March 23, 2017 by Life Can't Weight

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.

January 31, 2017 by Life Can't Weight

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!

February 17, 2016 by Life Can't Weight

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:

FullSizeRender (1)

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.

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

February 10, 2016 by Life Can't Weight

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.

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 8.31.24 PM

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.

Screen Shot 2016-02-10 at 8.36.19 PM

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.

February 8, 2016 by Life Can't Weight

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.

January 17, 2016 by Life Can't Weight

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

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.
Grabbed my foot from behind when my leg is bent at the knee in order to stretch out my thigh.
Walked at a 3.0 MPH pace without struggling.
Made it up one flight of stairs without getting winded.
Stopped snoring and start sleeping better.
Lost 10 lbs.
Lost 25 lbs.
Got under the weight limit to stand on the step stool.

Achieved between days 72 and 100

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

Achieved between days 100 and 150

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

Achieved between days 150 and 200

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

Achieved between days 200 and 300

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

Goals to be achieved

Jog in and complete a 5K.
Fit into one leg of my fat-girl gray pants.
Wear a single-digit dress size.
Wear a single-digit pants size.
No longer be in “overweight” category (BMI <25).
Wear shirt size M.
No longer be in “obese” category (BMI <30). (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
Reach final weight goal.
Reach 50% of starting weight. (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
Lose 150 pounds. (FORMERLY REDACTED GOAL)
Wear a belt.
See my feet over my belly when I look down (standing still).
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.
Do 250 miles in a month.
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.

December 11, 2015 by Life Can't Weight

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.

December 3, 2015 by Life Can't Weight

DAY 255: Shackled up

Another day home sick, another day of no working out. Blech.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m kind of glad for the excuse to take time away from work. It’s killed my exercise, though. I’m sure my weight is not dropping from the very strenuous physical demands of shuffling between the couch-tea kettle-bathroom triangle, and even though I’ve been staying on track with eating (in spite of a highly irregular hunger pattern), I’m pissed to be missing YET ANOTHER week of fixing myself.

Luckily, the universe is still looking out for me. While digging around in my Fuck-It Bucket™ for a candle lighter, I came across the second wrist band that came with my VivoFit: the small band. Oddly, I was searching for this over the summer when the weight was rapidly dropping off, and I couldn’t find it. I swear I looked in my Bucket, as that’s where I always put things that have no logical categorical storage place, and it definitely wasn’t there. It just wasn’t time for me to find it.

When I picked up the small band, I felt my eyes go wide like a Disney character. Earlier the same day, I had been poking around on Amazon to see if there was a sale on VivoFit yet to get one for my mom, who is interested in getting one for herself. I was reading the specs and noticed that the difference in the small end of notches in the large band and the large end of notches in the small band have some overlap. Since I’m down to where I can wear the large band around my wrist on the last set of notches available, the I-wonder voice spoke up: I wonder if you can wear this band now?

Well…

Sho ’nuff can.

I’m wearing my small band on notches 2 and 3, and my (crusty-ass!) large band at the same notches, but I slid it to the point where it naturally fits on my arm now. I started out wearing the large band only one notch farther over, on 3 and 4, on my WRIST, just 11 months ago. Within the next 11 months, I’ll probably be able to get that sucker around my ankle.

Viva the Vivo!

November 27, 2015 by Life Can't Weight

DAY 249: Thanks.

Yesterday was amazing.

I ate cheese. I ate chips. I ate salsa. I ate crackers. I ate artichoke dip. I ate turkey. I ate stuffing. I ate mashed potatoes. I ate rice. I ate bread. I ate salad. I ate green bean casserole. I ate cheesecake. I ate peanut butter chocolate chip cookie bars.

I have no fear or regrets about any of that.

Before the meal (in the early morning), I took myself on a 4-mile walk around my parents’ incredibly hilly neighborhood and through a nearby park. In the park, I twice passed a VERY good-looking guy in an orange shirt who was jogging. The first time we passed each other, we gave each other a polite-stranger smile. The second time, I was power-walking up a steep hill and he was jogging down it. He was smiling already when he saw me, and I involuntarily gave him a MASSIVE grin when I saw him smiling, which made him smile bigger and laugh, which made me laugh. I couldn’t tell if it was silly or flirtatious, or maybe both, but I kept hoping to run into him again. I didn’t. Maybe I will some other time I’m getting in my outdoor cardio at my parents’ house.

I spent the rest of the day cooking.

I ate my meal wearing an outfit composed of entirely new clothes, which wouldn’t have had a chance of fitting me last Thanksgiving.

I ate one moderate serving of everything, because I’ve taught myself when — and how — to stop. No seconds. No hunger.

I gave my family the public version of what I’m thankful for. This is the private version:

I’m thankful that the beach towel I used to have to use to dry off after showering at their house is now comically large for that purpose, and I’ll have to ask my mom for a different towel.

I’m thankful that the toilet on the main floor of the house isn’t working properly, and I have to either go upstairs or downstairs every time I need to use the bathroom.

I’m thankful that I no longer have to pause 2 or 3 times on my way back up the stairs from the basement to secretly catch my breath, so as not to arrive at the top of the steps all winded and embarrassed.

I’m thankful that my parents live in the middle of nothing but steep hills of various heights that I can walk around. I can feel the effects of that in my legs and butt, and it hurts so good.

I’m thankful that I could wake up this morning and eat cereal when everyone else was eating the traditional leftover pie for breakfast.

Even if I don’t lose any weight this week, I’m thankful for all of the above, because it proves to me that I’ve passed this test of will at a challenging moment of my mission that coincides with a challenging moment on the calendar.

Being mentally back in the saddle is by far the most important thing. The weight loss will come. I believe that again.

October 9, 2015 by Life Can't Weight

DAY 200: Milestones update

Welcome to the fourth installment of my milestones updates!

This is occurring at an opportune time in my progress, because I’ve hit the dreaded slowdown. Ironically, the changes I’m seeing in my body have never been more pronounced, but the scale has never been less cooperative. Good thing I have other ways of measuring the victories! You can skip the first 3 sections if you’re not into the recaps from the first 150 days. Otherwise, let the self-horn-tooting begin!