Tag Archives: milestones

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NEW DAY 365: One-year anniversary! 🥂

Committing to weight loss isn’t a decision you make once.

It’s a series of decisions you make every day, throughout the day, multiple times a day.
The days turn into weeks.
Then months.
Then, somehow, a year.

A year’s worth of thousands upon thousands of decisions range from seemingly inconsequential to monumental to overwhelming — as do the results.

The person I was a year ago today was shattered, tentative, reeling, and supremely unhealthy in every way. She got moving because her mind became so paralyzed by external inputs that it shut down and her body took control. She was in no way the “she believed she could, so she did!” meme; she was trapped kinetic energy, desperate to escape the confines of her physical being. A year ago today, she wasn’t trying to do anything beyond survive the next 10 minutes.

She would be floored to hear what she was about to do over the next 365 days.

She got reacquainted — painfully, slowly, and sweatily — with the elliptical, in 5-minute increments, until she could do a continuous hour. It took her 4 months to go from 6 miserable minutes to 60 manageable ones.

Then she ran 4 elliptical miles in 60 minutes.
Then 5.
Then 6.
Then 7.

Then she ran 8 elliptical miles in 70 minutes.
Then 9.
Then 9.3.

She ran 30 seconds on her bum ankle on the treadmill, at a pace barely above walking.
Then 60-second intervals.
Then 90-second intervals.
Then 2-minute, 3-minute, and 5-minute intervals.
She increased her speed and ran a full mile.
Then 2.
She dutifully iced and elevated her ankle after every run until it learned it could handle it.
So she increased her pace and kept at it.

She signed up for, self-trained for, and finished a half-marathon.
She saw her finish-line photo and, for the first time, saw a runner.
She then registered for 2 more half-marathons.

She became an athlete.

She tried 75 Hard. She got sick, got rained on, got injured, and bled through her clothes while refusing to abandon her workout. She completed the challenge.
She rediscovered her love of being outside and how restorative it is to her mind and body.
She got trapped by 14 inches of snow before vacation. She spent 4 days digging out, arrived at her destination only to have to dig that out, too. She went running on the frozen beach the next day.
She made up and tried Power 11. No one was watching. She finished it as competitor, coach, and cheerleader.
She dealt with illness, pain, interruption, inconvenience, and deterrence. She found ways to move anyway. It made her stronger.

She became someone who does not quit.

She cut added sugar completely out of her diet for several months, both in a row and in a cumulative-intermittent fashion.
She experimented and figured out what type of eating schedule her body responds best to.
She gained new nutritional knowledge.
She learned her hunger and satiety cues and no longer has cravings or urges to snack.
She found herself deaf to food noise and disinterested in consuming anything that wouldn’t support her health.
She tested new recipes and gave second, third, and fourth chances to foods she’d previously decided she didn’t like — and discovered she liked them when prepared differently.
She turned herself into an exceptional menu planner and meal prepper, and a creative experimental chef as well as a more-adventurous eater.
She learned she could be healthy by liking everything she eats, even if she doesn’t necessarily eat everything she likes.

She became someone who nourishes herself.

She eats to feed herself, not her cravings.
She keeps promises to herself first, not last.
She exercises for self-love, not self-punishment.

She became someone who takes care of herself.

If I could somehow sit beside Past-Me and tell her what her first decision one year ago would lead to today, she would hardly believe it. Looking at it now — knowing it happened — I admit there’s a small part of Present-Me that hardly believes it, too. Would vocalizing a year’s worth of select spoilers to her make it feel more real to both of us?

Hey girl. Life is about to change profoundly for you.

You’ll go through stretches of cooperation with an alacritous scale, reliably dropping pounds in a way that motivates you to keep going — yet no one notices you’re getting smaller. But you don’t care, because this feels fragile, and having other people’s voices enter the conversation you’re having with yourself feels like a possible destabilizer. You’re not trying to have that right now. This is yours. You protect it and you keep moving forward.

After about six months, you enter what feels like interminable stagnation with what the scale shows you. You seriously consider burning your scale and buying a new one that isn’t such a damn liar. Then one day, you stop to eat on your five-hour drive to your brother’s baby shower for the weekend. When you get out of the car and close the door behind you, your ring goes flying off your finger and skitters across the parking lot. You chase after it in maniacal laughter. You suddenly don’t care about the scale anymore.

You’ll become obsessed with the process. You’ll get sick of it. You’ll be nonplussed by it. You’ll be unfazed by it. And, eventually, you’ll be integrated with it.

It will challenge you. It will teach you. It will strengthen you. It will humble you. It will empower you.

It will you-ify you.

You will start to love the person you’re excavating. You’ll understand her in ways that were too inaccessible, too intense, too scary before. But they’re possible a year from now, because you trust yourself after the months of investing in yourself.

And when it feels too hard, you’ll invoke one of your two mantras:
1) “This is easy.” Not because it is, but because after everything you’ve done — like coaching yourself through those first breathless minutes on the elliptical at nearly 300 lbs — running that measly treadmill mile is nothing. Every time you push yourself, you put your arms around the version of you who truly wanted to go, but genuinely couldn’t. The person you’re becoming is doing it for the person you used to be. She lit the match. You carry the torch.
2) “I am so strong.” Because you are. And you know it.

You’ll become your own inspiration. You’ll become your own cause to honor. And you’ll become your own best friend.

As your process continues, you’ll clock the outwardly visible changes:

  • Your face is narrower. You can see the piercings in your ears without turning your head — including the 4 new ones you’ll get in the first half of 2026 that punctuate your progress.
  • Your collarbones, shoulders, and neck muscles are poppin’. You think it makes you look more feminine.
  • Bye bye, boobies / ta ta, titties — the girls have done some shrinking.
  • Your arms are thinning out. The gardening gloves that are supposed to be roomy, finally are. The wristband for your VivoFit has more excess band beyond the closure notch than it does before it. Sleeves don’t cut off circulation anymore.
  • Shirts don’t squeeze your torso anymore.
  • You’ll spend a small fortune trying to keep up with replacing the underwear that hangs and slides off your ass in a constant struggle with gravity.
  • Your legs don’t brush together with every step anymore. Your knees are bonier. Your quads and hamstrings show definition as if you’re some kind of… runner.
  • Your over-developed calves still touch when you stand, but now so do your ankles when you lie down.
  • There’s all kinds of space between your toes now.
  • You go down a half shoe size.
  • You go down 5 dress sizes.
  • You go down 6 pants sizes.
  • You go down 4 shirt sizes.
  • You lose a cup size.
  • You can wear a necklace that, when it was first gifted to you, inspired the indignant thought, “whose neck is that small?!”
  • You can wear a ring on your middle finger that, when it was first gifted to you, fit none of your fingers.
  • You can wear what you want instead of settling for what fits.
  • You look happy, not haunted.

You’ll note the things your body can do now that it couldn’t a year ago:

  • There’s not a seat you can’t sit in. Airplane. Theater. Stadium. Desk chair. Restaurant booth. Behind the wheel, you have to move the seat forward one day simply because the excess fat is no longer pushing your whole body forward and closer to the pedals, and you can’t reach the steering column without adjusting the position. When you put on your seatbelt, you pull it across your body and buckle it in one fluid motion instead of pulling it out as far as it can go in order to fasten it.
  • Regular belts? Also a thing you can fasten.
  • You can carry purses and bags with long straps without having to hold onto them the whole time so your hip isn’t bumping them off because it sticks out too far when you walk.
  • You aren’t constantly making contact with the shower curtain or running out of breath when you shower.
  • Those two creaky bottom steps that embarrass you at your parents’ house? They stop making noise when you walk on them. Actually, you don’t really walk on them; you run up and down stairs now. On your tiptoes. The way you did when you were a kid.
  • Your ankle is chatty and whiny sometimes, but it doesn’t refuse to play. In fact, it takes very little — if any — ice or elevation to recover from what you ask of it. Inflammation in general is barely even a thing for you these days.
  • You almost never get headaches anymore.
  • You do half marathons.
  • You do Pilates. It’s hard. It kinda sucks sometimes. You love it. Oh yeah — you have core strength now.
  • You do 6+ miles on the elliptical in an hour and it’s a casual cardio night.
  • Perhaps to your greatest surprise, your menstrual cycle comes back. It will come regularly, like clockwork, every month for you, starting in October. At the start of each one of the first five periods you get in a row, you will cry on the toilet. And then you will laugh at yourself for crying on the toilet.

You’ll log the stats:

  • You don’t randomly wake up with your heart racing anymore. Your average blood pressure is 101/68 and your average resting heart rate is 57 bpm.
  • 21 DietBets won (and you’re working on 3 more).
  • 252 total inches gone since you started tracking various body measurements1 in January 2026.
  • Your BMI drops from 50.2 (Class III obesity) to 29.5 (Overweight — just regular-fat!).
  • You’ve lost exactly 126 pounds since February 2025 as of this morning, 106.4 of them since today’s date a year ago — since you decided to try something.

But the most meaningful things you’ll notice are the unquantifiable changes in the way you behave and how you feel:

  • You stop suffering from energy spikes and collapses.
  • Your brain fog decreases significantly.
  • You don’t always sleep that well — some things never change — but the sleep you do get is more restful. At some point, you stop snoring.
  • Your relationship with food becomes so normal that it barely qualifies as a relationship. Food is fuel, not temptation.
  • Your confidence surges.
  • You remember how good success feels, and you want more of it.
  • You chase a challenge because you’re curious about how you’ll do it. Not if you’ll do it; HOW.
  • You find clarity and peace from movement. You look forward to it. It is not an instrument of suffering; it’s an instrument of regulation.
  • You take pleasure in experimenting with new exercises that strengthen you as a runner, because that’s how you see yourself now.
  • You stop using an apologetic tone when you say things like “I don’t eat sugar” or “I can’t, I’m going on a run”.
  • You actually say things like “I don’t eat sugar” or “I can’t, I’m going on a run”.
  • You stop hiding from things like cameras and mirrors. And from doctors and masseuses. And from new experiences and opportunities.
  • You know the difference between challenging and unrealistic.
  • You know the difference between discomfort from growth and discomfort from pain or risk of injury.
  • You understand your body’s limits, and you respect them.

Just last night, on the eve of your one-year anniversary as you were drafting this post, you had ice cream. It was the new Häagen-Dazs peanut butter brittle flavor that you bought over a week ago — along with 3 other pints — and kept in your freezer until you wanted some. You loaded a medium ramekin with the 6 spoonfuls that you’ve learned is the maximum amount your stomach can handle without knotting up.
You ate it slowly. It satisfied you. Then you didn’t want any more.
In fact, you determined the ice cream was too sweet.
You decided to drop what’s left of the pint at your parents’.

Who even are you?

You’re you, you-ified.

Thank you for taking that first step. We did this. We are doing this.


Happy first anniversary to all my Mes: past, present, and future.

Same time next year?

  1. upper arm (L), forearm (L), wrist (L), ring finger (L), bust, upper waist, lower waist/stomach, hips, upper thigh (L), calf (L), ankle (L) ↩︎
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NEW DAY 353: Regular-fat

It’s been a while since I came around these parts. In the time since, I’ve completed a half-marathon, fallen in love with Pilates, and — as of this morning — gleefully surrendered my obese status.

For the first time as an adult, I am just regular-fat.

Body recomposition is a helluva phase, and I am in it. Several weeks ago, I sprang for a body-scan scale. I know they aren’t foolproof pillars of reliability, but not having any indication of whatever is going on internally as the numbers on the scale have had me stalled for 6-8 weeks per decade ever since I got into the 200s has been testing the limits of my patience and, frankly, my credulity. Even if the smart scale’s measurements aren’t perfectly accurate, they’re at least a way for me to track trends other than just weight, which isn’t showing me things like muscle:fat ratio. So, to mark the kind-of funny milestone of becoming regular-fat, here’s a side-by-side comparison of my first numbers and today’s.

There’s a lot to update on as I approach the one-year mark of this whole health improvement odyssey I’ve been on. That will all come in a huge, rambling post on the anniversary date. Until then, I’ll keep on keepin’ on… as a card-carrying Just Fat person ☺️

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NEW DAY 300: Love story

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.

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NEW DAY 285: Power 11 report

Let’s get straight to the stats. (Rules here.)

Dates: January 11th – March 28th, 2026
Total inches1 lost: 17.75
Biggest change: -4.75″ from my waist
Total pounds lost: 22.4
Books read: 5
DietBets won: 4 Kickstarters (of 4) + 2 Transformer rounds
Treadmill running speed increase: 1.7 mph
Elliptical pace change: -2:26

And, as I predicted the day before the end of the challenge, the biggest difference is in the day 1 vs day 77+1 pics. My shoulders are narrower, my smaller waist brings my arms in closer to my body in a resting position, and my clothes fit the way they’re meant to rather than squeezing in the most unflattering of ways. My neck is leaner, which makes me look taller, and my jawline is more pronounced. My legs are slimmer, which balances my proportions better. And overall, there aren’t as many rolls and pudgy bits squeezing out from every angle.

I think I’m gonna continue with the measurements and progress photos, but more like every other week or maybe only every month. It’s truly jaw-dropping to see the side-by-side differences, especially now that the weight loss has started to slow. Those days of reliable weekly drops of 3, 4, 5 pounds may be behind me, but this recomposition phase is fascinating in a whole new way.

This next little stat extends beyond the Power 11 timeframe, but it’s a pretty gobsmacking one: blood pressure. My last BP was on September 16th at a dentist’s appointment, which I noted down because I was on 75 Hard at the time and had intended to record it again at the end… which I didn’t do. However, I’m glad I have that record to contrast with the reading I got from the doctor’s appointment I had today.

September 16th, 2025: 118/84 (weight: 247.8)
March 30th, 2026: 112/60 (weight: …I’ll tell ya in a second)

That’s a significant diastolic change! My doctor pronounced my BP “excellent” and proceeded to review the results of all the blood labs she had received from the work-up she ordered for me since my appointment with her at the beginning of the month and congratulating me on my “clearly healthy body.”

Since yesterday was the official close of the Power 11 chapter, it was an appropriate day for the scale to eke out just enough of a drop to land me at 192.6 pounds — which just so happens to be the lowest weight I reached way back in early March of 2016, before I lost my focus and that whole trajectory went up in smoke. And just when I started wondering if maybe I’d get stuck here like I got stuck in the 200s for 6 stupid weeks, the doctor’s office scale clocked me at 191.6 this morning.

I’m fully in body recomp right now, and the evidence is everywhere. Getting into the 180s is going to be where the emotional recomp begins. I don’t know exactly how to prepare for it, but I know I’m on a collision course with it. All I can say is, bring on the crash.

  1. Weekly measurements taken from bust, waist, stomach, hips, thigh, calf, ankle, upper arm, forearm, and ring finger. ↩︎
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NEW DAY 258: Gymbarrassment

I’ve had plenty of cringe moments at my house of fitness.

I’ve danced like no one was watching — because I thought no one was — in the middle of the bathroom, only to turn around and see a half-amused, half-“I feel you” locker room co-habitant walking past while looking directly at me.

I’ve had unfortunately timed eye contact with a man stepping off the machine in front of me while I was absent-mindedly licking sweat off my lip, breaking the eye contact, but looking back to find him still looking at me while I was trapped by my run in progress on the machine. That was one of the most awkward stranger waves I’ve ever been a part of.

I’ve publicly battled a live wardrobe malfunction while my underwear fully quit on me underneath my skin-tight workout pants as I was trying to run on the treadmill. I tried to surreptitiously hike them up through, and then under, my bottoms — but it didn’t last more than a minute or two no matter what I did. And that little adventure was just yesterday.

But tonight, when I threw my bare arms up in victory pose above my sweat-soaked top, said “WOO!”, and took a selfie when I hit 9.04 miles in 70 minutes on the elliptical? No embarrassment at all.

That moment was mine.

And I’d relive it every day without changing a thing.

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NEW DAY 238: 100

We all know I could easily exceed a thousand words in this post, but I’ll do this instead:

I hit my goal of losing more than 100 pounds by today, AND entered the 100s in the same weigh-in.

I did not expect that.

Which is probably why the emotional surge hit so hard. I let it. I felt the huge rush of pride and excitement and relief and surprise and accomplishment overpower me.

A single sob. That’s all there was.

Then I slid into my red pants that haven’t fit in nearly a decade, noticed in the mirror how they made my ass look fire, and sashayed out the door, all smiles.

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NEW DAY 235: 99

As of today’s weigh-in, I have officially lost an even 99 pounds since February 20th of last year.

As predicted, my numbers have slowed in the past couple of weeks. Some of it is because of travel and sleep disruptions. Some if it is the natural tapering that happens the smaller a formerly excessively large body becomes. And some of it is muscle building from the strength training I’ve incorporated into my regimen.

But I’m only a pound away from the 100-pound milestone, which I want to hit by the 11th.

This focus on a triple-digit loss by Wednesday is relatively new. I know the milestone is coming, just as I know the 100s are coming. The 100s are less of a fixation; that will happen sometime this month, and it will be the right time, whenever it is. The 100-pound loss is one I’m craving pretty strongly, and the date feels like gravity.

I do have a tendency to focus too much on the story, the poetry, the meanings of unconnected plot points.

In truth, I need no symbolism to anchor a 100-pound drop that happens in under a year or a big to-do for making it from a dark February 11th to a bright one a year later. Much less do I need something to tether these two big deals.

But I want it. All of the above.

So, just as I’ve been doing since June 18th, I’m going for it.
Not desperately. Not maniacally. Not recklessly.
But intentionally, and with all I’ve got.

If I miss, I miss. It wouldn’t be a failure, just a postponement.

And yet there’s something crazy enough in me that makes me think that losing a pound in three days is totally doable.

Let’s find out…!

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NEW DAY 221: Blizzard!

I’m in the huge swath of the US that’s being pummeled with 24+ straight hours of falling snow. As I write this, my internet is verging on an outage that has lasted nearly half the day, so I’m tethering my phone in order to post this lest I fail my Power 11 tasks. BUT dropped wifi is the smallest inconvenience I can imagine of the many that had the potential to occur during this storm, so I am certainly not complaining!

Knowing that this crazy weather event was coming to paralyze us for at least a day or two, I reconfigured my half-marathon training plan to give myself a rest day today, and to make tomorrow a cross-training day so that I can do it from home. (Also, I’m considering the hours of shoveling I’ll be doing tomorrow as upper-body strength training, cuz clearing an entire driveway of a foot of heavy, wet snow is nothing if not a workout.) It kinda stinks to miss this stretch of days from actual proper running, but them’s the breaks. I’m adapting as best I can and staying active even if it looks different from “usual”. Between the snow and my end-of-week travel, this whole week is going to require some creative license, so it’ll be an adventure.

It can be a chore to coax myself out the door for a gym session sometimes, but truly the toughest piece of Power 11 so far has been limiting my weight checks to once per week. It’s been getting slightly easier, but sometimes the urge to peek is pretty strong, especially when I suspect I’ll like what I see. I’ve been noticing a lot of physical changes lately, which is usually an indicator of a friendly upcoming scale reading, so I was highly anticipating today’s weigh-in. Sure enough, I posted a drop of 3.4 lbs for this week!

This means a few big things:

  1. I am currently at my lowest weight in 10 years. My all-time lowest (real-adult) weight was from March 1st of 2016.
    • I’m 12.6 lbs away from that number.
    • By March 1st of this year, I should be below it. (🤯)
    • I will be below it.
  2. I am only 3.8 lbs away from being 100 lbs down from my highest recent weight, recorded about 11 months ago.
    • If I hit that milestone by a specific date within the next 3 weeks, it will be the ultimate redemption for me.
    • I’m comfortably on track to do it.
    • I’m gonna do it.
  3. I’m within spitting distance of Onederland. (Actual pounds away: 5.2 lbs. And now you know how much I weigh. And have weighed. 🫣)
    • Yeah — I unhid my weight on DietBet the other day.
    • I don’t have a specifically meaningful date in mind for this, but it’ll be sometime next month.
    • Something’s getting pierced after that.

I’d say I can’t believe it, except I totally can. My body is sore all over in that satisfying way that whispers, “yes, you did run 5 elliptical miles and then do 30 minutes of strength training yesterday.” My obliques are the sorest part of me, and that’s purely from actual running.

It feels so good to feel sore. I’m getting smaller, yes, but I’m also getting stronger and fitter. THAT’S what this type of soreness means. It means results. It means effectiveness. It means payoff.

Since I got serious about my health in mid-June of last year, I have lost 76.6 pounds. When June rolls back around this year, I will have lost more than 100 lbs, completed 75 Hard, finished Power 11, and crossed the finish line of a freakin’ half-marathon — all since the previous June.

January-2025 Me wouldn’t recognize Present-Day Me — physically or otherwise.

And that’s fucking transformation, baby.

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NEW DAY 151: Milestones update

Today was unintentionally awesome.

I had a new DietBet to weigh in for, and a gym session planned for later, so I figured I’d get into my workout clothes and do the weigh-in right before it was time to head out. With my weigh-ins under more scrutiny these days, I wanted to make sure what I was wearing wasn’t too baggy. Since all of my go-to tops are laughably loose these days, I went into my workout shirts drawer and found a top that I remember fitting when I was last around my current weight many moons ago, although it seemed unlikely to fit when I held it up in front of me. I tried it on, and… to my complete and total shock, it not only fit, but it was also roomy! This top is more hanging off me than I am wearing it. I think that has to do with the way my weight loss has been working this time around: my shoulders narrowed at a much greater clip than the rest of my torso, so tops are a bit of a challenge right now. Work-out tops in particular tend to slide off my shoulders and feel flowy around my midsection, while somehow still also kind of fitting in that area. It’s tough to explain, but suffice it to say, nothing really fits at the moment. Anyway, even with that all going on, it was a fabulous surprise to have blazed right through the time when that top would have mostly fit, and right into looseness. I’ll wear it until it, too, becomes an almost-dress. (And good news: my DB weigh-in was accepted. Two more video weigh-ins to go!)

Then, it was off to the gym. Today’s workout in my half marathon training plan was scheduled to be cross-training, so I went to my old friend, the elliptical. I don’t know what had me all fired up, but I was immediately hitting the pace that it usually takes me the first 20-30 minutes to work up to — and I sustained or exceeded it for the entire time. Now, when I say “the entire time”, that wound up being far more than the 45-60 minutes I’d budgeted, because I had one of my classic evil elliptical thoughts within the first 5 minutes. And I fulfilled that evil thought by making today, the day I broke 8 miles.

To add some personal WOW to that, I notched those 8(.02, to be exact) miles in 76 minutes, which is a 9:29 pace. This is a personal best pace, elapsed time, AND distance.

I have never run a 10-minute mile on flat land, let alone under 10 minutes. As I am discovering through my treadmill trainings to work up to half-marathon-level endurance, what happens on the elliptical has virtually no bearing on what happens on an actual surface: the motion is different, the muscle coordination is distinct, and speed does not translate at all. Even with all that being true, it’s a BFD that I did this. That I can do this. Because 5 months ago, I couldn’t even keep the elliptical moving — at any speed — for 5 minutes, let alone 5 miles — or 8. I’m only now working up to sustain a full mile-run in one go on the treadmill. But my elliptical history tells me that when the half marathon is almost upon us 5 months from now, I’ll be ready for it.

The type of run I do on the elliptical may be dissimilar from the type of run I do on the treadmill, but the perseverance, self-coaching, and physical stamina apply across all types of fitness training. The beginning was slow on the elliptical, and I approached it intentionally and methodically, knowing it would take whatever time it would take. The result? I couldn’t hit a full mile for a while, and I unfortunately wasn’t recording these milestones yet — but I got there in a few hard-earned weeks. And then, it wasn’t long until I hit 2.
I hit 3.5 — breaking 3 for the first time — on August 19th, which was 2 months after I started my NEW DAYS.
I broke 4 just 2 weeks later, on September 2nd.
My goal at the time was to break 5 by the end of this year. Instead, I did it on September 19th.
Then I broke 6 later that same week, on the 23rd.
I thought that’d be plenty; I’d proven my point.
But then, on October 28th, I hit 7 — just a little over a month later.
And now, just under 3 weeks beyond that, 8.

Progress has a way of being self-perpetuating and exponential. I had no plan for hitting a certain mileage on the elliptical, and certainly no targeted date for doing it. I let the rhythm carry me, responded to my bursts of energy, and was realistic about checking in with my body and its radical ideas about taking me farther and faster. It hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

While I do have a training plan for running the halfer, I am still being agile and adjusting as necessary. I’ve already ratcheted things up a little here in the first week of training, but not in any kind of unrealistic or unsustainable way. It will still take me a while to be able to run an uninterrupted mile, and the pace will be unimpressive; but I’ll get there.
And then, it won’t be long until I hit 2.
Then 3.
Then 13.1.

I didn’t think I’d be genuinely excited about training for a half marathon, but… I am genuinely excited about training for a half marathon.

I missed the 50-day milestones update yesterday, so I’ll rattle off a few here:

  • Since February 20th, I have lost 80.4 lbs.
  • Since June 18th (the start of NEW DAYS), I have lost 60.8 of those lbs.
  • I’ve gone from being able to run barely 5 minutes, to 76 minutes (on the elliptical).
  • I’ve dropped from a snug 26 pants size, to a loose 18.
  • I’ve gone down 2 underwear sizes and 1 sports bra size.
  • I’ve dropped from a 3X shirt size to — depending on the manufacturer — L or XL.

But the most exciting stat is unquantifiable: I feel better. Actually better. In every way a person can feel any kind of way.

My theme for this chapter of my life is Reclaim. I am nowhere close to being done, but I am so proud of how well I’ve done with honoring that theme without wavering for the past 5 months.

I actually truly believe I can do this. I can see myself crossing the literal half marathon finish line, and the figurative finish line of this mission I have set for myself to reach a healthy size. It’s just… incredible. It’s a feeling I’ve never had before, and it has me absolutely floored. I don’t know what to do with it.

So I’ll just keep going.

by

NEW DAY 132: For seven’s sake

I hit 7 miles on the elliptical tonight. 7.18 miles, to be exact — in an hour and ten minutes.

This wasn’t planned until my “what if” voice spoke up somewhere between miles 2 and 3. And then I did it.

My legs are already feeling it, but after a MUCH needed stretch of rest days after 75 Hard, it felt phenomenal to let my body do this.

For those keeping score, 7 miles is more than half the distance of a 13.1-mile half marathon. So.

I guess this is happening…!

AAAAAAAAAAH, WHAT?!