Tag Archives: lifestyle change

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NEW DAY 101: Happy trails

One of the things I appreciate the most about 75 Hard is its requirement for an outdoor workout every day. Sure, it’s a hassle if there’s inclement weather that either throws a wrench in my planning or forces me to get attacked by the elements if bad conditions hit during my session, but getting outside has been wonderful for me. The daily dose of sunshine, fresh air, scenery, increased vitamin D, and exposure to nature combine to form a powerful mood booster that has helped stabilize my emotions, allowed me to clear my head, and and given me a prescription to get out of the house to shake up my stale surroundings.

I started tentatively exploring the greenway near my house earlier this summer, well before 75 Hard was even in my vocabulary. One of my first visits there is when I took a spill and busted my knee, which triggered a weeks-long hiatus from going there again. Since beginning 75 Hard, though, that greenway has become a staple in my routine — but I haven’t spent much time on the actual trails that make up the greenway. On my normal trips to the site, I fast-walk (and sometimes attempt to jog) around — and stop for frequent dance breaks in — the large paved surface up a small hill from the parking area. Trudging into the sprawling footpaths has felt intimidating to me; there’s no area map, so I can’t tell where the trails go, see how they all connect, or get a sense of how long it might take me to complete a given circuit. Since the time I’m there is usually my lunch break, I’m hesitant to experiment with what could turn into a very long walk and then be scrambling for time, or late returning to work. On top of all that, the last time I did venture back into one of the trails this summer, I made it about 10 minutes in before I got too winded by the hills to continue, so I turned back and left. I’ve been reluctant to do a repeat of that, so I haven’t bothered.

Until today.

I wasn’t feeling particularly eager to get out there for workout #1 this morning. It’s overcast, I haven’t slept well in days, and I’m bored with the same old routine. I finally coaxed myself down to the greenway and decided today was the day I would mix it up by at last giving the trails another try. Armed with a clear schedule and dozens upon dozens of podcasts to catch up on, I headed into the great unknown.

It took exactly the 45 minutes I needed to count as a 75 Hard exercise sesh. And furthermore, the hills were manageable! Towards the end, when I knew I was completing the loop back to the parking area, I kept trying to identify the point where I had given up and about-faced out of the trail 3 months ago. I never figured it out, even though it was the same trail; I reached the exit in total confusion, lungs full of air and not at all out of breath.

I really enjoyed the different experience and feeling of exploration I got to have today, and I’m looking forward to doing more of that at the greenway. Changing it up can be a small risk, but it’s almost always worth it. Now that I have a variety of new paths to infuse some novelty into my outdoor workout options, I’m feeling a bit more energized about the remaining 26 days I have on 75 Hard.

Again, I’m so glad I’m obligated to get out there for exercise every day. It’s expanding my horizons while helping me become measurably fitter. This challenge has given me the opportunity to surprise myself over and over again, and that’s been priceless.

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NEW DAY 97: To heal, the six

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

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

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

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

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

Well… they could.

And they did.

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

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

That’s recovery.

That’s what leads to peace.

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

POSSIBILITY.

I may find a way back after all.

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NEW DAY 81: OMG, WHAT?!

Sunday is my weight tracking day. It’s the day I mark the end (NOT beginning) of my week and officially update my weight loss tracker. I try not to peek at the scale between Sundays, unless I have to for a DietBet weigh-in/weigh-out.

Well.

I just had my weekly 1:1 meeting with the scale, and…

Ho. Ly. WHAT.

I lost 7.2 pounds last week.

No, like… actually.

This goes a long way to offsetting some of my disappointment from last week, when I only dropped 1.8 pounds after powering through some truly torturous workouts (and other situations) while on a sinister period — and I highly suspect that a non-negligible portion of this 7.2-pound loss was really from last week, but masked by residual water retention. All the disclaimers aside, it doesn’t matter when the scale decided to show the change; I worked for it, I earned it, and it’s my win!

I had been feeling and noticing differences throughout the week, but I never imagined I would lose more than 4 lbs at the absolute max. I have NEVER lost this much in a single week. I am absolutely mindblown!

It feels even better knowing it’s not from doing anything but truly healthy things. I’m consuming zero processed sugar, drinking at least a gallon of water every day, and working out twice a day. Importantly, I’m also spending time outdoors and getting enough sleep to sustain the physical demands I’m making of my body. And boy, did my body reward me for it this week.

Seven. Point. Two.

LET’S GO!!!

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NEW DAY 80: Label it

In a past weight loss life, I did a few rounds of the Whole 30 diet. One of my favorite foods and staples each time was Aidell’s chicken and apple breakfast sausage, because it had zero added sugar. In my current tango with 75 Hard, I’ve been looking for reliable sugarless foods I can easily incorporate as the healthy eating part of my challenging. My meal plan for next week’s breakfast included those sausages. So imagine my shock when I flipped a package of them over in my hand when I was grocery shopping this morning and discovered they now contain 2g of added sugar! 😱

I’ve had the Aidell’s sausages many times since I last did Whole 30; they’re delicious and simple to make. I have also checked those labels in the time since and am certain that they remained free of added sugar until as recently as earlier this year. When did this happen?!

Needless to say, I dropped the Aidell’s like it was hot and was fortunately able to find a different brand of chicken breakfast sausage that did have no sugar added. I’m so glad I thought to confirm the nutrition facts on the package before throwing it into my bag! Simultaneously, I’m so disappointed about this change. Granted, 2 grams of added sugar is negligible in most cases, but zero added sugar means ZERO added sugar. Close call — phew!

I am on day 28 of 75 Hard and holding strong. I did all of my meal prep for the upcoming week today after my grocery run, and my second workout of the day was a walk/dance in the lightly falling rain. I’m feeling so good about having the energy to get through everything I’ve planned and then some each day, and to know that I’m taking good care of myself.

I’m also becoming more invested in this half marathon idea. On Thursday night, I put together a training plan of 25 weeks that would begin in early November. My plan right now is to complete 75 Hard, start a less-rigorous workout routine (twice a day is simply not sustainable forever) and allow my body to adapt to things like weight training and rest days, then begin the program. I built it from a great deal of research, combining elements of plans designed by a couple of sources and creating something that will meet me where I’m at to start and allow me to work my way up in a gradual yet demanding fashion. I’m actually looking forward to this! It’s going to be incredibly tough — I am NOT a runner, nor am I built like one — but I want to trust my body to rise to the challenge and level up in fitness. 75 Hard is definitely greasing the wheels for it, too: I’ll have lost a helpful amount of weight by the time early November rolls around, which will make it easier on my joints to adapt to running.

This is a lot of change in just a few short months. The person I was at the beginning of this year would never believe what she would be capable of a little later that year — and in spite of the shitty things that would happen to her before that.

Doing this will avenge her. If I could, I would hug her and tell her she’ll be OK. And if she could, she’d high five me and tell me to go prove our point.

What a team 🙂

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NEW DAY 71: I’ve been thinking…


The past 3 days of 75 Hard have proven far more difficult than expected thanks to some very uncomfortable menstrual complications. In an effort to recast my misery into some form of positives to focus on, I’ve landed in potentially dangerous territory.

Here’s what happened.

I reminded myself how lucky the timing was with my hybrid work schedule, so that my peak suffering days have been wfh and, fortunately, not onsite.

This triggered the memory of the fortuitous timing of how I landed the job in the first place. If not for the exercise and weight loss starting when they did, I wouldn’t have had the confidence — or anything interview-appropriate to wear — while moving through the hiring process. If not for the precipitating chaos that led me to snap into action, I never would have started. If not for… I mean, just how far back do I take this?

It got me stuck in a loop of replaying key moments from the past few months and examining the importance of when they happened. What if the timing had been slightly different? What if just one of the things that led to another, hadn’t happened at all? Where would I be today? How would I be?

And while in this dubiously philosophical pseudo-meditation, a lightning bolt struck: what if I trained for the next city half marathon?

Uh…

Here I am, only 19 days through 75 Hard, and entertaining the possibility of running 13.1 miles just 8 months from now. Ummm, excuse me, me! I would like a word!

That word: HUH?! 😲

One of my coworkers mentioned the other day that she signed up for the halfer on a whim after her doctor told her to get more exercise. Most people would start taking causal walks; this absolute legend decided that the appropriate response was to go from never having run a single mile, to conditioning herself to run half a marathon’s worth in less than a year. And evidently, this airborne insanity has infected me.

But will I actually do it?

Honestly… I might.

Rationality says to make it through the rest of the current challenge I’m just barely 1/4 through before leaping off the next cliff.

Dubiously philosophical pseudo-meditation says that this seed was planted at this time for a reason, and I might as well start training even if I don’t want to take the step of registering for the event right away. After all, I have two guaranteed dedicated workouts a day for at least the next 56 days. Why not incorporate training into those slots?

I’ve found several feasible training programs ranging from 12 weeks to 20 weeks to 6 months. If I started training in September, that would give me 8 full months to coach myself up to half-marathon shape — and be a longer term goal that would have the additional benefit of keeping me focused on movement during the winter months.

There’s a good chance this is happening. Stay tuned.

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NEW DAY 60: Seeing is believing

Another metric is in: restaurant booths.

The last time I went to a certain fast casual chain was July 4th, which was about 6 weeks ago. I had been doing my frantic gym sessions and abrupt sugar detox for roughly 3 weeks at that point, so not much had noticeably changed for me physically yet. On July 4th, I struggled to squeeze into the restaurant booth and my body was touching both the back of the bench and the table throughout the meal — a reality I’d become all to familiar with, in spite of the discomfort.

Fast forward to yesterday when I returned to the scene of the ongoing crime. Several inches separated me from the edge of the table. I can comfortably fit into a booth again.

I had noticed the gradual changes over these past few weeks: more space between my belly and the steering wheel when I drive; less incidental contact with things like walls and furniture; roomier workout shirts; getting into tops that haven’t fit in several years. While my drops in weight haven’t been monumental, the slow slimming down of my figure has. In addition to fat, I was surely carrying a lot of bloat that has finally taken a hike.

I am falling into the trap of feeling frustrated that the number on the scale doesn’t seem to fully match what I’m observing off of it, and I’m trying to temper that as I continue my progress. I will say that the pounds lost aren’t obsessing me the way they used to in previous iterations of this. That tells me this is the healthiest approach I have ever had to getting healthy.

That beats every other metric, every time.

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NEW DAY 52: Vacation (all I ever wanted)

I got home yesterday from 2 weeks of traveling. I saw new places with familiar faces, spent a lot of time outdoors, and truly got away from things that I needed an escape from. I am back feeling recharged and still committed to healthy living. I actually missed the gym while I was away — and I continued to have no interest in tasty treats. The scale rewarded my consistency with a 4-lb loss.

Part of my travels was with a friend I hadn’t seen in a decade. In the time since, she has become very outdoorsy and athletic: she’s an avid hiker, jogger, and rock climber. When I say she’s athletic, I mean she’s climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. Recently. (Yeah, that’s right, my people are freakin’ cool.) So uh, I did have some concerns about whether I’d be able to keep up with her while we were roaming around our leg of the trip. I’m not saying I was matching her pace, but I was matching her energy level, and I wasn’t all out of breath and incapable of doing the things we wanted to do because I was too overweight and out of shape. Of all the high points of my trip — which was made up of almost exclusively high points — this is the one I may be happiest about.

I took myself on a bucket-list trip to Australia back in October for my birthday. I had always wanted to make that trip, but hesitated not only because of the expense and the fact that it would be a solo trek, but perhaps most of all because I knew there would be things that my size and (lack of) fitness would preclude me from doing, which I would have wanted to do. Sure enough, there were activities I had to opt out of for those reasons. The things I did do, I found took a lot longer for me to do and required a lot more energy to do than they should have. It was perhaps the worst shape I’ve ever been in on a trip like that, which is regrettable. I’m still glad I went, but I can’t pretend I feel no disappointment from the overall experience. I look forward to going back on a redemption trip there at some future point.

Come Monday, my daily routine will be changing and I’ll have to figure out how to reconfigure my schedule to include exercise time. I’m beginning 75 Hard with the friend who knows about this blog (hi!) tomorrow on something of a whim (for me), so I’m really locking in some hardcore stuff to take shape over the next 2.5 months! It seems like fortuitous timing to sync with my return from vacation and pivot into a new chapter with the start of a new job on Monday. Someone remind me on day 23 that I did this to myself. 🙃

That about covers it for now, but I trust there will be a lot of content in the coming 75 days or so!

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NEW DAY 20: Running scared

What if I can’t do it… again?

There’s so much I can’t do. I’ve failed at what feels like innumerable things in my life, and so much this year in particular. Today, I suddenly realized I am having imposter syndrome about everything. EVERYTHING.

My mind is very unhealthy right now. The only thing that has acted as a release valve has been movement.

My current situation is bad, but one luxury I have is that I can go for a workout whenever I want. It’s become a crutch to the point that I wonder if it’s actually problematic to be creating this type of likely-unsustainable precedent for myself, but it’s extremely helpful to me right now, so I’m gonna punt that potential problem to a later time.

The feelings of inadequacy, the fears that things will never get better, the preoccupation with how much I’m doing wrong, the outsize concern over rather trivial matters, the involuntary “what-if” thinking… they’re consuming. They’re suffocating. They’re draining. They’re LOUD.

But not when I’m running. Thank goodness.

I’ve had a long history of fitness attempts, all of which had notable success before ultimately failing. There were big similarities between the trajectories each time. I don’t remember this apprehensive state being part of it before. I know it’s because the stakes are at their highest now, and that this shitty year is casting a very long, very dark shadow over everything I do. It’s one more inner demon to combat in my very noisy mind amid the deafening silence of the faltering existential landscape around me. The discomfort from working out gives me something to feel other than sadness, and the challenge of keeping myself going when it feels too hard gives me something to think about other than how much I’ve fucked up my life. I kind of remember experiencing those benefits before, when the stakes were lower.

One thing I know I’ve never experienced in my past attempts is a total absence of “bad” cravings. It’s like I woke up one day and had zero interest in consuming anything that isn’t a healthy choice. It almost feels like cheating; as hard as physical conditioning and exercise are, especially in the beginning, the diet part was always harder for me. Temptation lurked around every corner, threatening to derail me in a moment of weakness — even in my dreams. This time, that’s a foreign concept. I doubt it will last forever, but for as long as I have this unexpected and incredibly valuable tool in my arsenal, I will be grateful for it.

While I’d love for the total disinterest in crappy food to be a lifelong friend, I’d welcome a change in the rest of my mentality. Fear’s ability to power my workouts is a tarnished silver lining, but feeling powerful in my workouts on my own is what I’m running after.

I hope I catch it soon.

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DAY 013: Positive reinforcement

Have you ever been so fat that everything you did made you lose your breath?  I have.  Forget losing my breath walking short distances or doing light physical activity; I would lose my breath doing things like tying my shoes and rolling over in bed.  I can recall being 300 pounds and being out of breath while eating (which clearly didn’t stop me!).  I finally pieced together that if I was gonna get all breathless, it ought to be from burning calories, not from inhaling them.

Now that I’m getting back on track with healthy eating and exercise, I’m returning to some of the things that first helped get me started, and that I’ve relied on along the way as reminders of why I’m abandoning obesity.  A friend of mine lets me use his parents’ DirecTV login in exchange for my Netflix (Millennial cord cutters, baby!  Holla for the tech barter economy!) — not an even trade, but he’s not complaining.  It’s allowed me to re-discover My 600-lb Life on TLC, a show I haven’t watched since well before my great run at weight loss in 2015-16.  There’s even a Where Are They Now edition that catches up with a few of the people who were on episodes from back when I did watch semi-regularly.  I’m using the episodes to help me remember:

  • Even though I have a lot of work to do, I can do this on my own.  It’s hard to think of finding yourself in any stage of obesity and considering yourself lucky, but many of the show’s patients are only just getting to where I am now, and that’s after gastric bypass and excess-skin removal surgeries.  I still have the chance to save myself from those extreme measures.
  • Where I don’t want to end up.
  • I’m not alone.
  • Life can get better.
  • It won’t do to deal with the physical and ignore the psychological.

Simultaneously, I’ve been re-reading this article over and over again.  It surveys six nutritionists for what they would recommend in terms of a change to make if they could only recommend one.  They’re all in some way expected or obvious, but for some reason, reading it in print is really getting through to me right now.  I keep coming back to the section called “Figure Out What Needs the Most Attention in Your Life.”  If you treat the symptoms and not the cause, things don’t actually improve in the long term, and a new problem or problems can arise as a result.  That’s true for diseases and it’s true for pretty much everything else.  It’s why “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is a truism.  However, this write-up gives a bit of a different spin on that notion without ever verbalizing it, and introduces the concept of six cylinders of health:  feet, forks, fingers, sleep, stress, and love.  I’m choosing to adopt that outlook more narrowly, strictly in terms of weight loss.  It’s helping me keep things in focus and in balance.

Finally, three quick updates:

  1. I got my earring back in!  YAY!
  2. I’ve joined yet another DietBet.  The elliptical and I are about to rekindle our relationship in a big way.
  3. I FINALLY WENT TO THE GYM TODAY, Y’ALL.

I have a date with the scale tomorrow night, a happy coincidence of my usual weekly weigh-in and my weigh-in for the new DB (as well as a Transformer DB I started haphazardly in November and have royally screwed up to this point — but am determined to rebound for!).  I don’t have crazy expectations, but I am looking forward to seeing what changes the scale may reveal.

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DAY 009: Coffiend

I’m not a coffee addict, but I do like my coffee.  It’s actually the coffee I like, by the way; I take it black, no cream or sugar diluting the hearty, nutty, bitter flavor.  I usually amble down the block on week day mornings to pick up a cup for myself to drink at work, and brew some at home in my French press on lazy weekend mornings or go for the bottomless coffee pots alongside leisurely weekend brunches with friends.  The smell of the roasted beans, the taste of the soothing liquid, the feel of the warm mug between my hands… I just enjoy the stuff.

I have a 3-year losing streak playing Starbucks for Life, which sees my fiendish behavior amp up significantly every year as I invariably rack up 2 out of 3 stickers in every category before ultimately only gaining dupes for the rest of the game’s duration.  That’s when a mild addictive pattern does start to form, born out of addiction to the possibility of winning MORE COFFEE, however improbable.  As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed I’m much more sensitive to caffeine than ever before.  I stopped drinking it after 12 PM a few years back when I realized it was wreaking havoc on my ability to fall asleep at night, but now it seems that if I have it more than a couple of days in a row, my sleep starts to suffer.  And so…

I’m giving up the brown stuff.

TEMPORARILY.  Like, for the rest of this month (and then we’ll see).

Conventional wisdom goes that it takes three weeks to form a habit.  Today was the first day I had no coffee, and three weeks from today is January 30th, which is just before the last day of the month.  So I’m going to be attentive to my physiological responses, where sleep is concerned as well as what effects it may have on my hunger and energy levels throughout the day and decide after that window whether or not it’s worth continuing the coffee hiatus.  I’ve given up coffee before for almost the exact same reason, but since it was during Whole30, it was impossible to isolate which impacts the diet was having on me vs. which ones coffee was, and/or how the two interplayed.  I’m really down with this sort of torturous self-experimentation, so hey, let’s call it science and party.

I didn’t sleep well last night, which is surely part of why I’m feeling draggy right now, but I’m sure the lack of coffee is also contributing to that.  I woke up his morning feeling as if I had been partially awake for a few hours.  It would be awesome to wake up from a full sleep to the sound of my alarm, rather than from a semi-conscious state in anticipation of my alarm.

Speaking of this morning, I noticed at one point of my semi-consciousness that my VivoFit wasn’t on my wrist, which is odd because I’ve been sleeping with it on for 3 years.  I felt around for it in the sheets, but it wasn’t there.  When I finally got out of bed, I saw it was lying on the floor.  I had clearly removed it and tossed it in my sleep!  Oh, subconscious self.  Don’t look for the symbolism, don’t look for the symbolism, don’t look for the symbolism…!

Also, last night, I finally did what could be classified as exercise.  My Wii Fit balance board arrived, and I did a Wii bit of activity for 30 minutes!  🙂  Baby steps still count towards that daily goal.

I’m hoping that once the caffeine fully leaves my system, I’ll get into more of a natural energy cycle that will make working out more productive.  I have a gym session in mind for tomorrow, which I don’t expect to be an easy time, but starting never is.

Don’t think, just go.  **breathes**