Tag Archives: travel

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NEW DAY 230: To beach their own

Six months ago, I was in the same vacation spot.
But everything was different.

Then: heat of summer.
Now: dead of winter.

Then: north side beach.
Now: south side beach.

Then: could barely walk through the sand.
Now: daily runs on the sand.

Then: 70 pounds heavier.
Now: less than 70 pounds left to lose.

Those are just the easy-to-spot distinctions. It would take a lot more time to go into how very fragile, wobbly, unconfident, and ginger I was Then. Promising things were awaiting me at home after my summer trip, but I wasn’t feeling steady about them. I had lost trust in the universe, while slowly clawing my way out from under the pile of collapsed rubble that had been my worldview, and bargaining with myself to keep going.

I didn’t know why to keep going. I had taken the part of my brain that asks and tries to answer that question, offline. I just… did.

Running on the hardened sand at the very end of January was a much more meaningful experience than sunning on the gritty sand at the very beginning of August. It’s hard to compare two experiences that are so drastically different, but what makes it possible is me. I’m more different than any side-by-side pictures of the coast separated by seasonality. My seasonal changes are also visible, but it’s the ones only I can see that are the most pronounced, the most powerful, and the most profound. But the best part of all of that is the ownership I feel. I have rebuilt and reclaimed all of it, and used it to propel me forward.

That’s why in the Now, I had to frequently pause during my oceanside jogs. It wasn’t to catch my breath. It wasn’t to rest tired legs. It was to let the waves of months of emotion wash over me as I involuntarily recognized how far I’ve come.

I can’t wait to see what further developments come about by the next time I find myself on a beach.

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NEW DAY 52: Vacation (all I ever wanted)

I got home yesterday from 2 weeks of traveling. I saw new places with familiar faces, spent a lot of time outdoors, and truly got away from things that I needed an escape from. I am back feeling recharged and still committed to healthy living. I actually missed the gym while I was away — and I continued to have no interest in tasty treats. The scale rewarded my consistency with a 4-lb loss.

Part of my travels was with a friend I hadn’t seen in a decade. In the time since, she has become very outdoorsy and athletic: she’s an avid hiker, jogger, and rock climber. When I say she’s athletic, I mean she’s climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. Recently. (Yeah, that’s right, my people are freakin’ cool.) So uh, I did have some concerns about whether I’d be able to keep up with her while we were roaming around our leg of the trip. I’m not saying I was matching her pace, but I was matching her energy level, and I wasn’t all out of breath and incapable of doing the things we wanted to do because I was too overweight and out of shape. Of all the high points of my trip — which was made up of almost exclusively high points — this is the one I may be happiest about.

I took myself on a bucket-list trip to Australia back in October for my birthday. I had always wanted to make that trip, but hesitated not only because of the expense and the fact that it would be a solo trek, but perhaps most of all because I knew there would be things that my size and (lack of) fitness would preclude me from doing, which I would have wanted to do. Sure enough, there were activities I had to opt out of for those reasons. The things I did do, I found took a lot longer for me to do and required a lot more energy to do than they should have. It was perhaps the worst shape I’ve ever been in on a trip like that, which is regrettable. I’m still glad I went, but I can’t pretend I feel no disappointment from the overall experience. I look forward to going back on a redemption trip there at some future point.

Come Monday, my daily routine will be changing and I’ll have to figure out how to reconfigure my schedule to include exercise time. I’m beginning 75 Hard with the friend who knows about this blog (hi!) tomorrow on something of a whim (for me), so I’m really locking in some hardcore stuff to take shape over the next 2.5 months! It seems like fortuitous timing to sync with my return from vacation and pivot into a new chapter with the start of a new job on Monday. Someone remind me on day 23 that I did this to myself. 🙃

That about covers it for now, but I trust there will be a lot of content in the coming 75 days or so!