  If my ENTJ-A self sticks to my plan, I’ll have hit my overall goal before the end of 2016, meaning I will be able to pull off the gas a little bit.  Maybe I’ll have more time to have fun.  Maybe I’ll stop thinking of other people’s demands as bull shit and look forward to phone calls and e-mails and spontaneity again.  Maybe I’ll change again as a result.  If I do — and hell, even if I don’t — I bet that if I take a Myers-Briggs-ish test again a year from now, I’ll get a different result.

But for now, the only results that matter are the health ones.  My truest personality will solidify once I’m through this tunnel.

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DAY 265: It’s not you, it’s me

I think whatever lessons I learned this summer about where I stand in terms of preparedness for dating must have fallen into the abyss of my throat V.  I stupidly went on a date this weekend.

It went a bit better than the last one.  For me, there’s a positive correlation between pounds lost and self-confidence in all situations, and dating is no exception.  The lead-up was almost not at all nerve-racking, and I felt calm and comfortable pretty much throughout.  Start to finish, I’d say it was… fine.  And yet, I’m so not in it to win it.  So why am I bothering??

It may have something to do with the fact that my life-long friend (no joke, I’ve known this girl since the day I was born) got engaged right after Thanksgiving, my best friend is headed rapidly along that trajectory, and the rest of my local girlfriends are suddenly in relationships, too.  It may also be because every time I start feeling kind of pretty, I have some weird impulse to check that theory on a living, breathing, human male.  It could also be a result of this freak December heat wave (it was 70 frikkin’ degrees today!) throwing off the senses and getting people all twitterpated (YEAH, I said it).

It could be all of these things.  It could be none of these things.

I just know I hate what I see when I take off my clothes.  I’m actually thinking about talking to my doctor in January about possible options to address some of that when all of this is said and done.  It sounds vain, but I can’t explain how upsetting it is to see the wear on my body.  I’ve put it through a lot, and I’m proud of the hard work behind what it shows, but I’m so self-conscious about the stretch marks and other ugly features on this wasted landscape that I can’t really see myself getting past it.

These guys who flirt with me, who hit on me, who hold my hand, who put their arms around me… they don’t know what they’re getting into.

The guy from this weekend, he was nice enough.  I wasn’t really feeling chemistry, but I wasn’t in agony just waiting for the date to end.  (How much of the lack of chemistry is psychological resistance on my part is debatable.)  And yet, he’d asked for a second date before the first one was over.  He held me a little too long parting ways.  Since we saw each other, he’s been all… talky.

What?  I don’t get it.  

I partly don’t get it because I still find myself so unattractive that it doesn’t compute that anyone would see me differently.  Yeah, there’s been improvement over the past 9 months, but that’s all relative to me.  In the grand scheme of things, compared to the rest of the gals out there, I’m still a 3 trying to claw my way to 4 status.

I continue to not get it because I was giving it like 60%, personality wise.  It’s kinda like, “Dude, you were into that watered-down version of me?  I’m SO MUCH BETTER than that!”  I know, weird thought progression, right?  Just wait.

Here’s where I veer off into the ridiculous:  I actually kind of judge this guy for being interested in me.  How fucked up is that?!  As if I have the right to judge anyone for anything, let alone him for that!

Then again, that’s only when I allow myself to believe he actually is interested in me, and not just desperate or under the assumption that fat beggars can’t be fat choosers, so I’ll be all in because I’m desperate.

It doesn’t matter what the truth is.  Bottom line:  I am obviously not where I need to be physically in order to be where I need to be mentally in order to date anyone.

Shut it down.

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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…

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DAY 196: A waist is a terrible thing to mind

Sleep is so freaking important.

My body is very demanding about getting enough rest.  The sleep deprivation during my trip where the scale went up certainly had more to do with that unwelcome fluke than any other part of the equation.  I should have realized that was what was actually going on; I’ve had previous incidents of no movement on the scale that happened to coincide with weeks where I was not sufficiently rested.  This past weekend, with my race called off and my days occupied by a labor-intensive and time-consuming sewing project underway — honestly, can’t I ever pick something within my skill range?! — I am not ashamed to say I went to bed at 7:30 PM on Saturday night.  I slept 13 hours.  I needed every minute.  I also netted less mileage over those two days than I typically get in one day.  I needed every non-step.

Today, in spite of my oncoming “woman times” (Tina Fey, holla) and my near total inaction over the weekend, the scale gave up the pounds.  Yes, in one fell swoop.  Just like magic:  WOOSH, gone.

I don’t know why I keep falling victim to forgetting the most basic rule of all of this:  LISTEN TO YOUR BODY.  I know the difference between my body telling me it’s tired and my mind trying to laze out of a work-out.  I need to remember to act like it!

Beyond that, I need to check my self-competitiveness a little bit.  I keep wanting to shatter the daily goals Jiminy gives me.  Well, Jiminy knows best.  He’ll work me up to a higher goal when I need to set my sights higher.  For right now, hitting the goal is enough.  Over-exercising isn’t a fast track to weight loss in my case; it’s a counter-productive practice that just makes my body more tired and, consequently, more likely to hold on to the fat I’m trying to burn off.  I’m sorry, Jiminy.  You are my conscience, and I must always let you be my guide.  **bows humbly to the almighty VivoFit**

Finally, I have to keep exercise in a category of positive associations.  If I let it start becoming a stressful thing, it negates all the emotional, mental, and physical benefits it’s meant to produce.  Exercise has become my release at the end of the day for all the frustrating messes I deal with at work, my outlet for emotional sorting, and my solace from the people and things that would otherwise eat me alive.  I have to keep it in the sweet spot of being challenging, but not too difficult as to become another source of frustration; sacred, but not so obsessively that I become a slave to it.  It’s true what they say about us Libras:  we’re all about that balance, ’bout that balance (no trouble).

And now… sleep.  I’ve got a Diet Bet to win.  😀

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DAY 193: Eraced

On account of expected crazy rain this weekend, my 4.01K has been “postponed.”

I would be a liar if I said I wasn’t relieved.  I never made it past the “run 2 miles” training session in the C25K program, and I’m feeling generally exhausted.  I’ve been working too much at work and working too much at home, and mama needs some sleep.  Plus, it’s nice to have a day of my weekend back to try and recoup before having to launch right into the next week.  Even though it was the shortest distance race that I’ve ever heard of, I wasn’t ready for it, and I’m glad I don’t have to be mad at myself for either flaking out or not being able to run as much of it as I wanted to.  Hopefully, if/by the time it’s rescheduled, I’ll be in better physical condition to meet my own expectations in it.  (Equally hopefully, my schedule will permit me to participate on the new date!)

I’m also not disappointed that my race is off this weekend because… I think my heel spur is on the way out.  It may have even already healed.  With that terribly annoying injury potentially eliminated, I want to be careful not to resurrect it.  It would probably be a good idea to give my feet a bit of a rest for a few more days.

By way of another quick update, the first Diet Bet I ever hosted recently closed, and I just barely eked out a win.  Hosting well is no joke, and it wound up being more time consuming than I’d imagined, but that was because of my own meticulousness and the type of game it was.  I think most people had a good time playing, though, and I know that several got close to their goals and/or busted through plateaus while playing, so that makes it all worth it!  I had a lot of fun hosting (in spite of what may have just sounded like complaints0, and I look forward to being able to do it again before too long.  For the near future, though, I’m taking a hiatus from DB.

I’m still in a kickstarter (that ends next week) and 2 transformers (of which one is ending in 2 weeks), which I feel I can handle because the monthly loss percentages are lower than the kickstarters, so I’m by no means leaving the community.  For practical reasons, I have to take a break because I won’t be able to weigh in while traveling internationally late this month into early November.  I also want to be able to enjoy that trip instead of worrying about being absent from a website, so it’s a good time for a sabbatical.  Beyond that, judging by nothing but the way my body has changed over the last couple of weeks, I believe I’m in the midst of a change in fat-to-muscle ratio that accounts for the slowdown I’ve hit recently.  That means I’m still losing fat, but it’s not reflecting as a loss on the scale because of the increased muscle mass.  It’s fantastic, but not the right scenario in which to be betting money on averaging a 1% drop in weight every week.

NOTHING IS CHANGING, THOUGH!  I’m still 100% in this.  I will still be interacting on DB and I will still be blogging like a crazy old cat lady with stories to tell.  More importantly, I will still be eating the right things and taking care of myself.  I will fit into more oh-honey clothes.  I will wear my new skinny jeans in public.  I will shake my shit at Zumba.  I will work my muscles.  I will elevate my heart rate.  I will get enough sleep.  I will drink enough water.  I will be BFF with Jiminy.  I will have a happy birthday.  I will lose inches.  I will lose weight.

When my race is rescheduled, with any luck, I will jog it!

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DAY 170: Sense of direction

There’s an idea — and a law of physics — that time only moves in one direction:  forward.

And yet, our clocks and watches reset every day.  Each morning, we get a new set of hours containing hundreds of chances for change.  If you’re reading this blog, the thing you’re trying to change is probably measured on the scale.

The scale, commonly thought of as the enemy, is actually a nifty little device.  It can — and does! — move backwards.  Oftentimes, its moves backwards can feel a hell of a lot like time travel.

As the needle has moved a little less to the right every week that I weigh myself, I’ve gone back to old clothes, old feelings, and old memories associated with the number the scale shows me.  I’m fitting into things I haven’t dared to even try on since my first job, since college, or since high school.  I have all kinds of associations with different garments, like remembering  seeing something on me in an old picture and wondering what the friends in the photo with me are doing now, or recalling when I bought the item, but never actually wore it anywhere.  Going back through my closet takes me back to moments in my life when I was younger and more optimistic, and it strangely conjures up not feelings of nostalgia, but feelings of hopefulness.

I started my weight-loss mission with the goal of running away.  I was going to put as much distance as possible between me and that ugly, ugly number the scale showed me when I stepped on it at my heaviest.  I never wanted to see the needle anywhere near it, ever again.

Now, a very comfortable number of pounds past my halfway point, I am running towards something: my goal weight.  I find I’m not looking at the distance between the needle and the weight of shame anymore; I’m looking at the distance between the needle and the weight of victory.

My thought is that this process compares nicely to the perspective you have when driving a car.  The rear view mirror is very important because it shows you where you’ve been and what might be coming from behind that may put you in danger.  The side mirrors are important because they let you look around and take stock of what’s happening in your periphery as you process and react to the changes in your environment.  But there’s a reason the windshield is the largest viewing surface, and the one the driver is oriented towards: life only moves in one direction.  All of the different views inform your **cringe** journey, but none of that matters if you don’t know where you’re going.

That’s why I’ve stopped running in evasion and started running in pursuit.

I’ll remember where I came from, but forget the way back there.

I’ll look around, but I’ll keep moving.

Eyes on the horizon!

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DAY 161: Ready for fall

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

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

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

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

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

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

AND YET…

I just want it to be over.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is it fall yet?

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

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DAY 122: Hello, me!

Sometimes, I just feel like the universe has my back.

Things have been really tough at work again this week, and even though I’ve been handling it well — not slipping back into old patterns, expressing frustration instead of eating it, etc. — it’s been trying.  Two days ago, at the end of a completely unproductive meeting where no one addressed anything of relevance, I kind of lost my shit and went on a 5-minute rant about the time we all just wasted and how if we want to stop being all talk, we need to discuss things that actually matter.  It turned into a singular focus on one particular example of my point, and I got a little bit in someone’s face for not being on top of what she needed to be on top of.  This person outranks me and this was in a group of about 16 people.  I mean, I wasn’t over the top or yelling or insubordinate, and I didn’t go out of my way to embarrass anyone, but I was firm, assertive, and unapologetic.  Since it was the end of the meeting, I wasn’t sure how that whole thing went over, and decided to just shrug it off — if it were terrible, I surely would have heard about it right away.

Yesterday, while heating up my lunch, one of the people who had been part of that meeting came into the room.  We greeted each other, and then she immediately got serious and said, “There’s something I need to say to you.”  Uh-oh.  I was pretty sure she was about to tell me I had behaved unprofessionally and crossed an unnecessary line in the meeting the day before.  Instead, she said, “You look GOOD.”

We then spent the next 10 minutes talking about my weight loss.  My co-worker’s affirmation really built me up after a string of crummy days.  She was effusive with her compliments and encouraging with her support.  To top it all off, we ended up talking about the previous day’s meeting at the end of the conversation when I confessed to her that’s where I thought she was going when she originally approached me, and she laughed.  She told me she was nodding at everything I was saying in the meeting and was glad someone finally stood up to hold people accountable!  Double affirmation!

I think — and I hope — the main source of the heightened stress at work is coming to an end today, so relief is in sight.  My horrendous January taught me never again to let the tension get the best of me, and this time around, I’ve learned to channel it into more productive avenues than overeating and sleep loss.  I haven’t strayed from my meals at all or lost a wink of sleep in the face of this, or my heel spur, or the last few days of unwelcome hip pain.

Also, my previous go-rounds with weight loss have taught me that being all touchy about it is immature and counterproductive.  You can’t simultaneously want to hide it from everyone, yet hope people comment on your progress.  I’m forcing myself to get comfortable with having conversations about it when people give me compliments, not only for my own accountability in the process, but also for my own personal growth.  It’s always been harder for me to accept praise than criticism, and that’s just stupid.  I want the recognition, and damn it, I deserve it.  I’m still having an easier time talking about it with strangers than with those closest to me, but progress is progress.  I’m working on it.

The universe is peppering my path with reassurance at very opportune times.  It’s reinforcing the lessons I’ve learned and helping me embrace new ones.  It’s incredible how all-encompassing the weight-loss adventure can be if you open yourself up to everything it offers.  I’m just in awe of that.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

I’m getting more excited all the time about what life will be like at the end of this whole experience.  I know I’m already healthy, and I have full confidence that I can continue to become even healthier.  I’m starting to see enough changes in my body to imagine what the thin version of myself will look like, and that’s mind-blowing to me.  But most importantly, I’m really starting to discover my (new?) personality — it’s like meeting a new (schizophrenic) friend.  I’m starting to respect and appreciate myself in a way I don’t think I ever have.

I think I’m really going to like the girl waiting for me at the finish line.