Tag Archives: motivation

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DAY 334: Winning winter

My body has changed a lot in the past 11 months.  The loss of weight has also meant a loss of insulation, and I’m feeling cold easily for the first time in many winters.  I need a higher temperature in my home and office, and more blankets on my bed when I go to sleep.  The silver lining is that I’m getting prolonged use out of those pants I’ve been shrinking out of:  I need the extra space at the waist band to accommodate leggings or a second pair of pants underneath!

To boot, I’m actually enjoying feeling so cold.  Not only is it a reminder of the pounds I’ve banished, but I’ve also read that being exposed to chilly temperatures increases calorie burns — and therefore weight loss — because of the extra work the body has to do to keep itself warm.  Its a win-win!

Keeping these things in mind has really helped me keep focused on staying active on days when it would be easier to stay inside, cozy on the couch, consuming some sinful TV shows and even more sinful food and drink choices.  On Presidents Day earlier this week, we got some snow and ice that I was tempted to use as an excuse to stay inside and indulge.  But I was on a 3-week streak of exceeding my daily VivoFit steps goal, and I was committed to making the streak last at least through the end of February.  When I thought about having to bundle up in my faux fur-lined boots, hat, gloves, scarf, and coat just to walk to the gym, remove it all, get sweaty, and then put all my winter gear directly ON that sweat to come back home, I wondered if it was really worth the hassle… for about 5 seconds.  The angry red arrow Jiminy was flashing at me didn’t allow me to entertain that silly question for long.  In an instant, I changed my thinking to the bizarrely positive reasons to trudge out into the harsh conditions (It’s cold out there [and that’s good]!  You need your steps!), and off I went.  My streak is still alive.

Working out has also become a stress release.  Instead of capitulating to stress like I used to, I now channel the negative energy into high-octane exercise that burns calories and frees my mind.  I have had surprising moments of clarity about confusing or nerve-racking situations I find myself in while testing the limits of the elliptical.  Physical activity as an outlet for emotional pressure: what a concept!  Here I am, living the myth.

This isn’t to say that all of this is suddenly rote or even easy.  I still have to convince myself that I have to work out on any given day, and then I have to internally cheerlead myself to the end of the workout for the majority of the time I’m moving.  I’m just getting better at it, and I now know I have reason to believe that the arguments I have for doing the hard things are good ones.  There’s certainly been improvement, and much positive reinforcement in the form of visible results, but it’s still hard.

Someone recently asked me what my “trick” was for the success I’ve had on my mission.  I had a negative knee-jerk reaction to that question; there’s no freaking trick to this, for cryin’ out loud.  It’s called I work hard.  All the time.  Weight loss and healthy living are NEVER not on my mind.  That’s not hyperbole, people; I am NEVER not thinking about those things.  They factor into every trivial decision I make throughout the day, from which way I will walk to the metro in the morning (long way or short way: which will fit best into my exercise plan for the day?) to what time I go to sleep at night (how tired am I vs. at what bedtime am I most likely to get a quality night’s sleep?).  It ALL ties in for me.  I’ve made it that way.  That’s the only way this works.  If it were as simple as having a trick, we’d all be thin and healthy.

The person who asked me that question probably just phrased it poorly and was only wondering if I had any tips.  At least, that’s what I’m choosing to believe.  But please, as a Recovering Fat Girl, I’m begging you:  don’t ever ask someone who is obviously in the process of dropping a lot of weight, what her trick is.  Semantics matter here.  Implying there’s some shortcut or some magic at work takes away from that person’s hard work and trivializes the act of drastically transforming her life as if it were some kind of effortless gimmick.  Affirmations and praise are fantastic, but if you’re uncomfortable asking the question you mean to ask, just don’t ask it.  Better that than to dishonor someone’s all-consuming, seemingly endless quest to save her own life.

Whoops!  Got a little hot under the collar there.

Fortunately, that kills calories, too.

Stay warm!

 

 

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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.

 

 

 

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.

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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 308: Snow daze

Snow my god!  Snowtastrophe!  SNOWBLIVION!!!!  I’m more tired of tortured snow puns than I thought possible.  Snowzilla?  REALLY?  I thought it couldn’t get worse than Snowpocalypse and Snowmageddon.  How about snowverreaction?  Tossing “snow” in to replace the first syllable of some cataclysmic word is not clever.  I can handle the transportation paralysis and forced hibernation; it’s the criminal level of forced portmanteaus I can’t handle.

Please stop.  You’re doing unspeakable things to English.  What did English ever do to you?!  SNOW YOUR ROLL.  (That’s how it’s done.)

Anyway, back to my life as a fat girl, which I realize is the actual purpose of this blog…

I’m pleased and a little shocked to report that after 4 nights surrounded by mountains of homemade cookies at my parents’ house, I had not a single one.  NOT ONE.  I should emphasize that I was not only surrounded by the cookies, but surrounded by people eating them.  FOUR DAYS OF PEOPLE EATING DELICIOUS COOKIES AND I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE A BITE.  I leave here in about an hour, and I have no plans to break that streak.  It was so difficult, and I wanted to eat all of them, which is why I knew I couldn’t have one.  I can’t believe it.  I escaped without surrendering!

A huge reason for that is that I took a few minutes to make preparations, like organizing a snack survival kit for all 4 days, before leaving my place.  I also made sure I got in all of my steps according to Jiminy in spite of being off routine and needing to make an extra effort to work out.  This involved scoring a week-long pass to a local gym so I could get legitimate workouts in since exercising outside wasn’t really on the menu this time.  So, yes, it took a lot of additional work to pull off what is second nature to me when I’m in my natural habitat, but make no mistake:  it was still overwhelmingly a mental struggle.  I had to constantly remind myself that I’m on a mission here, and there is no pause button.  I have impending weigh-ins and momentum that should not be compromised.  I haven’t had that much trouble with temptation since before I started losing the weight, and I couldn’t believe how hard this was.  I had to tell myself over and over again that I had a choice:  have a cookie and be mad at myself, or resist them for this entire visit and be immensely proud.  I chose pride, and I feel AWESOME!

Along the way, I had a couple of memorable weight-loss moments that impacted me and became part of my arsenal of resistance.  (WOW, that sounds militant!)  First, when the snow stopped on Saturday, my mom and I shoveled out the driveway and de-snowed my and my brother’s cars that were parked there.  Even with two of us, it took an hour to finish because of how much snow we had to clean up.  With all that work, I never got winded or tired, and I kept thinking to the last time I had to dig out my car and how laborious it was.  All I had to do was clean the snow off of my car and shovel a little bit behind the rear wheels so I could back out of my outdoor parking space at my apartment.  That’s something that shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes with the quantity of snow I was dealing with at the time (maybe 2″), but it took nearly a half hour.  I went inside afterwards feeling completely exhausted and was covered in snow from being so big that there was no way to brush off my vehicle without leaning against it and getting snow all over me.  That was then.  This year, my body never made contact with the cars when I was cleaning them off, and I actually enjoyed shoveling for the productive workout it gave me.

At my grandfather’s party yesterday, I made the mistake of wearing a sleeveless dress in the dead of winter.  At a certain point, one of my mom’s cousins, who’s a massage therapist, came up to me privately to say hi.  He didn’t waste a lot of time getting to,  “I don’t know if this is a polite thing to bring up with a woman, but…” and went into how amazing and toned my arms look.  He said that as a massage therapist, he notices these things, but I must be doing some work on my arms.  He asked more about it and said to keep doing whatever I’m doing, because the effect is obvious and looks great.  That made me feel pretty rad!

Beyond that, people kept telling me how happy and confident I seemed, and that kind of threw me because I don’t really think I was doing anything to give anyone that impression.  It’s not like I was front and center, but pretty much everyone I talked to make some remark about that.  No one asked about the weight loss, but I could tell that sometimes they were waiting for me to say something about it (and I didn’t).  I guess I’m carrying myself differently and just projecting this stuff.  And the 3″ heels that made me a respectable height probably helped and would give the illusion of confidence to most people.  😉  Oh, and then I ate a piece of the birthday cake, and was fine with that choice/had planned to do it, anyway.

It’s about time for me to be getting ready to hit the road, so I’m gonna wrap this up here.  Not an earth-shattering update this time, but I had to record for posterity that it is in fact possible for me to spend this much time in an environment inundated with my trigger foods and not cave to them.  It’s possible because IT HAPPENED.  Woo!

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DAY 305: ‘Snow big deal

Loooooooooong story short, I skipped town ahead of the massive, massive blizzard expected to pummel the eastern seaboard this weekend.  I was going to be visiting my family this weekend anyway for my grandfather’s 90th birthday celebration (!), so I just left two days earlier than planned to get out ahead of the snow.

When I realized the weather was going to be bad enough to make me need to change my plans, my biggest concern was figuring out how I was going to manage to work out while away.  I can manage 2 days (per the original itinerary) away from the gym without panicking about losing my routine, but five days with no gym time at this particular moment, when working out outside will be difficult or impossible and I had no mental preparation for such a stretch without exercise, was really stressing me.  But not for long — I didn’t have time for that.

Quickly, I got organized.  I traveled to my parents’ house with my homemade soup for every day I’d be here, AM and PM snacks measured out in baggies for each day, and some perishable food items that I can cook for all of us that would’ve gone bad if left in my fridge.  I optimistically tossed my gym clothes and shoes, along with my fitness journal, into my bag and sped away yesterday afternoon.

Today, while sitting on my butt in front of the TV with my dad, I got really antsy.  I could feel that I needed to move.  I have a suuuuuuuuuuper old one-week guest pass at the gym I used to go to when I lived here and was attempting weight loss several years ago, so I thought I’d dust it off and see whether I could use it myself since I’m no longer a member there.  I took it to the gym, and even though they knew it was an old pass that was really no longer valid, I was able to finagle one week of access out of them.  Gym conundrum resolved.

I did my arm weights and my old cardio staple today.  Because this gym is laid out differently from the one I belong to where I live, the mirrors allow me to see myself from unusual angles.  When I was pumping that iron, I couldn’t believe how many muscles I could see in my arms and shoulders!  Then, when I was powering through on the elliptical, I worked up a sweat I haven’t achieved in months.  It was a very satisfying workout, and I’m proud of myself for listening to my restless body and figuring out a way to get in my burn while totally out of my element because of the elements.  I have such peace of mind knowing that I have a way to exercise every day, and that I removed the option of excuses from my path for how ever many days  — well, up to 7 — before I can safely go back.

When I got back from the gym, my dad gave me a strange look and said, “You look taller.”

Yeah, I thought I was talking taller today.  Stride of pride.

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DAY 302: A shot in the arm

I had my follow-up appointment with my doctor today for a progress check on my weight loss.  Again, she commended me for my efforts and affirmed that they were paying off.  She told me she didn’t think we needed to do blood work to check on anything; my weight was going down, my vitals were strong, and from our conversation, she knew I was doing everything right.  “Your body loves you right now,” she told me with a massive smile.

We talked a little bit about what I was doing, how many steps I’m getting these days, and whether I was sticking with my goal weight as my target.  She updated my file on the computer and recommended another check-up in another 6 months.  I know that in that moment, we were both imagining where I’d be at that point.  I said, “I’ll be just about done!”  She said, “I won’t even recognize you!”

When I told her I had lost 100 pounds since starting this madness, I received another high-five and another “I’m proud of you” to go with the ones I collected from her last time I was there.  She complemented those with commendations for checking in with her as an accountability measure rather than to ask for diet pills or other prescription shortcuts.  As we were wrapping up, she asked me if I had gotten the flu shot this year. I told her I had already been sick with something flu-adjacent this year, and she said something like, “There are several strains this year.  It would still be good to get one.  It’s the only thing I can offer you!”  I laughed, decided it was a good idea, and indulged her need to feel like she had helped her patient.  And man, for the first time I can remember, the shot actually kinda hurt.  Thanks a lot, enormous arm muscles/possibly sadistic nurse.

Talking about this in medical terms, from a purely scientific standpoint, really helps me.  My doctor is able to confirm from a whole other angle that what I’m doing is working, and she tells me with amazement in her voice how great I’m doing by not looking for quick fixes.  She’s proud of me for tackling my problems head on, for not going on crash diets, and for pushing myself physically without endangering my health.  I went straight to the gym after seeing her, and I KILLED it from start to finish.  That woman always reminds me how powerful I am!

So, once again, my doctor gave me a shot in the arm.  And then, she gave me a literal shot in the arm.

This whole little weight-loss gamble?  Worth a shot.

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DAY 296: Sinking to a new low

…on the scale, that is.

I strategically do my weekly weigh-ins on Sunday evenings before dinner.  It helps me temper the back-to-work blues as a way to see what my week’s worth of fitness efforts produced and as a baseline for what I’ll have to put in for the week ahead.  I do it at that time of day because it feels like the most accurate reflection of my weight:  not first thing in the morning after a night’s digestion and dehydration, not just after exercise with the same factors, and not too soon after eating with a full stomach.  Weighing myself just before dinner reflects most of a day’s exercise and eating on the scale, but with enough space in between those things to show me what my “true” weight is.  (Note:  this is based on no science or recommendations, just my own rhythms and personal logic.  Weighing in first thing in the morning as most people do feels like cheating to me for some reason, even though weight on the scale is “real” at any time of day.)

This post is delayed from my most recent weigh-in 3 days ago, but it’s happy news that’s worth sharing:  I’m at my lowest weight in 5½ years.  I’m also within striking distance of several Diet Bet goal weights and personally — maybe universally, in the world of losers — meaningful milestones.

It’s a drastically different life from the one I had a year ago today.

On January 13th, 2015, I was in a work situation that was so truly chaotic, it would be difficult to hyperbolize.  I was in the middle of euthanizing a close friendship of 15 years.  I was missing my family after the holidays.  I wasn’t sleeping well.  I wasn’t eating well.  I had no free time because of the work disasters, which meant no social time.  I was carrying around unquantifiable emotional baggage and an extra person’s body weight worth of physical baggage.  I was exhausted, stressed, angry, frustrated, depressed, confused, and miserable.  I felt hopeless and alone.  At no point in my life have I ever truly thought about wanting to die, but at that time, I didn’t truly want to live.  I was at my highest weight ever, and I don’t think I’ve ever been lower.

On January 13th, 2016, I am on my way to being the person that the person sitting at this desk last year wanted to be.  I can handle work, and when it gets worse than the usual amount of bad, I can leave the office without taking the emotional toxins with me.  I have moved well past the death of the friendship that had run its course.  I sleep well.  I eat well.  I protect my free time with the resolve of the Secret Service, and I make sure it includes socialization.  I am emotionally and physically lighter.  I am rested, calm, steady, flip, amused, lucid, and content.  I feel hopeful and supported.  And on the scale, I’ve found the best possible way to be lower than I was a year ago.

This is for you, old me.  I got you.

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DAY 289: You betcha!

This isn’t going to be a very exciting entry.  I’m mainly posting today for some accountability, and out of bafflement.

As of right now, I am entered in six concurrent Diet Bets.  It’s a bit wild.

Here’s the breakdown:

Transformer, round 5 ending 1/15
Money pot (this round):  $2,475.00
Players:  188
74% to goal (10% of starting weight)

Weekly Kickstarter ending 1/17
Money pot:  $10,220
Players:  284
0% to goal, having just returned to my pre-holiday low weight that I joined this bad boy at 2 weeks ago (4% of starting weight)

Winter Onederland (my bet) ending 1/24
Money pot:  $150
Players:  6
31% to goal (4% of starting weight)

Make 2016 Your Year with Jessie Pavelka ending 1/25
Money pot:  $25,320
Players:  844
31% to goal (4% of starting weight)

Get Lean in 2016 with Heidi & Chris Powell ending 1/31
Money pot:  $336,480 (and counting)
Players:  11,216 (and counting)
14% to goal (4% of starting weight)

Transformer, round 1 (January 1st overall start date) ending 1/31
Money pot (this round):  $55,875 (and counting)
Money pot (total):  $588,775 (!!!!)
Players:  4,466 (and counting)
87% to goal (3% of starting weight)

 
I think I redirected my post-holiday sugar crash into Diet Bet cravings.  I joined the January 1st Transformer game before Christmas, knowing it would attract a huge pool of resolutioners, and made a promise to myself that I would have an uninterrupted downward trend on my 6-month progress chart rather than the chaos I see on the Transformer I’m in round 5 on.  I wasn’t wrong; the pot is ENORMOUS and sign-ups show no sign of slowing down, all the way through to the day Diet Bet closes it to new participants.  I stand to win a fairly epic amount of money from that bet, as sadly, I believe the vast majority of people who joined the bet were in a New Year’s haze and did it to kick themselves in the butt, but weren’t actually ready for this.  They’re hoping this will MAKE them ready, but it’s unlikely to.  I’d love to be wrong about that so that more people can get healthy and feel wonderful, but I don’t think I will prove to be.

The Heidi and Chris Powell bet was a total impulse buy.  They ran a bet over the summer, before I really knew who they were, but I remembered they had a massive following and a correspondingly massive pot.  When I saw they were hosting again, I figured that I might as well participate; I’m already in bets that require me to lose weight that’s basically equal to the amount I would need to lose in their bet.  If I’m already doing the work, why not increase my winnings?  Plus, I’m not gonna lie, that growing pot was a huge attraction.  Happily, Heidi and Chris are proving to be involved hosts.  They aren’t doing much direct interacting with participants, but I’m not at all disappointed, given the size of the group.  It’s just nice to hear from them via posts and announcements every few days.

Likewise for Jessie Pavelka’s bet.  I joined his before Christmas, at the same time as I was launching my tiny bet, figuring it would be a pretty big draw for players.  I was honestly a little leery of getting into another Biggest Loser trainer’s bet after having done Dolvett Quince’s VERY disappointing bet over the summer, but Jessie has been outstanding.  Like the Powells, he doesn’t do a lot of direct conversing with us, but he actively blogs, shares tips, and incites discussion through posts.  He seems much more invested than Dolvett ever was.  (Interestingly, Dolvett has a bet starting up in a couple of days.  I briefly considered joining it, but I remembered what a let-down his first bet was.  Besides, I’m pretty sure I’m in quite enough bets as it is.)

The DB-hosted Kickstarter and my round 5 for Transformer 1 seem rather like long shots, but I feel on fire right now and it’s not outside the realm of possibility that I can actually meet those goals.  It will be insanely difficult, but what a redemption if I can pull it off!

To revisit my January 1st Transformer, round 1 is virtually in the bag already.  My true goal for that one is to get near or to the round 2 goal (6%) before the end of this round.  If I achieve my goals for the bets in the previous paragraph, I’ll have done that.

My own game is small, and I have to admit that I’ve been a fairly negligent host this time around.  I am trying to up my presence now that my real life has returned to normalcy, so there’s hopefully time for me to be a good enough leader that my merry band of participants will remember me as a NON-negligent host.  My hope for that game is that everyone reaches their 4% and I don’t win any of their money.  As of now, everyone seems on track, so it could happen!  (I’m still a better host than Dolvett.  Just sayin’.)

OK, just had to blab about all of that because the number of bets and the amounts of money are making my head spin.  I didn’t post this on Diet Bet because the blog posts there are automatically advertised in each bet, and that means that thousands of people would be informed of the entry.  I’m not at all ashamed of it, it’s just that I wouldn’t want those people, who aren’t my DB “friends” and don’t “know” me to think I’m some kind of maniac who is mocking them for joining bets that I smugly believe will end up lining my pockets.  (Not that it matters, but that sincerely is not my attitude.  I want everyone to succeed, but that sounds like a total lie coming from a competitor.)

There you have it!  Those are the stakes.  I’ll be sure to report on progress as these weigh-outs come up.  Wish me luck!

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DAY 284: You say you want a resolution

Well, you know, we all want to change the world.

Have you ever made a resolution that actually stuck?  Probably not.  I can think of only one person in my own life who has made one successful resolution:  When we were kids, my brother resolved to eat exactly one potato chip the entire year.  For what it’s worth, he nailed it.  So much for the betcha-can’t-eat-just-one myth.

Apart from that sole example, these things are basically giant pillars of fantasy.  People tend to create lofty, overblown objectives — ostensibly for self-improvement — that are unattainable, grandiose, and inherently unexecutable.  Either their resolutions are not specific enough (“I’m going to lose weight!”) or far too specific (“I’m going to go to the gym EVERY DAY and never eat sugar and go paleo and gluten-free and lose 100 pounds by June!”), and we have ourselves to blame for the impracticality.  (Learn your SMART goals, people!)

It’s an honorable effort to create things to strive for in any situation, but making resolution-setting A THING is exactly the problem, especially when it’s for losing weight.

First of all, the time of the year is a trap.  It’s a freaking trap.  From Halloween to New Year’s Eve — two SOLID MONTHS — we stuff our faces with candy and pie and cookies (among other things) under the code of holiday conduct.  That’s two months of steadily gaining weight just through the interruption of whatever routine you have in place, in combination with the calorie fests accompanying each holiday in the forms of parties, receptions, and the celebratory meals that mark the occasions themselves.  So all the while, we have in the back of our heads that we’ve got to get right… but might as well wait until this holiday-laden time of year has passed, cuz it’d just be a lost cause before then.  *shrugs and eats another cupcake*

Furthermore, those two months of splurging on enough sugar and carbs to destroy a doctor’s soul, are two months wasted on regression when they could be spent maintaining, if not making progress.  It’s digging yourself into a deeper hole to work out of when the arbitrary date of January 1st finally comes and you can make your precious resolution.  Honestly, think of the damage!

So New Year’s Day becomes THE HOPE.  We don’t set goals, we set RESOLUTIONS.  (Those are more serious, y’know.  *eye roll*)  The ball drops at midnight on January 1st, and BAM!  You’re magically different and inspired to go lose the weight you haven’t to this point been motivated enough to tackle because… wait, why again?  Because NEW YEAR’S!  That bizarre top-hat-wearing New Year’s baby is your spirit animal, and he will guide you to win!  OO-RAH!

Next on the list of pitfalls is the delusion of time.  You figure, “hey, I have all year to hit this (fucking insane) goal I’ve set for myself.  Totally gonna happen, brah.”  But have you thought it through?  Do you have a plan for how to eat right, build muscle, and work off fat so that you can even get close to hitting that likely bonkers goal of yours?  Or were you just putting it on future-you in the midst of all those holiday smorgasbords to deal with current-you’s horrible decisions so you could continue eating and drinking your way into oblivion without feeling too guilty?  Was it ever a serious decision, or was it a sugar-fueled pledge made in the throes of a mad jones for more of the sweet stuff?  The amount of time you have to hit any goal is meaningless if you haven’t figured out how to spend it on achieving that goal.

Finally, the amount of pressure from this HUGE demand you’ve put upon yourself is crushing.  You have formally resolved to lose weight, and you must succeed!  It’s A THING, after all.  A THING!

No.  It’s too much.  The stakes are too high.  Resolutioning for weight loss is the prime example of the all-or-nothing approach, and unless you’re a wiry 9-year-old boy with a weird defiant streak against potato chip advertisements, ALL OR NOTHING DOESN’T WORK.  It’s why people fail. It’s why I’ve always failed in the past.  You kill it and kill it and kill it until you have one little slip-up, then it’s THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD and you’ve totally ruined everything and you might as well just stop exercising now.  Better luck next year.  Pass the cake.

If you’ve made any resolutions relating to weight loss, I highly recommend you try them the SMART way so you aren’t set up for failure from the jump.  I also sincerely wish you luck — some people do respond well to the magnitude of SUCCEED OR BUST, but those individuals are rare.  Prove me wrong.  Please.

For my part, I resolve to try very hard not to lose my mind when my gym is suddenly overrun with starry-eyed resolutioners who are all up on my elliptical starting tomorrow.  Other than that, my resolution is to make no weight-loss resolutions; just to make more weight-loss progress.

Happy and healthy 2016!

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DAY 271: Before pants

I pulled these out today.  They’re my Lane Bryant (gag) size 24 (vomit) “nice” pants that are on my milestones aspirations list as the ones I want to be able to fit into one leg of some day soon.

Here’s where we’re at on progress to goal:

 

For the record, I did try to fit into one leg today just to see, and it almost actually happened.  If my calves weren’t Superman size, I think it would have been a go.  I’ll run the experiment again in a couple more lost pants sizes and see.

In the present… check out all that extra fabric!

The first photo is with the pants zipped up and pulled as high up as they will go (which is just below my bust), and pulled all the way to the side (NOT the front).  The photo is turned in the wrong direction in this post, but I noticed it after uploading and am far too lazy to fix it.  😉

The photo in the middle is with the pants pulled up to where they’re supposed to be with the extra fabric pulled forward to make them fit my form.

The final photo is the bouquet of fabric in my hand as seen from my vantage point after I took the middle picture in the mirror.

I’ve been feeling really raggedy this week, so I’m glad I did this.  I’ve donated several boxes of clothing every month since July or August, and this is the only article of clothing that no longer fits — aside from the before dress — that I’ve kept.  I’ve tried these pants on a couple of times since starting my weight loss, but the loss hasn’t been as striking before today.  Today, it was impossible for them to stay on; they just fell right to the floor, no matter how many ways I bent or twisted to anchor the waist band onto a curve so they’d at least hang off me.  I can’t believe these were my go-to professional attire just 9 months ago.  They look ridiculous now, both on me and off.

I still have time to make the weight goal I set for myself for the end of this year, and I may have found the motivation I need to get me there.  I think I’ll keep my sad pants out in plain sight for a while.