Tag Archives: progress

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NEW DAY 61: Challenge stacking

Hello from day 9 of 75 Hard! I have officially endured the downside of the mandatory outdoor workouts when a thunderstorm with torrential rain rolled in a few minutes into mine yesterday afternoon. It was tragically mistimed, but you know, it was actually not the worst. Granted, I could hardly see or hear my little YouTube instructor from my phone screen that was safely within the shelter of the garage while I was being soaked, but the rain and wind felt nice — certainly a refreshing change from the usual punishing sun and resulting sweat. Rite of passage, check.

Yesterday morning’s (indoor) workout was the hard one. I’ve been trying to add 5 minutes to my elliptical sprints each week, and this week’s time is 35 minutes. I got to minute 20 and the internal whining began. I coaxed and coached myself along, minute by minute, to the finish — and I got there. And now there will be no future resistance, because the jig is up, Self!

I have been slipping into the bad habit of checking the scale every day, so my challenge this week will be not to look at it again until Sunday. That seems like it should be easy compared to the rest of the challenging things I have going on these days, but it’s a real test of will for me right now!

And on that dubiously suspenseful note… ✌️

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NEW DAY 60: Seeing is believing

Another metric is in: restaurant booths.

The last time I went to a certain fast casual chain was July 4th, which was about 6 weeks ago. I had been doing my frantic gym sessions and abrupt sugar detox for roughly 3 weeks at that point, so not much had noticeably changed for me physically yet. On July 4th, I struggled to squeeze into the restaurant booth and my body was touching both the back of the bench and the table throughout the meal — a reality I’d become all to familiar with, in spite of the discomfort.

Fast forward to yesterday when I returned to the scene of the ongoing crime. Several inches separated me from the edge of the table. I can comfortably fit into a booth again.

I had noticed the gradual changes over these past few weeks: more space between my belly and the steering wheel when I drive; less incidental contact with things like walls and furniture; roomier workout shirts; getting into tops that haven’t fit in several years. While my drops in weight haven’t been monumental, the slow slimming down of my figure has. In addition to fat, I was surely carrying a lot of bloat that has finally taken a hike.

I am falling into the trap of feeling frustrated that the number on the scale doesn’t seem to fully match what I’m observing off of it, and I’m trying to temper that as I continue my progress. I will say that the pounds lost aren’t obsessing me the way they used to in previous iterations of this. That tells me this is the healthiest approach I have ever had to getting healthy.

That beats every other metric, every time.

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NEW DAY 57: Loose caboose

We have achieved saggy underwear, people. This is not a drill.

It’s that otherworldly moment of weight loss where somehow the waistband still fits, but the seat has extra room — and that extra room hangs off the booty like it melted. This creates quite the bum conundrum: it’s not ideal to have a bunch of excess material chilling in your pants, but it’s also not quite time for new undies.

And yet, I can’t complain at all. It’s physical evidence that there’s less cushion behind me. Woo! Talk about working your ass off, amirite??

Speaking of which, I am about to end day 5 of 75 Hard. Math tells me that I’m 6.7% of the way to the finish line. I may get there limping, kicking, screaming, and dragging a trail of unfilled panty material behind me, but gosh darn it, I’m gonna get there!

I can’t wait to see what else doesn’t fit by late October. ☺️

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NEW DAY 56: They don’t call it 75 Easy

It’s day 4 of 75 Hard, and boyyyyyy, is it ever! I linked to the rules in my previous post, but here’s the rap down of what I will be doing every day for the next 75 71:

  • Taking a daily full-body progress selfie (for my eyes only)
  • Reading at least 10 pages of a non-fiction book in the vein of self-improvement
  • Drinking 1 gallon (4 litres) of water
  • Not consuming any alcohol
  • Picking a diet to follow and not straying AT ALL (I’m doing 0 added sugar)
  • Working out twice per day for at least 45 minutes each time, 3 hours minimum apart — and one session has to be outdoors, rain or shine

As with Whole 30, these rules are iron clad and the regimen is as strict as it gets. If you fail in any of these components for a given day, you have failed the challenge. If you want to continue, you have to start all over from the very beginning.

It’s mostly carving out the time for all the things plus 2 workouts per day that is throwing me. I’ve been making it work, but it’s been tricky. My body is tired. I have no temptation to give up, but the mental fortitude required to keep going is no joke!

I’ve joined 3 DietBets this week, so I’ ve had a peek at the scale for my weigh-ins. I’m down another couple of pounds since starting 75 Hard. The cool part is that I can actually feel and see it now. Crazy how a couple of pounds can be what it takes to make all the progress suddenly show up! I’m participating in this challenge primarily for psychological soundness reasons, but won’t pretend I’m not excited about the weight loss I’m anticipating by the end.

It feels so good to start believing in myself again.

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NEW DAY 33: Just keep moving

My last two workouts have been tough.

Friday was a real struggle. Not even running as fast as I can/normally do, I started feeling almost queasy with 10 minutes left to go. I powered through it — it took every ounce of mental strength and focus that I had, and I kept going. I did it so I could say I did it, so: I DID IT. I’m proud of myself for getting through that, but it felt rough throughout and for a while after. It left me feeling so icky that I skipped a Sunday workout to try to respond to the message my body seemed to be sending me.

Yesterday, I decided I’d do a 60-minute treadmill walk rather than an elliptical run. At the 50-minute mark, I realized I had a massive blister forming on the ball of my right foot that already hurt and was a big enough bubble that it was making my steps weird, and that was causing discomfort in my hip. I had to stop myself 10 minutes shy of the time I’d wanted to hit. (Luckily, my at-home blister remedies have been effective and the thing is already flat and painless.)

In the interim, I discovered that the cut on my knee has gotten infected. Yay! (I’m treating it now, and I think it’s responding.)

But you know what? It’s not all bad news.

At dinner with a friend on Saturday night, he asked: “Are you losing weight?” I said yes, and I was surprised he could tell. He said it was noticeable in my face.

That’s step 1! Next up: neck and shoulders.

I signed up for a DietBet earlier this month. It was already a week underway when I decided to join, which means I had 25% less time to lose the same 4% of body weight that I would have had if I’d joined at the start date of the game. The weigh-out was today.

I won by 1/2 pound.

It’s working.

**exhale**

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NEW DAY 18: Mind over what’s the matter

Apparently I’m in a phase where it I can easily be triggered into anxious feelings. I had a wave of it yesterday that caught me off guard while trying to focus on something important. Today, I felt another coming on while reattempting the same thing.

I wanted to get out of my skin. It turns out that’s not a thing, so I did the next best one: I went to the gym.

I am not exactly in peak physical condition. In my fitness prime, I could go 5 miles on the elliptical without stopping, in well under an hour. The most I’ve been able to do in the past few weeks since I (re)started working out has been 10 not-fast minutes, getting me not-close to a single measly mile.

Today, I challenged myself: what if I could double that?

And then I did.

I can do 20 minutes. I could do 30. I could probably do 60. It wouldn’t be pretty — 20 wasn’t! — but I bet I could get myself there.

Another thing it wasn’t, was easy. Ho.ly.shit., the mental effort to keep going when I stopped wanting to around minute 12! But I pushed myself, because I didn’t want to feel that surge of disappointment for not doing what I had come there to do. I had something to prove. I had something I needed to do.

And I did it!

In 20 sweaty minutes, I ran 1.52 miles. I was consciously trying to keep my speed below 4.5 mph so I could make it the full time I wanted, and I had to rein myself in more than once. My legs have been sore from adjusting to returning to this type of movement after such a long hiatus, and they scream at me as soon as they feel the pedaling motion when I start the elliptical. They howled at me that entire time today, and they’ll probably be jelly tomorrow. But today, I felt powerful for turning my mental nerves into mental command, and exerting my mind over my body.
I was powerful.
I am powerful.

That feeling is unbeatable.

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DAY 021: A woman’s right to chews

The recent days have been a blend of several non-scale victories and several non-scale fails.  A quick recap:

NSV:  I made it the full week between scheduled weigh-ins without sneaking a peak at the scale, which made seeing the loss today highly satisfying.

NSF:  I caved.  I had coffee this morning.  My sleep may or may not suffer, but I honestly can’t even say I’m that upset about the coffee.  This presents an interesting experiment opportunity at zero caloric expense.

NSV:  I chose moderately healthy options for my meal out on Thursday, last night, and this morning, and succeeded at staying within my calorie limit every day this week.

NSF:  My moderately healthy brunch choice this morning, it turns out, was actually not that healthy.  Nutrition calculators are wonderful and terrible at the same time — if only I had looked in the moment instead of after the fact!  It blew up more than half of my daily limit!

NSV:  I still stayed within limit today by severely adjusting my meal plan for the rest of the day.  Lunch was a banana, my PM snack was carrots, and my dinner was steamed broccoli.  It sounds extreme, especially on a day when I got a good cardio workout in, but you know what?  I’m not hungry!  This isht is working, y’all.

NSF:  I didn’t get to the gym all the days I should have this week.  I could have done more good if I had.

NSV:  I still hit my step goals every day this week, and I did still make it to the gym a few times.

NSF:  No more data — which means NSVs outnumber NSFs!

NSV:  I managed to fully prepare and portion out my meals for this week in spite of having company staying with me — a LOT of work and sore feet, but also highly satisfying!
The lesson for me here is that we have a right to choose what we chew, and we can even allow a few calorie-dense selections into the fray.  My Thursday and Saturday meals were both dinners this week, meaning I could budget my intake throughout the day and go into the meal knowing exactly how many nutritional points I had to play with once I had the menu in my hand.  That worked well.  Today, since my meal out was in the morning and of higher caloric value than either of my other meals out this week, it was more painstaking to stay under my limit because there was so much time left in the day.  But not only did I make it work without feeling deprived, I also felt more motivation to work out as a result.  I will keep my right to what chews I make because I know how to operate within the rules.

And my body knows it.  It shed 4.6 pounds this week.

That means I’m gonna crush those 4 new DietBets.  Ahhhh, this is more like it!

Screen Shot 2018-01-21 at 7.25.39 PM

It also means I’m at -7.8 pounds so far for the month, and solidly within reach of losing the 12 pounds I wanted to lose in January.  It’s going to take some hard work, but my 3 weeks of habit forming are now officially in the books.

Let’s rock.

 

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DAY 014: All bets are off. And on.

For those keeping score, I am currently playing in five different DietBets.  (And that’s more than enough.  Cut me off, please.)  Tonight was weigh-in night for the newest of the bunch, and the first time I’ve weighed myself since last Sunday.  I didn’t expect to have a HUGE drop this week, but I did expect to have A drop.  After all, I stuck to my meal plan all week (except one planned lunch out on Thursday), and hit my steps goal every gosh darn day.  So, it was not my happiest moment when I stepped on the scale tonight to see… no change whatsoever.

And yet…

I wasn’t mad.  (I mean, I did say I’d try to remember that the fatty gods were kind to me not so long ago.)

Weight loss is a wild ride, man.  Some weeks, your body gives up 5 pounds for no apparent reason when you’ve done nothing atypical; some weeks, things go more or less as expected; and some weeks, you bust your ass and get bupkis.  Now, in no way did I bust my ass this week; the bupkis isn’t entirely undeserved, especially given the notorious “week 2 curse” of new health routines.  Was I a little frustrated and disappointed at seeing no difference on the scale this week?  Well, yeah.  But it immediately passed thanks to all the DietBetting I’ve been doing.  I hopped off the scale, swallowed my dinner, and took myself out into the 17-degree (Fahrenheit) air for a 33-minute walk.

Like hell this event is gonna repeat itself.

Where I fell short on the scale this week, I succeeded in non-scale victories.  I stayed within calories on Thursday in spite of the meal out.  I got my steps every day.  I brought my lunch to a last-minute lunch meeting with a colleague on Friday instead of getting food where we went.  I smuggled lunch into the fancy movie theater I went to today instead of ordering off their fancy, delicious menu.  I’m still off coffee and going strong.  I’ve had THREE boxes of chocolates in my office for a full week, and instead of having a single one myself, I’ve plied my colleagues with them instead.  And I finally made it to the gym.

My commitment hasn’t wavered.  It’s growing.  And even though the scale hasn’t shown me the changes, I can feel them.

Go time.

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DAY 012: Don’t hate, motivate!

DietBet check!

WHAT. IS. THIS.

Motivating!  That’s what it is!  January could turn out to be a very lucrative month for me!

I had a very long day yesterday, and I racked up 15,366 steps as a result.  According to Jiminy, exactly 22 consecutive minutes of that was power walking from point A to point B outside (it hit 60°F!) — and I apparently did it so hard, it registered as jogging.  OK, then!

I admit a bit sheepishly that I still haven’t mustered up enough… energy? courage? patience?… to go to the gym and really work out, but I do know I need to, and I finally am feeling like I want to.  It’s a three-day weekend coming up, so my excuses will be thin.  In spite of that, I’m feeling on track.  It felt great to get a 15,000-step day in for the first time in several months.  That, combined with the effects of decaffeinating my system (today is day 4 without coffee!), produced the best sleep I’ve had in a long time:  8 total hours, 3 hours and 56 minutes of which were deep sleep.  I can’t remember the last time I had more than 2 hours of deep sleep.  After a week of feeling draggy, I’m starting to get some perk back.  AND I only had one day with a caffeine-withdrawal headache!  Things are lookin’ up.

Happy Friday!

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DAY 007: Shaken, not stirred

Spoiler alert:  This has nothing to do with how I take my martinis.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to express how the last few months have been for me that led me to the point in my weight-loss mission where I find myself today.  In particular, the last 6 weeks of that have turned me into a raw, exposed nerve at times.  When I saw that today was #007 in my numbering scheme, a bit of an opportunity presented itself.  It’ll be a bit of a stretch, but hey, that’s been true for my pants of late; why should my writing be any different? 😉  So, let’s say I’ve been feeling existentially shaken, but somehow not stirred to action.  (It’s tortured, but whatever.  I’m sure I’ve done worse.)

Most of the year was pretty decent, just extra busy.  When things weren’t busy, I didn’t use my time the right way.  If I could go back to the summer and kick myself in the ass, let’s just say I would.  I did have an ankle sprain in there, but even still… I leaned hard into excuses that allowed me to stray from my healthy eating and abandon exercise altogether.

Zooming in on one cross-section of time, I take you to the period of late November through late December 2017, AKA the holiday season.  Call me over-analytical (and be correct), but a highly symbolic thing happened out of precisely nowhere.  The week leading up to Thanksgiving, the piercing I got to mark the halfway point in my mission got irritated.  It was slightly warm to the touch, and I could feel there was some sort of ball of nastiness between my earring and the hole in my ear.  I the area as best I could without taking the earring out, but after a few days of those attempts, there was no change.  I finally decided to do the obvious thing my body wanted me to do and remove the earring to give the hole a thorough cleaning.  The second the post left my ear, the nastiness ball got even larger and warmer, and the hole was imperceptible.  For the ensuing 2 weeks, it became a one-to-three-day cycle of cleancleanclean, scab slowly forms over site, scab falls off, repeat.  I haven’t been able to figure out what could have caused the sudden flare-up, but it was a week before I dared try getting an earring back in.  When I did, it was my sharp piercing stud from when I got my lobes pierced at age 11 — ohhhh, yeah, I still have those little pink studs in all their juvenile glory — and it hurt more than the original cartilage piercing did.  I’m pretty sure I partially re-pierced it.

That long-winded account is to say, I don’t view it as a coincidence that this happened at a moment in time where I’d solidly backtracked to the pre-halfway mark.  My piercing might as well have said, “You no longer have the right to this.  Come back when you’re serious.”

This saga is persisting even now, albeit to a lesser extent; but I am mostly leaving the earring out, periodically re-piercing the hole to drain it of blood (there’s a blood bubble that’s shrinking, but still present) and cleaning it.  I am not about to let that sucker permanently close.  At one point, I tried to insert the earring I got that hole pierced with, but my ear swelled up around it immediately and I had to take it right back out.  It was several days before I could do anything with it again.  I don’t know if I’ve developed a sudden allergy to sterling silver — is that a thing that can even happen?! — but it was wild.  I guess I’ll have to keep watching it.

Right after Thanksgiving, I had a minor car incident when a friend’s mom hit my car in her driveway.  No one was hurt, but it was enough that my car needed significant repairs, and I was without it, out of state, for over two weeks.  This meant a huge inconvenience at home; hours on the phone with insurance adjusters, rental car agents, and the auto body shop; and an unplanned trip back to my hometown that cost me 8 hours on the road and personal time off work to pick up my car when it was finally fixed.  It was an unwelcome bout of stress and annoyance.

Then, just before Christmas, my grandfather died.  I don’t think I need to expound on that.  Suffice it to say, I loved him very much and everything about letting him go was awful and painful, sometimes physically.

When I finally got back to my place after the unexpected, prolonged time at my parents’, I was drained.  I couldn’t get out of the terrible mental spiral of, What will they say about me when I die?  I need to quit my job and do something that matters.  Life’s too short.  I’m so unhappy.  Like a broken record, over and over again.  And I came damn close to doing something rash.  When I would re-pierce my ear during that period, I liked the pain.  I admit to doing it more than usual because I liked the pain.  The psychology attributed to cutters suddenly made sense to me:  giving myself this physical pain was a type of release valve for the internal pain I was feeling but didn’t know how to express, let alone work on solving.

I needed to get myself back into some semblance of control over the situation I was downward-spiraling myself further into.  That’s why I decided to do a fast to end the year.

After devouring breakfast on New Year’s Day, I signed up and weighed in for a new DietBet.  The pot is currently at $195,870 with 6,532 players.

This past week, I signed up for two additional DietBet games:  a Kickstarter that currently has 13,355 players and a pot of $400,650, and a Transformer that currently has a DietBet record (!) of 7,022 players and a pot of $932,400.  (Both are still open to new players — join me!)  These three new bets are in addition to the Transformer I joined in November that’s still in progress — and that I have lost both rounds of so far, but that I will come back and win!

Even after all the turbulence of the fall, I remained in a sort of helpless stupor where I knew what I needed to do, but I just couldn’t get myself there.  I’ve had to force myself back into meal prep and ratcheting up my give-a-shittitude, and the mental effort of babysitting myself has been tedious and exhausting.  It’s starting to take hold, though.  I’ve gone from being emotionally shaken to having finally shaken myself out of that rut.  I’ve gone from being emotionally not stirred to having finally stirred myself into taking charge.

I’ve already made some progress in spite of that, dropping 3.2 pounds since Monday night.  I’m definitely a long way from being all in, and I have yet to get a proper workout under my belt this time around, but it’s coming.  I’m going to get myself there.  There’s no alternative option.

Life’s too short for regret.