Perspective

So here's the thing about a really heavy person losing weight -- not a chubby person who could stand to lose a few pounds -- a really heavy person: there are many many many little changes that take place that no one in the world would notice. A roll becomes a crease which becomes smooth -- the size -- from outside -- through clothes -- doesn't change a bit, but the body does. It is wonderful, but privately so.

I experience these private victories and revel in them -- but it does make me sad that my progress isn't evident from the outside. I remind myself constantly that I am doing this for myself and that the opinions of others shouldn't matter.

But, dammit, I want to look good to to others. 

That is vain and stupid and shallow and I need to get over it. I don't think it is going to happen. And it shouldn't matter.

Another observation: when I went home for Christmas -- 50 pounds lighter but still, admittedly, significantly overweight -- no one seemed to notice. Friends I haven't seen in months notice, but family and friends from home did not. I think -- and this is pure speculation -- that that may be because my local friends have never known me as anything other than very very fat -- so the change from very very fat to very fat was noticeable. People who have known me all my life -- who knew me in my teens and 20's when I was not even kinda fat, much less very or very very fat just didn't notice what -- in the grand scheme of things -- was a relatively small outward change.

It was a reminder that -- while I've been patting myself on the back and feeling like I'm all fierce -- I'm still a fat middle-aged woman.

But a less fat middle-aged woman than I was 9 months ago.

I'm off to the gym.

It's what I do.

I go to the gym and I eat super-low carb.

I behave like people who look a helluva a lot better than me. I look like people who behave a helluva lot worse than me. It's not fair, but it is what it is. I'll keep doing these things that are good for me because I feel better.

Today, though, I feel more lumpy than fierce.

But maybe tomorrow...

Salt in a Wound

The holidays and the weeks leading up to them have been rough. Not in the way you might think -- I haven't been gobbling up cookies or other goodies. I haven't been neglecting my workouts. I haven't even had a cocktail. All I can figure is that it must be a sodium issue. Out of necessity I have been eating way more processed foods than my body is accustomed to. And instead of countering that by drinking more water, like a person of normal intelligence would, I'm drinking less.

I am puffy and gross and my jeans don't fit the way I want them too.

And the real food issues are in the immediate future.

There is a part of me that thinks looking puffy and gross over the holidays -- when, I'll admit, I was sort of looking forward to seeing people I haven't seen in a year in a new body -- is some sort of karmic retribution. I was cocky. I was proud. I was even a little bit vain. Maybe a lot. What better reality check than to not be able to zip my jeans without doing a little dance?

I had gotten to a place in this journey -- emotionally -- where I was able to focus on the positive changes I've made. For the past two days, all I can really see is how far there is left to go.

I AM stronger.

But I'm still really fat.

Really, really fat.

The cheekbones that, I'll admit, I vainly admired have faded into puffy oblivion.

AND YET,

I know that, given the situations that I've been in, I've made the best choices I could possibly be expected to make. Will I be able to do so for the next two days? Feeling down on myself and disgusting? Man, I hope so.

When I'm home and the traveling part is over I can drink water like a boss to flush this out. I can sit in a steam room. Heck, I can do sit-ups in a steam room.

This is not the end of the journey. I've come too far (though you wouldn't know it to look at my lumpy-ass self today) to let a little roadblock stop me.

But it would be a lot easier to pass by cookies and treats if I still felt fierce and hot. Hercules makes better choices than the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man.

But maybe it was time for a little humility. Maybe it was time for a reality check. Maybe it's time to see if I can't knock out some push-ups on my mom's squeaky floor before people start waking up and making cinnamon buns. Maybe it's time to stop feeling sorry for myself and power through this the best I can.

I'm disappointed in myself. I feel like I'm following all the rules and I'm still losing the game. (But not, semi-ironically) the weight.

Christmas, man.

Humbug.

Back With a Vengeance

Backslide managed.

Plateau resumed.

Cortisone injected.

It. Is. On.

A great visit with the doctor and a couple ginormous salads later and all is well.

Holiday weekend?

Bring it!

Head Down, Power Through

I gained weight.

I gained fucking weight.

I fucking gained weight.

I am so angry at myself right now.

It's not been a great week.

We have eaten out a lot.

Like -- breakfast, lunch and dinner a lot.

I make the best choices I can.

Except that damn fudge at work. That was not a good choice. And I made it two days in a row.

But mostly I make the best choices I can.

I missed a couple workouts last week.

Life. Holidays. Stuff.

But I got in more than I missed. I really only missed two.

Everything combined in a bad way.

I feel gross.

BUT

(And that's a big but, to go along with my big butt. See what I did there?)

I still went to the gym this morning.

I will make the best choices I possibly can today.

I will not let this stop me.

Because it's only weight.

I'm still strong -- I know -- I lifted the hell out of heavy things this morning. I pushed like I was pissed. (Mostly because I was. That helped.)

It's a backslide.

They happen.

They're possibly worse, even, than plateaus.

But I can beat it.

I can beat the hell out of it.

Head down, power through.

Spectacularly Normal

An interesting phenomenon has been occurring this week. I have been in several social situations and in each one, I was keenly aware of not feeling like the biggest person in the room. Now let me be clear: in at least a couple of those situations, if not all, I still WAS the biggest person in the room. But I didn't feel so -- unwieldy. In the past, in social situations, I was keenly aware of my size and did everything I could to apologize for it without actually apologizing for it. (because, as I learned, people get really uncomfortable when you do that). I would head for a corner, I would sit down if it was an option so that I didn't take up as much of the space that the regular people needed to mingle, I would make myself as unobtrusive as possible. If there were throw pillows handy, I'd reach for one and cover as much of myself as I could with it in a further attempt to hide.

This week -- in several different situations with several different groups of people -- I did not feel like that. I felt -- normal. And normal felt spectacular.

I am still big. I am definitely still on the bigger side of normal. I am not at anyone's goal weight or goal size, including my own.

But.

I no longer feel like I need to be relegated to the sidelines of -- anything.

It must be the straight size clothes.

I'm still a big girl -- but I'm in the game.

I'm hoping to be at a new goal next year (next month, next week, tomorrow...) -- more muscle, less fat.

THAT has been my goal all along. BOTH parts of it. I don't want to be thin. I want massive muscles. I want to be wicked strong.

For now, though, I'm on the big end of normal.

And coming from where I've been, that feels better than, to paraphrase the old dieting motto, any holiday treat tastes.

Happy Holidays indeed.

Or perhaps I should say, Spectacularly Normal Holidays.

During: Before the After, But After the Before

We all love a good "before" and "after" photo.  I don't have one of those (yet). But I have this: A before and during.

Summer 2011/Winter 2012

The first photo was taken on a girls' weekend at Kelley's Island, when the motto Eat, Drink and Be Merry still included eating and drinking. The second photo was taken this morning when I chanced upon the same outfit and decided to try it on and see how it looked with 50 less pounds in it. I cannot wait to take another picture 50 pounds from now.  I have put this outfit on a hanger in the back of my closet with that purpose in mind.

It would be very easy to pick apart the second picture. It would be easy, but it wouldn't be nice -- and I am making a concerted effort to be nicer to myself. So I shall take the high road and look at the two comparatively, rather than looking at either critically. It was what it was, it is what it is, it shall be what it shall be.

The second picture shows progress. It does not show a mission accomplished. I know this. But it shows progress -- steps in the right direction.

I like it.

And I like that I am happy in both.

I expect to be happy when the after is added, too.

But it's easy to look happy in the after.

Everyone always looks happy in the after.

I love that I was happy in the before and that I am happy in the during.

Yo-Yo-NO!

This is not the first time in my life that I have adopted healthy eating habits.

Like many fat people, I was always relatively well informed about calories and fat and "good" foods and "bad" foods. (I hated even typing that, so insane is the concept of applying these terms to food. Food is not good or bad. It is food. Now what our bodies do with it....) I knew the whole calories in/calories out mantra (completely false and wildly uninformed). I read. I tried. I worked. I tried harder. I would - like so many others like me - achieve a little weight loss success and then gain it all back and then some. But oh, how I tried.

When my doctor (a former competitive bodybuilder, for what it's worth) told me to eliminate carbs the first time, I thought he was whack. I had read enough to know that you can't eliminate an entire food group and be healthy. I continued to eat what I considered to be a healthy, well-balanced diet. I also continued to gain weight. It was very distressing. Eventually I gave up on trying and just ate whatever I wanted. I didn't gain like crazy. I maintained. I reasoned - if I can torture myself to try to eat healthy and still be this weight, or eat everything that gives me pleasure and still be this weight -- well -- I think I'm gonna have to go with pleasure.

And I did.

I sort of epitomized fat and happy.

When I was distressed, it was because of societal expectations, not because of any self-hatred.

Spin, baby, spin.

One day I decided that fat and happy was cool, but I'd also like to be strong.

I started lifting which is a brilliant thing for heavy people to do. Our muscles condition quickly and nicely, generally speaking -- of course there are exceptions to every rule -- because we are accustomed to carrying around a lot of weight. It's not easy being fat. I'll tell you -- I've just lost 50 pounds and -- while I can certainly lift 50 pounds, I sure wouldn't want to do it all day.

When the doc approached me again about cutting out carbs, I was much more primed to listen. I did not cut out fruits or high carb vegetables, but I did cut out pasta, sugar, flour (not just white!) -- even oatmeal and other grains and (gulp) booze. He explained that while many of those things could be handled by most people my body did just terrible things with them. I made an appointment to see him in 6 weeks and I stuck to the plan. I ate no carbs and worked with my trainer twice a week and worked out on my own the other five days. When I returned to the doctor in six weeks time I had cheated exactly 5 times. I had eaten tortilla chips one night (no ill effect) had 2 dry martinis (no ill effect) had a bag of Chex Mix (no ill effect) and had a sugary cocktail (sick as a dog). 

In six weeks I lost over 20 pounds. I knew there was something to this. It was working. And I felt good -- better than I'd ever felt in my life. I left the doctor's office that day with instructions to set aside one meal every 7-10 days to eat whatever I wanted. There were only 2 rules: Never breakfast and never booze. The reasoning behind breakfast was this: eating carbs makes me sluggish and tired. Feeling that way in the evening is no big deal -- go to bed and sleep it off -- but feeling that way all day is a major bitch. I know. I cheated once for breakfast and had pancakes. It was most regrettable.

I have learned that incorporating that "cheat" meal is as important as not eating carbs the rest of the week. It's not only good for my psyche, it's good for my body too. I am absolutely certain that that weekly no-holds-barred meal will be the difference between this and every other time I've tried to modify my eating. It probably slows the weight loss process down, but I think it also provides an assurance that the weight that comes off will stay off. For what it's worth -- I do generally slip into a food coma following my "cheat" meal.

I'm not losing as quickly as I was in the beginning, but I'm still losing. I work with my trainer 3 times a week now. I cannot recall ever feeling better.

I cannot possibly emphasize enough that this is working for me because I have an extreme sensitivity to carbs. I have a pretty severe thyroid disorder, too, which plays into all of this. I will be cutting back on fruit and legumes soon. But this is because of my metabolism and my genetic make-up. Most people can include whole grains in a healthy diet very successfully. There is no such thing as a one size fits all plan. There are no universal truths.

People who claim that they have fallen upon the one and only way to be healthy and lose weight are dangerously irresponsible. It's important to find out what works for you. This seems to work for me.

Support Me on This

Some facts:

I have lost 50 pounds.

I am still very big.

I love clothes.

I have a very exaggerated curvy figure. My hips, thighs and bottom are disproportionately large in comparison to what is becoming a much smaller waist.

That doesn't sound too bad. It sounds pretty good to a certain faction, I'll reckon.

But it's a very difficult figure to dress.

Loose clothes are comfortable, but they look sloppy and -- more importantly -- hide that waist I've been working so hard on.

Tighter clothes -- well -- that's the direction I was leaning.  Until I saw a full length picture of myself. I'd post it here, but I've already cropped it. It was so distressing. I felt so cute and stylish but I still just looked frumpy and fat. 

DAMN it!

One can't wear wrap dresses every day. (Or can one?)

So I've been thinking about support garments. I haven't worn them in years. You get to a certain weight  and the little bit of help that they offer doesn't really mean anything. Band-aid on a stab wound territory. But at this new -- still large but smaller -- weight, I wonder if they might be just the thing to push me into looking as cute and stylish as I feel.

It sort of feels like a cheat to even be thinking about it.

I don't color my hair.

I don't wear much make-up.

I pretty much am what I am. I'm -- honest about my looks. No secrets. No surprises. Here I am, this is me.

Would a supportive undergarment change that?

Would compression pants make me look and feel better at the gym? Or would they just make me look like a walking sausage?

I had already promised myself that my next big clothing splurge was going to be a trip to Victoria's Secret for a proper bra fitting and a handful of proper bras. Is offering some support to the lower regions as well as the upper really such a huge step? Would I be trying to deceive the world -- or, worse yet, myself -- or is it really just as simple as wanting to look nicer in the clothes I want to wear?

So many questions.

So little money.

What Number Am I Thinking Of?

If you guessed "Sixty-nine, dudes!" you were darn close. 

The correct answer is 67.75.

It is my new temporary favorite number.

It is how much weight I have left to lose.

Now you might be thinking -- and rightfully so -- that is a damn odd number -- plus it doesn't really seem like anything to brag about.

Perspective.  It's all about perspective. Allow me to elaborate on mine.

A woman I've never spoken to before approached me today at the gym. "I just wanted to tell you that I've really noticed all of your hard work paying off. You've changed your shape really quickly."

"Thanks!" I said, laughing a little bit, "But it hasn't really been that quick!"

"Maybe not from your perspective (there's that word again!), but watching you it's seemed fast. You are really persistent!"

"Thank you for that! I've lost almost 50 pounds, but I still have about 100 to go." Actually, to get to the kind of numbers the (EVIL) BMI charts think I should be hitting, it's more like 110 or 120, but 100 is the most most people -- including me -- can wrap their brain around, so I rounded down.  Or so I thought. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

"That's great! A third of the way there!"

My trainer came by then, before she had a chance to say the dreaded "I" word. (Inspiration. I hate that word. I don't know why, but it really rubs me the wrong way. She was headed there I think, but we managed to avoid it. This time, anyway.)

We did my measurements today. Since I started training with her I've gone from 33.5% body fat to 25% body fat. That is substantial! While I acknowledge that 25% body fat is nothing to brag about, dropping 8.5% is inarguably impressive. That wasn't the best part. The best part was when she said I was still carrying 67.75 pounds of fat. I understand if you don't get right away why that is even a good part, much less the best part.

This means that I not only cannot but SHOULD not lose more than 67.75 pounds. Not 100 pounds. Not 110 or 120 pounds. 67.75 pounds.

Not even.

Because 67.75 pounds would put me at 0% body fat and that is not a reasonable goal for anyone.

So.

LESS THAN 67.75 pounds.

I can SO do that.

My muscle mass is increasing more rapidly than the fat is coming off, too.

I didn't commit those numbers to memory but they were good. If this fat comes off, I'll be a beast.

Rawr.

Can We Talk?

I hit some milestones last weekend and I was pretty euphoric about it. As is almost always the case, euphoria was followed by a crash.

I like to talk about -- and especially to write about -- the euphoric parts. I need to talk about -- or at least to write about -- the crashes.

I committed a super faux pax last week and used Facebook as a forum for writing about the euphoria. It was not the proper venue. It came across like bragging. I meant to share a small triumph -- a small milestone -- a small hurdle managed -- and instead I was alienating and obnoxious.

I don't want to do that anymore.

But I need to talk.

So I'm opening this blog up again.

I will whine here.

I will pat myself on the back here.

I will be brutally honest in my journey towards fitness -- the good, the bad and the ugly.

Because I need to.

Sometimes things need to be said, even if they don't need to be heard.

So.

The euphoria.

I shopped in a straight sizes store. Old Navy. Not just jersey shirts -- which I've pretty much always been able to buy there. Jeans. Straight size jeans. First time in a very long time. So long I can't remember when the last time was. I know a lot of words, but none of them could accurately convey the way I felt when I zipped up those jeans. Without lying down. Without jumping up and down. Without Spanx. Just me and a pair of jeans from Old Navy that zipped easily.

This was a triumph, and I presented it as such.

A lot of people celebrated it, too -- the people who weren't too turned off by the obnoxiousness of it all, anyway -- and I panicked. I had presented myself as some kind of success story and I am NOT. I have lost almost 50 pounds -- and that is undeniably an accomplishment to be proud of -- but it is not a fait accompli. I still have over 100 pounds to go before anyone sane would consider me a success story. Hell, even THEN most would still think I could benefit from dropping a few more pounds. I just wanted to share my joy at my little milestone. I didn't mean to imply that I have succeeded. I have  merely begun. 

The crash.

A small triumph in the dressing room lead to a small set-back in the gym and on the scale. I could not begin to tell you why. My limited background in psychology doesn't offer an explanation, although I'm certain that there is a simple one. But I didn't want to go to the gym. When I got there, I didn't want to work. And when my trainer missed our session yesterday I cut out early and had pancakes.

What.

The.

Bloody.

Fucking.

Hell.

I haven't had pancakes in over 9 months.

They tasted good.

And I felt like shit the whole day. 

Just like my doctor told me I would if I ate carbs for breakfast.

Just like I knew I would.

And I ate them anyway.

I had to force myself to eat a healthy lunch, snack and dinner -- all I wanted to do was crash. I felt awful and I couldn't concentrate. And gassy? Oh my Lord. What an awful, yucky, and completely self-imposed and absolutely deserved day.

And my back hurt. That wasn't because of the pancakes. Carbs are bad for me, but they are not the source of ALL evil. (everyone knows THAT title belongs to the diet industry. Another post for another day.) I went to the gym anyway. Friday is normally a cardio day, so I was plugging along on the elliptical, watching the seconds tick by and pissed at the world when I decided to cut cardio short, call it a warm-up, and lift. I'd missed my session with my trainer yesterday and I was going to miss my usual Saturday session -- not a reason in the world not to.

I kept my sore back in mind as I chose my starting weights. It would have been hard not to, the pain was such that it was difficult even to breathe. Check this out -- I was doing a reclined bench press. I started out with nothing on the bar to warm up. My nose itched in the middle of a lift and I took one hand off of the bar and scratched it, continuing to pump with one arm. It was light, so this was no great feat of strength, but it cracked me up. Look, Ma...

I increased my weights slowly and got myself to a point of reasonable respect.

I was breathing easier and my back hurt less.

I moved on to weighted squats. About halfway through my second set I realized that my back didn't hurt anymore.

I felt good again.

Lifting is magic.

I can't deprive myself of it -- it is just too wonderful -- too overall great for me.

I don't -- and never will -- look like someone who enjoys lifting. 

I am 50 pounds lighter but still ridiculously overweight.

I don't get to enjoy the benefits of a beautiful muscular physique.

But I get to wear jeans from Old Navy and my back doesn't hurt.

I ate a healthy and delicious high protein breakfast this morning.

Today is already kicking yesterday's ass.