Getting Stronger?

I was asked a few times last week how my weight loss journey was going...I think when I stopped writing about it, people assumed I had lost interest and decided to keep being blobby. I mainly stopped writing about it because I am NOT a health expert, its amazing to see some of these blogs that pop up when people start to eat some oatmeal and lift weights-- a week later they are handing out nutrition plans. I wrote about the fitness thing a bunch at the start because it was fun to write about that initial workout pain that hurts in such a true way that I can still feel it. And after that it seemed strange to write updates like, "Yup, still working out. Nothing is happening." So here is my not at all expert advice and current progress in this crazy thing I started doing to feel better. Exercise. Full disclosure, I dont like exercising. I dont think it is fun. I dont like doing it. I didnt get addicted to that awesome feeling everyone said would happen from doing it all the time. When I am working out, Im constantly thinking, "I cant wait for this to be over." I know some people will think I must be doing it wrong, maybe I am. Thats all part of the journey and if I get there, I will surely write about it. I hope it gets fun. Maybe I will think its fun when I can turn it into something I can measure like a super fast 5k, or I become a fencing champion. So the big question has been, how is it all going? I honestly have no idea how much I currently weigh, because I stopped stepping on the scale a couple months ago. When I first started exercising I came up with this idea of what I should weigh, based on numbers from when I was in my 20s. Completely baseless and ignorant, just a number that I thought would reflect the brand new skinny me. So every day like a real lunatic I would step on the scale hoping to see a big change. I had stopped eating junk food, I was hitting the gym, I dramatically reduced portions at meal time, so I expected big changes to come quickly. If the weight stayed the same, or didnt move down fast enough I felt like what I was doing wasnt working. It made me feel completely defeated and so it opened up doors for me to "cheat" or fall into old habits: "Well, Im not losing any weight so I might as well just eat the bacon double cheeseburger I want!" The scale doesnt seem to be the greatest ally when it comes to encouraging progress. I was so caught up in this magic number that I was ignoring the good changes that were actually going on. I hardly even noticed after the first two months how different I was starting to look, and ignored all that extra energy I had. The big changes were that my muscles didnt feel like soft squishy cookie dough when you pushed on them. I had actual muscles underneath that fat, and they were starting to feel like muscles are supposed to feel. It was this nice little realization that what I was doing was working. The best thing that I did for my health was to stop weighing myself all the time. I finally made the decision to stop caring about the actual number on the scale and instead just focused on the number of times I was exercising. The bigger the number, the better I felt at the end of each week. If it wasnt the gym, it was a bike ride, or a walk, or rowing, it all adds up. I wanted big numbers in everything I was doing. I put my energy into making the numbers on the weights go up, I wanted to go farther on the treadmill, add a few more blocks to the bike rides, these numbers mattered way more. Big numbers. If I want to feel stronger, I lift more. If I want to feel trimmer, I run more. So that is what I have been doing. Its working. Its slow. Real slow. I still catch myself standing in front of the mirror after a shower pushing my body around frowning about how ridiculous I look, asking Cole: "Can you see anything yet?!" I asked Cole what she thought the biggest change has been so far, and she said, "I can see lines now, instead of rounds." Lines are good. I can definitely say that I had unrealistic expectations of what hard work would do to my body. Shows like the Biggest Loser sensationalize what can be done in the gym armed with some Subway sandwiches and a sensitive trainer that really gets me. Guess what? Im no expert, but Subway isnt good for you. Just throwing that out there in case anyone was confused about it. So... yes I am still doing the fitness thing. Im not anywhere near my fantasy of running some jungle adventure race, or finding myself in the final four on Survivor, but I am making a pretty good go at looking decent in a fitted T-shirt. In a nutshell, its going way slower than I thought, its not fun like people say it is, but I am starting to look different, and that feels pretty dang good. How is it going for everyone else? Anyone else notice changes? Feeling stronger? Have you kept at it? Did anyone let the scale defeat them?