January wrap-up

At the beginning of the new year, I set three goals for myself for the month of January:

1. Put in 30mi on the treadmill.
2. Put in two extra sessions per week to work on weights.
3. Stay faithful to my food plan every day.

I fell short of my first goal, logging 20.3 miles on the treadmill in January. This was slightly less than I did in December.

I'll give myself a pass, though, in light of the fact that I put in 75.8 miles on the treadmill, elliptical, and stationary bike combined. I only managed 36.1 miles of cardio in December.

My second goal was met by putting in long sessions, rather than additional ones. I've gotten in the habit of doing at least some lifting before nearly every session. The benefits of this, I think, were reflected in my muscular endurance during last night's evaluation. It's definitely paid off!

The third goal was a mixed bag, though it was mostly a success. There were only a handful of days in January that I didn't record everything I ate, and those weren't because I didn't want to. On the days I allow myself to eat more freely and worry less, I don't always have stats on my foods handy. Maybe I ate at a restaurant or with my parents.

So while I didn't have the means to monitor everything, I still feel that I did well. Well enough, anyway.

That brings us to February. With the new month, I have some new goals for myself.

Cut out soda.

I'll allow myself one diet with breakfast, as I don't drink coffee and I appreciate a little caffeine in the morning, but that's it. This may be the hardest goal I've set yet. Giving up chocolate was nothing compared to giving up soda. Yikes.

Run a two- or three-miler every weekend.

I'd like to get some structure into my cardio, so I'll shoot for doing endurance on the treadmill on weekends. I made awesome progress on my mile time this week without running for speed even once over the past month, and I hope that continuing to work on various skills will return such results again.

Do my sit-ups and push-ups twice a week.

When I started this journey, I always did these. When I started demanding more of myself, some of the simpler exercises fell by the wayside. I need to get them back into my rotation, whether it's on the days I do weights or on alternate days.

So! Three new goals for a new month. Will I make it? Stay tuned!

Another day, another evaluation

Today was evaluation day. It was also totally freaking amazing.

Everybody, seriously.

It's no secret that my last evaluation left something to be desired. Improvements, yes, but small and not very inspiring. I had to work hard over the next few weeks to dig deep and find the motivation to keep going in.

The week after that eval, I got my diet plan, and I quit chasing the 13-minute mile. I started cross-training just before the new year, spending more time on other cardio machines. I started more weight training on my own.

And so tonight, six weeks after my last evaluation, the numbers were good. Very good. I'm down ten pounds from last time, weighing in at 216. That's 22lbs total! Eep!

All of my measurements have gotten smaller since last eval. I'm down 1.5" on my waist, about 1" on my thigh, and .5" on my calf. Since starting in October, I've lost a total of 5.5" off my hips.

Guys, that's huge. (Pun intended.)

All of the weights I was lifting went up, some of them dramatically. Last time, we set the leg press at 185 and I did 40 reps. Tonight, we set it at 225. I still did 40 reps. My teeth were gritting and I was grunting elegantly for the last eight, but I made it happen. I did 40 lat pulldowns at 70lbs and 25 chest presses, also at 70lbs.

I managed 52 push-ups in one minute, from my dainty knees, and I completed 61 sit-ups. Barely.

My run wasn't quite what I had hoped for, finishing .94 miles in 12:00, but it was a greatly-improved pace over my last eval. The run felt hard today, not at all like last week's triumphant runs, so I'll take it. Improvement is improvement!

Most exciting, my BMI has dropped to 39. I am officially no longer morbidly obese! I'm just plain old, garden variety obese. Six months ago, I didn't think I'd ever get under that mark again. But here I am.

After I got out to my car tonight, I started laughing. I laughed all the way home, singing along to the radio at the top of my lungs.

This is what it feels like when it all comes together. Sometimes, it won't. Sometimes, it'll be hard and it'll hurt, emotionally and physically. But sometimes, this happens. I need to file this feeling away, to pull out and remember when times get tough again. Like the next eval, which is bound to humble me all over again. That's just how this game works.

For now, I'm going to revel in it.

Changing my destructive impulsiveness

I had a doughnut today.

An hour later, I got sick, so I rather wish I hadn't eaten one. But I was okay with that choice. So what makes it different from last weekend, when a single S'more sent me into fits?

This one was a choice.

I've always been an impulsive person. Case in point: a little while ago, at 11:30pm on a Saturday night, I got halfway through a DVD of mine when the movie stopped playing. The DVD was damaged. Rather than accept that, oh well, I can't finish watching a movie I've already seen numerous times, I went to the store in my pajamas to buy a replacement. And here I am, back on my couch, continuing with "Watchmen".

This sort of impulsive behavior isn't always destructive. When it comes to food, though, it usually is. I never decided to over-eat or load up on junk. I never sat down and said to myself, "You know what? I should really do my best to eat 3000 calories a day of mostly refined sugars and fats." It was an impulse, a spur-of-the-moment idea that sounded good, so I did it.

Today's doughnut was planned. I decided on my way to work that I was going to treat myself to the snacks we had at the office. This was in stark contrast to the snacks I had last weekend, which were eaten because I had a craving and I just plain wanted to.

Learning to say no to these impulses is hard. It's undoing a lifetime of behavioral programming with no guarantee of a reward.

But it's worth it, every time.

Cheating, without cheating

I'm tired of protein bars, guys. I still do my protein shakes almost every night, but I can hold my breath while I gulp those down. I can't pull that off with the chewy, unappetizing bars on my shelf. I need a break from these things.

So this week, I tried a new option.



These Snackwell's Cereal Bars don't stack up to protein bars, not really. At only 8g of protein, they're less than half what my other bars provide. But what they lack in protein power they make up for in yumminess. I've eaten these all week for my mid-morning snack and have yet to tire of them.

One of these with my Cherry Coke Zero (very convincing!) and I almost forget I'm on a freaking diet in the first place.

I also stopped and sampled a new fast food option tonight. I've been cooking my dinners all week and decided, after my post-gym grocery shopping, that what I really wanted was a burger. So I had one of these:



That's a Hardee's Turkey Burger on a whole wheat bun, and I had mine with cheese, ketchup, and pickles. The Hardee's website doesn't let me break down the ingredients, so I could only estimate, but these turkey burgers have well under half the fat of a typical 1/4-lb burger and less than 500 calories.

The flavor was a little bland, which is my opinion of most turkey products that don't come with loads of gravy and mashed potatoes on the side. But this was the right texture for a burger, and when loaded with my favorite condiments, it was exactly what I was looking for.

I have these new foods loaded into my calorie counter, ready for the next time I need a candy bar or a burger. I think that's one of the neatest things about this part of the journey: the opportunity to try new foods that I wouldn't have considered before. Why would I have? I liked my fatty foods and I was going to keep eating them. I didn't need to change. Now, there are so many other possibilities.

New personal best!

I hit the gym today with the intention of getting back on the treadmill. I've been doing slow and steady for a month now, and I thought I'd mix it up, either going for speed or adding incline for the first time.

I went for speed. I finished my mile in 12:35.

This was my first time breaking 13 minutes. It was my fastest mile of my adult life. Another 35 seconds and I'll achieve the fastest mile I've ever run, ever.

The 12-minute mile has been my goal for years. Every time I go back to the gym to try this fitness thing again, that goal remains. I remember being a sophomore in high school, on the last day of gym class, trying to meet the requirement for passing gym: running a 12-minute mile. It was just me and the teacher, with her stopwatch, out on the track. She wanted me to achieve this, I knew it was important to her. But I'd never been taught how to run.

"Come on!" she yelled as I rounded the track the first time. "You can walk a twelve-minute mile!"

Experience and training have taught me that, no, I can't. As a 5'2" woman, this will never happen. But I tried. I walked and I ran and I limped. I tried my guts out.

I finished in 12:02.

She let me pass and I made a point of never running again.

Today, I'm within 34 seconds of the fastest mile I've ever run in my life. I'm still not sure how this happened, but here it is!

The best part of tonight's run was that it felt good. Very good. I didn't have that crappy, where-are-my-endorphins? feeling that I usually have during the first few minutes. It felt like I was flying from the start. I still got tired, and I had to bail out a few times before I wanted to, but it never hurt. It never scared me. It was all kinds of awesome.

So. Yay! Another milestone, one more on the horizon.

Healthy habits are contagious

When I started this journey, I was on my own. My co-workers and I had all dabbled in fitness, some folks trying diets, some taking classes from time to time. But when I started, it was a very big deal to me. I talked about it all the time, excitedly sharing what I'd learned with my friends, who were probably just listening politely but who were listening all the same.

I love an audience.

But now, three of the four of us in my department go to the gym regularly. The fourth has started meal-tracking with a phone app similar to mine and hits all her favorite fitness classes around town. A manager, who often hangs out at the empty desk, has started bringing healthy snacks and jokes with us about how he can't let his wife bring him burgers anymore, because it's embarrassing. He's making healthier choices, partly for us, but partly for himself. In another department, half of the staff members are either regularly going to a gym or changing their diets.

Instead of running for the snacks or overindulging in the office meals, we've learned to simply say "No, thank you." We're not controlled by the impulses that controlled us before.

This journey can so easily be hurtful or discouraging, driven by negative thoughts. Those ones that say "You're not good enough. You need to change." But my co-workers seem to feel every bit as empowered as I feel every day. We talk about these new discoveries with excitement and a sort of camaraderie.

Solidarity.

Even my teen-aged son has changed. Sitting down to a healthy meal and talking about his mile times in gym and how he's improving in sports is priceless. We poke at each other, daring the other to lift heavier or run faster. Sometimes, we stay up past bedtime taking turns with my free weights, critiquing each other. It's gratifying to know that I'm fit enough to inspire competition in him and that he's now interested enough in fitness to care.

'Course, he's nearly 6'1" with a 30-inch waist, so he's usually got me soundly beat on all counts. But still. It matters.

Healthy habits are contagious, guys. Small changes in you can become big changes in others.

It makes this journey more rewarding than I ever could have imagined.

More cookie wisdom

Tonight's fortune cookie read:

Keep on keepin' on.

After the rotten day yesterday and the pound gained as of this morning, I needed a kick in the butt. So thanks, cookie. I think I will!

Confessional time!

I have some friends who are under the mistaken impression that I'm really good at this "diet" thing. They think I have incredible willpower and that they, somehow weaker than I, could never do it.

So we're going to get real here.

Earlier, I said that my diet today was on track. That was true.

Was.

Then I decided I really needed chocolate. I made the mistake of believing myself. I gave in.

I didn't even have something worth eating. I don't keep snack foods in the house, as a general rule, because I am weak. I have odds and ends, some of which I forget about, none of which I would think of putting together. Tonight, I found some marshmallows on a high shelf in my kitchen. I combined these with graham crackers and a handful of chocolate chips to have S'mores.

Any of you who've ever struggled with weight loss know what comes next.

I hated myself. That's what I felt, first. Part of this journey is understanding (and respecting) the fact that calories matter and only by creating a calorie deficit can I lose weight. And so putting another who-knows-how-many calories into my body makes me upset. I hated myself because I've created more work.

I hated myself because I know how hard these cravings are to beat, and every time I give in, the next time is that much harder to fight. It's petty, but I hated myself for giving in.

And then, I felt something else. Nausea. That's where I am right now. I'm still angry, but mostly I just feel barfy, partly from the sugar and partly from the overwhelming frustration. I'm so sick to my stomach right now, guys.

S'mores are not worth it.

This is why, when people tell me "It's okay to cheat", I get so irritated. Because for me, it's not. These are rules I set for myself, with hopes and dreams riding on the backs of those rules. No, it's not the end of the world. Yes, I'll still get up tomorrow and go to the gym, and I'll hit it extra hard to make up for tonight. It'll all be okay.

Meanwhile, I'll be having words with myself about promises and not breaking them, even when the promises were only to myself.

Oh, and right now? I'm throwing those chocolate chips away, and I'll flex my massive biceps in an intimidating fashion while doing it. That'll show 'em.

Humility, part 2

I like to think that I'm completely in control of this "exercise" thing. I go when I want, I work as hard as I want, and I come home when I decide I'm good and ready. This is how I get fit.

But sometimes, I forget that there are other pieces to this puzzle. Pieces I should have known about, and probably did, once upon a time.

First point: When you feed yourself crap, you perform like crap.

Second point: When you overtrain, you cannot train yourself out of it.

I'm feeling both of these today.

Yesterday, being my birthday, I allowed myself a no-counting day. I don't usually do this, but I was out and about for my meals, so I didn't have the means to record and calculate what I was eating. I had an ice cream cone and way too much Mountain Dew - my biggest weakness. I knew I'd be back on track today, and back to the gym, so I allowed myself the transgression.

I didn't realize what a bad choice this was until I was on the treadmill today. Many runners will tell you that the first few minutes are the hardest, and you need to buckle down and concentrate on breaking through the wall holding back those wonderful, beautiful endorphins. That's when it gets easier. Only that part never kicked in.

Making it worse was the fatigue I was feeling. Having been a legs day on Monday, I spent most of my week with sore quads, which makes me limp, and when I limp, my left hip flexors get sore. Then my right shin starts to ache. None of this is the end of the world, but if I push too hard, it all starts to come apart.

So instead of the triumphant return to the gym after a birthday overindulgence, today's session was a limping, sweating, panting, achy mess. As I hobbled to my car, "ow"ing with every step, all I could think of was climbing onto the couch and icing my entire body.

My diet is back on track today, a small comfort. My legs are being iced, I'm drinking water like it's my job, and I'm hitting the supplements and anti-inflammatories hard. I may need to take a few days off from the treadmill, to let my legs finally recover.

The lesson here is that I'm still in control of this journey, but I need to remember every part of it. I can't reach my potential today if I abused myself yesterday. That includes eating garbage and overworking myself.

It's all connected. Lesson learned, again. Until I forget, again.

"Fun" is no longer a foreign concept at the gym

This week has been full of cardio goodness, and after taking a break from how hard I'd been hitting the treadmill, it's been a lot of fun.

On Sunday, I'd put in a lackluster cardio session in the morning. I just hadn't been feeling it. It was late in the afternoon when, while watching a group of competitors sweating, groaning, and crying their way through a 5k on "Biggest Loser", I thought Huh, that looks like a good idea!

And I meant it. What the crap is wrong with me?

So I went back to the gym, hopped on the treadmill, and knocked out 3.1 miles. I figured in my five-minute walk at the beginning and finished the whole thing in 46:06. What I'm most proud of is that I rated my pace and finished as strongly as I began, continuing my run/walk interval until the very end. Each mile was within a minute of each other.

Today, I spent some time on arms and followed my lifting up with another trip to the treadmill. I put in 35 minutes and went 2.41 miles, passing my previous two-mile best and finishing in 27:57.

I made a leap of faith today. I've settled into my speeds and am always nervous about going faster. Klutz may as well be my middle name, and ever since I was a kid, I've been notorious for tripping over my own feet. After my impressive head-over-heels fall down the stairs of the State Capitol in 6th grade, in front of ninety classmates, you might even say I'm renowned.

So the idea of pushing myself to go faster on the treadmill is scary to me. I'm convinced I'll fall. I can see, in my head, me stepping off the belt and falling off the treadmill in some dramatic fashion. It's pretty grisly.

But today, I took the chance and turned the speed up to 6mph. That's a ten-minute mile. It doesn't sound like much, most people can run that fast without even blinking, especially for short distances. For me, it was huge. In October, I ran at 4.5mph. I gradually moved up to 4.8, then 5mph. I try a little higher on my middle intervals, but only a little. I don't push myself very hard.

I had a lot to be proud of today.

Until I went back to the locker room, anyway, and weighed myself. According to the scale tonight, my weight has gone up slightly. It was almost enough to erase the progress I made on the treadmill.

Almost.

Some weeks, my victory will be on the scale. But some weeks, it won't. It'll be somewhere else. Every week, I fight to remember that. It's worth remembering.

Trying out a new supplement

I knew it was going to be a legs night with J, and after two trips to the gym yesterday (I couldn't help it, I was bored!), I knew I'd need a little help to make it through.

So tonight, I tried out a new pre-workout supplement:


This is N.O.-XPLODE. Y'know, like the can says.

I did a fair amount of reading on the subject of pre-workout supplements before jumping in and buying one. There are dozens of them on the market, chock-full of things that help increase performance, feed muscles and delay fatigue. This particular product was recommended by both my brother and J, so after hitting my most recent plateau, I decided to pick some up to have on hand when the urge struck.

The website for N.O.-XPLODE says lots of things about what it contains and what it does, which you can read at the link above. There are many big words that mean things, and they may be interesting to read. But I'll tell you, in my own words, what it did for me tonight.

*It gave me focus. Like, crazy focus. I-could-play-Call-of-Duty-for-seven-hours kind of focus.

*It delayed muscle fatigue, for sure. I was able to get a little more out of my workout before my legs gave up.

*It delayed muscle pain. Last legs day, the burning sensation started early and didn't stop until I got home. Tonight, there was no pain. The legs gave up, but they still don't hurt.

Basically, while sitting here I feel like I could hop up and run a mile. I know that, if I tried, I'd fall over, 'cause yikes. But the focus and lack of burn are pretty excellent.

It's not something I'll use often, probably only for training days to get the most out of my time with J. I don't want to build up an immunity to the effects too quickly. But it's nice to have another tool in my toolbox.

Oh, and as a footnote: it doesn't taste great. I take one scoop in at least 20oz of water, to dilute it. That's how hard it is for me to stomach. It's no worse than my protein shakes, though, which I drink while holding my breath.

All for the good of the journey.

Counting down to the next milestone!

When I started this journey, I told myself that when I dropped under 200 pounds, I would get myself a present.

One of these:


That right there? Is a freestanding punching bag. I already have a spot picked out in my garage.

Nineteen pounds! Ready? GO!

Three months down

Today marks three months at the gym. Three months of ass-kickings dealt by my trainer, with a few of them dealt by myself.

And I'm twenty pounds lighter.

As many times as I've tried to lose weight, I've never lost this much. I've never stayed with it long enough. Every time, the pessimism has gotten the better of me. The negative talk, the apathy, the decision that I was fine and why did I bother? But I was never fine. I was never happy with myself.

I've been lighter than 218 before. Most of my adult life I was lighter than this, by a little. But this is the fittest, healthiest 218 pounds I've ever been. There's merit in that.

I have perspective now. I've been appreciating who I am each day and I'm working to respect myself. I'm not afraid to wear sleeveless shirts at the gym anymore, though finding ones in my size that are flattering is nigh impossible.

Speaking of which, an XL in street clothes does not equal an XL in fitness clothes. Oops.

And my biceps are pretty killer. Even as they are, swaddled protectively in armfat, they're not just becoming noticeable. They're becoming prominent. This is perhaps the coolest thing ever.

I still haven't broken my 13:00 mile, but I'm not trying anymore. I realize my January goal for 30 miles on the treadmill may have been misguided, since my previously-stated plan of attack was one of cross-training. But we'll leave the goal stand. Maybe I'll surprise myself.

Have you ever noticed that when you're working really hard, and you start to sweat, it's not too bad? Then, after several minutes, the stank kicks in? I discovered that this week. Yikes.

I tell myself it means I'm working harder and getting healthier. It might just mean that I'm smelly.

I've learned that, in order to lose weight, I need to be honest, and I need to be accountable to myself. I can't look at the scale in confusion, wondering why I don't lose weight, knowing that I'm eating poorly. Honesty may hurt, but the sort of sneaky self-sabotage created by that false bafflement is much more damaging in the long run.

So. Three months down. Worth every minute.

I'm a cheater

I've started treating my supplements as a crutch.

Instead of eating well all day, I've found myself eating sorta well and resorting to the protein shakes at the end of the day if I have calories left and need more protein. This has led me to make questionable choices.

As long as my ratios are okay, that's the point, right?

Maybe. But it's a dangerous road to go down. While I may be ending the day at the numbers I want, telling myself I can have a carbtastic pasta lunch if I choke down a shake later isn't doing me any favors. It's teaching me to fake it.

Food is a battle for me. It's a battle for many of us. Short-cuts like this allow me to undermine my own progress and make choices I otherwise wouldn't have.

Here's a much-needed reminder to myself: This is a long road. No short-cuts allowed.

Hooray for arms days!

While I tolerate doing legs, I really love my arms training sessions. I can see the muscles build faster than those in my legs, since I carry the bulk of my weight (and fat) in my hips and thighs, and there's the added benefit of knowing that I'll be able to climb the stairs for the rest of the week.

It's also nice to push myself in my cardio the next day. I sweat harder on legs nights, but the rest of the week leaves me feeling like I'm missing something.

During last night's session with J, we focused on triceps and back, and there was a lot of repetition. Let me tell you, it's easy to train your muscles to failure when half your exercises work the same groups. Holy cow.

My least favorite part of the night was the giant set we did (that's three or more exercises, in a circuit, without rest) of chest press, incline push-up, and arm raises with 5-lbs in each hand.

Think 5-lbs isn't heavy? I thought that once. Now? Ha!

After more than a dozen reps of chest press and ten incline push-ups, J's grin when he handed me those weights and said "Do what I do" told me all I needed to know.

Have I mentioned how much I hate it when he grins? Probably. But I do.

Arms extended in front of me, arms to the sides, down. Sides, down. Front, down. Repeat. And then, ha-ha, to the sides and make little circles.

I swore at him. He laughed at me. It's a symbiotic relationship.

My arms ached today, a little, and I exceeded my calories for the day by 200 or so. I seem to do this on the day after training. As long as I maintain my ratios and avoid eating garbage, I allow myself to have a day like this sometimes. It definitely could have been worse.

I also did my cardio tonight. I decided to mix it up a little and put in a mile on the treadmill, two miles on the elliptical, and three miles on the bike. It was a nice change from a plain ol' thirty minute routine, with the added benefit of allowing me to watch nearly a whole episode of NCIS as I swapped around on machines.

When you don't have tv at home, you begin to love the gym for more than just the exercise.

A productive week so far. Looking forward to the rest day tomorrow and some quality time spent on the couch!

Weekends: Happy to see you, happy to see you go

Weekends are always a welcome break, but staying on track is nigh impossible.

I weighed in at 219 yesterday. One more pound and it'll be a total of twenty pounds lost since I started this thing on October 13. Hoping for a good week so I can reach that milestone by my three-month mark on Friday. It'd be a nice, round number.

The jeans I haven't worn in almost a year not only fit me, but fit me comfortably. The spandex workout capris I bought two months ago and barely squeezed into slid right on yesterday. Those pants I mentioned Friday, which I hadn't been able to button for months, have been traded out for a whole size smaller.

Taking a break from the calorie recording this weekend, enjoying few meals with family, having some cake that I shouldn't have but probably deserve.

This fitness thing makes me appreciate the structure of my weekdays. On Friday, I mastered my mid-morning cravings by eating lighter for breakfast and having a protein bar around 11am. The chocolateyness was just enough to get me through, and the protein was a welcome addition to my day. Having that bar early made the rest of the day more comfortable, in terms of my diet.

Spending the evening getting my head back in the game, watching some past episodes of "Biggest Loser" and flipping through January's magazines. Back to training tomorrow night and I hope to cheesecake it's not legs again. Fingers are crossed!

Fat acceptance and my turning point

Today, I casually referred to myself as a fat woman. Y'know, because I am one. But you'd have thought I'd advocated the wholesale slaughter of unicorn babies from the response I received from one woman.

I suppose this language is normal for me, not because I'm masochistic, but because I'm honest with myself. Accepting my weight was the first part of my journey.

Some people choose to stop here. I did, for a long time, and that's okay. It's okay to be happy with yourself, as you are. Overweight people are beautiful, intelligent, vibrant people who deserve to be acknowledged. They deserve to have pride in themselves. I am an advocate of fat acceptance and defend the rights of my shapely compatriots to follow their own path.

But I realized, at multiple points over the past many years, that my weight and fitness level were limiting me. As I've said before, in order to push yourself to be something better, you need to first admit that you need to be better. Understanding this was the second part of my journey. It was the hardest part.

Even so, I struggled. I dieted, gaining and losing the same ten pounds countless times. I started at a gym two years ago, then stopped going. And again, a year and a half ago. Over and over.

It wasn't until last October that this finally changed. Ready for a little story time? 'Cause I'm about to tell one.

I fell from a horse the first weekend of April, re-injuring my left knee, which already had a torn ACL. I've fallen plenty of times in the past, sometimes my fault and sometimes my horse's, but this one was different. This should have been a simple fall, a drop-and-roll that ended with a self-deprecating laugh, a remount, and a lesson learned. But since there was no ACL to stop the lateral sliding of my knee, when my horse went right and I went left, it was like my knee came apart. It bent sideways, straining the MCL and severely spraining my calf.

I sat in the dirt, then slowly struggled to my feet and remounted, legs shaking. It's simply what you do as a horse person. You get back on. When it came time to dismount a few minutes later, the concussion from dropping onto my left leg buckled my knee, jamming the joint and striking parts of my knee together that shouldn't have touched. It took me more than five minutes to stand this time. I put on a brave face in the viewing room as I iced myself, but by the time I drove home, I was in tears, clenching my jaw and sucking breath through my teeth all the way.

Those of you who know me understand how severe the pain must have been. The painkillers I had left over from surgery because I didn't need them after having been cut open were the only things that got me through that weekend.

Anyway. I recovered, slowly, and while the summer dragged on - the summer I was supposed to spend on horseback - I packed on the pounds. I was down to a single pair of pants that fit me, and when they stopped fitting me, I simply stopped buttoning them and wore long tops to hide my embarrassment. I gained nearly twenty pounds in only a few months.

And then, literally overnight, enough was enough. I watched a documentary that changed me, only it had nothing to do with weight or fitness. It's a movie called Buck, and it's about an extremely influential horse trainer who has done some incredible things with some horses (and people) who needed him very much. This movie reached into my heart and pulled out what matters. It reminded me of what I'd lost in that fall from the horse. It made me realize that the only way I could follow horses again was if I got fit, if I worked to fix what I'd broken, in my knee and in my spirit.

The next day, I called the gym. I met my trainer a week later. I haven't looked back.

We all have these turning points in our lives, those moments when we say "That's it! It's time to change!" and mean it. I realized that my weight was stopping me from doing something that truly mattered to me and it finally made me angry enough to do something to fix it.

Nobody has the right to make that decision for anyone else. It is not my place to judge anyone other than myself, and never in a millionty-jillion years would I look at another person, regardless of their size, and decide they should be following my path. Ever. They are beautiful people who lead their own lives. I just chose differently.

So, there you have it. I'm fat. Less fat than I was in September, but still fat. If you tell me I am, I may punch you, because seriously, who does that? But if you tell me I'm not, I may wonder if you're looking at someone else. I'm not doing this because I hate myself. I'm doing this because I love myself. Fret not, friends. This is the best change I have ever made.

I accept who I am. I'm just working on building a better vessel to get to my destination.

So far, so good

The new year is off to a solid start. It's only the 5th, but credit where credit is due.

This week's lineup is a little tamer than usual, with the legs session on Monday having put a dent in my cardio. My goal of 30mi on the treadmill this month is stuck in neutral, so I know I'm going to have an uphill battle with this week out of contention.

I accomplished two days of independent weight training, Sunday and tonight, and I'm pretty stinkin' happy about it. Would really like to do legs, but I'm still a little broken, so I've been stuck with arms.

The diet has been good, though challenging. The cravings have been persistent over the past few days, I feel desperate for sugar around 10am despite being full from breakfast. I think I need to rethink my breakfast, eat less, and pack some kind of protein snack for the morning. I still haven't found a protein bar I like, but I may need to suck it up and have one anyway.

I gave in today at lunch and had a scoop of ice cream. My calories are still good today, my ratios aren't completely destroyed, but I'm disappointed that I gave in. I also got a little sick afterward, which didn't really surprise me.

Every day is still a battle with food. My friends pat me on the back for not snacking all day like I used to, for saying "no" to treats that are passed around the office. They couldn't do it, they say. It makes me feel especially brave.

Sometimes, though, they say it's okay if I just have one. I know they mean well.

But what they don't understand is that I'm afraid. I'm afraid that eating that one piece of candy will make me need it all the time. I'm afraid of the compulsion, I'm afraid of the food obsession. I'm afraid of undoing everything I've done. I don't want to be that person anymore, and every day I'm terrified I will be again.

I know that one piece of candy doesn't have enough calories to do me in. Some days, I'll even eat it. But most days, it's not about the one piece of candy that I can't have. It's about the rest of the bag I would finish off if I went back to being that woman I was before.

I won't let that happen. Tomorrow, I work to fix my food plan to fight those cravings better. I keep saying "no". I keep moving forward.

It's the little things

Almost every day, there are little things that remind me of the benefits of this journey.

I made a trip to the store yesterday to pick up cat litter. I brought my empty bucket, filled it at the back of the store, and brought it to the register. When I got to the front of the line, I put the 30lb bucket onto the counter to be scanned.

"Sweetie!" the pretty young clerk exclaimed. "You didn't need to lift it all the way up there!"

When I shrugged and said that it was no problem, she replied, "Must be lifting those weights, huh?" She politely fake-laughed.

And I'm thinking, thirty pounds? Really? Did that used to be heavy?

It's a good thing I have those moments, too, because today I'm in so much pain that I can't walk without wincing. Legs days, yo. They're a killer.

Just another legs night

Whenever J makes me do legs, I think I'm going to die. Afterward, I think it couldn't possibly get any worse.

He proves me wrong, on all points, every time.

I do know, though, that I've never been so grunty, or so whiny. Tonight was hard - like, hard hard - and I felt weak. You know how, on really hot days when you're doing lots of running around, that little trickle of sweat meanders down your back and gets all into your business? I had that.

We started with supine leg presses on a machine similar to this:



I wasn't a fan of this style. The burden was on my shoulders, which are now criss-crossed with broken blood vessels. I was lifting 60lbs less than I do when seated and I still felt maxed out. I'll stick with the seated presses from now on, I think.

Then came lunges (backward and sideways), goblet squats (25lbs in hand), lateral step ups, and me almost falling to the floor and exclaiming that I've died and cannot finish my session, thank you anyway.

Thirty minutes had passed. Halfway there. I may have taken various names in vain upon realizing this.

Then J pulled out a medicine ball, and before he could say a word, I blurted, "You're not going to make me throw it at the wall, are you??" That particular exercise is forever etched in my memory.

He said no. I said that was good, because I didn't like that one.

I probably shouldn't have told him that. I bet he'll make me do it again soon, just to spite me.

We instead hit the mats for some hamstring exercises, which I also don't like because my hamstrings always feel like they're cramping when I do these body weight exercises. We started with single leg hip lifts and alternated sets of those with stability ball hamstring curls. I thought that doubling up these hamstring exercises was especially mean, but that's what a trainer is for. To be mean sometimes.

Those sets took me a long time. I spent at least as long lying on the floor staring at the ceiling, panting and feeling sorry for myself as I did actually performing the exercises. This earned me one well-timed "Poor you" from J, who was laughing as he said it.

Perspective.

After I dragged myself off the floor, we headed to one last room for some ab exercises. I alternated sets of v ups (which weren't nearly as perky as this lady makes them seem) with sets of leg lifts. We still had time on the clock, but J cut me loose five minutes early, bless him anyway.

So there we have it. Fifty-five minutes of self-imposed misery. I'm not sure how I'll feel tomorrow; I made the (poor?) choice to do arms yesterday, which are starting to ache this evening, and getting up in the morning may be a challenge.

If I show up tomorrow in my jammies, coworkers, you know why. It's because I can't put on pants.

For all the crap that was going on tonight, with feeling weak and struggling as badly as I did, I was never once demoralized. I was surprised by this. Hard sessions are exhilarating, but they can leave me feeling like I could have done better. Tonight, I put it all out there, and I'm left happy but drained, both emotionally and physically. I'm spent, guys.

Here's hoping for a long, restful night's sleep. Tomorrow is cardio, no excuses!

A smart cookie to start the new year

It's not the having, it's the getting.

This is the piece of wisdom my fortune cookie had for me today.

If you were to dig through my wallet, you'd find a notable absence of money. But you'd also find a number of things with no practical purpose. A train ticket from Graz, Austria, dated the summer of 2006. An old, mangled train ticket from Stuttgart and a receipt from a lunch I ate in Maribor, Slovenia that same summer. A receipt from a money exchange at the Penrhosgarnedd Post Office in Bangor, Wales, dated May 2011.

I hang onto these things because they remind me of the things I've done. Who I was, how I've changed. And, yeah, they make me look like some awesome jet-setter, which I'm totally not. I wanted to be, once, before I realized that a simpler life is pretty nice and infinitely more favorable.

You'll also find, tucked in with the quarters I try to collect so that I can do my laundry every week, a few fortunes pulled from cookies over the years. There are hundreds of fortunes that I've thrown away, fortunes that don't resonate with me. But there have been a few that matter to me and give me a vision for the future.

This one has been added to the collection.

I've been talking a lot about the process lately. I've needed to. The plateau I've been on has been emotionally devastating, and even though I soldier on and keep going into the gym five days a week, it's hurt. I've beat myself up, mentally and physically, for not doing more. Not doing better. It's only within the past week that I've started to truly accept that as long as I keep going, I'm doing it right.

It's not the having, it's the getting.

Functionally, there's a reason that these plateaus happen. When we start a fitness program, it's a shock to the body. Here I was, an entirely sedentary person, suddenly spending upwards of an hour almost every day doing hard physical work. It demanded a lot of my body, and my body responded.

After several weeks, though, the body starts to adapt. There's a reason runners can finish a 5k and still be ready for more. It's not because they're magic. It's because their body has been trained to do the job more efficiently. So when I'd been at this for two months, my body had this stuff figured out. Lift this, push that, run on the treadmill. Repeat.

Plateaus suck, but they're also evidence that we've been doing something right.

Getting out of a plateau requires a change in game plan. I could have still made gains with business as usual, but they would have been small, uninspiring gains. In order to start to see measurable results again, I needed to find a new way to tax my muscles. Maybe find a new diet plan.

Bingo.

I started cross-training. I threw away my pursuit of a 13min mile and started visiting other machines for my cardio.

I also started a new diet plan, given to me by J last week, counting not only my calories but monitoring what percentage of those calories came from carbs, protein, and fat. The body uses each of these things differently, as fuel and for muscle-building. Paying attention to these ratios can be immensely beneficial in a fitness program. I use the FatSecret Calorie Counter app on my phone, to keep an eye on my intake and to help me make better choices.

And today, when I weighed in, I kicked that plateau right the hell outta here. The scale said 221.

My body will adapt again soon enough, and I'll need to rely on the process to see me through until I'm able to break the next plateau. But this was a timely reminder that it's all working out. It will all be okay.

Training tomorrow night. We haven't done legs in four weeks, so I doubt I'll be spared again. Wish me luck!