Today is my 300th day of this… thing. Nearly 10 straight months of… doing this… this.
Not “journey”. I’m already not much for euphemisms, and that one is so over-used, it’s at the living edge of cliché meaninglessness.
Journeys imply a trajectory with some amount of planning; a clear starting point with a clear destination. A trip of some length, but overall pleasurable.
My past 300 days have skewed positive, but that’s where the similarities end. My this has been meandering. At times haphazard, and at other times meticulous.
Uncharted. Arduous. Surprising. Surreal.
I don’t know exactly where I’m going. I can’t picture exactly what it will look like when I get there. I have no idea how long it will take. I’m forging a path forward by instinct and knowledge I accumulate as I go, in a self-contained world with its own rules, patterns, and logic that don’t always hold parity with anything in the larger world. The experience is changing me in every way. And I have no intention of going back to the home I left.
It’s more like an odyssey. That combination of strangeness, adventure, movement, and purposeful quest.
I’ve learned how to nourish myself well. I’ve learned how to move my body safely, in ways that push it to new heights and help it strengthen. I’ve learned how to channel my positive emotions into healthy pursuits. I’ve learned how to process my negative emotions through healthy outlets. I’ve learned how to honor the commitments I make to myself, even — especially — when it’s not convenient. I’ve learned how to take up more space through taking up less space. I’ve learned how to say yes. I’ve learned how to say no. I’ve learned how to challenge myself in the right ways. I’ve learned that movement and self-care are gifts, not punishments. I’ve learned what I’m really made of, because I gave myself the chance to shine in the dark.
That’s not a journey. That’s a love story. A self-love story.
The 115-pound (and counting) weight loss, the 6-size (and counting) decrease in pants sizes, the rings that fall off fingers and necklines that slip off shoulders and shoes that slide off feet… details. Minor plot points. Background noise. The main character is still venturing forth, ready to meet the future.
Will she live happily ever after? I don’t know. I certainly hope so.
More importantly than hoping, though — I believe it’s possible. Because she’s making it possible.
My weight loss has been crawwwwwwling for the past 3 months. Yes, a slow-down is normal in drastic weight loss after months of quick drops. And also yes, I’m undoubtedly in body recomposition right now. And yes again, 23.8 pounds is still arguably a respectable amount to lose in 12 weeks. Yeses and valid justifications aside, this glacial pace is not my jam.
It got to the point that for the first time since June, I lost a DietBet. Like, it wasn’t even close; in 3 weeks, I only lost 3 lbs and missed my 4% goal of 187.5 by 4.9 lbs. I hadn’t even broken into the 180s.
Unfortunately, I was on a bit of a DB sign-up spree at the time I signed up for that March Mayhem Kickstarter, so two more were a week from closing — and I was even further from those goals of exactly 187.0.
Ugh. Now I was losing more money than weight.
What could I do but lose graciously? I thought of it as rebalancing the sheet of me taking other people’s money these past 10 months. Can’t win ’em all.
What I did not do was use this VERY minor setback as an excuse to go off the rails. The thought never entered my mind. I stuck to the plan.
What was the plan? The plan was to thwart this sluggish plateau-adjacent nonsense which has overstayed its (never-really-)welcome. Historically, my body has responded well to a bit of healthy, intentional upheaval, so I decided to mix things up with a zero-sugar week — not even any fruit (RIP reliable breakfast staple). In the process of designing that menu for this week, I noticed that I had never adjusted my daily calorie intake down to account for my body’s smaller size. Since I’m being honest, I’ll confess one more cardinal sin: I haven’t been tracking my calorie intake at all. My plates have been filled with balanced whole foods and I’ve been training my body, so I never stopped to question if the food could be behind the stalling weight loss. It’s no wonder that until this moment, I didn’t realize how small my deficit had become. After crunching the numbers from my past several weeks’ worth of meals, the fact was inescapable: I was just barely outside of the maintenance zone. Honey, we are not in maintenance yet! That my body had been allowing me to burn any fat at all was a bit of a miracle. (THANK YOU, BODY!) I also decided to pump the brakes on intense cardio this week — a dubious call with a half-marathon less than a month away, but hey, I live on the edge — and switch to post-meal digestion walks coupled with a focus on strength and core work.
With all this in mind, I dutifully refined my week’s menu to stay within a daily deficit appropriate to weight loss, compiled my grocery list, made the haul, and batch-prepped all 3 meals in full on Saturday. My exercise plan shifted immediately, even with erratic temperatures and weather conditions throwing wrenches left and right. With two impending DB weigh-ins with windows of Monday-Tuesday and Tuesday-Wednesday, it wasn’t looking good when the scale spat out 191.2 at my Sunday weigh-in — a measly half-pound down from the previous week.
As someone who ignores the scale at every other time, it was a major departure when something possessed me to check that cheeky appliance on Monday morning.
And it was an even more-major departure when that little imp showed me 187.2. As in, 0.02 lbs away from both DB goals, literally overnight.
I am not a fan of this type of suspense. I can barely tolerate it in a cozy mystery. I arguably can’t tolerate it at all cinematically. In real life, forget it. I am not built for drama.
This was a real test of mettle. I could go extreme and over-exercise and under-fuel and wring my hands for the ensuing 24 hours, or I could honor my commitment and trust my body and the process to respond well enough to result in DB victories. After all, this whole thing is about so much more than a few DietBets. Winning/keeping money is great, but it’s in no way healthy to go full nutcase at the possible expense of the broader arc. That type of compulsive behavior is the ugly cousin of what got me to over 300 lbs. So I chose responsibly and made my peace with the fact that the die was cast already, and all I had to do was stay the course — my body had just given me a loud and clear signal that it was happy with what I was doing. This was a moment to listen, not to hijack the convesation.
And, well…
I just love a story with a happy ending, don’t you?
It’s the last day of my Power 11 challenge. I’ve been consciously tracking quite a few metrics throughout the past 11 weeks to monitor my changes, but there have been some I couldn’t have predicted. Today, an unexpected moment cemented a trend I’ve been lightly observing over the past week, and I’m… still wrapping my head around it.
Earlier this week, I casually scooted my carseat when I got into the car. There was no thought involved. I got in the car, felt too far from the steering wheel, and moved the seat forward. Only once I’d started the car did it hit me how weird that was; I’m the only person who drives my vehicle, and my seat position hasn’t changed in… ever? Why would it? My height hasn’t changed, so why should an adjustment like this suddenly be necessary?
Oh. Because there’s less cushion behind me, forcing my body forward and out from the seat. The disappearance of that natural padding has required me to sit farther back in the seat, creating more distance between the wheel and the rest of my body. It makes sense… but it also makes no sense at all.
Later in the week, I took myself out for a walk through a touristy area near my office. I happened upon a t-shirt I liked and decided to buy it — but I spent several minutes debating what size to get. The XL looked huge. The L looked right. I ultimately opted for the XL, rationalizing that it’s better to have something be too big than too small, I could wear it over something else if it actually was too big, and it might shrink in the wash anyway.
Then today, my package arrived of the 2 maxi dresses I ordered as options to wear to an upcoming event. I tried them both on immediately, and just as immediately, saw that they were too big. Not just kind of too big; too big as in the elastic band under the bust on one of them wasn’t even making contact with my skin. That one is going back where it came from. (I’m keeping the other for a swimsuit cover-up.)
The kicker about those dresses is that I pored over the size chart for each one before choosing the size. The smaller size matched my latest measurements, but once again, I rationalized that most brands run small (in my experience), and I’m inept at taking my measurements, so I didn’t fully trust the numbers. I erred on the side of bigger, just to be safe.
On my walk today, I caught a glimpse of my lean-looking shadow moving with relative ease up and down the hilly terrain. It sent me onto a thought spiral of the way the skirt I wore earlier this week wasn’t clinging to my hips like it used to, the way my red pants swished instead of hugging the length of my legs the other day, and the way I can feel and see new contours in my thighs both in motion and at rest. (Seriously, all the divots and indentations and little bulges — the topography of my legs is a totally new frontier to me.)
This is all inescapable evidence that there is some serious recomp happening here. And even though I expected it, it’s messing with my head. Hell, even expecting it to mess with my head has not curbed the messing-with of my head.
It isn’t squaring for me. Does not compute. That’s why I keep catching myself hedging. I negotiate with reality in real time, just like I did in all 3 instances above where I was confronted with my physical changes.
I’ve watched myself get smaller. I’ve felt myself shrink. I’ve put in the work; it’s not like it’s a surprise, or something I didn’t very much want. Why am I resisting the evidence? Why so skeptical?
It’s a simple answer: this shit is crazy, and it can make a person feel crazy. Just like going to the gym when I’m already exhausted — Just like staying on the run when I’m out of breath — Just like choosing the healthy food option over the convenient one — This is a mental game much more than it is a physical one.
I’ve been a big back forever — since before “big back” was even a term. Someone who’s moving closer to the steering wheel, comfortably wearing size L clothing, and finding more power in her legs even as they shrink? That doesn’t sound like me. I can see it. I can feel it. It makes sense… but it also makes no sense at all.
When I do my weekly weight check tomorrow morning, the scale may or may not reflect what I’ve been noticing since our last encounter. I don’t necessarily need it to. Either way, it will be capping off 11 weeks of a particular kind of focus. My weight loss from the past 10 weeks has actually not been that impressive, so I’m not expecting any remarkable drop to suddenly show up tomorrow morning and buck that trend. What I do think I’ll see tomorrow are some jaw-dropping side-by-side photos contrasting day 1 and day 77+1.
Regardless of what I see in the metrics or in the pictures, what I’m feeling now is a whole new level of embodiment. I struggle to articulate exactly what that means, and attempting to process it all internally is proving just as difficult. It’s hard because change is hard. But change — this kind of change — is also very, very good. Hard isn’t always bad.
In addition to — and in no small part because of — the heavy load they’ve had to haul for nearly the entirety of their load-bearing lives, I’ve derided them for their too-wide-for-boots muscularity and unfeminine appearance. Disrespecting them for the appearance they took on as a direct result of the abuse I inflicted on my body, which became their burden. Classic insult to injury.
Since I’ve been losing weight and training for a half marathon, the demand on my legs has anything but lessened, even as my body mass has. The musculature is even more pronounced as my calves slim down. My knees have taken on a knobbiness they’ve never had before. There’s definition and shape developing as the muscles, tendons, and ligaments in my thighs develop and strengthen. My ankles are popping, and not in the injury-adjacent way the normally do.
My legs don’t look different, exactly; they look more unabashedly themselves. And I’m learning to love them.
They’ve done a thankless job for decades. They may never look conventionally attractive. They may never fit into a cute autumn boot. They may never stop a speeding cab with their irresistible curvature. But they have always held me. They supported me. They carried me. They are strong, and they are tireless. They are perfectly mine.
Before? Hide the legs! Keep them out of others’ view! Pants year-round! Now? Electric blue workout pants. Highlighter pink tights. Dresses. Skirts. Dare I say, SHORTS… coming soon.
This is the type of change that matters the most to me. I’m getting healthier mentally — and that’s been the entire purpose of all of this.
I’m coming off of 2 successive nights of, to put it mildly, suboptimal sleep. Taken together, I’ve netted a cumulative single night’s worth of in twice that amount of time. I’m in the middle of a (self-conducted) multi-week experiment where I’m closely monitoring the variables that may be impacting my sleep and I’m very much anticipating the results, but until then, the erratic restfulness has me dragging ass.
Today was rough, but it was a prescribed Power 11 rest day that seemed well timed to help mitigate some of the fatigue from my sleep deficit. Instead of taking it easy, though, I racked up 5 (leisurely and spread-out) miles on the treadmill work station at the office today before coming home and completing a 15-minute core workout video.
It’s not just that I want to keep up my physical activity. It’s not just that consistency matters more on high-exhaustion, low-energy days. It’s not just that restoration comes in many different forms, including an alternative type of movement. It’s that this is what my body told me it needed today.
Counterintuitive? Sure. But I spent decades ignoring my biological and physiological signals. My body is working hard for me, and it deserves better care than a return to that nonsense.
Crucially, yes: I am physically depleted. My eyelids feel like they weigh 10 pounds each, almost every part of me is sore, and I have spent the day having elaborate fantasies about my pillow. I am T.I.R.E.D. And yet… I am not tired of this.
Taking care of myself, noticing changes in the mirror, feeling new muscles and shapes emerging from my physique, fitting into new (old) outfits, effortlessly moving in ways that were impossible 6 months ago, nourishing myself properly, and caring enough to do things like track my behaviors so I can repair my disrupted sleep? It’s work. It takes time, focus, commitment, and thought.
And I choose it every day — thousands of times a day — because it matters. Right now, nothing matters more.
True exhaustion was being twice the size I should be and still having to participate in life like a fully functional, healthy person. This right here is a bump on the road to regulation. Healing isn’t linear. Recovery isn’t smooth. Change isn’t straightforward. This is messy.
So I know it’s working.
Rest days will fall by the wayside. Sleepless nights will strike. I can handle that; I know how to care for myself now.
But I will not go back there. I will never return to true exhaustion.
In a past life, when I was having success with weight loss, I used to do this thing where I’d buy a few articles of clothing a size down from where I was, every time I reached a new smallest size. Staying on top of the sartorial demands of slimming down is an expensive pursuit whose timing is unpredictable, so it helps to be prepared for it; my little gimmick helped not only to keep me motivated, but to keep me clothed. My big move was rifling through the sales and clearance racks for off-season finds that gave me a comfortable cushion, to the extent that the season-bound availability allowed. Every time I purchased a downsizing garment, I wrote the date on the tag, which remained attached until that piece fit. Once I could wear it and it became an official part of my wardrobe, it was a cool way to track the time between size changes that weren’t always congruent with the scale — and it came with a fun little ceremonial act of snipping off the tag.
Last night, while I was laying out my attire for today (to save me time in the morning), I found one such relic from that bygone era:
I tried on this skirt and it fit. With room to spare. (So yes, I wore it today.)
Seeing the date on the tag as I cut it off triggered a memory of a couple of other items I bought around the same time: two pairs of… shorts. 😱
I found them immediately, folded together in a tiny stack on a shelf in my closet: one a size 14, and the other a quixotic size 12. The tags aren’t dated, but I’m reasonably certain they were from around the same time as when I bought the skirt I wore today, if not from the same shopping trip.
These are the two smallest downsize items I have. This means two pretty big things: 1) I have never been as small as I am now. 2) I am about to enter a new frontier that I am literally not outfitted for.
I set both pairs of shorts out in plain view for subtle thinspiration. It was too soon to try on either of those sizes, having newly sized down into 16s. Maybe in another month or two, I’d be up for trying on those 14s. For now, those two pretty big things are a lot to absorb.
So when I got home from work today, in the skirt I was wearing for the first time since purchasing it more than 9 years ago — because I regained all the weight I’d lost before I got the chance to shrink into it — I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t also be the last. I picked up those size-14 shorts from their spot and held them up in front of me. The idea of fitting into them suddenly didn’t seem so outlandish.
And it wasn’t.
Because they fit.
Not perfectly. Not as flatteringly as they will after another few inches disappear from my hips and waist. But the fastener closed. The zipper slid right up. Those shorts were on me. And I was floored.
It’s truthfully a little nerve racking; I have no blueprint for this phase. I haven’t “been there before”. I don’t know what I’ll look like the next size down. I don’t know what I’ll feel like when those 12s are sliding on. I don’t know how things will fit me at clothing sizes I’ve never bought ahead, let alone worn. Most alarmingly, I don’t know for sure that I’m gonna make it to the next size below. There’s no precedent for any of that.
But I made the major choice at the outset that every minor choice I make in this process will support my overall health. I do know I won’t deviate from that, because there’s nothing but precedent for it — and a trove of powerful results that have come from it. I believe in what I’m doing. I may not be prepared for the next step down, but when I get there, I will be ready.
This is where the real emotional work begins. In the interest of always choosing my health, I’ve been laying track for months to support my psychological journey that will go right through the heart of this thing. It’s already been exhausting, and it’s not even at full speed yet. The beautiful thing I have going for me is the physical activity that keeps me mentally regulated. And that’s a full circle.
So I might as well complete another circle while I’m at it. New frontier sounds pretty great to me.
Today was my first doctor’s appointment in more than 7 years.
I told her about my 105+ pounds of lost weight. I told her my menstrual cycles have become regular again. I told her I’m training for not one, but two half marathons this year.
She told me I was doing everything right. She told me maybe I didn’t need to drink quite so much water. She told me to get lab work and come back at the end of the month.
We talked about my complex medical history. We talked about my current nutrition. We talked about my future goals.
And we began a conversation about one big thing that’s been on my mind for the past few months: skin removal surgery.
Because in several places on my body where there used to be fat, my skin hangs low. It wobbles to and fro. Before too long, it wouldn’t surprise me if I could tie it in a knot and tie it in a bow. God forbid I should wind up with enough to do what’s described in the lyric that comes next.
I’m not done yet. There’s no certainty about much more time it will take me to reach my “end state” — but it could be about a year, give or take. Starting the conversation with my doctor is the right move strategically for insurance purposes as well as for my own psychological and logistical purposes. My doctor gave me a referral for a practice that has done good work for a past patient of hers for an initial consultation, as a first step, which I look forward to taking. And, if I’m being 100% honest, it motivates me to keep going. Yes, I am interested in the aesthetics of this because I’m a person with deep-seated body issues and some (probably standard-issue) vanity to boot; no question it’s unsightly. But also, it is physically uncomfortable. Loose skin hanging from my arms, belly, and inner thighs is in the way. It chafes. It bulges. It gets irritated. And it’s not the kind of skin that just burns off when you lose more weight; it gathers additional mass.
This is just the beginning of a longer discussion, but it’s the right time. A surgical option is a big decision with a lot to think about, and I’m ready to start doing that in a real way with professionals who can paint it all in practical terms. My body isn’t finished changing yet, but the progression has been so rapid — 92 lbs since mid-June — that the finish line is going to get here fast no matter when that is.
I want to be prepared for it, not blindsided by it.
So, yes: today was a big day. It felt like the start of a new chapter. Not the exit from an old chapter, but the beginning of a concurrent one that has never been foreshadowed in anything that has been written so far. It’s as grounding as it is exciting, because for the first time, I’m looking at something that feels within my reach. I believe I have a doctor who is on my side and is invested in my health. I don’t have to do it alone.
Going forward is going to get harder because it’s going to demand more and more from me. I’ve already had to persevere through the slog of the 200s, sticking to my plan without taking drastic measures out of desperation to finally cross that threshold. I’ve already had to work around injuries and modify training sessions. I’ve already had to creatively reconfigure my schedule to ensure my workouts and meals didn’t fall off. It’s nothing I haven’t been able to handle, but it is the type of demand that tends to produce fatigue that compounds with time and demand. I’m trying to be prepared for that, too.
I heard somewhere, in a different context, perhaps the most affirming and applicable quote that fits my whole approach to my self-improvement work: “Motivation is fickle; discipline is consistent.”
I’ve shown up. And I’ll keep showing up. Because god damn if I’m not disciplined.
Months ago, I predicted that I would reach a point in my weight loss where the emotional dam would break, unleashing decades of emotions locked away behind body armor I’ve packed on as excess weight.
That time has come.
I have been going through it lately. I have cried every day since Saturday for one reason or another — or, more likely, for a nice big tangle of reasons knotted together by tenuous, anachronistic threads that barely make sense as part of the same weave.
Drastic weight loss? It’s… forgive me… heavy.
Seeing myself in the mirror feels like an elaborate prank. Sometimes I look so small, I can’t reconcile my reflection with the image of myself that lives in my mind. Other times, I still look so huge that the amount of work I have left to do seems nearly undoable.
Getting dressed is a gamble. If the pants fit my waist, will they be too tight in the calves and consequently spend the day being pulled down by the war between my limbs and my trunk? Will the underwear that sags in the ass still cling to my hips? If it clings to my hips, will my ass be too big for it? If the bra band is snug enough, are my boobs spilling out over the sides? If the neckline of my top looks right on the shoulders, will it still be too tight around my midsection when I sit down? If the dress hugs my curves, will it accentuate the bulge from my recently adjusted bra band and downsized tights squeezing my stomach? And don’t even get me started on the legs.
But the real mind fuck is the fucking mind.
I am approaching a size I have never been as an adult. The associations I have to that body are not positive. It was not a time when I felt safe, sure, or seen. I blame the grown people in my life for not helping me. I blame the people around me of all ages for not seeing what was going on. I blame society for normalizing the pressure on young girls such that the unhealthy ways they cope with it are easy to go undetected.
And I blame myself for letting things get so bad that it cost me.
It cost me my health. It cost me experiences. It cost me closeness. It cost me understanding of self-care and self-love. It cost me peace. It cost me good decisions. It cost me years of life I can’t change.
None of that resentment is productive. It might not even be entirely fair. But I feel it all the same. I feel it with the weight of decades and pounds of body fat that I did not put on consciously, but that I now am consciously taking off. It padded me, but did not protect me. It fucking hurts.
So I’m wandering around like an exposed nerve, hell bent on surrendering no ground on my half marathon training, because showing up matters to me. But today, after crying throughout therapy for the first time and wiping silent tears from my eyes for the rest of the afternoon in front of my work computer, I realized: this is not a knot I can untangle in an hour with a 7-mile run on the elliptical. Being low-key competitive with the people around me at the gym would not soothe this ache.
I needed to go outside.
It was nearly 60° today, and there was enough sunlight by late afternoon that it wound up being a great opportunity for my first trail walk of the year. It was treacherous; the foot+ of snow we got last month has not been cleared, leaving it to melt on its own. The freeze-thaw cycle and intermittent sun has created a soggy, muddy, slippery network of pathways that are clear in some places, frosted over in others, and wet everywhere else. The climb to the top of the trailhead was almost too much for my worn-in sneakers. With ankle concerns fresh on my mind, I nearly turned back; if the entire trail was going to be like this, it seemed imprudent to risk a fall.
But I thought, I’ll be careful.Maybe it’s not like this the whole way. Maybe it clears up later.
So I pressed on. I slid a little once or twice, but I was careful. It wasn’t like that the whole way. There were clear parts.
Then I got to this point.
And something about it struck me.
This was the thing:
Choose your metaphor.
The punctuation mark of this outdoor trek was at the very end. On my first venture to this part of the trail in the summer, I took a spill and did some damage to my knee — which also got infected. At that very same spot where I fell, there is now a 2.5′ x 4′ puddle of ankle-deep water from melted snow. The only way back to my car from there was either through that small lake, or all the way back up through the treacherous trail. I spent a fraction of a second verifying that there were no ways around the pool of melt, and then I trudged right through it. It was frigid and sloshy, but I didn’t care. A few minutes later, I was driving my soaked feet home to a warm shower, weighing the same amount yet unquantifiably lighter.
Emotional excavation is hard work. It requires a type of fortitude you don’t get by turning away from rough roads and uncomfortable obstacles on your path. It’s exhausting. It has no timeline. It fucking hurts. But if you keep going, carefully, it might not be like that the whole way. It might clear up later. You might even come out lighter.
I saw the scale dip below 200 lbs for the first time in 10 years. I did this mid-week weigh-in specifically because I had my August 11th – February 10th weigh-out to do, which is *the* exception to my Power 11 rule about only doing once weekly weight checks (on Sundays). I handily won that Transformer, going from 268.4 pounds in August to 202.8 pounds on February 11th1 — nearly 2.5 times more than what I needed to lose. Even better, it was the most I’ve ever raked in from a Transformer bet: $343.70! Conversely, it was the smallest group of people I’ve ever played with in a Transformer bet, and possibly any DB at all — so it was a VERY pleasant surprise to clean up like that! My theory is that people signed up for it in August and either lost track of it with the calendar busy-ness between start and end dates, or they fell victim to it: back to school, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and all the functions, parties, events, and promotions that come along with all those occasions.
It’s always a great day to collect. And I felt pretty proud to review these 6 months of pretty fantastic effort and results.
But the good times ended there.
At the beginning of the week, I was contending with intense lower back pain that seemed to hit out of nowhere last Saturday when I woke up. It followed me into Sunday and Monday, and finally fucked off on Tuesday after some desperate interventions I made on Monday night that either paid off quickly or perfectly coincided with the natural ending of the pain. One of those was changing from sleeping on two pillows to sleeping on only one pillow. After losing 100 pounds, my shoulders are narrower, which means I don’t need a stack of pillows to properly support my neck as a side sleeper. I never thought about it until my back started complaining, but I made that adjustment and not only slept better, but woke up on Tuesday with no pain. I felt rejuvenated enough on Tuesday to hit a PBR on the elliptical in my workout that evening: 7.05 miles in one hour on the elliptical. Woohoo!
On Thursday, I had a bit of an emotional hangover from putting myself through some mental health processing work on Wednesday night. It was a positive development overall that came from that, but it did leave me wrung out on Thursday — which consequently felt like a VERY long day. Friday also kind of dragged, but it ended with dinner with a friend I hadn’t seen since the end of June. Catching up with her was lovely and a much needed top-off of my social cup. (And yes, she was floored to see how different I look now!)
Yesterday was the roughest, though. I woke up with my period, which is a bit of a mixed-bag way to wake up. Now that my cycle has seemingly regulated itself, I feel this intense relief, joy, and gratitude when it shows up… and I also feel a bit of apprehension about it. Will it be debilitatingly heavy? Will the pain immobilize me? Then this spins out into feeling that I don’t even have the right to complain about any of the downsides, because I’m lucky to even be having a period now. (Yes, I have managed to emotionally complicate menstruation. Welcome to my mind.)
Anyway, I went for my haircut and lunch with a friend as planned, and everything was fine. Unfortunately, it all took a turn into death by a thousand cuts when I got to the gym for what was supposed to be my half-marathon training session where I’d be running 25 minutes straight for the first time, after multiple missed attempts at this since last week. Spoiler alert: it didn’t happen again. I got on the treadmill to do the damn thing, and my ankle instantly started whining. I figured I’d try to run anyway; it’s about 50/50 whether the pain subsides or not when I give it a shot when this happens. In the final minute of my warm-up walk, someone decided that the machine beside mine was The One — out of all the unoccupied machines beside absolutely no one in the gym that afternoon — they needed to use. Um, no, ma’am. So I hopped off and changed to a different machine that was apparently not good enough for her. I started my run speed, and my ankle all but tea-kettle screamed at me. I tried a couple of minutes, a couple of foot placement changes, trying to see if it would loosen up… but it wouldn’t. So I had to stop.
I was pissed.
But I was at the gym, and the second half of my planned workout for the day was strength training. I was able to complete my circuit without event, but my earbuds did die two minutes into the first exercise. That’s annoying on its own, but I had JUST charged the suckers because this same nonsense happened earlier in the week. Between reps, I was rage-ordering a USB-C wired pair when I realized that not only was my ankle was still making its displeasure known, but my head had joined in. I suddenly felt the pain of a raging headache that was going precisely nowhere. I used to get headaches pretty regularly, but since I’ve started exercising every day, they’ve been a rare misery. When they hit, though… ugh. Right on cue, I moved to my next machine and felt violent cramps join the full-on assault my body was now waging against me.
This gym session was cursed.
That’s when I decided two things: 1) I was absolutely finishing this strength training, unless my limbs fell the entire fuck off; and 2) My evening plans were not happening.
I did finish the arm weights. With sincere apologies, I did cancel my dinner.
And then I went home, did the barest of minimums of prep work, ate what could passably be called dinner, dosed up on Excedrin PM, and promptly passed out on the couch with my ankle icing and propped up.
When I woke up some time later, my headache had not subsided at all. The recommended amount of time between doses had not passed, but I had no energy and no fucks left to give. I popped two more pills, crawled on top of the heating pad in my bed, and was asleep before 8 PM.
And there I stayed for the next 13 hours.
I woke up today feeling a million times better: no trace of a headache, an appeased ankle, and weaker cramps. I’ve been able to be as productive as I needed to be today to make up for the total unproductiveness of yesterday, and my whole list is now accomplished as of almost 6 PM: 2 loads of laundry, 3 meals prepped and snacks pre-portioned for the week, dishes cleaned and put away, and Power 11 Sunday tasks completed. I also went on a brief social call to atone for my last-minute jilt last night, got gas in my car, and transferred the contents of my work bag that broke this week (because of course!) into the replacement for it I ordered that arrived today.
After the weird week I’ve had, it’s no surprise that my total weight loss this week was 0.6 pounds. It’s frustrating, but not terribly; I am a walking skin sack of bloat, sleepiness, and emotional wear. I did the best I could at balancing my training against what my body told me it needed this week, and I can’t expect the scale to reflect that. And now, that week is over. I am letting this Sunday sunset with my yummy dinner, then taking my cramps to bed before they start biting again.
The most important thing I have learned over the past few months is that when my body talks, I need to listen. Feeling a little behind in my training is the price of admission for ensuring I don’t sideline myself for days or weeks because I was trying to prove the wrong point.
One positive thing I can say with full force is that even though this week tried my patience, disrupted my plans, and forced me into what feels like stalled progress, I have NOT fallen into past traps. I didn’t get angry and storm out of the gym, costing myself any amount of movement altogether. I didn’t push myself to keep plans — with myself or with others — that would have involved suffering for me. Most importantly, I never once reached for comfort in the form of sugar-coated sabotage.
I’ve said it before, and I repeat it for a reason: that’s how I know I’ve changed. Unhealthy food doesn’t solve my problems. It iswas my problems.
My body doesn’t want bad food that tastes good. My body wants care.
Some days go smoothly. Some days go roughly.
All I can do is keep going safely.
I trust myself now. Nothing feels better than that.
If you are reading this and noticing that 202.8 pounds is not below 200 lbs — yes. My below weigh-in at 198 was at 5:30 AM, after a pee, nothing new in my system, and buck-ass naked. This is not how I usually weigh in; my typical checks are between lunch and dinner, fully clothed. I have to submit photos for DietBet, so I follow their guidelines in my normal weigh-ins for consistency across my own records. Why the change, then? Because this milestone was important for me, and I wanted to do it this way. Enough said. ↩︎
Somehow in the past 2 days or so, I managed to tweak my back. It hasn’t been debilitating, but it did inform my decision to take a rest day yesterday, opting instead to spend it and most of today laid up on top of my heating pad. After taking it easy today to not only treat my back, but also to bank on a crowdless gym during the Super Bowl when I went to complete my half-marathon running session as planned, I hit a snag: I failed to remember that the Sunday gym hours are shorter than on weekdays. By the time I got there, as the employee at the check-in desk informed me, they were 18 minutes from closing.
There went my planned 45-minute treadmill session and strength training circuit.
For a split second, I considered taking a second rest day in a row. What was the point of a 15-minute workout?
Consistency. Showing up for myself. That was the point. That’s the entire point of all of this.
So I dutifully took my place on a treadmill in the nearly empty gym, making it my purpose to log a mile. My treadmill pace has been a modest 4.3 mph; in under 15 minutes, I was not going to be able to pull off the distance I wanted, even with a truncated 1-minute walking warm-up. So my pace tonight — and from this moment until the next increase — was 4.5.
I got 1.02 miles in 14 minutes.
Seahawks. Patriots. Whatever. After snatching a victory from the jaws of defeat, I feel like the true champion of Super Bowl Sunday 😏
This coming week is going to be about some serious pushing of limits.
Life Can't Weight 