Let's talk about how awesome we are

I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty damn awesome.

I'm feeling so dang good lately, if I wasn't me, I'd want to BE me.  I feel like I'm covered in a thin layer of glitter and unicorn farts (which, btw, smell like carrot cake I think) and I want to stand on top of a tall building with a megaphone shouting compliments to everyone so they feel as good as I feel.


That sort of thing is probably frowned upon.  Also, I don't own a megaphone and the tallest building in my city (where I work, incidentally) is a whopping 10 stories.  And there is no roof access unless you work for maintenance and wear a harness.

I was thinking...what is it that's making me feel so awesome?  Good choices!  Taking care of myself (physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually).  Doing things that make me happy!

What awesome decisions have you made for yourself today?  This week?  This month?  I hope you can think of at least 10 nice things you've done for yourself this month and/or 10 amazing, wonderful things about your fabulous, bad-ass self.  Actually, I hope you can think of a lot more than that...but if you can't think of at least 10, you let me know, because we need to talk.  Every time you treat yourself with respect and love, it's a tiny victory.  Every time I make the choice to treat myself well, I picture this little turtle cheering me on:

Hooray!  Good choices!  Eeeeeeeee!

Thanks, little turtle!

Anyway, the awesomeness has little to do with weight loss at this point (though don't get me wrong, I still love that "side effect" of my nutrition and exercise plan and hope it continues for awhile).  It's about doing things that make me happy, and how those things have changed over the past year to include a lot of healthy, active things. 

I sometimes worry that people will misinterpret my newfound self-respect and happiness with arrogance and fat-shaming.  Please, please, please, don't misinterpret it, because being arrogant and shaming people are two of the last things I would ever want to do.  I've learned over the past several months that interpretation can cause serious problems and that the way a message is received is often more important than the way it's intended. 

But also...I AM AWESOME AND I WANT TO SHOUT IT FROM THE TOP OF THE JOHNSON BANK BUILDING.

And more importantly...YOU are awesome and it's high time you knew it.  If you already knew, kudos to you for realizing your amazingness.  If you didn't know, well...welcome to the amazeballs club.  It's pretty exclusive and I'm 100% sure you deserve to be a member.  The only membership requirements are to take care of yourself (whatever that means to you!) and recognize your fabulousness.  Your club t-shirt is in the mail.

Trust the Process

I have a confession to make.





I weigh myself every day.

Sometimes multiple times a day.

I know, it's horrible.  My trainer AND my nutritionist both tell me, in the nicest way possible, that I'm a freakin' idiot for doing this.  And yet I can't stop.

I have to do it.  I don't punish myself on "bad" days or reward myself on "good" days, I just have to know what the scale says!

I feel weird when I don't weigh myself.  It's obsessive and I know it's bad, but I do it.  Confession over.


Let's talk about why this may be the crappiest idea ever.

Last month, I went to my nutritionist's office for my body comp appt, like I always do.  She weighs and measures me, sticks the EKG patches to my hand and foot and then we chat about how things went and she answers my 10,000 inevitable questions.

Last month, I weighed in at 255, which for me is pretty damn good.  Friggin amazeballs good, actually.

The next day, and for about 2 weeks afterward, I consistently weighed in at 255.  Sometimes my body likes to hold on to weight for as long as humanly possible and then drop several pounds overnight, so I wasn't too concerned or annoyed at this point.

Then, things took what I thought was a horrible turn.  My weight started to creep upwards.  A few days later, it was 257.  Then 260.  261.  262.  Another week and a half later and I was holding steady at 266.

And I was PISSED.

I was (am) still working out as much as I have been for the past year, 5-6x weekly for an hour.  I had (have) been eating the same healthy, whole foods as I always have been.

Why in the holy hell had I gained 11 pounds in less than a month?  I could understand it if I had avoided the gym all month and taken to eating a steady diet of cupcakes and Cheetos.  In fact, I briefly considered eating cupcakes and Cheetos, because why not?  If I'm going to gain weight anyway, I might as well go down in flames...

About 4 days before my nutritionist appointment, my weight started to trend downwards.  It finally "landed" at 256, one pound above where I'd started the month (although my bathroom is an electromagnetic black hole...every scale that enters it becomes 2-5 lb heavy within 6 weeks, no lie).

I asked my nutritionist about my body's love of holding on to weight and then dumping several pounds instantaneously instead of gradually letting it go.  Apparently, normal.  I also asked her about my rapid weight gain this month and told her how pissed I was.  After telling me (again) to stop weighing myself every damn day, she told me this can be normal, too.  *le sigh*  I don't WANT to gain weight when I'm working my ass off!  Even if it's muscle and water (two things that I actually need to gain).

I hopped on the scale.

253.

Ok, not fantastic, but a loss.  I'll take it.

Then she did my body composition analysis.

And this, my friends, is why you should not weigh yourself every day.


Even though I "only" lost 2 lb on the scale, I lost 12 lb of fat.

I also gained muscle and several pounds of water.  I know a lot of people hear "water weight gain" and think of edema or bloating, but I'm chronically dehydrated despite drinking 3-5 Nalgenes of water a day, so for me, numerous pounds of water weight gain was excellent news.

The moral of the story?

I hate hokey crap.  "Trust the process."  "Find your zen." "Keep calm and carry on." "#blessed" "If you build it, they will come." 

Ugh.  Just give me the info and/or tell me what to do without the crispy new age coating, please.

But in this case, true.  Trust the process, indeed.  "The process" has been serving me well for over a year now, one perceived setback shouldn't derail me.

Especially because it turned out to be AWESOME and not a setback at all.