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DAY 755: The dirty on Whole30

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I MADE IT.  ALL THIRTY DAYS.

Here’s the official Whole30 timeline of what to loosely expect along the way.  Here’s what actually happened to me:

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THE SCORE
Days with low-carb flu:  7.5
Days with a headache:  16
Days with diarrhea:  3*
Days constipated:  8
Days with no weird effects:  4

*I think there were more of these in the beginning; at least, I recall having loose stools often and going at least once per day.  I unfortunately didn’t start keeping a symptoms calendar until I started that wretched, wretched 4-day stretch of constipation, and by that point, I could only recall back a few days.

BROAD SUMMARY (MENTALLY [because the physical should be self-explanatory based on my calendar image])
Days feeling meh/normal/pretty much fine:  16 (1 – 16)
Days feeling fucking terrible:  5 (17 – 21)
Days feeling fucking awesome:  9 (22 – 30)

TL;DR
Did you ever get your tiger blood?  YES.
Was it worth doing this shockingly expensive, drawn-out, often infuriating dietary experiment to feel awesome for less than a third of the time?  YES.
HUH?  WHY?!  There is no TL;DR way to answer this question.  Trust me blindly or keep reading, champ.

First of all, let me say up front that I’m proud of myself for doing this.  At no point did I falter, or even consider abandoning ship.  I stuck with it the whole time and I owned this process, and it wasn’t without its challenges or massive frustrations.  If I could high five myself without looking like a total dork who never learned to clap right, I would do it.

Sticking to Whole30 truly did help me tame my “sugar dragon,” challenged me to face the way I’ve been using food to punish or reward myself instead of to nourish myself, and gave me the feeling of power and control over what I put into my body (ironically enough, on such a restrictive diet).  It got me back into the gym on a routine basis.  It (eventually) made me feel great physically and like totally baller mentally.  I learned to love almond butter.  I reached rain-man levels of label-reading expertise.  What I thought was already great skin, became even greater.  I got something I really wanted out of this, which was improved sleep.  It forced me to become comfortable with discussing my dietary habits with people, out loud.  And ya know, it just feels great to have set out to do something for 30 days, and to have inarguably risen to the challenge.  Above all, it punted me out of my I-don’t-wanna stupor, and gave me results along the way:  my final weight-loss number from Whole30 is 17.2 pounds (most of which was knocked off in the first 2 weeks).  I still have a long way to go, but holy hell, y’all.  That’s a big-ass number, especially considering that low-carb flu sidelined me for a full week and I didn’t really start working out in earnest until the final third of the program.

And yet, I don’t think I would ever do this again.  The main reason is that it was astronomically expensive for me.  I’m not exaggerating when I say my weekly grocery bills doubled.  To give an example of the runaway costs I had on Whole30, I site breakfast.  Typically, I eat a bowl of passably healthy cereal (Cheerios) that I buy on sale at CVS for $2.50/box, and it lasts me over a week, along with milk from the grocery store that also lasts me over a week, for which I pay under $4.00.  Assuming each lasts me 10 days, that means one day of breakfast costs me roughly $0.65.  SIXTY-FIVE CENTS.  It’s practically free.  On Whole30, however, grains and dairy are no-nos, so I had to seek out compliant options — quite the quest within itself — and then I had to properly balance my plate.  For breakfast alone, I had to have starch (let’s say breakfast potatoes, which cost me about $6 to make last for the week), protein (let’s say Aidell’s chicken-apple sausage, $6.00/package, which lasts two days), and fat (usually avocado, which I can make last 4 days — thanks, refrigeration! — for $1/each).  I would also usually add in a fruit to help inject some fiber into the meal (let’s say raspberries, $4.00/package, which lasts two days, according to serving size).  Are you seeing how this adds up insanely fast?  Pricing this out per food item and factoring in staying power gives me a breakfast that costs $6.10 every morning.  SIX DOLLARS AND TEN CENTS.  It’s almost ten times more expensive every day!  And that’s just ONE MEAL!  Extrapolated across the full month, if I had had this meal for breakfast every day (which I did not, but I’m doing this just to drive home the point), it’s a total cost difference of $163.50!!!!  UNAFFORDABLE.

Beyond that, the amount of time it takes to plan (i.e. find compliant, balanced recipes that I liked) and prepare (i.e. cook and portion out) all the meals and snacks is something you should be provided a time machine for.  And I don’t mean a gizmo that lets you travel through time; I mean one that lets you add hours to your day.  Honestly, I thought this would be a very minor adjustment heading into Whole30 because I already put in so much thought and time into my menu planning and prepping efforts, but this knocked my socks off.  I’m used to sacrificing my entire Sunday to the kitchen altar of the nutrition gods, but even cooking morning to night did NOT give me enough time, especially if I had any hopes of getting a workout in.  I repeat:  cooking morning to night for an entire day was not enough time to get ready for the week!  Taking the example of breakfast again, something I never had to do any kind of prep for when I was simply eating a bowl of cereal, I was now having to fully prep an entire additional meal in addition to lunches and dinners for the week, increasing my kitchen work time by 50% right off the bat.  I had to sacrifice more and more of my weekend to Whole30 prep time, and it got a little dicey pretty often.

Finally, doing Whole30 can be a bit of a lonely experience.  I’m fortunate that I had a co-worker roped in with me, and I’m very glad I was vocal about my decision to take on the program ahead of time so that people I see regularly would already be in the know and implicitly give me support and accountability, but social situations could be very trying.  It’s basically impossible to find something at a work function that’s likely to be compliant, aside from an undressed pile of lettuce and perhaps some raw fruit or veggies.  There is sugar in everything.  EVERYTHING.  It’s also an isolating feeling to be at a celebratory event and be the wet blanket who’s not raising a glass of fizz to the guest of honor, or digging into the cake alongside the rest of the guests.  I’m only grateful I didn’t have to do any traveling during those 30 days; that would have been straight-up painful.

All that being said, I *am* glad I did it this once.  I learned a lot, and I think differently about food now.  On day 21, when I was up to my ears in frustration with stalled progress and feeling stymied by the whole thing, I would have said it was a pure waste of time and money.  On day 22, the Whole30 gods mercifully gave me my tiger blood, and there was no turning back.

I’ve done one day of reintroduction (sugar), and just those 12 waking hours were enough to show me the effects of sugar on me:  it makes me feel guilty, and it immediately exhausts me.  After a few days on Whole30, I had no more energy crashes and maintained a pretty consistent level throughout the day pretty much every day.  One day back on sugar, and the spikes and crashes set back in immediately.  Mind you, it wasn’t even an unusually high amount of sugar; it was a bit that was a casualty of preparation from each meal (except the cupcakes — yeah, plural.  I was at a bridal shower and I baked those bad boys blind on day 30.  You really think I didn’t deserve both of them?!  😉 )  I hate sugar now.  I mean, I still like the taste, but I hate the concept of it.  It has wrecked many a person’s relationship with food, myself included.  Taste wise, I do now detect a chemically/artificial taste in sugary foods that I didn’t previously.  It’s interesting… and unnerving.

This week, I’m actually back on the program.  There was one last recipe I wanted to test out, and I figured that while I’m at it, I might as well just keep on the program full-time the rest of the week.  I’ll continue reintroduction at the end of that.  I’m curious to see what I’ll discover.

If you’re considering doing Whole30, my best piece of advice to you is to economize your money and time.  You should save money for a few weeks before you start, and you should plan out all your meals before you even begin the program so that you save yourself that time once you get started.  Search for and build your little Whole30-friendly library of recipes well in advance, and write out your grocery lists by week so they’re ready to go when you get there. Believe me, you’ll be grateful for that little gift of time you give to yourself.  Oh, and if you can, definitely get a friend to do it with you.  The support will help keep you going when it feels like the tiger blood fairy has forgotten you.

Just don’t ask me to be that friend.  I’m taking a hard pass on doing Whole30 again.

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DAY 750: True come dream

Two nights ago, I had a major first.  While unconscious.

I was dreaming that I was at some sort of banquet-y lunch with a massive dessert table.  Of course, I gravitated directly towards the dense, chewy, chocolate chip cookies displayed on it.  I picked one up, studied its delicious mushiness, and placed it back on the table.  I picked up another, gave it the same inspection, and set it back down to examine another.  After the third or fourth time I put a dream-cookie back down, I shrugged and walked away.

No, no, no, you don’t get it — my dreams are the place where I relatively safely, albeit at the cost of fleeting waking guilt, stuff my face with nutritional contraband.  I always eat the illicit brownie, piece of cake, cupcake, ice cream, chocolate, or cookie.  But this time, subconscious-me chose not to eat that little piece of dessert heaven.

I still don’t think you heard me.  In my dream, which I have never been able to control, I opted out of a cookie indulgence.

It might sound silly, but this almost feels like a bigger deal than making the safe choices in real life.  Why?  Because DUDE.  This means that the lifestyle change has so deeply permeated my mind that it now lives in my subconscious.  I have embraced it so wholeheartedly that even in my dreams, which express my true desires, I’m going for the healthy option.  I truly, at all levels, want to be healthy.  The cookie, real or imagined, no longer has the hold on me that it used to.  Even at my strongest point of total weight-loss dominance last year, I never managed to achieve this level of mental strength and control.  I’m sure I haven’t dreamed my last food-binge dream, but I’m also sure that having dreamed my first opt-out-of-food-binge dream is a BFD.

Dream-me’s actions are rooted in my general lived experience, but they also come from a specific incident at the end of last week.  On Friday, I was stuck at a work conference for the third day in a row, and it was a Whole30 dieter’s food desert.  (Incidentally, on day one of the conference, The Sugar Association’s Board of Directors was meeting down the hall from my group.  I should’ve burned it down.  HISSSSSS!)  At lunch that day, I was wringing my hands over whether or not the cold-cut turkey set out was compliant.  I had hungrily taken three slices to cut up into my plate of lettuce and cherry tomatoes, but it seemed unlikely that the lunch meat was safe to eat because it almost always contains added sugar.  Finally, I decided not to risk it and pushed it aside in favor of my boring-but-safe rabbit food.

While this inner struggle was playing out, I was looking it up on my phone and wondering aloud to a co-worker who knows of my Whole30 endeavor about the predicament, and another co-worker overheard and asked what was going on.  I explained, and she was kind of horrified to learn what Whole30 was.  She asked, “What do you do when you have a bad day?!”  (Implication: what do you binge on when you want to eat your feelings?!)  I simultaneously appreciated the completely normal, honest reaction she had, and also felt a sudden click of recognition that this is what they’re talking about when they refer to unwitting, sugar-addicted victims of SAD (Standard American Diet).  It was the first time that struck me in such a crystallized way.  As I was processing my reaction to her reaction, I checked myself to make sure I didn’t come off like one of those goddamn judgmental, holier-than-thou dieters.  I took a beat and said, “One of the things Whole30 helps with is changing how you relate to food, so it gets you away from doing that.  I mean, it helps that it’s no fun bingeing on carrots.”  She chuckled, and that was kind of the end of it.

Leading up to this conversation was my walk along the lunch buffet line.  Coming away with a plate of greens and some puny vegetables was a big, fat bummer, even though none of the options looked stunningly awesome.  Passing the cookie-laden dessert table and sitting down to eat with my cookie-laden colleagues was a bigger, fatter bummer.  I really wanted a cookie.  I vocalized that I really wanted a cookie.  I even went back over to the dessert table, knowing that I wasn’t going to take one, just to look once more at what I was missing.  I told myself they probably weren’t as good as they looked, shrugged, and walked away.

And then a few nights later, my true came dream.

What’s funny is that when I’m all by myself, I could give a rat’s ass about a cookie.  I don’t think about junk food normally; I just go about my day and eat the things I’ve spent hours and hours planning and preparing for myself.  It’s these social situations that are murder.  Already, it’s hard even finding something that I’m confident will be compliant, but then watching everyone else be able to indulge in whatever without having to think about or care about what they’re eating, is extra hard.  I never feel like I’m about to cave in those instances, but I do feel resentful and envious of the people who get to eat things other than lettuce.  (Always prepared, I did have my home-cooked lunch with me that day, and at an odd hour of the afternoon, I snuck back to my office for the sole purpose of microwave access so I could eat it.)

I only have 4 days left (including today) on Whole30.  I’m starting to feel apprehensive about going off the program when it ends.  It’s like after spending all of 8th grade English being absolutely forbidden from ever writing with a being verb — sounds impossible, but is really just super challenging — I felt guilty when I started using them again in 9th grade, even with full permission of the teacher.  True story.  Even though I will have successfully stuck it out all 30 days, it will feel wrong to start consuming grains, dairy, etc., again.  I’m also nervous I’ll suddenly regain a lot of weight, and I simply can’t afford to do that.  Unfortunately, I literally can’t afford to maintain this diet fully, so it’s a bit of a conundrum right now.  At this point, I’m thinking I may end up going on for at least another week, to give myself a bit more time to figure it out with a little less pressure because the 30 required days will have passed.  In any event, I had anticipated feeling relief by the time I reached this point, so it’s a total surprise to be feeling hesitant about going off of it!

In non-Whole30 news, I’ve been good about sticking to my work-out regimen, even in spite of some scheduling challenges.  In addition to arms and cardio, I’m keeping my new core workouts on regular days, and I’ve noticed it’s been helping with my digestion (unless that’s just a huge coincidence).  On Sunday, I did back-to-back classes at my gym, and my legs still haven’t forgotten — but it hurts so good.  My sleep has been much better and more consistent, and I am feeling more energetic overall.  I know I said this was non-Whole30 news, but the truth is that it’s probably related to at least a small degree, of course.  I’m relearning more and more that all of this is a delicate balance, and every component of it matters.

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DAY 740: Headlines

1. I finally made it to the gym today!
2. I got a headache again today 😦
3. I weighed out for round 2 of my DietBet and won!
4. Since starting Whole30, I’ve lost a whopping 14 pounds!  Whaaaaa?  (And I still have 13 days to go!)
5. For my height, I have moved (back) from extremely obese to just regular obese.  Ah, what a strange milestone to celebrate.

That’s all I’ve got for today.  Short, but a lot.  Kinda like my BMI.  😉

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DAY 731: Happy worth day, dear body

Two years ago today, I made The Change.

It was tentative at first, but it stuck… for a while.  For months and months, I gained steam and experienced a lot of successful changes physically, mentally, and emotionally.  After nearly a full year of hard work, I eagerly laced up my running shoes and went for my first-ever outdoor run in the refreshing spring air after work.

It was also my last outdoor run.

I spent the remainder of 2016 undoing most of the work I’d done from March 23rd, 2015, until that date.  I couldn’t even bring myself to post on my first worth day because I was too busy falling off the wagon, sabotaging myself, and feeling 360 degrees of shitty about it.  One little thing went wrong, and then I allowed every little thing to go wrong and nearly ruin my weight loss.  What a waste.

This year, I’m not at the size I thought I would be when I imagined myself two years out at my start date on this day in 2015.  I’m trying to claw my way back to the levels of health and happiness I had managed to reach previously, before I will really be able to believe I can attain my ultimate goals.  If I started out two years ago feeling tentative, that’s amped waaaaaaaaaay up this time around.

Shakiness aside, I am making sure to recognize my efforts today.  The path I’ve taken hasn’t been straight or without significant obstacles, but it’s started taking me back towards  where I’ve long wanted — and needed — to go.  As my mission enters its toddlerhood, I recommit to the girl who has always occupied, and will always occupy, this body:  I will be fearless.  I will work hard.  I will see to it that my last outdoor run was only my most recent outdoor run, not my final outdoor run.  I will one day stop being ashamed of this body and strive to not only accept it, but to see it as beautiful.

I am worth it.

Happy worth day, dear body.

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DAY 680: Going against the (mi)grain(e)

This past Saturday, I had possibly the worst migraine of my life.

At some point after all the vomiting, a new sense of resolve overcame me.  It’s well past time for me to have found a way to kick myself in the ass hard enough to get back on the fitness express, but I just haven’t been able to really tap back into the feelings that gave me so much strength and power to go hard around this time last year.  Maybe it was all the incidental cleansing from the migraine-induced yakking, but somewhere in my mind, the right synapse finally fired and reanimated those atrophied senses.  I finally felt truly recommitted to The Mission.

On Sunday, when I was back to feeling 100%, I prepped my week’s worth of meals and portioned them out along with my snacks.

Yesterday, I hit the gym for the first time in months.

Today, I signed up for 2 new DietBets.

I’m back, baby.  Go time.

P.S. WordPress tells me that, quite fittingly, this is my 100th blog post!

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DAY 331: Holy mole-y!

Welp, today was a day I’ve spent the past several weeks being somewhere on the spectrum between not looking forward to and dreading:  my first mole screening.

Moles, moles, moles.  I’ve got more moles than a bad cop show.  Of course, I grew up with my mom putting her loving spin on the terminology and calling them “beauty marks.”  Unfortunately, naming them something else doesn’t exempt you from potential associated health risks.

I wasn’t uncomfortable about this visit to my dermatologist because there’s anything alarming with any of my “beauty marks.”  It was the exam I wasn’t down with.  You have to lie on a table wearing one of those awful open-in-the-front paper robes with nothin’ but your skivvies and bra on underneath, while the doctor examines your skin inch-by-inch while he’s wearing all of his clothes, plus magnifying glasses.

I’d rather do almost anything else.

Except have skin cancer.

So, I did the screening.

Shockingly, it wasn’t so bad!  I mean, sure, I felt like a lab specimen, but that’s true of most doctor’s visits for me.  Everything is clear and my doctor isn’t worried about any of my moles.  So, that’s one unpleasant visit over and done.

The further good news?  I realized that life below 200 pounds means that those stupid examination robes actually stay closed around your body if you don’t want to let it all hang out.  I also learned that your heart doesn’t race with embarrassment the whole time the doctor is looking at the parts of your body you wish you could trade in for better models.  At the end of the visit, you get to leave with your dignity, and you don’t even feel like crying.  It’s miraculous.

Oh, and I’ll throw in a little milestone from last night:

P.S.  That’s not a mole on my foot, it’s a cut from breaking in some new boots that also broke in me.

Can you guess what that is around my ankle?

No, it’s not a house-arrest bracelet monitor.

It’s the large VivoFit band that used to fit my wrist, pictured halfway down my arm here in December:

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I’m too jazzed to expend mental energy putting an elegant little bow on all of that.  But you can see a bunch of my moles in that picture of my arm, so it ties together.  And maybe I’ll go watch a bad cop show for good measure.

Just roll.

 

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

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DAY 324: The big reveal

I issued myself a dare a while back.  The dare was that when this photo happened, I would stop being coy and secretive about the numbers.  I was REEEEEALLY pushing myself on the whole fearless thing.

OK, past-me.  Here goes.

 

 

 

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That, ladies and gentlemen, is my current weight.  I JUST SHARED MY WEIGHT.

And that’s ONEDERLAND.

That makes TWO BFDs.

Now for the rest of the numbers:

  • Starting weight (March 7th, 2015):  303 pounds*
  • Diet Bet starting weight (April 17th, 2015):  279.2 pounds**
  • Final goal weight:  140 pounds (doctor approved!)  (Well, the official line is that I’ll see how 140 feels.  If there’s more to do at that point, I’ll do it.)

Um, I haven’t been in the 190s since I was on my way up the scale in my sophomore year of college, which was the worst year of my life.  It’s when all kinds of horrible things happened and I coped with the sadness and stress by eating everything in sight.  No one who has met me since I was 19 has ever seen me this size.  Ever.  That’s BFD number three.

For the official record, I saw 199 on the scale for the first time 2 weeks back, but it was a morning scale read, which doesn’t count in my mind.  I’ve even seen 198 in the morning, but again, it doesn’t count.  I’m going to say something crazy now, which is that yesterday, I felt 199.  So tonight at the gym, I weighed myself, and for the first time in over a decade, I got to move the 50-pound weight to 150 instead of 200.  I’m in the 150 club.  That’s BFD number four.

Finally, I have unhidden my Diet Bet weight chart on my profile.  Don’t believe me?  Here’s the proof.  That’s BFD number five.

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And now that that’s all out in the open… rest of sentence.

If you need me, I’ll be walking in a winter onederland.

🙂

FOOTNOTES/DISCLAIMERS/FURTHER EXPLANATIONS:

*I remember my weight on this date because it was the night before I left on an international trip and I weighed myself for the first time in weeks because I was worried about spending hours in an uncomfortably small airplane seat.  It was my heaviest weight in my life.  Yeah, that ride did suck; not only was I physically uncomfortable, but I had that number emblazoned on my brain the entire time.  Luckily, I came back having magically shed nearly 10 pounds (without trying), and I let that be my momentum.  The conscious choice to lose it all forever was on March 23rd, a few days after getting home from said trip.  At my doctor’s appointment on March 26th, I was at 289.

**This may look like a lot to lose within a short period, but it just falls the fuck off when you’re 303 pounds and suddenly adopt the healthy lifestyle your body has always wanted.  It’s also a lot of water weight.  I wasn’t doing anything extreme; I’ve always been level-headed and healthy in my approach.  I’m going to do this right from start to finish.  Promise.

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DAY 322: Monu-MENTAL

I’m taking an improv class.  The people are upbeat, fun, silly, and just looking for a good experience.  I find myself smiling throughout the class from the great creative outlet and clever social exchanges with peers, and I leave feeling energized and happy.  (Thanks for bankrolling my fun, Diet Bet!)

The sort of strange thing is that the class meets in an elementary school library.  (The school is, of course, closed during our sessions.)  It’s probably good juju for us to be subliminally reminded of our free-spirited inner children by the colorful decorations and toys around the room, but some of the set-up is a little impractical.  When our instructor wants us to do seated scenes, the only chairs at our disposal are meant for 5-year-old butts, not adult ones.  For someone who used to love ass-planting, the idea of sitting in one of these flimsy little seats was an, um, uncomfortable prospect.

This weekend, there was no way around it:  chair games galore.  I couldn’t shake the gif-style image my brain conjured up of me sitting on one of these children’s desk chairs and having it crumble to smithereens beneath my mass, and the thought of that horrified me.  I really wanted to participate in everything, but I was hanging back and hoping to abstain unnoticed to avoid busting a chair and embarrassing myself beyond redemption.

And then I realized:  I am a 31-year-old woman afraid of a piece of furniture.  CHILDREN’S furniture.

Dafuq?  That’s not how a fearless person acts.

So I shook it off.  I stopped thinking about how I’m probably the heaviest person in the class — certainly the heaviest girl.  I reminded myself that I’ve lost over 100 pounds, and if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t even be in this class entertaining the possibility of putting my ass on that tiny chair.  I put my mental gif into my “mind vice,” à la Jack Donaghy, and crushed it.  I told myself it would be fine.

And I sat in a chair, like I’ve done a million times in my life, and did not crush it.

It was fine.

I will be fine.

But I still keep having nuisance thoughts creep into my mind.  It’s such a weird psychological place to be in, suddenly feeling a spike of nervousness about things I can do now, but that I used to not be able to do when I was at my biggest.  When I took a bath last week and could lie in the tub with both of my arms at my side because they fit now — that was a weird naked triumph.  When I was charging to work this morning and realized I was flying through the turnstiles to get to the train without making contact with the sides of it, I had an involuntary flashback to when that was impossible.  When a stranger sat beside me on the train and spent the whole ride trying to gingerly keep her body piled on her side of the line separating our seats, I remembered when that girl was me.  I don’t think people who have never dealt with significant weight loss ever think about this stuff.  I wonder if I always will?

Later today, I caught my reflection in the mirror of the bathroom at the office and saw a cheek bone on my face.  A cheek bone.  I started whipping my face around back and forth, averting my eyes and then quickly zooming them back to look at my reflection, as if trying to catch my cheek bone off-guard before it could run away.  It was still there.  And it has a twin on the other side of my face.

I couldn’t believe it.

I was about to reach up and touch my cheek bones to make sure they were real, when someone came out of one of the bathroom stalls. It was a co-worker I rarely see, but who has made a few subtle remarks on my weight loss before.  She caught me in a weird moment, posed with my hands half-raised to my cheeks and a strange grin on my face.

Instead of commenting on what must have been an odd thing to see, she looked at me and paid me an awesome compliment, with a huge smile of her own:  “You look great!”

It turned into a 5-minute conversation about her own struggle with weight loss.  She asked me how I had been feeling since I’ve been changing, and I told her I felt better than I looked, and that my doctor was looking forward to not recognizing me soon.  She shared a doctor story of her own:  her doctor recently told her that she needs to lose 30 pounds.  She took hearing that really hard; she had a baby last year and is now back to her pre-pregnancy weight and happy with her size.  I told her she didn’t have 30 pounds to lose and she looked wonderful to me!  She said she didn’t think so, either; she agreed with her doctor that she could stand to lose maybe 15 pounds, but 30 sounded extreme to her.  It was deflating.  She said that ever since then, she’s really struggled with motivation.  She started asking me how I got started, so I shared a few things with her.  Even when she was describing her tough experience at her doctor’s office, she was smiling at me.  She ended the conversation with, “What you’re doing is inspiring me.”

That was AMAZING.  Honestly, I thought she didn’t even like me; turns out, she was kind of… studying me?  All this time, I was misinterpreting her glances and expressions.  I never would have known she was quietly cheering me on if not for that conversation.

That’s when I thought of the biggest change in myself:  being able to talk about it.  I am now talking about it with real people, in real life, out loud.  I don’t get all awkward or squirmy, and I don’t avoid the compliments anymore.  And guess what?  That makes people share more of their own experiences, and it becomes a way to help them.  It leads to conversations where you learn something more about someone you were previously making bad assumptions about, and it teaches you something about your place in your environment.

The personal growth during the physical shrinking is the best part of this.  It’s better than losing 100 pounds, it’s better than collar bones, it’s better than running a mile without stopping, it’s better than facing down a child’s chair, it’s better than breezing through a turnstile untouched, it’s better than fitting on less than half of a bench on public transportation, and it’s better than visible cheek bones.  But it took achieving all of those milestones to get here and finally start to see something I’ve been trying to find all along:  my true self.

The next person who asks me how I feel may just make me cry, and that’s the most open and honest answer I could possibly give to that question.

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DAY 300: Milestones update

 

As promised, here is a long-overdue milestones update to commemorate day 300 of my mission!

Even though it’s been 100 days between updates rather than the usual 50 I’ve tried to stick to, there are fewer notable milestones that I hit this time.  HOWEVER, they are much more significant.  Among these major accomplishments, which I view as probably my most important, #6 is the one I’m proudest of.  I’m getting over some of my awkwardness around how fat I used to be/still am.  I still haven’t gotten to the point where I feel OK with sharing my starting weight or my goal weight, but I have un-redacted all of my goals, and that’s a pretty big step (and also pretty big clues as to what those numbers are).  The personal growth is an amazing byproduct of the hard work and physical changes.

I won’t completely spoil it all in the preamble.  Check it out for yourselves.  (Skip to the end if you’re not interested in reliving my first 200 days.)


Achieved within first 71 days

  1. Found a sports bra that fits so I can even work out. When I first started losing weight, I couldn’t get into any of the ones I could find.
  2. Grabbed my foot from behind when my leg is bent at the knee in order to stretch out my thigh.
  3. Walked at a 3.0 MPH pace without struggling.
  4. Made it up one flight of stairs without getting winded.
  5. Stopped snoring and start sleeping better.
  6. Lost 10 lbs.
  7. Lost 25 lbs.
  8. Got under the weight limit to stand on the step stool.


Achieved between days 72 and 100

  1. Sat on my own furniture.
  2. Painted my own toe nails without contorting myself.  
  3. Closed my towel the whole way around me when I get out of the shower.  
  4. Wore the oh-honey pair of pants I bought on April 11th.
  5. Wore the oh-honey shirt I bought on May 2nd.   
  6. Walked a mile at 3.5 MPH.
  7. Got 3 miles on the fat burn setting on the elliptical.   
  8. Tied my shoes without having to sit down.
  9. Went down a notch on my Vivo Fit band.   
  10. Lost 50 lbs.
  11. Lost 10% of starting weight.
  12. Stood for prolonged periods of time without numbness in my leg.  (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
  13. Put ankle on opposite knee without having to use hands.   
  14. Fit into a restaurant booth.  
  15. Wore shirt size XL.
  16. Did 200 miles in a month.


Achieved between days 100 and 150

  1. Fit into my plaid rain coat.
  2. Went down a half shoe size.
  3. Wore a dress.
  4. Fit comfortably into airplane seats.
  5. No longer in “extremely obese” category (BMI <40).  (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
  6. Got away from pre-diabetic sugar levels.
  7. Folded down the tray table from the seat in front of me on a plane.
  8. Lose 25% from heaviest weight.
  9. Lose 75 pounds.
  10. Wore my ring on my middle finger.
  11. Wore a swimsuit in public.
  12. Hiked up a mother-effing mountain, with mother-effing company.
  13. Reached halfway point of weight-loss mission!**
  14. Laugh-cried while trying on the “before” dress, which I put on by stepping through the neck hole.**
  15. Purchased and wore high heels!**


Achieved between days 150 and 200

  1. Fit into my red jacket.
  2. Jogged 5 minutes without stopping.**  
  3. Jogged a mile without stopping.
  4. Jogged 1.5 mile without stopping.**
  5. Wore shirt size L.
  6. Wore skinny jeans.**
  7. Bent over and touch my toes without bending at the knee.** 
  8. Wore a skirt.**
  9. Got too small for an oh-honey item of clothing.**  
  10. Crossed my legs.
  11. Fit into only my side of the bench on Metro.
  12. Did 225+ miles in a month.**
  13. Hosted my first Diet Bet!**


Achieved between days 200 and 300

  1. Switched to the small Vivo Fit band.
  2. Got out of plus sizes.
  3. Wore two oh-honey rings that have never fit before.**
  4. Lost 30% of starting weight.**
  5. Lost 100 pounds.
  6. Got the hell over myself and some of my weird privacy hang-ups.**


Goals to be achieved

  1. Jog in and complete a 5K.
  2. Fit into one leg of my fat-girl gray pants.
  3. Wear a single-digit dress size.
  4. Wear a single-digit pants size.
  5. No longer be in “overweight” category (BMI <25).
  6. Wear shirt size M.
  7. No longer be in “obese” category (BMI <30).  (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
  8. Reach final weight goal.
  9. Reach 50% of starting weight.  (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
  10. Lose 150 pounds.  (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
  11. Wear a belt.
  12. See my feet over my belly when I look down (standing still).
  13. Fit into roller coasters. I couldn’t do it at a theme park 2 years ago, and had to wait around for my friend to go through the line and ride it by herself — sucked for both of us. — I’m absolutely sure I could cross this off now, but I haven’t had the chance to test it yet, so it stays on the to-do list.
  14. Do 250 miles in a month.
  15. Fit large VivoFit band around my ankle.

Watch this space.

 
**These were not on my list of goals, but they were notable milestones that I hit during this period.

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DAY 263: Persistence

I’ve been trying to do a milestones update every 50 days, but you may have noticed I didn’t do one on day 250.  Sadly, day 250 is the day I got sick, so I didn’t have the presence of mind to make a blog post at the time (nor did I even realize it was a milestones day).  This update will sort of stand in for that missed entry.

First, shortly before Thanksgiving, an executive at my office ran into me in the kitchen and commented on my weight loss.  Mind you, this is a very senior, statured person with whom I have almost no interaction; I didn’t know she knew my name, let alone that she had noticed my progress.  She commended my hard work and asked me how much I had lost.  I paused, then decided to go for it and tell her the number.  I admitted I hadn’t shared it with anyone, and she started to say I didn’t have to tell her, but then I just blurted it out.  It was a little crazy hearing it out loud, but it also felt kind of good to say… I’ve lost almost 100 pounds.

So it’s really no wonder why I’m noticing the following small changes that are probably only perceptible to me:

  • I can now see three bones in each hand.  At first, I couldn’t see any.  Sometime over the summer, the first one emerged.  Out of nowhere, two other ones just showed up.  I wonder how many there actually are in there waiting to pop out?!  I’ve never thought about it before!
  • The shape of my ass has changed.  The most recent underwear I bought still fit around my hips, but they sag in the seat.  This sounds funny, but my butt was kind of squared off before.  It’s starting to actually look like a human rear end now.  It’s round and bootylicious.
  • I noticed at my last couple of token weigh-ins for DB that when I look down at the scale, I see more space between my toes.  The first time I saw extra black between my toes, it actually startled me.  OMG, what’s wrong with my foot?!  Oh, wait…!
  • My shirts fit more loosely around my shoulder blades, of all things.  It used to be that when I put my jacket on, I didn’t have much of a wing span because the fabric was restricted by the width of my upper torso.  Lately, it’s much looser.  It’s not just the jacket, either; I’ve felt a difference in the way T-shirts, button-down shirts, and even my sports bras sit on that part of my body.  Who knew that would be noticeable?
  • My cheeks have new angles!  They were so round when I was bigger that my face looked swollen all the time.  My cheeks were actually so rotund that I couldn’t see beyond them; I would have to turn my head to check that my earrings were hanging right or my hair was OK.  Seriously.  Faces can be that fat.  Then, with the right changes, they can start looking like adult faces that might have a shot at being pretty some day.  🙂
  • My belly has shrunken in a northerly fashion.  Yeah, I worded that strangely on purpose.  The result is NOT that my stomach looks smaller (yet), but that my legs look longer.  That sentence, coming from a life-long member of the Stumpy Leg Club, is insane.
  • Now, here’s the one I’m really geeked about… GUYS.  I have a throat V!!!  (Google tells me this is called the suprasternal notch.  Also, please appreciate that I had to look up what this is called because it’s such a foreign concept to me!)  You know, the small of the throat, where elegant woman in jewelry ads always have a tiny diamond delicately nestled from their expensive platinum chains.  A this.  Mine is not always visible (yet!), but it is more often than not.  And I love it.  It’s my new favorite feature of my villain beard.

I’ve been feeling stymied from the past month of a post-vacation weight gain, moderate indulgence at Thanksgiving, and an immediately ensuing illness that kept me from exercise.  It can be a slippery slope to returning to past harmful behavior in such circumstances, especially when you’re home alone all day, every day, for a week, with an uncooperative scale and a bevy of food-delivery services available via a few quick taps on the phone screen.

BUUUT…

I knocked 5.6 pounds off of my post-vacation weight in spite of all that, and have hit a new low weight.  I did not overdo it at Thanksgiving, and I didn’t stray even a hair from my food plan even in the grip of the sickness that JUST WOULD NOT QUIT.  It’s been a slog, and it’s been a true mental challenge to stay on the eating plan when it felt like there was no pay-off, but I DID IT.

And that’s how you lose 100 pounds.  Look for THAT milestone on day 300.