Work out joy and a changing equation

Weight: 240.5

I had a fabulous workout yesterday. I went to the gym pretty much straight after work, and did 45 minutes on the elliptical. But it wasn't your run of the mill "chug along on the elliptical." It was me, giving everything I had and going faster and harder than I thought I could. It was the sort of workout I hadn't had in a while, and it felt great. I'm so glad I'm working out regularly again, and I haven't stopped beaming since I left the gym last night.

Despite yesterday's slight melancholy and yearning over a past I couldn't change, I do think on the whole I'm quite a bit happier when I'm on track and losing weight. A feeling of joy just started on Thursday, shortly after I returned to blogland and the world of the on-track, and it by and large hasn't subsided.

I've spoken in the past about what we're really saying when we embark on a diet/lifestyle change/weight loss effort/whatever you want to call it:

What "I'm on a diet" says, essentially, is "I was wrong." It says somehow, along the way, I messed up. Maybe I thought I enjoyed food more than the idea of being thin, maybe I was stressed and let impulse get the better of me, maybe I was just plain lazy, but what I did, was wrong. Being fat was a wrong choice. I messed up. And right now, I'm fixing my error.

(Side note: reading that post back I think it may be the best post I've written here. In general I'm not wild about my writing, but I do from time to time write things that I think are good, and that post is definitely one I like. Best or not, it's certainly one of my favorites.)

And I think what I said there is true. It does say that. But it also says something else.

The flip side of what "I'm on a diet" says is "I'm worth investing in." Yes, mistakes were made, but I'm worthwhile, I'm worth changing. That there's value in me, and that I'm worth protecting and taking care of. It's saying my future and my health are worth whatever pains I must endure along the way. It's not just saying the short term suffering is worth the long term rewards, it's saying I am worth far more than cramps or hunger pains or delicious delicious cheesecake.

I'm going to talk about this more tomorrow: there's a lot to be said here, about faith in yourself, about marginal costs, and about what side of the equation flips for the "I'm worth dieting" vs. "no, I'd really just have the pizza."

In the mean time, though, as my head churns the analysis and philosophy of it all, I'm still smiling. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be exercising. I'm happy to be eating healthy. And I'm happy that it's the season where the grocery store sells huuuuuge strawberries that I just absolutely love.

For the comments: what's one thing you're happy about today?

Onward and downward

Thank you all so much for the warm welcome back! It definitely feels good to have returned to blogland.

I did indeed go to the gym last night, and it was nice to be back after quite a few weeks away. I only put in 20 minutes on the elliptical, but it was much better than nothing. Combined with the hour walk during lunch yesterday, and the mile roundtrip walk to/from the gym, I think I got in some pretty solid activity.


I weighed in this morning at 242.7, which is 1.8 pounds less than yesterday. The scale tends to move quickly in the first few days of a new/renewed diet, but it's still nice to see. Getting rid of the easy weight is always a nice way to kickstart a diet.

The question, of course, is how much easy weight I have to lose. I'm hoping a good portion of the 240s will end up being fluff and water weight and that I'll be back in the 230s in no time, but things of course don't always turn out as we might hope.

Anyway, a few "While I was aways" just to get you guys updated:

While I was away, I finished my Arabic class. I got an A! I'm really happy with it and enjoy the language, but I think I'm not going to do Arabic this semester and instead focus on losing weight. I simply don't think it's smart to spend 10 hours a week (6 class, 4 homework) on it at the moment.

While I was away, a big paper that I'd spent a lot of time on at work finally came out. It's been received very well, and I got thanked in the footnotes! I was, I won't lie, pretty damn proud.

While I was away, my dormant blog managed to attract its first marketing email. It's from LA boxing, offering me a few months of membership in return for telling you guys if I liked it or not (well, probably it's "tell you if I liked it, say nothing if I didn't"). They sent it to me about a week ago, and since I just checked this email account, I just got it and replied.

While I was away, I turned 24! The side of my blog has now been updated accordingly. Part of me is debating if I should just rock "mid-twenties."

While I was away, I missed you guys a lot. And since I've been back, it's been great catching up.

Right now, I'm optimistic and happy. I had a pretty good 2009, and I'm looking to make 2010 even better. Onward and downward!

I hit my first goal!

Okay, I know I might have kind of given it away in the title, but check out this weigh in:

Weight: 250.0
BMI: 42.91

Ahhh! YAY! Okay. I should not just write random screamy things as they do nothing to illuminate the post, but by god I just cannot stop smiling.

I started this journey on July 7th. Using that as day 1, today is day 59. When I started, I declared a mini goal of getting to 250 pounds by September 15th. This is the equivalent of 28 pounds and just an eensy bit over 10% of my starting weight. Hitting it required dropping an average of 2.8 pounds/week. Today, September 3rd, 12 days early, I finished my first mini goal.

What now? Well, it's time for a new mini goal!

So, I've got two long term goals, which I call my long term goal and my long term stretch goal. My long term goal is to not be obese at my brother's wedding, which would mean getting my weight down to 175 by August 14th, 2010. My long term stretch goal is to not be overweight at my brother's wedding, which means hitting 145 by that same 8/14/2010. When I started, that meant losing a little under 1.8 pounds/week for my normal goal, and losing a little over 2.3 pounds/week for my stretch goal. Because I've been going above pace, the sustained loss needed to hit those milestones is now a bit over 1.5 pounds/week and a bit over 2.1 pounds/week respectively.

Once I set my first mini goal, I knew the weight I was going to attach to my second mini goal: 233 pounds. At 233 pounds, for the first time in too long, I will no longer be morbidly obese. Morbid is such a wretched word, such a wretched concept, one label I just can't wait to be rid of. My next goal is to not be morbid.

But I need a deadline. Some people don't like deadlines (weight loss isn't a race, after all), but for me they're helpful. It gives me a discreet point to work towards, and an expectation of pace. By attaching a deadline to my goal, I'm more likely to work harder and lose the weight faster.

So, 17 pounds. Back when I thought I'd be hitting 250 on the 15th, I sort of assumed that I'd make Halloween the deadline. Plugging that into calculators this morning (thank you fitday!) that meant a pace of 2.05 pounds/week. That's slower than my stretch goal, and thus way too slow for a mini goal. Mini goals are meant to push me.

The next meaningful date I could think of was Saint Crispin's Day, which is October 25th. An October 25th deadline would mean a loss of 2.29 pounds/week. This is above the pace needed for my stretch goal. The main benefit is that doing things around Saint Crispin's day is just totally badass. I could be all "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers we" and whatnot.

But, I asked myself, is 2.29 enough of a stretch while you're still this high? I weigh quite a bit right now. This, in many ways, sucks. But having so much to lose gives me one substantive benefit: moving myself around burns a heck of a lot more calories than it would for a person of reasonable size. Because I still weigh so much, dropping a given pound is comparatively easier than it will be down the road.

So I tried pushing it up a bit more to the 15th, the ides of October. (Did you know the ides only take place on the 15th during October, March, May and July? In all other months they're on the 13th. In other news, I am a gigantic nerd.) Fitday says this means losing 2.83 pounds/week. This is a slight bit more than my last mini goal (which started at 2.80 pounds/week) but is slower than the actual pace I've had thus far of 3.32 pounds/week.

My new goal is to lose 17 pounds by October 15th.

It's going to be tough. That's a high number. I'll need to push workouts and keep mistakes few and far between. But it's also eminently doable. If I want to, there's not a doubt in my mind that I can make it.

The comments you guys left yesterday were just incredibly insightful. Several of you brought up that "easy" isn't quite the right word, and thinking about it more I realized that's true. The pain of recovery and long term restrictions are not to be underestimated. I started drafting a bit more of a response to all the good points you guys brought up last night, but that got preempted by my WOOHOO 10% post. So look for that in the near future.

In the mean time, I'm still smiling. I've lost 10% of my bodyweight. I've improved how I look, lowered my risk of disease, and quite a few other things. I'm happy I stuck through, and I'm proud of myself for doing so. I hope the rest of you guys get to have just as fabulous a day as I'm having.

A Grocery Store Disaster

To everyone who said I'd hit that 20 pound mark in no time: you were right.

Weight: 257.7
BMI: 44.23

That means I've lost over 20 pounds! YAY! I'm very very happy about it. It also means I've now lost over 7% of my starting body weight (7.30% if you're counting) and 3.48 points of BMI. In order to hit my first mini goal of 250 by 9/15, I now need to lose only 1.63 pounds/week. If things keep going as they have, I should not only meet my goal date, but beat it by a week or two.

Anyway, yesterday at work was a busy day. I left around 7pm, changed quickly, and headed to the gym. I did 50 minutes on the elliptical (550 calories) and even enjoyed some of it! Needless to say, I'm glad that the badness and misery of my Saturday/Sunday workouts wasn't repeated.

There was a dire need to replenish my healthy food supplies, so I hit up the grocery store post gym. I do this relatively often, just grabbing produce (which is right by the door) and going straight to the checkout before I head home. Today, though, I needed to buy lunch meat for work sandwiches, which brought me in to the belly of the beast.

It started with a 100 calorie hostess cupcake display. I'd had the last of my 60 calorie sugar free Jell-o pudding snacks two nights ago, so I needed to get some small new desert, right? Cupcakes it was. Oh, but if I have these you know I'm going to need a glass of milk to go with them. I should go grab that. The milk was in sight of the eggs. I'd been meaning to try the egg substitutes one of these days to see how they tasted, so shouldn't I get a package of those too? Added to the cart. I walked down the aisle . . . Cottage cheese! I used to love cottage cheese. Shouldn't I get one of those 4 packs of cottage cheese to see if I love it as much as I used to? And then Oh, yogurts, I'm running out of those. I might as well grab a few more. Then I hate hate hate that low fat cheddar I've got at home, oooh and this mozzarella has just the same number of calories. I couldn't NOT. And on and on it went.

The damage? $50 of groceries. Looking through the receipt, precisely $11.50 of that is stuff I'd been intending to pick up. Yeesh. While everything I bought still qualifies under the vague banner of healthy, it's much, much, much more than I needed.

While I do feel pretty guilty about my unplanned purchases, it's tricky because I also am really excited about them. I'm sad, but I'm also happy to get to try all this new stuff I bought. I don't generally rock frozen food, but I ended up on some blog (sorry I don't remember who you are! otherwise the link love would be yours) recently where they were raving about a few Smart Ones dishes, so I ended up buying four of those. I had their macaroni and cheese for dinner last night and it was oh so good. (I also had a salad with lettuce, tomato, apple, one cut up wedge of light laughing cow cheese and Italian dressing, which is a standard dinner salad of mine and is amazingly good too.) I'm excited to try the egg substitutes and see if I like them. I'm looking forward to the rest of the frozen dinners. I can't wait to see if cottage cheese is as good as I remember. And really, the anticipation for those hostess 100-calorie cupcakes is killing me.

I love food. It's bad. I'm making healthy choices right now because I'm dedicated to losing weight and it's something I really want to do, but good lord, in so many ways I'm still absolutely in love with food. I love buying it, I love trying it, I love making it, it's terrible. It's probably 60% of what got me into this situation in the first place.

This is no good.

I don't know. I think I'm always going to love food. I don't really think I'd want to not love food, which is probably just as well because I don't think I could stop even if I wanted to. And I think (or maybe I just hope) that it's okay to love food. I can love trying new foods and making new things, I just have to do it in moderation. I can love food, I just can't love it more than I love my life, my health, and my future.

I can love food, I just can't let my love of it negatively impact everything else.

That could work, right?

Onward and Downward

Weight: 261.5
BMI: 44.88

Counting both the day I started and today, I am 30 days into this whole weight loss journey. When I started, pounds dropped pretty quickly. But after that, things became tougher. I'd be coaxing my body to drop just a bit of weight each day, and some days it would. Other days it would revolt. There were quite a few days where it just said "nah, I think I'd rather go up on the scale today."

Somehow, since I've gotten home from San Diego, the pounds have been just melting off. Initially it made sense: I was bloated from eating lots on Friday but didn't actually weigh that much. But, this is beyond just bloat dropping. I've lost over a pound for 5 straight days. I'm 4 pounds below my prior low. This, really, is just wonderful.

Too good to last, yes, but for now wonderful.

I'm now down 16.5 pounds in total (1.1 day to day). That means I've lost 5.94% of my starting bodyweight and 2.83 points of BMI. In order to hit my mini goal of 250 pounds by September 15th, I need to lose 1.96 pounds a week. This is the first time ever that my mini goal has needed a sustained loss of less than 2 pounds a week.

I am smiling. And it's not just numbers that are making me smile. I walk to work every day, and I now walk fast enough to catch a light I used to miss. The suits I wear to work every day all feel a little big. I was able to increase the resistance on the elliptical machine and still blast through my workout. When I stopped by the grocery store after the gym to pick up some extra produce, I actually stuck to my shopping list. Yesterday after dinner, I wasn't all that hungry for desert, and it wasn't because I ate too much.

There's a long hard road ahead. For now, though, I'm happy to be walking it.


And in case anyone's curious, thus far the new guy seems really nice. I ate breakfast at my desk this morning without feeling embarrassed about it, and it was definitely in large part due to all of your "He probably can't hear you and wouldn't even care!" comments, so thank you. :)