“I Work Out!”

(The title is a reference to LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It,” which is totally my guilty pleasure these days.)

I know I said blogging would be light, but I have to share this: I went to the gym today. This is the first time I’ve been to the gym since April. Between the foot injury, assorted illnesses, and some of the other issues I’ve been dealing with, I just couldn’t get there. Then, when I could go, I didn’t, because I was afraid. I’ve been fighting these feelings for almost a month now. I feel ashamed that I’ve gained some weight over the past few months and ashamed that I haven’t been to the gym. I felt like I’d completely undone all the hard work I did to get healthy, which also made me feel ashamed. I was really worried that I’d get to the gym and would be able to do very little of what I used to be able to do.

I’ve been trying to get out of that mental space, and today I broke through and went to the gym. It was great!!! People probably thought I was insane, because I was grinning like a maniac for a while when I first got on the elliptical. It just felt really good to use my body in that way again.I did 34 minutes of the elliptical, compared to the 40 I was doing last spring–not much of a drop-off at all. I did a 60 minute strength workout, and I didn’t have to reduce the weight I was lifting all that much. Well, I did with my arms, but that’s due to the tendonitis. My legs, back, and stomach changed very little, if at all–I was within 10 pounds of where I used to be. I’m shocked that I didn’t lose more of my strength, but apparently I haven’t.

I’m really happy that I had such a great workout. I have to remember this feeling to keep me motivated to start going regularly again. I’m blogging this in the hopes it will make me feel accountable, but I think it will get easier now that I have broken through that initial fear.

Weight Loss Update

It’s been a very long time since I gave an update on my weight loss efforts, so here goes.

I did well with getting through the holidays, but after the first of the year, things stalled out. Throughout January and February, I kept losing and re-gaining the same two-three pounds over and over, which put me between 58 and 60 total pounds lost.

The problem was basically centered on the fact that I was not working out very much during this time; in fact, I think I went almost the whole two months without getting to the gym. I was sick a lot, which left me unable to work out much, plus it was so damn cold that I lost all motivation to go out unless I absolutely had to.

When March rolled around, I said, “Enough.” I decided to kick-start myself by setting a spring break goal (working out three times) and a weight-loss goal: losing five pounds by the Cs. I have simply come too far to get complacent now.

The plan worked! As of today, I have lost seven pounds since the first week of March, for a total of 65 pounds.  It’s hard to believe I am this close to reaching numbers that once seemed completely unattainable.

When I started this process, I was so overwhelmed by all I needed to lose that I simply set the goal of losing 10% of my body weight, then 10% more. My big goal was to lose 60 pounds, which seemed completely impossible, and my “beyond my wildest dreams” goal was to lose 70-80 pounds. Now, I’m only five pounds away from that. Unreal.

It feels great to be at this point. Of course there will always be things about my body I don’t like, such as my stomach–between two huge babies and this weight loss, my skin is so stretched out. But I feel much better, physically and mentally. I’m strong; I have endurance. I like what I see when I look in the mirror. I may never again get down to the single digits, size-wise, but I have worked hard for the body I have now. It’s healthy, and I’m proud of it.

Bottom line: I feel good about myself. My therapist has said to me, “You have your mojo back,” and I feel that I do. It’s great to have this confidence.

Loss

I’ve noticed that several folks have done posts that discuss the one word that summarizes their 2010; this topic was the first prompt for Reverb 2010. Clearly, I am not writing this post on December 1, and I simply can’t commit to blogging every day. However, I would like to write on this theme.

My word for 2010 will probably not be a surprise to many of you, given the topics I’ve regularly written about this year. My word is loss.

The most obvious reason why loss encapsulates my past year–one that is immediately apparent by looking at me–is my weight.  As you well know, I’ve lost a heck of a lot of weight. Losing this weight, a project that is still ongoing, has been life-changing and has been in the forefront of my mind all year.  My blogging frequency on this topic is one indicator of its importance to me.

I’m proud of myself for losing this weight. I’m proud that I’ve gone from barely being able to last five minutes on the elliptical to doing forty minutes, followed by an hour-long strength workout. I’m proud that I can do three sets of 15 reps of nearly 400-lb. leg presses. I’m proud that when I walk, I can feel how strong my quads are. I’m proud that I can swing my 33 lb. son around like he’s nothing; after all, I’m doing three sets (15 reps) of overhead presses at 45 pounds.  When I started, I could barely lift 10 pounds over my head. Thinking back to where my physical condition was on January 1 and where it is now leaves me shaking my head. It is still hard for me to believe the progress I’ve made this year.

While much of my pride centers on the improvement in my physical condition, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m happy and proud of how I look. While I have not yet reached my ultimate goal, I am happy to be where I am. I feel good about myself when I look in the mirror. While I am not a particularly girly girl, I have always appreciated what clothes, make-up, and hair can do; I think it’s my theatre background at work here. I’ve always enjoyed cultivating a particular look to express a different persona or another element of my personality.

Anyway, as I gained weight, putting on my “costume” for the day was less fun for me, and I eventually stopped doing it. It was hard to find clothes I liked and that were flattering.  Because I didn’t feel good about my body or what I was wearing, playing around with my hair or make-up seemed kind of pointless.

The last few months have been fun for me as I’ve rediscovered how much I enjoy preparing for each day’s “performance.” I’m having a good time choosing who I want to be that day and putting together the look that goes with the particular part of my personality or which role in my life I’m emphasizing.

Loss is usually viewed as a negative; a simple look at a dictionary is illustrative in this regard:  ”detriment, disadvantage, or deprivation from failure to keep, have, or get”; “the state of being deprived of or of being without something that one has had”; etc. “Defeat” and “failure” pop up repeatedly. However, weight loss is one of the few losses in life that is almost always viewed as a positive, and in my case, there have been many positives.  This major loss has resulted in significant gains to my health, my physicality, and my self-image.

However, my weight loss has also included losses of the more conventional sort. As I worked through this process, I was forced to confront the reasons why I gained so much weight in the first place.  I had to ask myself why I was not making my health a priority by working out and making healthier choices with food. I had to examine why I was, in essence, self-medicating with food.

Coming to terms with the answers to these questions has led me to another kind of loss, one I’m not really sure how to identify.  One way to think of it could be that I’ve lost a sense of complacency; some might say I’ve lost my ability to live in denial. Whatever you want to call it, I realized this year that the status quo of my life had been failing me for years, and during that time my remedy for this problem had been to ignore it and stuff down my feelings.  All too often, that “stuffing” became literal, as I unthinkingly used food to soothe my hurts. No, I didn’t binge–I’ve never been a binge eater–but even the seemingly small choices I made (an extra candy bar here, another can of Pepsi there) added up in a hurry, especially since I exercised very little, if at all.

This realization probably strikes most of you as a significant gain, and in some ways, it has been powerful for me to see so clearly how this negative relationship with food and my body developed. But this realization has led to tangible losses. Being in a state of denial enabled me to function as an ostensibly happy person and to convince myself that certain relationships in my life were fine (or if they weren’t, it was my fault, which somehow was comforting? Don’t ask me why, but it’s true).

I’ve now lost the sense of  plausible deniability I lived in for so long, and it’s a scary place to be. I’ve allowed myself to feel anger and pain that I had not felt in years, because I was so very good at stuffing down those emotions. These emotions have been frightening and difficult to work through. I’ve been struggling with depression as I’ve come to terms with some of the issues I’d been trying so desperately (and pretty successfully) to avoid. I’ve come to unpleasant, painful realizations about relationships in my life.

These are losses, no doubt. There will be more loss in the months to come, both in terms of my weight and my illusions. It’s hard for me to say what my word for 2011 will be, as I really don’t know where I will be by this time next year.

I just hope that, whatever happens and wherever I’m at with all of it, I’ll be in a better, more honest emotional place.

50

As of this morning’s weigh-in, I have lost fifty pounds.

I knew I was closing in on this goal, but I am still kind of in shock. It seems hard to believe I’ve actually made it this far.

My original goal had been to lose 60-70 pounds, but now I’m thinking it’s going to be more in the 70-80 range. I’ve worked through that plateau I hit, and I’m feeling good about how the weight loss is going.

When I started this process, I didn’t really believe I could lose this much weight. I am of the “fake it ’til you make it” philosophy, so that is what I did at first. And now, I’m truly making it!

Unbelievable.

Light in August

As you can easily surmise, August has been a challenging month.

Thankfully, I am starting to feel as if I can see a little light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Some of this is due to my weight loss efforts. After not losing any weight for two or three weeks, yesterday I discovered I lost three pounds in the past week.  I’ve lost 1.5 inches off my hips over the past two weeks. This has helped encourage me to maintain my diligence with exercising and making more healthy choices with food.

G. has decided that he will be looking for work here in Fort Wayne.  He says will not be working in Cincinnati.  There are still many issues to discuss, but this is a positive development.

School starts for M and me on Monday, and I have been freaking out about maintaining my research agenda once the semester (and M’s school year) begins. I have been working hard to reinforce my commitment to Boice’s ideas, particularly brief daily sessions. 

During the school year, I don’t have sustained periods of time during which I can write–I simply don’t.  As a professor and mom of two young children, I’m always running from here to there to everywhere, and the techniques I know some professors can use simply aren’t realistic, given the constraints of my life. Brief writing sessions five days a week are realistic for me, however.  They fit into my life, and this was the strategy that helped me finish my dissertation when I felt hopelessly stuck.  Hopefully this will help see me through to tenure as well.

I have to keep writing as a daily habit, just as I have made exercise a daily habit.  That is just how it is. I am nervous about both, actually; I’m afraid that once school starts, everything will start slipping away from me.  I simply cannot allow that to happen.