Thursday, August 28, 2014

The stone cutter effect



Over the past ten plus years of my life that I’ve spent conscious of the battle of weight loss and dieting and healthy living I have often thought about a single quote. In fact, 10 plus years ago, the very first time I ever went to weight watchers or lost a single ounce, I printed out this saying and hung in at my cubicle at work. I will not quote it exactly right off the top of my head, but the gist of the quote is that, “ever watch a stone cutter at work? They hammer and hammer away at something until it finally cracks. It wasn’t that last single blow that caused it to crack but all the blows that went before it.” I think about this often in relation to weight loss. Mostly because it is always true and relevant to weight loss. It’s one of those things that work at and work at and sometimes you see results and sometimes you feel like it’s all going good and sometimes you think maybe it should have/could have been more, and then suddenly for no apparent reason, out of nowhere comes that big blow. It wasn’t so much necessarily this exact week that resulted in the outcome but the series of effort that led up to this moment.

What I am getting at is this, this morning when I got on the scale I had to do a double take (and that includes weighing a few times just to make sure) but the scale said 149.8, which means I lost 3.2 pounds this week. This is CRAZY to me. I have been steadily holding my 1.5-1.7 range for the past 4 weeks and I have been more than comfortable with that rate of loss. And I really did nothing different this week except for have a Sunday where I ate like 4,000 plus calories and wham today, I’m down 3.2 pounds. I am not advocating having a binge day by any means, but sometimes they work for me. This is not the first time in my complicated 10 plus year history of doing this that having a crazy binge day results in a good scale weigh-in. My body is bizarre like that. I also think it helps that I followed up my Sunday binge with 3 excellent, perfectly on track days. I’ve actually been incredibly proud of my efforts these past 3 days. My workouts have been totally on point and my food has been great as well. I am not delusional enough to think that this one week I actually lost 3.2 pounds, (well, yes technically I did) but realistically it is my body letting go and accepting the entire month of hard work I’ve put forth.

And yes, I can honestly say I’ve worked very hard this past month for this result. And as a result I feel proud once again of my efforts. This means in 5 weeks I am down 9.7 pounds. I am technically .3 pounds away from my initial 10 pound goal. I have 5 more weigh in’s to go before San Jose. My goal has and will continue to remain simply to be 145 pounds. I also believe that now that the second number is back to being a 4, it gets harder and harder to lose weight. I think a goal of 5 pounds in 5 weeks is perfectly realistic and more than enough to hope for. Let me tell you the relief I felt this morning though to see a 14 on the scale. It’s been a very long time since 4 was my second number. Aside from my first initial complete shock, was utter happiness. I honestly had no idea. I did not cheat or peek at the scale all week. Truly the last time I weighed myself was last Thursday morning.

It’s funny that this occurred today because last night in personal training, Amanda looked at me and said, have you been losing weight, you look leaner? I guess about 10 pounds is the magical number that someone starts to notice. It was still nice to hear. But at this point, in the last 5 weeks I’ve lost a little over 6% of my body weight, so that’s pretty good. When I lean out, the muscles that already live under the body fat tend to pop out more, helping the overall appearance as well. Whatever, I am in the 140’s again. BARELY. But it’s there.

It’s not easy. It’s never easy. But the truth is, the time is passing by anyway. Had I not started 5 weeks ago, these last 5 weeks would have come and gone no matter what. At least now I’m down almost 10 pounds and feel much better about myself as a result. The thing is for the last 6 months I have been giving myself excuse after excuse as to why I didn’t need to actually lose any weight. And yes, technically there is nothing wrong with me being 155 pounds. I totally understand that.  But it just isn’t a place that ultimately I am comfortable or happy at. I start to feel and look much better at around 150, and ideally feel really good at 140-145 pounds. This is where I really truly do want to live at. Because it was too much work and I didn’t want to give up the treats and indulgences I tried to convince myself that my body just wanted to stay between 155-160 pounds. It was truly an excuse born out of laziness. Weekly indulgences are fine, every single day indulgences are not okay.

Overall I’m very happy! Entire bag of hint of lime tostitos and a bottle of wine aside. (I forgot that on Sunday I drank pretty much an entire bottle of wine as well. Oops!) Thank you body for always being so kind to me, even when I have been less than kind to you. You are truly amazing and I’m proud of where we stand together, after all these years.

Back at it today, back to my consistent normal healthy life. Just keep plugging along, being good and healthy and not spend any amount of time worrying about what the scale will do, because ultimately it is highly unimportant. Tonight I gym, tomorrow night I gym. I am taking Saturday off to spend the day with my husband and rest before running another half marathon on Sunday.

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