Tag Archives: non-scale victory

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NEW DAY 370: GLP-none

Over the weekend, my mom treated us to mani-pedis at a salon I’ve been going to for years. The owner, who often staffs the front desk, has the same name as me, so we’ve been making prolonged chit-chat every since our first encounter when we figured that out. She hasn’t been around much lately, so when I saw her on Saturday, she complimented my weight loss and seemed struck by it. Then she asked, “are you taking one of those GLP-1s?” When I said no, she was even more floored. “You’re the only person I’ve asked recently who isn’t!”

I ran into another person whom I hadn’t seen since last August — before I even started 75 Hard — at the end of May. He took a moment to recognize me. Once he did and we’d gotten through the small talk portion of the conversation, he also asked me if I’ve been taking “Ozempic or something”. I awkwardly responded, in front of the friend who was there with me and is on a GLP-1, “no, I’m doing it naturally. I run all the time.” (Really, what is the etiquette here?)

It’s no secret that plenty of people are losing weight with the help of glucagon-like peptide-1 drugs. As mass-market appeal grows, so will their use continue to grow. Anyone who is using them for legitimate reasons, and is doing so safely and responsibly, has my blessing — not that they need it! I hope their GLP-1 experience is effective and 0% harmful. I have no problem with them as a general rule. They’re just not for me.

My weight loss has been rapid and drastic. I’ve lost 126 pounds since February of 2025, 106 of which have been since this time last year. Body recomposition has been further changing my shape, defining my muscle tone, and highlighting my facial bone structure pretty prominently for the past 3-4 months. Almost every time my dad sees me, he says something like “my daughter is disappearing!” My brother literally didn’t recognize me when we saw each other at the end of April for the first time since Thanksgiving. Hell, I even had a moment a couple of weeks ago when I was looking inside a storefront window I was passing by, saw someone, and thought, “that thin lady looks like me! …WAIT.“

Given the prevalence of the weight-loss wonder drugs and how prominent my transformation has been, it’s no surprise at all that people would assume I’m one of the 12% of the adult American population who’s on one. There’s a part of me that feels indignant about that. I don’t want just partial credit for my careful nutritional architecture, my self-coached running and strength training, my sweating through challenging YouTube workouts, and my newfound addiction to the pleasurable low-key torture that is Pilates. I deserve FULL credit for all of it. No GLP-1 has contributed to any of this. But hey, if the results are SO pronounced that the only logical conclusion people (who don’t know me very well) can arrive at is that I must be fast-tracking things with a GLP-1, I’ll try to view that as a compliment.

Again, no judgment here towards anyone using a GLP-1 for the right reasons. They’re meant to help people lose necessary weight who have had trouble doing so. Personally, I’ve found a way to better health without any pills, powders, or injections — and I’m proud of that.
I’m proud of my body.
I’m proud of my stats.
And I’m VERY proud of my mind for finding the strength to push myself through the most intense and challenging parts of the process, time and time again. Nobody but me did that.

And for the person who could barely walk 5 minutes without keeling over at this time last year, yeah, I will absolutely strut it.

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NEW DAY 365: One-year anniversary! 🥂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She became an athlete.

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

She became someone who does not quit.

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

She became someone who nourishes herself.

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

She became someone who takes care of herself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It will you-ify you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’ll log the stats:

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

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

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

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

Who even are you?

You’re you, you-ified.

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


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

Same time next year?

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

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

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

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

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

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NEW DAY 292: Gone tomorrow

The scale has been a prick to me lately. I wandered in the desert of the 200s for 6 long weeks, and now I’m closing in on the same amount of time in the 190s (although I saw an exit ramp to that when I peaked this morning 🫣). It’s enough to make a person snap.

Luckily, I’ve learned a good bit about resilience these last almost 10 months. I’ve also learned to look for progress in other sources, like measurements, the way I feel, and how clothes fit.

That skirt I shrank into only a month ago?

It’s too big now.

I am now officially in the shorts.

Gooooooooooood night.

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NEW DAY 283: Big back and a side of thighs

It’s the last day of my Power 11 challenge. I’ve been consciously tracking quite a few metrics throughout the past 11 weeks to monitor my changes, but there have been some I couldn’t have predicted. Today, an unexpected moment cemented a trend I’ve been lightly observing over the past week, and I’m… still wrapping my head around it.

Earlier this week, I casually scooted my carseat when I got into the car. There was no thought involved. I got in the car, felt too far from the steering wheel, and moved the seat forward. Only once I’d started the car did it hit me how weird that was; I’m the only person who drives my vehicle, and my seat position hasn’t changed in… ever? Why would it? My height hasn’t changed, so why should an adjustment like this suddenly be necessary?

Oh. Because there’s less cushion behind me, forcing my body forward and out from the seat. The disappearance of that natural padding has required me to sit farther back in the seat, creating more distance between the wheel and the rest of my body. It makes sense… but it also makes no sense at all.

Later in the week, I took myself out for a walk through a touristy area near my office. I happened upon a t-shirt I liked and decided to buy it — but I spent several minutes debating what size to get. The XL looked huge. The L looked right. I ultimately opted for the XL, rationalizing that it’s better to have something be too big than too small, I could wear it over something else if it actually was too big, and it might shrink in the wash anyway.

Then today, my package arrived of the 2 maxi dresses I ordered as options to wear to an upcoming event. I tried them both on immediately, and just as immediately, saw that they were too big. Not just kind of too big; too big as in the elastic band under the bust on one of them wasn’t even making contact with my skin. That one is going back where it came from. (I’m keeping the other for a swimsuit cover-up.)

The kicker about those dresses is that I pored over the size chart for each one before choosing the size. The smaller size matched my latest measurements, but once again, I rationalized that most brands run small (in my experience), and I’m inept at taking my measurements, so I didn’t fully trust the numbers. I erred on the side of bigger, just to be safe.

On my walk today, I caught a glimpse of my lean-looking shadow moving with relative ease up and down the hilly terrain. It sent me onto a thought spiral of the way the skirt I wore earlier this week wasn’t clinging to my hips like it used to, the way my red pants swished instead of hugging the length of my legs the other day, and the way I can feel and see new contours in my thighs both in motion and at rest. (Seriously, all the divots and indentations and little bulges — the topography of my legs is a totally new frontier to me.)

This is all inescapable evidence that there is some serious recomp happening here. And even though I expected it, it’s messing with my head. Hell, even expecting it to mess with my head has not curbed the messing-with of my head.

It isn’t squaring for me. Does not compute. That’s why I keep catching myself hedging. I negotiate with reality in real time, just like I did in all 3 instances above where I was confronted with my physical changes.

I’ve watched myself get smaller. I’ve felt myself shrink. I’ve put in the work; it’s not like it’s a surprise, or something I didn’t very much want. Why am I resisting the evidence? Why so skeptical?

It’s a simple answer: this shit is crazy, and it can make a person feel crazy.
Just like going to the gym when I’m already exhausted —
Just like staying on the run when I’m out of breath —
Just like choosing the healthy food option over the convenient one —
This is a mental game much more than it is a physical one.

I’ve been a big back forever — since before “big back” was even a term. Someone who’s moving closer to the steering wheel, comfortably wearing size L clothing, and finding more power in her legs even as they shrink? That doesn’t sound like me.
I can see it. I can feel it. It makes sense… but it also makes no sense at all.

When I do my weekly weight check tomorrow morning, the scale may or may not reflect what I’ve been noticing since our last encounter. I don’t necessarily need it to. Either way, it will be capping off 11 weeks of a particular kind of focus. My weight loss from the past 10 weeks has actually not been that impressive, so I’m not expecting any remarkable drop to suddenly show up tomorrow morning and buck that trend. What I do think I’ll see tomorrow are some jaw-dropping side-by-side photos contrasting day 1 and day 77+1.

Regardless of what I see in the metrics or in the pictures, what I’m feeling now is a whole new level of embodiment. I struggle to articulate exactly what that means, and attempting to process it all internally is proving just as difficult. It’s hard because change is hard. But change — this kind of change — is also very, very good. Hard isn’t always bad.

I’m changing. A lot.

And I love that for me.

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NEW DAY 281: Legwork

I haven’t always been the kindest to my legs.

In addition to — and in no small part because of — the heavy load they’ve had to haul for nearly the entirety of their load-bearing lives, I’ve derided them for their too-wide-for-boots muscularity and unfeminine appearance. Disrespecting them for the appearance they took on as a direct result of the abuse I inflicted on my body, which became their burden. Classic insult to injury.

Since I’ve been losing weight and training for a half marathon, the demand on my legs has anything but lessened, even as my body mass has. The musculature is even more pronounced as my calves slim down. My knees have taken on a knobbiness they’ve never had before. There’s definition and shape developing as the muscles, tendons, and ligaments in my thighs develop and strengthen. My ankles are popping, and not in the injury-adjacent way the normally do.

My legs don’t look different, exactly; they look more unabashedly themselves.
And I’m learning to love them.

They’ve done a thankless job for decades. They may never look conventionally attractive. They may never fit into a cute autumn boot. They may never stop a speeding cab with their irresistible curvature. But they have always held me. They supported me. They carried me.
They are strong, and they are tireless.
They are perfectly mine.

Before? Hide the legs! Keep them out of others’ view! Pants year-round!
Now? Electric blue workout pants. Highlighter pink tights. Dresses. Skirts. Dare I say, SHORTS… coming soon.

This is the type of change that matters the most to me. I’m getting healthier mentally — and that’s been the entire purpose of all of this.

If I can learn to love my legs…

.

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NEW DAY 260: Downsizing

In a past life, when I was having success with weight loss, I used to do this thing where I’d buy a few articles of clothing a size down from where I was, every time I reached a new smallest size. Staying on top of the sartorial demands of slimming down is an expensive pursuit whose timing is unpredictable, so it helps to be prepared for it; my little gimmick helped not only to keep me motivated, but to keep me clothed. My big move was rifling through the sales and clearance racks for off-season finds that gave me a comfortable cushion, to the extent that the season-bound availability allowed. Every time I purchased a downsizing garment, I wrote the date on the tag, which remained attached until that piece fit. Once I could wear it and it became an official part of my wardrobe, it was a cool way to track the time between size changes that weren’t always congruent with the scale — and it came with a fun little ceremonial act of snipping off the tag.

Last night, while I was laying out my attire for today (to save me time in the morning), I found one such relic from that bygone era:

I tried on this skirt and it fit. With room to spare. (So yes, I wore it today.)

Seeing the date on the tag as I cut it off triggered a memory of a couple of other items I bought around the same time: two pairs of… shorts. 😱

I found them immediately, folded together in a tiny stack on a shelf in my closet: one a size 14, and the other a quixotic size 12. The tags aren’t dated, but I’m reasonably certain they were from around the same time as when I bought the skirt I wore today, if not from the same shopping trip.

These are the two smallest downsize items I have. This means two pretty big things:
1) I have never been as small as I am now.
2) I am about to enter a new frontier that I am literally not outfitted for.

I set both pairs of shorts out in plain view for subtle thinspiration. It was too soon to try on either of those sizes, having newly sized down into 16s. Maybe in another month or two, I’d be up for trying on those 14s. For now, those two pretty big things are a lot to absorb.

So when I got home from work today, in the skirt I was wearing for the first time since purchasing it more than 9 years ago — because I regained all the weight I’d lost before I got the chance to shrink into it — I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t also be the last. I picked up those size-14 shorts from their spot and held them up in front of me. The idea of fitting into them suddenly didn’t seem so outlandish.

And it wasn’t.

Because they fit.

Not perfectly. Not as flatteringly as they will after another few inches disappear from my hips and waist.
But the fastener closed.
The zipper slid right up.
Those shorts were on me.
And I was floored.

It’s truthfully a little nerve racking; I have no blueprint for this phase. I haven’t “been there before”. I don’t know what I’ll look like the next size down. I don’t know what I’ll feel like when those 12s are sliding on. I don’t know how things will fit me at clothing sizes I’ve never bought ahead, let alone worn. Most alarmingly, I don’t know for sure that I’m gonna make it to the next size below. There’s no precedent for any of that.

But I made the major choice at the outset that every minor choice I make in this process will support my overall health. I do know I won’t deviate from that, because there’s nothing but precedent for it — and a trove of powerful results that have come from it. I believe in what I’m doing. I may not be prepared for the next step down, but when I get there, I will be ready.

This is where the real emotional work begins. In the interest of always choosing my health, I’ve been laying track for months to support my psychological journey that will go right through the heart of this thing. It’s already been exhausting, and it’s not even at full speed yet. The beautiful thing I have going for me is the physical activity that keeps me mentally regulated. And that’s a full circle.

So I might as well complete another circle while I’m at it. New frontier sounds pretty great to me.

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NEW DAY 221: Blizzard!

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

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

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

This means a few big things:

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s fucking transformation, baby.

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NEW DAY 217: Walk on

Today was my prescribed rest day for this week of Power 11. It came at a good time; each ankle had its own special little tantrum at different moments last night, so it was a well-timed moment for a break. I did end up doing 20 minutes on my walking pad at home after work, though, to make sure I hit my daily steps goal for the day. While doing that, I had a realization: my balance has crazy improved.

My first foray into the world of the walking pad was back in the fall when I was doing 75 Hard. My first walk, and all those I did subsequently, were unsteady. It wasn’t so much a walk as a stagger, like that fool at the office holiday party who had more than one too many trips to the spiked punch bowl and is in no way pulling off the ruse. I had to hold on to my raised standing desk just to make sure I didn’t tumble off backwards or sideways, even for a short walk at a low speed.

Today, for the first time, I didn’t have to hold on. I walked briskly (3.4 mph) for 20 minutes with zero contact — and, more excitingly, zero swerves or stumbles.

It’s not just that my balance has improved; my stamina and strength have, too. I am no longer the spitting image of a failed DUI traffic stop when I take to the walking pad; I’m a woman with purpose.

Fitting, after a year of staggering through uncertainty and hoping — and then working hard — to regain my footing.

Speaking of fitting, I used my lunch break today to take a tour of my “before” pieces. These relics of my most-enormous size are the equivalent of snacking on grapes when what you really want is M&Ms: because I am only weighing myself once a week on Power 11, I can’t sneak a peek at the scale on days when I’m feeling curious. (There’s a reason for this: I’m trying to break my obsession with that number so it won’t become my whole worth. I say this while actively working towards a rather aggressive goal with a deadline that’s precisely 3 weeks away, but I digress.) Instead of indulging my curiosity, I try on the couple of articles of clothing I’ve held on to that remind me of where I started, so I can see how far I’ve come.

Today, I fit into one leg of my size 24 “before” pants. And after stepping into it (still zipped) through the neck, my “before” dress slid off my shoulders and right onto the floor.

Funny how that instantly killed any interest I had in what the scale might have had to say.

And so I walk on… with purpose.

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NEW DAY 163: Thankful

Here’s a sentence that February-Me did not think my fingers would be typing in 2025: there are a lot of things to be thankful for this year. When it was my turn to share one of my points of gratitude around the Thanksgiving table this year, the one I went with was, “I am thankful that this year will be ending so much better than it started.”

It’s the healing emotional and psychological wounds from those violent first 3 months. It’s the tangible incoming changes I went after and earned in later parts of the year. It’s the exciting events on the horizon for myself and the people I care about. It’s the ability to believe in more good to come because of the good that is already here. It’s the way it all feels as a composite.

To keep the focus on health and weight loss, I took two grueling walks while staying with my parents for this holiday. The first was around their very hilly neighborhood: a 3-mile circuit I used to power walk in my late 20s that took about an hour, with some amount of difficulty. The last time I attempted it was on day 4 of 75 Hard this past summer. With the extra 48 lbs on my August body, it was a struggle; I truncated the distance to about half the full course and had to take frequent breaks to negotiate some of the most punishing hills, just to get through it a puffy, sweaty, depleted mess.
On Thanksgiving Day, I walked that full circuit without a single stop, including the final 20 minutes when it was lightly snowing. It was challenging and it demanded full cooperation from every muscle below my waist — and as a team, we met that challenge.

The second walk was from their house to the nearby park for a shorter but steeper set of hills. It’s been at least a month since I last trifled with the path that goes through the park, but more than 10 years since I tried to walk to the park from their home, which is also a hilly (and not super pedestrian friendly) route. This one’s total distance is about 2 miles, but takes about as long as the neighborhood one because of the unfavorable footing conditions and sharp inclines.
Today, I not only managed it in less than an hour — also in light snow — but I remained energized throughout the trek, which was not the case 5-6 weeks back when I last trudged that path.

This illustrates my notable progress on its own, but I also have to underscore what a big deal it is to have done so while still being a little cautious while still side-eyeing this bum ankle. Most importantly, though, I wanted to tackle those hills. I wanted to scale those steep grades. I wanted to conquer those paths.

A month ago, my attitude was still tentative, still hesitant, and still unconfident. Not anymore.

AND these exercise breaks were retreats and reward for myself, not annoying interruptions that I resented for cutting into my holiday family time and taking me away from an excuse to over-indulge in poor consumption choices. I looked forward to the walks for my mental recentering and welcomed the accompanying satisfaction and relief that came from completing them, and never thought about food at all.

Add to these little triumphs the experience of the meal itself, and it feels like a work of fiction. I had one normal-sized serving of each of the dishes I wanted rather than mounds of multiple helpings of sinful components at Thanksgiving dinner. When dessert came, I did opt for a little slice of my mom’s famous cheesecake — and I didn’t freak out. I spent zero seconds calculating calories or obsessing over sugar intake. Instead, I got to be present in the holiday moments with my family rather than trapped inside my head while I engaged in some sadistic battle of wits with temptation. And I got to go to bed feeling full, but not stuffed — and not at all deprived.

I had no temptation. I just had dinner.
And then dessert.

And then, no regrets.

Will I lose weight this week? I don’t know.

And for truly the first time EVER when I’ve been in Healthy Self Mode, I truly do not care.

What mattered to me this holiday was being able to enjoy it without the creeping anxiety of being surrounded by “dangerous” options.
Because I’ve spent the past 5 months learning how to trust myself, I got to do that.
And for that, I am deeply thankful.