Finally Getting Fit

Today JM and I went for a walk. It dawned as one of those special days Melbourne can put on in the middle of winter, clear blue sky, slightly chilled breeze and a pleasant 14º - in short, a great day to be out and about.

A few years back, when JM first came to Australia, we had to renew her visa so we headed to New Zealand for a holiday. Among other places we visited during a lovely time touring around, was Tauranga a seaside town near Rotorua, a place of sulphur springs (think fart smells) and geysers.

At Tauranga there is a hill out on a point sticking out into the ocean – it’s maybe 350 metres high with a walking track that winds around one side to the top. JM struggled her way to the top, resting when things got too tough, but showing amazing determination – a number of times I assured her she had shown her willingness to strive and that we could head back down knowing she had done a very good thing in getting as far as she did. As usual she was concerned about what I would think of her but I assured her I was already impressed at what she had achieved.

We got to the top; I don’t think I’ve seen anyone ever so proud of themselves. (which brought up a childhood religious issue about being chastised for being proud of things she had done – I explained that pride in achievement is NOT what the bible was talking about)

So, today we set off on a casual walk, no plans for power walk or anything special, just out and about to enjoy the day.

I was quite astonished at how easily she was able to walk at a decent pace. Mind you, she has been improving steadily in pace and stamina over the years we’ve spent together – the gym work and exercises she has been doing have worked wonders. But the difference that’s come from carrying 36lbs less than her normal weight was pretty startling.

Soon I will have to start getting fitter to be able to maintain her pace – up till now, an exercise walk with her has been little more than a stroll for me.

JM is amazing!

I am both happy and annoyed at my latest non-scale victory.

My wedding rings are now too big for me to wear.

Haha. When I started losing weight, I never thought about my rings or about how I’d need to get them resized eventually. The thought never crossed my mind. But now my rings have gone from ‘a little lose’ on my ring finger to the point I refuse to wear them because I’m so afraid I’ll lose them.

I wear one of the rings on my middle finger of my left hand and the other one on the ring finger of my opposite hand (one is smaller than the other), but it feels a bit weird doing it that way.

I’m thinking of getting a replacement cheap ring for the time being part of my latest reward. I haven’t picked up my new pajamas yet, so I could just stick it on, right?

I would just get them resized now, but I’m still about sixty pounds away from my goal weight, so I’m sure that what will fit now will be too big then. I’d rather do it just the once, even though it will be weird to be without my true wedding bands for so long…

I might give in and get them resized sooner, but not quite yet. The funny thing is I had to get them both resized when I bought them because they weren’t big enough!

It’s so nice to have a non-scale victory to talk about. I love supporting other people with their NSVs, but I don’t think I give enough attention to my own.

Things have been going great for me over the past month and a half or so. I’m finally seeing weight loss, I’m feeling better about myself, I’m actually happy to exercise… So far, so good.

However, last night I was reminded that not all my demons have been so easily vanquished.

Though I have ventured into the realm of ‘real food’ (non-meal replacement, non-veggies, non-fruit type food) on occasion, I have always kept it bread/rice/pasta/etc free and very light. Mainly meaning I had mostly grilled fish when I strayed. This has been what I feel is a big factor in my sticking with meal replacement.

But last night was the first really hard night for me.

I’m not sure if it was because of time of month coming up (I’ve been known to have HUGE meat cravings the week before TOM) or just some weird thing, but I told my husband all I wanted was a lamb souvlaki or a burger. (We’re talking good quality, good ingredients Australian burger – not fast food crap.) We sat at the pub and all I could talk about for fifteen minutes was souvlaki.

I consider it a victory that the thought was just to have something ‘real’ (which was pretty much any combination of meat and bread that I could think of) instead of wanting to quit the diet entirely. In fact, quitting the diet never entered my mind.

I should change the title to “JM Two”.

In the end, I didn’t have any souvlaki. We got caught up with trivia night at the pub, and we were having so much fun that I wanted to stay there rather than run off an indulge my cravings.

And today? I still kind of want some meat, but it’s not that ‘GIMME MEAT’ type of craving anymore.

Phew. Now only if I could combat every craving with random trivia.

SW: 264
LW: 238
CW: 236

Total Squats: 199
Total Push Ups: 147
Total Sit-Ups: 223

Today I saw a gain of two pounds on the scale. One of the nicest things on the planet? Seeing a gain and not freaking out. I went up by about two pounds, but that is still less than I was at last week, so obviously I’m happy. Even despite all that, I think the best part isn’t being less than last week but being okay with the gain I saw this morning.

Sure, I want to do something about it, but it didn’t ruin my day. I just thought about all the things I did yesterday (including not drinking enough water), other factors that could contribute (week before TOM) and that was that. I’m going to do better today. And there you have it.

I guess I’m just stunned over the fact that I can take that sort of thing now. Granted I may have felt differently about a four pound gain, but the best thing about this diet is that my weight doesn’t instantly shoot up huge amount by just thinking about ‘naughty’ things.

Other things are going well. I started the second week (I’m a week behind Cammy *waves*) of the challenge this morning, and I must say that I’m not fond of squats. Hehe. However, I am recovering better and faster than I did in the very beginning, so that is a plus.

I’m having a hard time imagining being any thinner than I am at the moment. I’ve tightened up a bit on my stomach and definitely around my face and neck, but it has been so incredibly long since I was in my 220s (almost there!) that I’m wondering what it (and beyond) will be like.

Wonderful, I’m sure.

I hope you all are doing very well.

I was responding to comments the other night and came across Little Miss Fatty’s Pants weight loss blog. While she is struggling a little bit with things right now, she has taken that all-important step of deciding to make her life a better, longer, healthier one.

I was looking through her past posts, and there was one that contained a letter to her boyfriend.

While her letter was a short one, it conveyed the love she has for her boyfriend and the appreciation she has for him looking out for her.

Well, that inspired me to write a thank-you to my husband…

Dear Mr. JM,

Me

I’ve mentioned on this blog a few times how I have managed to lose weight before and yet, for some reason, I hit my sabotage point – 244 – and screw it all up in one way or another. For some reason, that number always trips me up. It’s like something clicks in my head and I feel like ‘it’s okay’ to just drop everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve.

But something different has happened this time.

I talked yesterday about how moving the scale from the lounge to the tiled floor of the kitchen gave me not only a steadier scale that didn’t need constant adjusting but also a six pound difference in my weight.

Well, that six pound difference just so happened to take me right past my sabotage weight and plant me firmly on the other side.

Huh.

The moment I had been dreading trying to get past was suddenly gone. Poof. No need to deal with it.

And I have even lost another two pounds since then.

I always knew that the sabotage point was well and truly just in my mind, but to pass it so easily was… weird. And strangely, a complete non-event.

Knowing that I had suddenly gotten past the sabotage point with ‘no muss no fuss’ has apparently broken whatever hold it had over me in my mind. I smirked at being past it, but I focused more on being near (and now in) my 230s.

Is that weird or what? Something that had been so big to me is just gone.

Hooray!

Oh, boy.

It’s only day two for getting back to healthier, regular eating and exercise, and I’m already trying to sabotage myself.

On one hand, it’s probably a good sign. The voices of temptation and sabotage popping up this early means I’m on the right track, treating myself right and doing the things I need to do for a healthy body. But, as you can imagine, it’s also a pain in the arse to have to deal with that stuff already.

Giving myself flexibility in my menu has turned out to be the best decision I could have made. Not only do I not have that invisible ‘must eat this’ pressure, but I have also discovered some awesome snack alternatives (tuna! Tuna in a can! With Vita Wheats! Yum!) that I wouldn’t have tried had I stuck strictly to the menu.

It’s hard to be facing my demons so quickly, just when I’m getting my feet under me with a new plan, but like I said – it must mean I’m doing the right thing.

Today when I went to pick up some groceries and new shoes, the moment I stepped into the mall I felt bombarded with tempty thoughts. You know the ones:

“You could have just one.” “No one would know.” “You don’t HAVE to write EVERYTHING in your food diary.”

I battled those thoughts with the usual ones, but surprisingly, the one that seemed to work the best (but hasn’t in the past) is: “I need to prove to myself that I can do this.”

After I thought that, I got distracted with other things. I was tempted again a little in the grocery store, but I just stocked up on some yummy tuna and got a ‘yogurt to go’ to try as a treat.

So here is do one day won, and many more to come.

Well, six weeks and five days after I started my restricted diet, I went back to the naturopath for a bit of a check-in and progress report. The appointment went great and I’m scheduled to go back in another six weeks.

Never in my life would I ever have though I would have someone tell me that I should probably slow down the weight loss.

How funny!

Anyway, just had to get that out of my system. I’ve been chuckling about it for days.

I got retested and things were fantastic. Instead of all my systems – yes, all – being completely out of whack, this time my systems were calm and quiet. The weight and PCOS issues are still of concern, of course, but no longer is my body going a bit crazy.

I’m quite proud of myself. Six weeks without so many of the things I have come to love? That’s hard. But, unlike things I have tried in the past, I am actually seeing results and feeling good about myself. No longer is it a waiting game of ‘maybe the weight will come off soon’ in trying to find the right diet for me.

Basically, I’m still on the restricted diet. However, things have loosened up a little bit. ‘Forbidden’ things have now become ‘try to avoid’ and instead of alternating between having one grain meal a day and two, I can now have two grain meals every day. (Woohoo!)

I’m feeling very good about this. I know I can achieve my goals.

I hope you are all doing well!

(For those of you who don’t know who the man on the right is, check out Watching Doctor Who.)

It’s a long holiday weekend here in Oz, so I slept in and had the pleasure of doing so next to my husband. Not having to deal with the alarm and having the husband home, it wasn’t until after I took a shower that I realized it is Monday. I dried myself with the towel and though, “Oh, Monday. That means weigh in.”

But as I got dressed and prepared to start work for the day (someday I’ll take a real holiday), I thought about how I have been feeling about losing weight lately. I thought about how I have been closer to just giving up completely, for good, than I have ever been. Yes, I’ve fallen off the wagon before, but never have I wanted to purposely just stop.

I also thought about an email I received over the weekend from my lovely friend Jenera. In the email, she said:

“I’ve taken breaks in weight loss (and life) before and it really helps. You might just need to take the next month to focus on YOU-not your body, just you. I know it helps me quite a bit. I think if you keep up with the exercise, still eat healthy, and have the hubby hide the scale, you might be able to refocus a bit and not be too hard on yourself. The fact that you’ve been sticking with the positive changes is a huge accomplishment!”

And she’s right. I have been so focused on numbers, pounds, losing weight, that I have lost focus on me, JM, the person inside. I have been slowly turning myself into someone who judges myself based on my looks instead of based on the beautiful person I know I am.

So for the entire month of June, I’m hiding the scale. Whether it turns out to be a bad or good thing in terms of pounds, I don’t care. I need to focus on me, take care of me, and remember why I started getting fit in the first place.

Brought to you by Dancing Down the Moon. Original story.

August 30, 2005

I nearly punched someone today.

The scene is Book People, a Monday evening. The cafe area. Having spent the day feeling like ass and laying around watching TV bundled up in various wubbies on the futon, I decided to make a pilgrimage to the library, then on the way back to Mecca itself, my all-time favorite bookstore and Austin landmark. I can’t count the hours I’ve spent at Book People curled up on a couch or in the cafe sipping chai and collecting recipes, or paging through the latest metaphysical tripe. It’s a comforting ritual and a way that my last couple of bucks could support local business.

So I score a table against the wall, put down my stack of cookbooks and various other and my purse, grab my wallet, and head for the counter. (My purse is in plain sight, don’t worry; I wanted it to mark my table.) Today’s coffee jockey is an adorable pierced-and-tattooed boy en flambe, as most BP baristas tend to be. There’s one woman in line in front of me, waffling between a decaf skim milk latte and some other thing.

Now, this woman…oy. There are thin women, and then there are Skinny Bitches, and my radar went screaming off on the latter immediately. She’s standing there in her overpriced workout clothes–you know, the kind nobody wears to actually work out in, they just wear around town to make it look like they’re oh-so-health-conscious. She has one of those stupid little pink leather purses that should have a dog in it, and an armload of magazines about pilates and yoga; her hair is that expensive streaky blonde that’s all the rage in people trying to look young and hip. She’s making fake small talk with the adorable pierced-and-tattooed boy en flambe, and taking forever to decide what she wants, talking herself into and out of a piece of cake about five times.

I’m barely paying attention, as I am scanning the menu myself (you know, making up my mind BEFORE I get there?), but she has one of those nasal voices that worms its way into your brain and makes your spine hurt, so before long I’m listening to her; I think she was trying to be flirty. Anyone with half an IQ would have known her charm was absolutely wasted on our friendly neighborhood cafe lad.

The woman is now weighing the pros and cons of having skim milk versus two percent milk in her latte, and she says, “God, I don’t know, I just feel so, like, fat today. I feel like such a big fat cow.”

Then she turns to me, and she says, GET THIS, “How do you stand it every day?”

I blink.

The adorable pierced-and-tattooed boy en flambe blinks.

Several heads in the cafe pop up because nobody can believe this woman actually said this to a total stranger. I feel as if the sitcom camera is pulling in tight for a closeup on my reaction.

But the gods of snark are smiling upon me today. I reply, straightfaced, “You know, it’s normally not too bad, but today I’m having one of those days where I feel like a shallow dumb bitch. How do you stand it every day?”

Just then the barista, who is holding back laughter so hard he’s beet red, hands her her skim milk yuppie whatever and says, “Here you go, ma’am.” She too is kind of pink, but she doesn’t say a damn word, or leave a tip–she storms off, her cell phone already to her ear, because clearly she’s the wronged party here.

The pierced-and-tattooed boy en flambe busts out laughing, and I notice a few of the popping-up-heads are laughing too. I’m both shell-shocked and proud of myself, because usually when I’m insulted I’m not quick on the draw enough for the witty retort. “Oh my God, I cannot believe she fucking said that to you,” he says, shaking his head.

I can’t, either, but at the same time I can. It’s not the first time people have made comments like that to me. They only do it when you’re alone, because if you’re with friends you’re upholding the Fat Girl Contract–you’re playing the part of asexual sidekick to whoever is the pretty girl. But if you’re by yourself, and gods forbid having a good time or–gasp!–eating something besides a salad with the dressing on the side, you’re fair game.

If you walk up to a black man and call him that dreaded “n word” or tell him he should be tap dancing and eating fried chicken, you’ll be thought of as a bigot, but if you insult someone’s appearance to their faces in public or tell a fat woman she should be on Atkins, it’s considered “helpful advice.” You don’t know this woman, why she’s fat, or anything about her life, but it’s okay to be cruel, because obviously she’s lazy and self-indulgent and you, as a skinny evangelist, have the right to say whatever you want if you think it’s for her own good. People don’t believe this kind of shit happens, but it happens every day.

I order a cherry Italian soda. The adorable pierced-and-tattooed boy en flambe waves my money away. “On the house,” he says. “The comeback was worth two-fifty at least.”

I slip the two dollars in the tip jar and go back to my table, shaking my head, still too amazed at the whole thing to really process it. A few minutes later I hear a quiet laugh, and I look up to see the adorable pierced-and-tattooed boy en flambe holding a milk jug and grinning a little sheepishly.

He sees me looking and holds up the jug. “I think I gave her whole milk by accident,” he says, and winks. “Oops.”

When I started this journey a year ago, I wrote this on my 100 Pounds to Go blog:

I’m Spunk, and I’m 100 pounds (about 45 kilos) from my ideal weight. I got married May 5th, 2007.The honeymoon is over.

If you’d like to join me on my quest for health, please feel free. People like to know they aren’t alone when they take on challenges.

When I wrote that, I was ready and rearing to go, not worried about anything going wrong or stumbling on my path. All I knew was that I wanted to get healthy in a hurry.

While the hurry part hasn’t really happened, a year on I am in no doubt that I am many times healthier. I feel better than ever, have more energy than ever, and I even go to a local gym on a regular basis.

I can definitely tell you I didn’t see that happening a year ago.

All in all, I may not be down in the pounds like I would like, but I’m still very happy with my progress mentally and emotionally so far. I’m in a much better place.

How about you?

On May 14th 2007, I wasn’t long married and I decided it was time to get my health straight. I started at 256 pounds and set out to lose 100 pounds. I wanted to be healthy and happy. And, as the year wore on, it became important to me to be healthy so I could have healthy babies.

My starting statistics looked like this:

Starting Stats: Started: May 14th ‘07

Weight: 256 lbs ~ 116.1 kilos
Waist: 45 inches ~ 114.3 centimeters
Hips: 51 inches ~ 129.5 centimeters
Upper Left Arm: 14.5 inches
Upper Right Arm: 15.5 inches
Left Thigh: 27 inches
Right Thigh: 27 inches

BMI: 41.4

GOAL: 156 lbs ~ 70.76 kilos

I felt ashamed of my body and ate whatever I liked. I knew little about PCOS, insulin resistance and didn’t pay much attention to what dietary changes I should make because I deal with those things.

Now a year has gone by and I look at how far I have come.

Stats: May 14th, 2008

Weight: 248 pounds
Waist: 44 inches
Hips: 50 inches
Upper Left Arm: 13.5 inches
Upper Right Arm: 14.5 inches
Left Thigh: 26.5 inches
Right Thigh: 26.5 inches

BMI: 40

I’m not that much changed in terms of weight or inches, but I am completely changed in mentality. I am no longer ashamed of my body. It’s my body. I like it, but I know it can be better.

Food is no longer my enemy. I have adjusted my diet to one that is better for someone with blood sugar problems. I don’t eat as much and neither do I feel the need to eat more. I eat things that satisfy my hunger longer and have even discovered foods I love that are also good for me.

The numbers simply cannot show how much I have changed in just one year.

That’s right; I’m not weighing in today.

Today I am taking a break from dieting, exercise, and everything else. Today is the day I truly enjoy myself…and my husband.

May 5th is the day I celebrate my first wedding anniversary. Last year at this time I was nervously pacing and getting everything together so I could have the wedding I had dreamed of, getting married to the man I had always dreamed of.

We met online, me from the US and him from Australia. We went through a lot of hard times because of distance and so-called ‘friends’. But we made it through and met in person when I took a plane ride to Australia nearly a year to the day after we met online.

Seven months after we started living together, we got married at the local park, surrounded by our friends.

It wasn’t long after that that I got serious about my getting healthier. I knew that if I kept on my current track, my life would probably be a lot shorter and with a lot more complications. I’m a greedy sort and want all the time I can get with my husband, so I began on my journey.

Nearly a year later, celebrating our first anniversary, I am more in love with my husband than ever and I love myself as well. We have lived, learned and grown so much in the last year and the time has gone by so fast.

I can only hope that we see the success and abundance of love this year that we had sustain us last year.

Be well and happy.

I was a bit nervous about making this post because, like a lot of people, I’m afraid (on a subconscious level) of ‘cursing’ my weight loss by posting about successes. It may seem silly, but it’s the absolute truth.

However, there comes a time when you have an undeniable non-scale victory… This week, I am happy to share mine with you.

I have fat pants!

For probably the first time ever, I have a pair of pants that I need to put away because they are practically falling off. I might not put them away just yet because I have a belt, but the fact remains that I am in danger of everyone getting to know my knickers in a public place if I don’t wear a belt with these pants.

I am so happy!

I have had pants get a bit loose during weight loss before, but I have never gotten to a point where my pants were so obviously loose and falling off on me. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten my measurements down so much in my life. It’s a fantastic feeling. It makes me want to go through all of my pants and start putting away the things that are too big for me.

Not only that, I noticed this morning that I had to pull up my gym pants a couple of times because they were a bit loose on me as well.

As they say, when your pounds aren’t dropping, check your measurements! It just might be that you’re losing inches instead of pounds right now.