4 posts tagged “weight loss”
I've now lost 132 pounds. This summer has been an interesting time for my weight loss/healthy journey. At the beginning of summer I was losing a crazy amount of weight a week (like 5-7 pounds a week) because I was doing so much work around the house and particularly the yard but not eating anymore than normal. Then came family visits, friend visits, headfirst diving into the Louisville dining scene, a couple Maker's Mark nights, and the hot sign being on at the Krispy Kreme. So then the scales stopped moving. Even when the number on the scale wouldn't budge I knew I was making good progress in my health goals. My upper body strength has grown significantly (bags of mulch are heavy), my overall fitness level is higher, and I'm just really active on a daily basis. So though I can't say I wasn't frustrated when the scales wouldn't budge I knew it was just a plateau that I could work through and not the end or the beginning of anything. Now the scales are moving again, our eating out is back to a normal level and our healthy eating habits are right back on track. I should mention that earlier in spring I had set a min-goal of reaching the 130 pounds lost mark by my birthday. Clearly I've exceeded that and I couldn't be happier about it.
Speaking of birthdays, it is that time of year again. On 27 July I turn 31. Hmmm. I don't have a lot of thoughts or emotions on turning 31. This time last year I was in such a depressed, miserable place emotionally, physically, psychologically, it's good to now just be back to "yay a birthday. Presents, dinners with loved ones, cake, good times." instead of "my god I'm 30 years old and a complete and total failure." Definitely an upgrade.
At this point I've lost 126 pounds. I can't remember if I said this or not but when I started this journey I didn't really have a goal weight I wanted to reach. I threw out a number here and there but truthfully I didn't really care about that number. What I cared about was a clothing size. I wanted to be clothing size X. I don't know why I focused in on that particular clothing size but I did and I'm currently one size above clothing size X. That means I should comfortably be into clothing size X by the end of summer. But as I mentioned in last month's update I feel good and comfortable in my own skin but I still want to be significantly smaller, leaner, stronger and more physically fit. I thought that the number I was throwing about and clothing size X were at about the same point. They aren't. I'm one size away from clothing size X but 56 pounds away from the number. The clothing size and weight were quite close together in B's case but she's several inches shorter than I am and I'm just bigger overall. So in general there has been about a 50 pound difference between when she's in clothing size Q and when I'm in clothing size Q. That doesn't mean anything of course, it's just interesting to know that numbers on a scale can't be the sole motivating factor for anyone because our bodies are each so very different and one weight on me looks and feels very different on someone else. I've always known this but it's a good reminder. I got another kind of good reminder this week too. A reminder of why I don't like to talk about these things with most people. This week someone commented that I'd lost a lot of weight. I said "Yeah, a little." She said something like oh it's much more than a little. I smiled and started to move on. Then she pressed and said "So has it been really, really hard?" I said "well there has been hard work of course in terms of exercise but the actual change in lifestyle has not been that difficult. We've found that we very much enjoying eating healthily, we very much enjoy exercising, we very much enjoy being smaller more fit people. So in that regard no, it hasn't been that difficult. I don't feel like I'm constantly working or that I'm deprived at all." She smirked and said "Well you'll get to a point where it will be much, much harder to lose weight. You'll see." What? What am I supposed to do with that? You assume that I want to lose more weight, you assume that I want to be skinny, you assume a lot and you just seem petty. You don't ask if I feel good, you don't ask what kind of exercise I like, you don't give any useful or supportive comments. Don't ever bring this topic up to me again. Ahem, moving on.
We used the gym at our apartment complex in Indianapolis so since we've been in Louisville we have been treadmill and elliptical machine-less. We have the machines we're going to buy picked out and the space all ready for them we've just not been to buy them yet. However a lack of exercise has not been a problem since we got here. Our house has two stories, sits on hill on a street with a hill, surrounded by other streets on a hill (seriously we're in a valley), has a ton of yard work to do (including mowing the hilly yard with a reel mower), our neighborhood has lots of stuff to walk to and we of course have our beloved new bikes.The routine has been to walk 2 or 3 miles each day with a 2 mile or so bike ride thrown in with lots of house work to do during the week. During the weekend those same 2 or 3 walking miles, same biking miles but lots and lots and lots of yard work. You know it's hot in Kentucky during the summer right? I've been sweating and working and working and sweating and loving lots of the minutes of it. Not every minute you understand, but lots of the minutes of it. My arms are quite sore today from mowing the yard yesterday. Quite sore.
So I'm confident that we'll continue our healthy eating (we're biking to the farmer's market tomorrow morning, yum) because that's what feels good to us and what we like to do and we'll continue exercising (walk, bike, treadmill, etc on the way) and even expand our physical activities (we're looking into some canoe/kayaking options, and both really want to try skiing/snowboarding this winter, and I may want to take up golf again, walking the course naturally). So even with size X right around the corner I think my weight is still going to go further down. I don't know how much further down it will go though. The BMI index says I've got a long, long way to go but I know there isn't much fat left on my hips. Seriously, my hip bones are close to jutting out at this point. If I get to a point where I have to exercise like a crazy person and starve just to lose more and more weight as opposed to just feeling good and healthy then that's the point where my weight is going to stay. Like I said above, the number can't be the thing. A healthy weight for me isn't necessarily a healthy weight for you. I hope that a healthy, comfortable weight is about 56 pounds from now but maybe it's 40 pounds from now or maybe even 60 pounds. I don't know but I know that I look good, I feel good and I'm strong and active. That's what's important. If I don't ever break that additional 56 pound mark but I look good, feel good and am strong, active and healthy then that's A-ok.
Did you catch that last part where I said I looked good? That's a self-confidence thing. My self-confidence was gone for the 4 years we lived in Indianapolis. We've gotten reacquainted here in Louisville and we find that we like each other very much. Here's the thing about me and Louisville. When I'm here I'm "The best, cutest, quietest most confident version of" myself. And I sometimes "wear lip gloss." Here the cute dyke at the cafe flirts with me and I flirt back a tiny bit before letting it be known that I'm completely taken. Here I go to the coffee shop by myself and hang out and chat with strangers. Here I'm joining a book club. After the Indianapolis book club fiasco (anyone remember that?) it's shocking that I'd be up for joining one ever again but here I don't have a single reservation about it. It meets next Sunday afternoon at a cool coffee house and the book is "This Is Not Chick Lit." Here I find it easy to connect with an artist I met online and tell her truthfully that she sounds cool and I hope B and I can be friends with her and her partner. She says she feels the same way. We're meeting for coffee in a hour at a cool lesbian coffee house. Here I find it easy to be honest and earnest about a documentary photography project I'm working on and not care if someone gets it or not, thinks I'm silly for doing it or not. It's my project, it's work I want to do and I'm doing it. Fin.
That's what I'm like here. That's who I am here. It is the real me. The me that's been buried. Buried under excess weight. Buried under Indianapolis' cold winters and frosty people. Buried under a layer of unhappiness I didn't really understand. Buried under low self esteem and extreme self doubt. This all sounds a bit melodramatic doesn't it? That's cool though because the real me is a bit melodramatic.If you've only known me during the Indianapolis years then we definitely need to get reacquainted.
Hello there, it's very nice to meet you. Enough about me. What do you think of me? Bwhaaa, I kid, I kid.
When I changed my lifestyle I naturally expected to lose weight, be healthier and be more physically able. All of those things have happened, continue to happen and will hopefully be happening long into the future. I didn't think about all the details included in losing a significant amount of weight though and some of them are surprising. One of those details is that I suddenly seemed to have lost a shoe size. For my entire adult life I've worn men's shoes over women's shoes in probably a 3 to 1 ration. I mention that just to explain that my default shoe size is 9.5 Men's. For as long as I've been buying my own shoes my shoe size has been 9.5. Except now it's not. I went to buy some new running/walking shoes a couple weeks ago and found that the 9.5 I tried on was much too big and that the 9 was a much better fit. I'd noticed that my current running shoes were loose but just attributed it to generally stretching aging. I just pulled out my Birkenstock sandals and found that they are now considerably too large for my foot. I expected to have to buy all new clothes, I'm just surprised that apparently I have to buy all new shoes too.
As of this morning's trip to the scales I've lost 101.6 pounds. That's a pretty staggering number. Of course I've got another 80 to lose to reach my goal weight (though really my goals are more in terms of clothing sizes and being able to accomplish certain physical feats) and probably another 100 or even more to lose should I suddenly want to reach society's/bmi chart's definition of not being overweight. I don't measure my waist or my hips or any of that but I do like to wear men's pants frequently so given that they're sized by waist number I know that as of a few weeks ago, when I bought a new pair of shorts, I've lost about 12-14 inches around my waist.
So 101.6 pounds and at least 12 inches around the waist.
As I said a few weeks ago when I hit the 90 pounds lost mark I don't hate my body anymore. I don't love it, I look forward to it getting smaller, stronger, faster, having more endurance than it does now but I don't hate it. I'm comfortable in my skin. That's really an amazing feeling. I started to say that unless you've been really fat you don't know what it means to hate your body that much and know what a relief it is to not feel that way anymore. However I think that would be an unfair statement because lots and lots of people hate their bodies. It's my natural inclination to say things like "what on earth does she have to be unhappy about? She's 5'10 and weighs 195 pounds. She looks amazing." But you can't discount what someone feels just because you think it's irrational. That doesn't mean that I don't get really irritated when people comment on my weight loss and follow it up with "Oh. My. God. I have to lose these 10 pounds. Jesus I look awful." But I'm trying to be a more considerate, understanding person when it comes to the very individual, very internal, very emotional feelings we all have about our bodies.
I still don't know what to say to people who comment on my weight lost. The other day a neighbor asked me how much I'd lost and I had absolutely no intention of telling her a number. I don't know why but I just wasn't comfortable with that at all. So I said "a little." She laughed and said "A whole lot more than a little." Yes I guess a hundred pounds is a whole lot more than a little.
Even though I'm unemployed (notice how I just slipped that in and neglected to give any details about why I left the job I took a few weeks ago? Smooth I say) I'm going to buy myself the new-ish Gomez CD today. Not so much as a "reward" but just as "I feel really good today and good new music makes even really good days even better." And I really dig Gomez.
I'm also going to Starbucks in a few minutes. I'm going to enjoy my vanilla cappuccino, eat my yogurt, write in my journal and read my book. That's really my favorite way to spend a morning. That reminds me of something. I know I've written before about people who make comments like "oh you must not eat food x or y" and how silly that is right? Well some people are surprised, nay shocked to find out that I don't order non-fat drinks at Starbucks. I do from time to time enjoy a Frappuccino Light but when I have a hot beverage it is full fat, whole milk all the way. Why? Because I really don't enjoy drinks made with skim milk. Why else? I really, really love the taste of a cup of coffee with a couple of tablespoons of half & half and I really, really love the taste of cappuccinos made with whole milk. So when I have coffee I make it work with my food plan for the day. It's really that simple. People have a hard time understanding that. My family, people on the street, people I know are trying to lose weight so often seem to think that becoming healthier is one long exercise in deprivation. It's so not and I wish I could get that point across to people. When you throw out most of the junk you eat then you start eating better, healthier, tastier foods. And because you're eating so much more healthily it's ok to have whole milk cappuccinos or full fat yogurt instead of having everything fat free all the time. You can find ways to make it work and still keep foods and beverages you love. Honest. 101.6 pounds says I'm right on this.
