Run for your life...wow, how many times has that pun been used on a weight-loss blog?

I am doing the Couch to 5K program now. I ran the second of my Week 1 runs today and I feel pretty great. My hip is a little loose, a leftover from some car accidents I have been in—including the time I was hit by a giant truck right on my left hip, the one giving me trouble. I vacillate between thinking that it is some terrible rare problem, a stress fracture that I am making worse and worse, or just something I need to pamper with aftercare. Regardless, I can interval run for thirty minutes and I can walk for four hours or more, I can ride for hours...but my hip always has something to say about it. In turn, my knees seem to think that means they have an opinion. I bribe them with ibuprofen on the worst days and ice and wraps on the others.

One of the things I have learned from all of this is why it really pays off to join a gym and have a trainer. It is rid— excuse me, RIDICULOUSLY expensive. Upwards of 50 dollars a session for a reasonably priced trainer...but you go, you meet with them, you tell them, My hip is doing such and such, and they can tell you the best way to treat it. When to keep pushing, how to rehab, whether or not to worry...all the stuff that is so up in the air for me right now. Is a trainer the same as a full body MRI? No, but their best guess is still probably, because of experience, better than mine. And despite that fifty, a damn-sight cheaper than an MRI. Hooray, no health insurance. I mean, it sucks.

The holidays are upon me and I have plans to go out to Boston to visit a friend I haven't seen in about a year, maybe longer. He missed out on watching me gain weight (about thirty or so over a year) and of course, this fifty-pounds lighter version is probably going to be new to him too. There is a certain amount of nervousness that goes along with that. Not because I think he will treat me differently but because I feel so different and my life is so different. Running? Yeah, that's new. The food is a bit scary too. Not the food, but the fact that our relationship has always had a long dinner table running through it. On that table was ice cream, cakes, Mexican food, more ice cream, fried eggs, burgers, bacon...there was this breakfast called The Pile at a diner in Salt Lake city that began with about two potatoes, country-style, included onions, peppers, mushrooms—all fried, two fried eggs (or three if you chose), bacon, a cup of coffee extra sweet, extra cream, and a half stack of pancakes.

I ate that or something just as bad for me, every Sunday for about two years.

Breakfast for me these days is uh, oatmeal with prunes...that was yesterday. Today was protein smoothie and some bran flakes. And you couldn't pay me to go back to The Pile. Damn.

I know that this visit will be super-fun and I am not worried about food being an obstacle to that but there is still the issue of food to be dealt with, as there always is.

Good news, I am still awesome.
That is all, no bad news.

As of Thanksgiving, yes I weighed myself on Thanksgiving, I am down another nine pounds which, for those of us paying attention, means I am down fifty pounds in total. From 276 to 226 in five months. I feel pretty good about it.

I have been watching weight loss reality TV shows, mostly because it motivates me to do it the right way, and because I exercise while watching them. They make me glad that I am doing this slowly because the chances of gaining it all back in a year are so much lower this way. As it is I keep being weirded right out by pictures of me. It doesn't look like me sometimes and I am not even halfway through it yet. If I had lost this much weight, just a little over a third of my intended goal, in five weeks instead of five months, I imagine the psychological impact would be even more severe. After an entire lifetime of thinking of myself as a great big, fat guy...yeah, it is going to be years before I think of myself as someone who is only overweight (a milestone that I will actually hit at 204 pounds, so, right around the corner). And yet again years beyond that to think of myself as "normal."
The last time I was under two hundred, I was probably in middle school. I have been overweight or obese my entire memorable life. How in the world am I supposed to acclimate to not being something I have always been? How do you get used to "normal" when normal for you is something so much different?

These days I am approaching the upper end of American average size, about a 14 in ladies' sizes. Around a Large. And though a series of Xes no longer precedes my size, I still feel like someone who would be more suited to a 3X than an L. I like to think that I am not at all defined by my clothing size but when I pulled a sweater dress off the rack and I held it out, looking at the label "Large"...I thought, there's no way I am just a large, this looks way too small. Trying it on, it fit, I then thought, I'm a Large? That's nuts! I'm a large! The thought pattern sort of upset and amused me at the same time. I am not my clothing size. I know this, but when a great deal of my time involves working out, researching diet and weight-loss science...of course my focus is a little skewed at the moment. I often gauge time passed in cardio blocks. The two or three hours on my bike are broken up into interval and moderate phases. My life is a strange place right now. I am focused. I have a goal. I am Losing Weight, practically a full-time occupation. So it makes sense that measures of my success toward that goal will feel rather personally defining but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I am used to feeling like so much more than an L. Or whatever.

In two more months, or I hope by New Year, I will be at my halfway mark. I have about one hundred thirty pounds to lose overall to get to my personal ideal weight. But the name of this blog is Century Ride, so, 100 (106 exactly to no longer be classed as "overweight" according to the BMI calculators). And as of Thanksgiving I am halfway there. I had a little celebration on the scale at my friend's house where I had snuck a little weigh-in, still not having a scale of my own.

It is something to celebrate.

Even greater a milestone to celebrate?
My arms are strong enough and I am lighter enough that I can bike out of the saddle for a minute at a time at full resistance. Hills, I'mma eff you up come Spring.

Also in the great news category? I interval-ran 4.2 miles on Thanksgiving. It felt great. I run now. I am a runner.

Life is good.

Whoever invented walking lunges needs to be taken outside behind the woodshed and shot.

Guess who <3s wearing pearls during a good workout?

That'd be me.

I never realize I am wearing them until I have to take them off for the shower.
Such a lady.


PostScript: That sweat is from 12 little minutes of bodyrocking.
I feel wiped and pumped at the same time.
Fitness rules.

Update for the masses, for posterity, for me

October is over already? WTHeck?

I weighed in a little while ago and, having just eaten and it was not first thing in the morning, I was 235 which is awesome considering I started over 270. No fads, no crunches, no gimmicks...okay, a few crunches, and I'm down 41 pounds since July. About ten pounds a month, not too bad, eh?
And that was about two weeks ago so who knows now?..I know that my pants are falling off again. I have zero pants that fit. And zero workout gear.

That's become sort of a big self-perception hurdle. Losing weight but not being able to afford new clothes. Because you feel kick-ass right after a workout but then you have to put on the same old clothes that don't fit and you feel like a hobo.
And knowing that even if I do scrape the forty bucks together for a new pair of pants, they're not gonna fit in a month or so anyway. Disposable pants. Grr. And workout gear? Isn't the point, if I am doing it right, to lose weight? So I size myself right out of the eighty dollar moisture wicking jersey and the hundred dollar sports bra and the sixty-five dollar bike shorts. So frustrating.
But you can't complain about this phenomenon to most because what they hear is still just, "Woe is me, I'm losing weight," and they want to smack you.

I am on a rest-ish day and I am starting a recovery week today. My neck has been not so happy with me lately and I am planning on starting an outdoor walk/jogging routine soon; I want to give myself a clean bill of health before getting into that. Calories appropriately reduced though I think I am going to have to break from my desk and eat a real lunch soon—the banana I had on the way back from the grocery store just isn't cutting it. I still have that tendency to just not eat if I don't have to. If there's no one around to notice, if I am not starving from a hard workout, any other reason that seems rational at the time but totally isn't. I suppose it's just one of those things. Once an eating disorder, always an eating disorder. I just have to be aware of it and do what I can to rise above.

So, tomato soup and spinach, I think. Because I am all out of asparagus.

Pre-Sunday update

I am on a workout high. Drinking recovery shake, about to have a light dinner, in a good mood.

Not much else to say other than, I rule. My triceps are getting pretty kickass and I am about to level up to a heavier set of hand weights. I can do about a hundred pushups at a time—half of 'em divebombers—without having to take breather to pass out or throw up...and I did this latest workout while on a break from getting Real Live Grownup Work done.

So, yeah, I rule.

Ah, Autumn. It is always my best time of year.

When you are losing weight there are a lot of ways to measure success, to track it. And there are a lot of things to look forward to.

I don't usually wear expensive clothing; I tend to be hard on my things and spending 300 dollars on a blouse seems ridiculous if I am just going to wear it twice, have it dry cleaned a year later only to find that they couldn't get out the blood stain I don't remember getting on it.
So I splurge in other ways.
I like corsets and lingerie and garter belts and hosiery. For those of us over a size ten, there are only about three places that are of any use for this: I favor Hips and Curves.

I was over there browsing, because Halloween is coming up and because I found the other day that I have lost too many inches to wear any of my corsets anymore...it was a sad and awesome moment at the same time.

I want this corset so bad I can taste it. I know exactly how I would wear it. I can tell I would look awesome in it. I know I would feel awesome in it, which is the real reason to wear sexy underclothes. And then I took my measurements to figure out which size I would order if I had 160 bucks to blow on lingerie and I realized that I would order a 32.

Now, it is beyond foolish to order a pricy something like this when you are losing weight because it is likely, and it is the hope, that you will lose more weight and it won't fit anymore. But it is not the most expensive corset I have seen and you can bet I have my eye on a corsetière who will be getting a call the second my final weight has been maintained for a couple months. Knowing that my custom fit is going to cost about five hundred bucks makes one that is under 200...well, it puts things in perspective. Maybe my Christmas list is something other than just exercise equipment afterall. Lingerie and exercise equipment. And new pants. I think it's pretty clear what I have been up to.

That's a finished size of 32. So after lacing, my waist would measure a 32. Let's take bets on whether or not that's going to be a 30 in about two or three weeks.

If that isn't reason enough to go workout in triumph, I don't know what is.