Change

Today I cut my hair.   It was getting long and shapeless,  but as importantly I had a momentous meeting coming up and wanted to give myself the best opportunity to succeed. 

There is an old southern superstition that when you want to change your luck,  you change your look.  Cut your hair, and you throw away your bad luck with your excess locks. 

Anyway,  it was time for a change.  What do you think?

The Framework

Just a few notes on the structure I use to make it work.

There are a million tracking services out there, but personally I use Noom Weight Loss.  It's an app on my phone, based on the general concept o Volumetrics, and I find it to be mostly helpful and low-drama.

Fitness -- I have, basically, three commitments that I make to exercise.

1. Roller derby, which I play 2-3 days a week
2. Walking/running, which I do 2 days a week.
3. Horseback riding, which I do every Sunday. 

Personally, I just have to have commitments, such that I don't get into the game of mentally bargaining away my fitness opportunities.  Without an expectation that I do certain things at certain times, I'll come up with reason to let them slide or skip them altogether.

Food -- I have a CSA, which entails a cooler of produce being dropped off at my house every Friday all summer and into the Fall.  Otherwise I'd avoid buying produce, despite it being by far the healthiest thing that I should compose my diet of. 

So, that's the basic framework.

"After"

During, really.  And let's talk about what I've achieved and where I want to go, while we're at it.

Since the baby arrived, I've lost about 25 pounds.  I have not officially subscribed to any particular plan, and I don't endorse any overall commercial solution.

For me, it was about feeling better, looking better, and being able to see a photo of myself that I felt positively about.  To date I've lost about 3" from my waist and 25 pounds, and dropped 2 sizes in my clothes.  Yay.

So, what do I do?  What does my routine look like? 

Workin' on the Weekend

Pardon the selfie, but I want to illustrate something.



I went riding this weekend.  For the first time in a long time.  It was awesome.

Further, weekends are in some ways what I live for.  We have pretty rigid weekdays, so the weekend is pretty much the only time that I can do whatever I like.  And increasingly that means exercising in some way, and sleeping. 

I managed all of that this weekend. So as far as I'm considering, that's successful.

I'm Not An Awesome Runner...

And that's ok, at least for now.  I've been running for a few years now, and quite frankly I'm not great at it.  It's a good run if I can maintain a 10-11/minute pace.  

This morning was a beautiful morning, a perfectly clear and cool day.  The race was to benefit the scholarship fund established in honor of Jeremy Herbstritt.  It was well-run, and the "quaker hill" portion was punishing.  

But why was I out there?  Running isn't my primary sport, nor do I spend enough time on it to excel at it.  Today it was enough to get out there on my recovering ankle, to push my recovering lungs, and to have a great time.  At that I excelled.

What Didn't Work

Yogilates. Atkins. "The Yogurt Study." Low-Carb. South Beach.  The 17 Day Diet.  The Cabbage Soup Diet.  Slim Fast. Racquetball.  Horseback Riding. 

I could go on for days.  Almost all of it felt good, briefly.  None of it by itself actually helped me lose weight or keep it off.

"Before"

So, why did I start this whole weight loss journey, and what was I trying to achieve? 

Here's my "before" shot.


Interestingly, as I prepared to write this, I went looking for photos of myself at my heaviest.  I couldn't actually find any.  I think this is more important than, say, the number on the scale, or the technical terminology, but that was bad, too.  I was obese.  Not technically morbidly obese, but my BMI was around 33, and I weighed about 60 pounds more than, technically, I would ideally weigh.  I didn't own a full length mirror, or a scale.  I never threw my clothing out.  I was basically avoiding looking at myself.  Because I didn't feel good about my body. 

Now, people tend to assume that fat people don't exercise, but I did.  A lot, actually.  They also assume that fat people don't diet.  And I did a lot of that.  Actually, it's probably why I got to be so fat.  The cycle that I got into when dieting usually backfired.  Anyway, ultimately I weighed way too much.  So much that my reproductive endocrinologist said he wouldn't work with me if I didn't limit my pregnancy weight gain, and quite frankly my OB office harassed me about my weight for the entire nine months.  I don't think that's acceptable behavior, but it reminded me of all the unacceptable behaviors I had endured as a fat person and all of the less subtle disadvantages that studies tell me I must be experiencing.  Put simply, I was paying a price for being fat, even beyond my own personal feelings.  Things had to change. 

Post-Pregnancy Paring

After the baby arrived, I also discovered that I had really no time for extraneous nonsense.  Babies come with a lot of bric-a-brac -- I am in the process, always, of donating it to other people when we no longer need it.  But I also realized how much effort and time I had put into obtaining and maintaining stuff that I really don't enjoy all that much or have time for.  Clothes are a special example of this.  You know I had 14 pairs of dark wash bootcut jeans?  Nobody needs that.  NOBODY.  But over time, I had colonized a closet, dresser, and two wardrobes, and what was I getting from that?  Mostly, I couldn't tell what I owned, and often I owned duplicates of things that I only sort of felt I liked.  Beyond that, my closet was a tour of outfits I wished looked great on me, but which sort of fit poorly or were sort of pathetic facsimiles of my business wardrobe.  Anyway, it had to go.

1. I tossed everything that didn't fit.

2. I tossed everything that I don't pretty seriously like.  Someday I'd like only to wear things that I love, but I think step one is cutting down my collection so I can tell what things I need.  And I expect that list to be a little costly, so I need to keep some staples that I can mix in, as long as they function for me at this point.  

3. I tossed duplicates.  4 pairs of black athletic shorts.  Three pairs of athletic leggings.  The aforementioned dark wash bootcut jeans.  Good riddance!

4. I set reasonable numbers of certain types of items to keep, and I tossed the rest.  Well, I tried.  I still have a surprisingly large tee shirt collection.  But I probably have half of what I had.

So now I'm in the second round of culling, looking forward to being able to purchase some pieces that might help me define my personal style.  I do have it -- I just had to bring it to light by getting rid of all the stuff it was buried under.

The Better Me Project

So, something kind of crazy happened with the new baby, at least as it pertains to my self-concept and fitness.  Specifically, I was fairly overweight when I got pregnant.  I was, quite frankly, harassed about it by my medical providers, and I was careful not to gain much.  So when I came home from the hospital four days after Hal was born, I was surprised to find that I was back at my pre-baby weight.  A week after that, I was ten pounds down.  

Like many women I've tried to lose weight on and off my whole life.  I think I started really worrying about it when I gained weight in 10th grade and zoomed from 120 to 135.  135!  It seems like an unattainable weight now, but I thought I'd suddenly become fat.  I never got especially emotionally unhinged by it, but over the years I attempted to lose weight, and I failed.  The pounds crept inexorably up.  

Anyway, what with the unexpected jump start, I decided to tackle weight loss again.  I decided it would be different this time.  I managed to lose 25 pounds.  So, so far so good.  I'm going to talk a little here about that, as I puzzle over it in my own mind.  This time it's working, but why?

Babies and stuff

Obviously, the baby arrived.  His name is Hendrix Sterling Olmsted, but we call him Hal.  We're totally thrilled with him.  

Let's see...so much has happened.  I got a new job.  Chris got tenure.  Hal did a million news things in his march from newbornhood to babyhood and now from babyhood to toddlerhood.  We went back to roller derby, but we've gotten kind of lackadaisical about restoration and home improvement.  It's crazy busy and totally awesome.