Tag Archives: motivation

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DAY 161: Ready for fall

We had a lovely teaser of fall weather last week:  low humidity, bright sunshine, comfortable temps, and general pleasantness.  I took a few extra walks outside, opened all the windows in my apartment, hit the pool, traveled home the long way from work, ate on patios, and rotated through almost my entire robust collection of sunglasses.  It was pretty much perfect.

Now, it’s all gross and humid again, and it’s like… I JUST WANT IT TO BE OVER.

Which is kind of how I’m starting to feel about this whole losing weight thing.

My progress has been excruciatingly slow these last 3 weeks.  I always knew that would happen — I’m actually surprised it didn’t happen sooner — so I’ve been braced for it for months, actually.  I’m also a little skeptical that this is the slow-down; I think it’s a fake-out.

  • The week of 8/10 was my first week back from Seattle, and I was dragging ass like whoa.  I didn’t hit the gym at all, so no wonder I dropped under 2 pounds.  I’m lucky I dropped anything.
  • The week of 8/17, I picked my gym routine back up, but it was also restaurant week, and I indulged.  Three times.  Again, no wonder I dropped under 2 pounds.  (Really, it’s kind of surprising I lost any weight either of those weeks.)
  • This past week, I again lost a modest amount of weight, even though I can’t account for why.  (Then again, this process makes sense less often than it doesn’t, so I’m not twisting my brain into a pretzel trying to figure it out.)  I was in the gym exactly as planned, 5 of 7 days, and exceeded my steps by a lot every single day.  It’s probably just my body readjusting to this pace of exercise, or that I wasn’t eating enough on the fruit/veggies/fiber fronts.  I’ve tweaked my meals for this week to account for that in hopes of upping my game a bit.

So, to recap, I have lost exactly the same amount of weight each week for the past 3:  1.8 pounds.  The three-week grand total is 5.4 pounds, which I dropped in a single week early on.  Thinking about it that way is frustrating (which is why I haven’t thought about it that way until typing this), but a loss is a loss is a loss.  I’m not going to complain for having lost 1.8 pounds, especially considering the fact that for 2 of those 3 weeks, it came at very little cost of effort.

AND YET…

I just want it to be over.

The lifting and the ellipticaling and the treadmilling and the perfect food balancing and the OBSESSIVE step monitoring and the weight checking and the pushing through the foot paining and the UGH.  Make it STOP.  I’m TIRED.

I have valued this experience in ways I haven’t shared.  I have learned so much about myself, about other people, about health, and about life from my little self-overhaul, and I never imagined the volume of profound lessons I would learn simply by going all in on losing weight.  I am a better person for it in every way, and I know that.  I’m also not done in any sense.  I’m not done on the scale, I’m not done mentally, and I’m not losing focus or otherwise checking out.  If anything, I’m more committed to this mission every week than I was the week before.  So, still going strong?  Well, yeah.  No plans to change that.

The thing I think I’m really grappling with is, now that I’m entering territory I haven’t seen in many years, am I going to be able to master the post-weight loss?  I was getting in the shower after a long day outside, which included a lot of exercises inside and outside of the gym, and I just thought to myself, “I never want to do this again.”  Not the work I’d done that particular day, but this process.  This process whose infinite value I just raved about.  Don’t want to repeat it.  Ever.

It’s great and it’s rewarding and it can even be fun, but for the love of EVERYTHING, it is TEDIOUS.  It is TAXING.  It is PERSONAL.  It is HARD WORK.  It rewires your thinking to put yourself first, and it makes you feel conflicted for being selfish while knowing you’re doing the right thing.  It takes SO MUCH TIME away from the other parts of your life because there’s the getting to the gym, and the working out at the gym, and the getting home from the gym, and the meal planning, and the meal prepping, and the meal eating, and the BLAHBLAHBLAH.

And, while I’m actually enjoying myself in real time, I’m starting to get a little bit nervous about what happens next.  Am I going to have to give up all of my free time for the rest of my life, just to maintain health and fitness?  Am I going to be so focused and obsessed with that that there’s no room for anything or anyone else?  I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but this whole process has only worked BECAUSE I’ve gotten ahead of myself.  So, the question is:  How the hell do you prepare for thin life when all you’ve ever known is fat or working on it??

I guess it’s like anything else and you just figure it out.  So I will.  But ugh.

Is it fall yet?

P.S.  I’m hosting my first Diet Bet game!  As a group, we’re pooling our daily miles to travel around an exotic part of the world together.  This is the second in our series of as many DBs as it takes to “see” everything we want to see in the world.  If you’re getting a little restless like me and need more community support than you do monetary motivation, this is the group for you — it’s just a $10 bet.  We start tomorrow!  Join We Run the World here!

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DAY 150: Milestones update

It’s a milestone-numbered day, so it’s time for another milestones report!  Moving things out of the “Goals to be achieved” section feels AWESOME!  I can’t believe some of the earlier goals ever needed to be goals.  Wow, was I in a bad way.

Any suggestions of goals to add are VERY welcome, so please share some of yours!

Achieved within first 71 days

  1. Find 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.  I’ve gone down a size since first meeting this goal.
  2. Grab my foot from behind when my leg is bent at the knee in order to stretch out my thigh.
  3. Walk at a 3.0 MPH pace without struggling.
  4. Make it up one flight of stairs without getting winded.
  5. Stop snoring and start sleeping better.
  6. Lose 10 lbs.
  7. Lose 25 lbs.
  8. Be under the weight limit to stand on the step stool.

Achieved between days 72 and 100

  1. Sit on my own furniture. The dining chairs and patio seating I own have weight limits that I exceeded before I purchased them.
  2. Paint my own toe nails without contorting myself.  
  3. Close my towel the whole way around me when I get out of the shower.  
  4. Wear the oh-honey pair of pants I bought on April 11th.
  5. Wear the oh-honey shirt I bought on May 2nd.   
  6. Walk a mile at 3.5 MPH.
  7. Get 3 miles on the fat burn setting on the elliptical.   
  8. Tie my shoes without having to sit down.
  9. Go down a notch on my Vivo Fit band.   
  10. Lose 50 lbs.
  11. Lose 10% of starting weight.   
  12. GOAL REDACTED.
  13. Put ankle on opposite knee without having to use hands.   
  14. Fit into a restaurant booth.  
  15. Wear shirt size XL.
  16. Do 200 miles in a month.

Achieved between days 100 and 150

  1. Fit into my plaid rain coat.**
  2. Go down a half shoe size.  Tragic timing, because I had just bought several pairs of heels in my old size, but I am NOT complaining!
  3. Wear a dress.  This has happened multiple times, in multiple dresses.  In fact, it’s mid-happen.
  4. Fit comfortably into airplane seats.
  5. GOAL REDACTED.
  6. Get away from pre-diabetic sugar levels.  Like whoa!
  7. Fold down the tray table from the seat in front of me on a plane.
  8. Lose 25% from heaviest weight.
  9. Lose 75 pounds.  This is the last figure of pounds I will likely post!
  10. Wear my ring on my middle finger.
  11. Wear a swimsuit in public.  Two total swimsuits, four total times.**
  12. Hike up a mother-effing mountain, with mother-effing company.  This is a point of emphasis because I would have been too embarrassed to be huffing and puffing beside someone while doing anything remotely work-out-y even a month ago.**
  13. Reach halfway point of weight-loss mission!**
  14. Laugh-cry while trying on the “before” dress, which I put on by stepping through the neck hole.**
  15. Purchased and wore high heels!  I own 3 new pairs, one of which is in my new half-size down.  I wear them EVERY DAY at work now, and my feet feel just fine.  They actually HELP with that persistent jerk of a heel spur I still have.  Between the dresses and the heels, I am loving feeling girly!  I never thought I’d see the day.**
  16. Also, this progress on my DietBet Transformer:**
    progress

Goals to be achieved

  1. Jog in and complete a 5K.
  2. Fit into my red jacket.
  3. Fit into one leg of my fat-girl gray pants.
  4. Wear a single-digit dress size.
  5. Wear a single-digit pants size.
  6. No longer be in “overweight” category (BMI <25).
  7. Wear shirt size L.
  8. Wear shirt size M.
  9. GOAL REDACTED.
  10. Reach final weight goal.
  11. GOAL REDACTED.
  12. GOAL REDACTED.
  13. GOAL REDACTED.
  14. Get out of plus sizes.
  15. Switch to the small Vivo Fit band.
  16. Wear a belt.
  17. Jog a mile without stopping.
  18. Fit into only my side of the bench on Metro. I have actually hit this, but the true test will be with a winter coat on, so I’m not crossing it off the list yet.
  19. Cross my legs. I’ve never done this in my life.
  20. See my feet over my belly when I look down (standing still).
  21. 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 haven’t been to an amusement park since, so haven’t had the opportunity to test this out yet, but I suspect I could cross this off now.
  22. Do 250 miles in a month.

Watch this space.

*Some goals are too personal/embarrassing to publish, so I’m curating selectively.
**These were not on my list of goals, but they were notable milestones that I hit during this period.

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DAY 146: I’ll double-take that

You know those Magic Eye images that were huge in the ’90s?  I could almost never see them.  If I did, it was because someone with the patience of a saint who had found the hidden picture 20 minutes prior wouldn’t give up sitting with me until I was able to see it, too.  I could certainly never find them on my own.  Just keep that in the back of your mind for now.  This is going somewhere, I promise.

I made it home from my beach trip just in time to weigh in for round 4 of my Transformer Diet Bet.  As of this evening, I am down some more weight AND a confirmed round winner!  That’s actually not the point of my post tonight, though.  It’s an answer to Day 94.

A little under 2 months ago, I got all bent out of shape because I saw a photo of me that did not seem to accurately reflect all the progress I’d made on my mission up to that point.  It crushed my morale for most of that day, and even though I rallied, it’s something I continue to think back to sometimes.  Why is it that you can feel so (comparatively) small and hear constantly how small you look, yet still not look the way you think you should in pictures?  It’s one of the most baffling parts of this whole thing.  I know that even if I were a skinny bitch, there would be certain photos of me that didn’t square with my version of reality, but come on.  This is like EVERY PICTURE.

Well, today, for the first time — in a weigh-in photo for DB, no less — I finally saw myself in a picture.  I mean, it probably helps that I’m all sun kissed and have flowy beach hair, but I actually look the size I feel in my submission picture from tonight.

The Magic Eye tactic that many tried to impart to me, but that I could never practice, was to relax my eyes and stop looking so hard.  If you refocus your vision and try to look at the real image instead of searching obsessively for the hidden one that you can’t even picture because you don’t know what it looks like, it’s much harder to find it.  That’s true here, too.  I keep thinking, madly, that I should look like I’ve lost 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 pounds, but I don’t.  I’ve only now realized that it’s not because I still look big, but because I’m getting into sizes I haven’t seen in years.  I don’t know what that looks like on me, so I don’t know what I’m looking for in pictures.

Tonight, I wasn’t looking for the secret image; I relaxed my eyes and saw the picture for what it was for the first time.  Not coincidentally, for the first time, I liked what I saw.

For those of you who read my ramblings regularly (smooches!), you might know this is a poignant message for me to suddenly grasp at this moment.  I immediately took the leap with this thought to my life in the dating desert.  I’m not going to be a totally passive Disney princess who sings “Someday My Prince Will Come” to her running shoes, but I’m also not going to be an aggressive dating ninja who pounces on every rare specimen seemingly worth the time on OKCupid.  Hell, I’m still learning to work these heels.  I can’t be falling too hard right now.

Sorry, boys.  I’m gonna keep my eyes intently focused on the hidden image of myself when it comes to you.  See ya in 6-8 months when the picture becomes clear.

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DAY 142: Sleeveless in Seattle

I got back from the West Coast late Monday night.  I had a WONDERFUL time making new friends and reconnecting with old ones, all while exploring a couple fantastic cities I had never seen before.  I made a concerted effort to get my steps in while I was out there to counteract the ridiculous food indulgence I participated in, and even though I fell short for 3 of 8 days and I only made it to the gym ONCE in the past 10 days, I’m labeling the trip a success in the weight-loss chronicles.

When I weighed myself Monday night, I fully expected to see my first weight gain since I started this mission in late March.  Instead, what I somehow saw was a two-pound loss.  (Thank you, surprise Seattle hills!)  I mean, I ate pretty well in terms of meals: most meat was salmon, I had a few salads, and I ate as close to normally as I could — with the exception of the bacon EVERY MORNING at breakfast.  It was the desserts, though.  What I REMEMBER is splitting a decadent piece of chocolatey something with 3 people, a Snickers ice cream bar, an Oreo ice cream bar, half a piece of tiramisu, half a serving of panna cotta, a piece of lemon coconut pie, gelato, more ice cream, a square of fudge, a Godiva chocolate bar, more ice cream, and whatever else I’m forgetting.  Of course, there were also the endless treks across Seattle, the seven flights of stairs, and that 3-mile hike up a proper mountain in British Columbia.  So, as with all the other components of the weight-loss experience, it all comes down to balance. This week, the scales definitely tipped more towards the consumption than the burn, but because that has not been the norm in the past 5 months, my body was like, “Relax, girl.  I got this.”

I love you, body.

Digression:  I also got a couple of affirmations during the work part of the trip.  Someone I only see at the conference I attended (read: annually) said when she saw me for the first time this year, “Every time I see you, you look different.  You’re thinner and you changed your hair.”  (It’s funny, everyone thinks I’ve gotten a hair cut because I’ve been wearing it down more.  No, guys; I haven’t had a hair cut since May.  If anything, it’s a hair growth.  Does a thinner face make your hair look shorter?  Life’s little mysteries.)  Someone I work with but haven’t seen since winter said when she saw me the first day of the conference, “You look so GOOD!  You’ve lost a ton of weight, right?!”  Then, she proceeded to ask me how and started telling me that she was going to try and lose some before her wedding next year.  She brought it up with me again later in the trip.  Since I’ve been back, two people have made a point of letting me know that they’ve noticed, too.  One has told me two days in a row, very pointedly so I’d know exactly what she meant by her comment, “You look good.  Really good.”  The other is a few months pregnant and said to me, “Are you disappearing, lady?” to which I responded, “I’m having a reverse pregnancy.”  That’s four people in a little over a week.  I guess the fat’s out of the bag.  (OHHHHH!)

Anyway, I also rocked a dress I bought online and was too tight to wear 3 weeks ago, but uh…

FullSizeRender

Again: I love you, body.  My “work for it, and it will work for you” mantra is in full effect.  (And yes, that’s a bra on the floor behind me.  Whatevs.)

So, after a week where I was sure I was going to gain enough weight to knock me out of contention on my two pending 4-week DietBets, I’m now poised to win both.  I have a weigh-in for my Transformer bet (which I have to be careful not to disqualify myself from through losing too much) over this upcoming weekend, when I will be in Atlantic City.  At the top of my packing list?  Scale.  Oh, life on a mission.

I’ll have another rambly post tomorrow, or possibly the day after, about another pretty weird part of what life is like these days.  For now, it’s all good news.  I hope the same is true for you guys!

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DAY 94: Delusions of non-grandeur

Damn all the cameras.

I took a co-worker to lunch for her birthday today, and she was all giddy and wanted to commemorate the day with a photo.  Sure — now that photos are less embarrassing to take, I was entirely on board.  I even thought it might actually be kinda cool to see myself in a picture after such a long evasion of anything with a photographic lens that could be pointed at me like a weapon.

Well, cool it wasn’t.

So much weight lost, and I still look like shit.

Have I been imagining all the changes?  Or is it just that they’re so subtle, only I can notice?  I mean, who the hell else is gonna notice my fingers are smaller?  Ugh, and I had been walking around all, “I feel pretty!”  God.  No wonder only 3 people have realized I’ve lost any weight.  It’s not like I’ve moved the needle from fat to thin; I’ve only moved it from fat to marginally less fat.  Looking at that picture was such a deflating moment.  It made me feel hopeless.  And crazy.  And stupid.  Still fat, and now hopeless and crazy and stupid to boot.  Needless to say, I hid that cursed photo from my wall when the birthday girl posted it on Facebook.  I’m not quite ready for prime time, I guess.

I felt a little draggy the rest of the day.  I ended up staying late at work, so late that it derailed my normal routine of going straight to the gym after my commute, then coming home for dinner.  Somehow, I convinced myself to walk a mile to the gym after dinner, do a mile and a half on the treadmill, and walk back home.  (Getting my miles in has become a dissociated obsession at this point, so I was going to do that regardless of my never-ending fatness.)

During the treadmill slog, something magical happened:  I looked in the mirror, and it was not what I had seen in the photo.  All I could see of myself that wasn’t obstructed by the actual machine was my chest and points north.  I realized I was staring at the way my shoulders were moving with my swinging arms.  I snapped out of it and kind of forced myself to look myself in the eye.  I was wearing an expression I’ve never seen on my face before:  defiant determination.

Fuck that photo.  It does not define me.  What I do in reaction to it does.

Did I have a diva moment where I didn’t want anyone to see that picture of myself?  Sure.
Did I slip into a negative space and allow myself to feel defeated for several hours?  No doubt.
Did I throw my hands up, pick up a pint of ice cream on my way home from work, and spend my night crying into it on the couch?  Hell no, I didn’t.  My defiantly determined ass walked itself to the gym and kept moving right along.

That chick I saw in the mirror at the gym?  I want to always be her.  Her narrower shoulders were high with confidence, her slimmer neck was strong, and her single chin was up.  No one else in the gym knew it, but that chick is a bad-ass.  It took the treadmill to literally block out the “bad” parts so I could focus on the positive progress I’ve made.  It’s NOT all in my head.  It’s so easy to lose that focus if you let yourself.

Thirty-six miles to go to reach 200 miles for June.  I think I’ll focus on that instead.

…And maybe no more pictures for a while.

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DAY 43: “It’ll fit one day…”

  • That pair of jeans you outgrew 3 years ago, but keep quixotically folded up in your dresser drawer.
  • That perfect dress that was a tad bit too tight when you tried it on at the store, but you bought it anyway.
  • That gorgeous top in JUST your color that you’ve had forever, but have never worn because it’s never actually fit you.

We all have at least one of these: either in the form of a remnant of your former, thinner self, or a symbol of hope for the future, thinner you.  Look in your closet, and it will tell you a whole story of what-ifs.

Personally, I’ve been one of these delusional clothing hoarders since high school.  I often bought things while out shopping with friends, too embarrassed to try anything on and show any of them, but even more embarrassed to not buy anything when everyone else was.  (No one ever asked why those clothes I bought when we were all out together never actually ended up on my body in public.)  Then, after I’d gotten too big for all the clothes I already owned, I never got rid of them, and I’ve kept that habit throughout my entire adult life.  Hell, just to add insult to injury (or insanity?), I’ve even done this with work-out clothes.  Between the things I’ve kept in vain and the things I’ve purchased in vain, I could clothe an entire army of overweight women, each slightly larger than the last.  And why do I do this?  It boils down to that simple little lie I’ve gotten so good at telling myself:  “It’ll fit one day.”

Oh, honey.

I did the foolishly optimistic purchase ritual as recently as this past Saturday.  I was out with a new friend after we got our hair cut and after I was such a good little big girl at dinner when I resisted the chips and salsa and ordered a salad instead of a pile of enchiladas.  In that “I’m so pretty and so well behaved!” mindset after being pampered and nutritiously fed, I ended up in a clothing store with my friend, who was all about the dresses.  I’ve never in my life been a dress person; even if I were skinny, my proportions are bonkers and I always look like someone who stumbled out of someone else’s closet when I try to wear a dress.  But, since this was a new friend, I figured I’d better find something to try on so she wouldn’t think know I was a totally neurotic spaz, so I grabbed an oh-honey top off a rack and dragged it into the dressing room with me.  Trying it on was like trying to squeeze myself into a tube of toothpaste.  So naturally, I bought it.

Oh, honey.

Well, this morning, I thought I should try on one of those oh-honey shirts from my semi-past:  January of this year, when I ordered a top online during a post-holidays sale for like $3.00.  When it arrived, I pulled it out of the box and put it directly into my closet, where it has hung untouched for the past 4 months… until today.  It’s so freaking humid all of a sudden that I couldn’t imagine spending any time outside with sleeves covering my now-somewhat-presentable arms, lest they immediately become drenched in sweat.  Suddenly, the red sleeveless top from January stood out amid all the other what-if crap in my closet.  It may as well have spoken to me:  “Try me on, you frivolous nutcase.”  So I did.

Ohhhhhhhhhh, honey!

It FITS!  I’m wearing it RIGHT NOW!

There’s a new reality, people.  I’m not a delusional dreamer anymore who’s just waiting for the weight to get up and walk off of me by itself one day.  I’m someone who is eating the right things and moving my ass every day to make that happen.  As a result, I’ve lost 35 pounds since I bought that top in January.  Of course I can wear it today.

And all of a sudden, buying that beautiful top over the weekend doesn’t seem like it was such a bad idea.

It’ll fit one day.