A Changing Outlook

I’m going to talk a little bit more about breaking the 200lb mark this week... and by "a little bit", I mean "a whole lot":

I’ve always been someone who didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the number on the scale – I think part of that is because I’m so tall that I’ve always weighed more than I looked like I should, and always weighed more than 90% of my peers because of my height. It’s no fun listening to your 5’4 girlfriends complain about weighing a meager 120-125lbs and wearing a size 4 when the last time you weighed 125lbs you were 11… and never wore a size 4 because along with puberty came hips.

It took a long time for me to realize that being between 140 and 150lbs at 5’10 WAS super skinny. And that wearing a size 8 or 10 was pretty fantastic. Unfortunately by the time I realized that I had already started to gain a little weight. Honestly, I think being between 160 and 170 was a much healthier weight for me especially when you consider that I actually had muscle tone at that weight – whereas in high school being super thin, I was just that: super thin. Not toned. It was in my late teens that I stopped focusing on the scale and started paying more attention to how I felt in my clothing, how my clothing fit, and more on the sizes I was wearing. If I could still fit into my 10s and 12s and felt like I still looked good then I must not have gained too much weight. Even when I bumped up to a 14 I still felt pretty confident in the way I looked.

I’m sure I’ve said this before – but when I got pregnant I was the heaviest I’d ever been at 170lbs. I gained exactly what I should have during my pregnancy and 2 days before my son was born I weighed 205lbs. I lost almost all of that weight in the month after James was born – and then I became stressed and depressed due to certain circumstances most of you followers already know about… and I packed 25 of those 35lbs back on. I was a size 16 for the first time in my life, but I had just had a baby so I wasn’t really stressed over it. I never had trouble losing/maintaining weight in my life, why should now be any different? I finally got back into the gym in the summer of ’06, lost enough to fit back into my 14s, then fluctuated in the lower-to-upper 180s for a while. I got engaged in the beginning of ’08 and really started hitting the gym pretty hard and by that August, just in time for my wedding, I was down to my pre-baby weight of 170! Go me!!

When you get married and you have to get all that paperwork taken care of and all the administrative crap… someone should give you this disclaimer: Getting married can cause inexplicable weight gain...IN LARGE AMOUNTS. It’s just how life works. You’re not trying to impress anyone anymore, you’re happy, you’re probably going out to eat more, you’re not focused on hitting the gym everyday because you’re a NEWLYWED and you want to spend time with your NEW HUSBAND/WIFE. It’s VERY EXCITING! Add to this the fact that you continue to get older every year… shocking, I know… and it becomes harder and harder to lose all that “happy weight”.

Let’s fast forward to January 2010: I’ve just continually gained weight since I got married… I can no longer fit into a single pair of my size 14’s, and now my 16s have gotten too small. Instead of going to Target and purchasing a SCALE so that I can actually SEE how much weight I’ve gained in a little over a year, I decide to purchase new clothing… yes. That’s right. 18. I had to graduate to 18. I like to blame this on my 6 months stint on Prozac for lovely anxiety… but the reality is I got lazy, I ate crap, and if I had been taking care of myself I wouldn’t have gained nearly the amount of weight that I did over that 6 month period. When I went to the doctor that month I was at 206lbs. One pound heavier than I had been at 9 MONTHS PREGNANT!

(Quick FYI to the guys out there:  going from a size 14 to a size 18 in girl sizes is like going from a size 30 to a size 36 in dude sizes. It’s pretty substaintial.)

Okay, so you would think this GIANT LEAP to weighing more than I had when I was pregnant would have been some kind of huge wake-up call, right? WRONG. Instead I just got fucking depressed… and then by June I weighed a lovely 215lbs.

That was the wake-up call for me. That, and looking at pictures of my fat-self… lol…plus the realization that my size 18 pants were starting to feel tight. UNACCEPTABLE.

Being under 200lbs again feels amazing. It’s hard for me to articulate. I feel emotionally lighter. I feel like it IS actually possible for me to reach my “dream” weight. This is a HUGE thing for me. It’s hard to describe.

 In Spring of ’09 my gym offered me 2 free personal training sessions – I was at about 180-185 at the time… and the trainer asked me what my goal weight was and I went off on this whole thing about how I didn’t care if I weighed 180 for the rest of my life, I just wanted to be healthy, toned, strong… and he again asked me, “Okay, but what is your GOAL weight?” and I said 150, and then immediately added, “But I know I’ll never be that again. I’ve had a baby, I’m older now. I’d be happy with 170.” I wasn’t giving myself any credit. At the time 170 was a small loss for me. It was shortly thereafter that I stopped going to the gym regularly and began the process of gaining and gaining quickly.

Today I feel like 150 is an attainable goal. It might take another year, maybe a little more – but the point is that I KNOW I can get there. It’s all about small steps. A couple months ago I wanted to be at 200, I made it, I surpassed it! Now I’m focusing on 180.

The biggest thing is that now I enjoy taking care of myself, I enjoy eating right and learning about nutrition and how different foods help my body. I enjoy exercising and feeling the difference in my energy level and my emotional health. This has been an incredible experience for me! I’m really proud of myself!

<end rant>

Stats for 12/7:

• total calories: 1974 - yesterday was my MIL's birthday and we went to Olive Garden, and I would have done juuuuust fine if I hadn't had that margarita later in the evening... it's okay though. I hit the gym pretty hard before heading to dinner and my net calories for the day were only 1610. Not going to beat myself up over this one.
• calories burned: 364 - weight lifting for the win!
• 2 cigarettes - smoking has been really weird for me this last week. It's like I really WANT to smoke (especially when I'm drinking or with my smoker friends), but then when I do I feel really yucky and the next morning - no matter if I smoke 1 cigarette or 10 - I feel awful and my chest feels heavy and I'm all coughy and gross. Quitting has turned out to be much harder than I thought it would be for me. 
• 12am bedtime  - stayed up too late reading.
• $15 on drinks ($21 left for week - dinner was free thanks to my FIL!)

I haven't decided if I want to go to the gym tonight or not - I'm feeling like I might be coming down with a cold or something, and I have a personal training assessment tomorrow evening that I really really want to go to and don't want to reschedule. Maybe I'll do some yoga or something at home.