18 Minute Muscles

My body is still reshaping after my weight loss and, while I'm thrilled with losing this much weigh, I'm not completely thrilled with all the results. I know that my skin won't all bounce back. I'm hoping that adding some muscle will help. I'm also facing my 3rd winter of working out and I know just how hard that is. At one time I would have considered buying some workout equipment that I know I would ignore eventually. I have learned to like the free and the more organic workout. These suggestions I found in my Reader this weekend are right up my alley. The writer is talking about 18 minutes of bodyweight workout, and it's what I've been thinking of doing: adding push-ups, crunches, (more squats), etc. I like this plan.

I'm thinking of what Sean Murray said last year, "full on McMuscles." That's the new goal.

One step at a time

In the fall of 2009, my life took a different path. After 5 years with a non-profit that I cared deeply about, I left to work for one of the vendors at their conferences. I still got to work in the same area of ministry, but the work I would be doing was more along the lines of what I wanted to be doing. And I could work from home. I don't think it was even a week before I realized that having an hour lunch break was going to create some bad habits if I didn't put the time to good use. I decided to go for a walk.

This is where I started.

When I started walking, I couldn't make it around the block without being winded. Eventually, as the pounds started to drop and my endurance started to rise, I walked farther and farther. As the following spring turned to summer, my daily walks were pushing the bounds of my lunch time, and the heat of the day was making longer walks impractical. If I wanted to walk farther, I'd need to start earlier. I started getting up earlier just so I could walk. I'd changed my habits one step at a time.

I've gotten a lot of comments from people about my weight loss. Most of it has been very encouraging, but I've discovered something interesting. At some point, a subset of the people who talk to me about my appearance and my walking now feel compelled to explain to me why they can't do what I have done. They can't walk 3 miles a day. They can't afford to eat healthy foods. They don't like low fat foods. What they don't realize is I told myself those same "can'ts" before I took that first step.

Finishing the 1/2 marathon.

I didn't get to this point overnight. It's taken 2 years to get here. In that 2 years I've learned to eat fresh foods when possible. I've learned that I wasted a lot of calories on fat, so I cut the fat where I could so I could still enjoy a piece of meat. I also learned that for me, lettuce is the delivery system for the salad dressing. If it weren't for the dressing, I wouldn't eat lettuce. I took a break from lettuce salads and started experimenting with other vegetables, and even fruit. The point of this, however, is not what I've done or what I eat but the fact that it took me a year to learn a lot of this and another year to get it firmly planted in my subconscious. But it never would have gotten there if I hadn't taken that first step.

A perspective nearing 100.

It's an interesting thing losing a large amount of weight. I'm looking a loss of 100 lbs squarely in the face. Only 2 more pounds to go. It's been revealing from my own perspective and from that of others. Little things like being able to easily trim one's toe nails all the way up to the big things like being able to walk a 10k race make an impression. So do things people say.

One of the most remarkable is that people don't recognize me. I find that I have to tell people I haven't seen for a while who I am; and people who do see me regularly still do a double take. I can't blame them. I did one myself a couple weeks ago. Yes, I look that good and that different.

I also find that a lot of people now find excuses for why they aren't losing weight. As much as I'd like to be able to take them along with me on my journey, it really is a matter of something just clicking inside that makes you know you have to do this. I try to remember to encourage them that when I started this adventure, I couldn't walk around the block. Now I can walk miles. Also, when I started, I ate more than my 1200-1500 calories because I needed it just to lug around the fat.

I've had an amazing support group, and very few of them have I met online. Most of them are my friends on Twitter and Facebook, and I've only met a few. Most of them don't know what I looked like before, although I do share pics if asked. They encourage me to keep going when I'm flailing, and generally I've been pretty open with them about my struggles and my victories. I hope that some of them follow me in the adventure.

I still have more to lose, but as I'm reaching for the next 2 lbs, I'm also thinking that it's less a matter of a target weight and more a matter of continuing to eat healthy and exercise. Where I land, I land. But first, these 2 pesky pounds need to say bye-bye.