Results. Are. In.

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I love “All I Do is Win” by DJ Khaled. It’s been a staple on my workout mix for a few years now. It’s got Luda. It’s got Snoop. It’s got everything a girl trying to shed some serious pounds needs. And for the first two months of my training, it was practically my theme song because I was winning this fitness game. Little did I know “up-down-up-down-up-down” would end up being the part of the song that resonated most with this journey.

Let’s start with the first “measurements” day that happened one month into training. (Remember the horror of the initial assessment? Scale + shirt removal + fat calipers = mortified reality check.) So I approached this office visit with an interesting mix of PTSD and hope. I’d been working hard, watching what I ate and had become damn near intimate with MyFitnessPal.

Then I stepped on the scale and watched as he moved the slider. To the right. Two pounds to the right. I looked at the scale. Then at him. Then back at the scale. Then back at him.

Me: exCUUUUUSE ME? I’VE GAINED WEIGHT? WHA?

Trainer: Hold on! Don’t panic! You look smaller so let me do measurements and I’ll show you we’ve made progress.

Me: (no words, just look of disbelief, defeat and despair)

Off went my shirt. Out came the calipers. Pinch, pinch. Measure, measure. MATH. And ahhhhhhhhhhh yeah…. he was right. Sure, I’d gained two pounds on the scale but the important numbers were the percentages. I was down 2.55% in body fat. His fancy equations showed that I’d lost four pounds of fat and gained six pounds of muscle, which he assured me were incredible results so my blood pressure returned to normal. Whew.

Fueled by my progress and motivated to move the scale in the other direction, I decided to up my game a bit and start taking some classes I’d been afraid of before but now had the confidence to at least try. The weather was starting to break as well which meant I could ditch the treadmill for my beloved sidewalks and park. And that’s when I started to notice other results that weren’t tied to weight or fat percentages. I had gotten faster. I had shaved nearly 30 seconds off my mile and it didn’t feel like extra work. I was running comfortably at a faster pace. I could also do high impact cardio and weights classes without feeling like I was going to die. I was actually getting FIT. I was like a Daft Punk song! Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.

And the high continued for a while as I had a doctor’s appointment two weeks later and had lost four pounds. Then another appointment two weeks after that and was down another four pounds. I was losing two pounds a week! It was working! So when Trainer wanted to do another check-in a few weeks later I was super confident I’d have more impressive results for him. I’d go so far as to say I felt cocky as I stepped on the scale. Then, disaster. I had only lost one pound in the last three weeks. What happened to my two pounds per week? I should have lost more weight. Ok. breathe. I was distraught but still hopeful that the calipers would reveal a higher fat percentage loss and then the stalled weight loss would be less of a blow. But that barely budged too. I was only down a quarter of a percent in fat. Ugggggghhhhhh. This was so depressing and I actually felt myself shutting down.

Trainer was telling me I’d lost almost ten pounds and three percent body fat since we started, which was great progress, but my brain wouldn’t hear it. It was in panic mode and drowning out his encouraging words with questions about why I’d stalled. What went wrong?  What’s a girl gotta do to lose 30 pounds around here? Surely it’s not go home and drown your sorrows in a bottle of wine but that’s what I did. It was kinda pathetic actually. What was I thinking? “I’ll show you FitnessPal… calories be damned!” Fortunately, I realized I was just feeling sorry for myself and only allowed one day of wine-y wallowing.

A lot of good has happened in these two months. I’ve lost ten pounds! That is huge and I should celebrate it with more hard work, dammit. No more sulking and throwing myself pity parties if I have an off day. The highs, the lows, the good days, the bad days. They’re all part of the deal.

It can be an emotional roller coaster, especially since food is involved. (Or, rather, a lack thereof.) People who are hungry are not rational. I’m a basket case with an empty basket so please be patient with me, and I will try my best to be patient with my results. Besides, if all I really did was win I’d probably stop appreciating it so much.

The Sleep Diet

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In order to lose 30 pounds by pool season (fitness goals 2 and 3), Trainer mapped out a workout regimen and put me on what he called a “conservative” calorie count of 1550 cals a day. At that rate (I started in January) I would lose 1.5 pounds per week and hit my goal in time for summer.

At first I thought, ok, 1550 isn’t so bad for a weight loss plan. In fact, it sounded almost decadent given that I’d worked with a trainer a few years back who had me on 1200 cals a day which made me think I was dying. Working out that hard and eating so little made me ravenous and a wee bit insane. Things got weird. I had to apologize to friends and coworkers when they caught me staring and drooling, and explain that everyone around me was turning into turkey legs, bowls of spaghetti and pieces of pie. You know… like in the old cartoons where two people are marooned on an island and they’re both starving so they imagine the other person is food and they end up chasing each other around with a knife and fork that appears out nowhere? Yeah. That.

So, clearly I was a bit nervous that might happen again but had high hopes the extra 350 cals a day would feel luxurious this time around. And they did. Sort of. For the first few days I found it was pretty easy to stay under 1550. Turns out managing calorie intake is a piece of cake (CAKE!) if you prepare all of your meals at home and avoid alcohol. Then the weekend came. Whoops.

“It’s ok,” Trainer said. “Think of your calories in three day increments. If you blow it one day, just make up for it with low cals the next couple of days so your total count works out overall for those days.”

Hmm… more math. But it sounds a little more forgiving and doable as I attempt to find some will power. It’s tough. When every calorie counts, you end up obsessing over everything you ingest and there’s a number in your head that climbs all day long as you get closer and closer to your limit.

One day I’d underestimated something I ate for lunch and by the time I had a snack and saw my mistake, I realized anything I ate for dinner – no matter how healthy – would put me over for the day. Oh no. Panic. Despair. What to do? I was trying so hard and thought I was being so good. Then I had a terrible thought. Brilliant. But terrible.

What if I take a sleeping pill when I get home from work? Then I could skip dinner and just go straight to bed! GENIUS!

Yep. That was an actual idea from my brain. Desperate times were calling for desperate measures and I’d been reduced to thinking I could knock out my hunger by knocking myself out. What had my world come to?

Fortunately, the more mature and wise part of me that wants to be healthy about losing weight didn’t let me to do that. So, instead, I had a ton of roasted vegetables and a small piece of grilled chicken for dinner and didn’t go to bed hungry. I did have a good laugh though because, come on, I almost invented a horribly unhealthy “sleep diet.”

And I’ve heard laughing burns like four calories a minute. But who’s counting?

 

Goals

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A wise prostitute once said, “You gotta have a goal. Do you have a goal?”

kit deluca

Yeah, Kit DeLuca, underrated hooker sidekick from Pretty Woman, I do. In fact, I have three.

I was surprised at how quickly my first fitness goal came to mind when Trainer asked. “A faster mile,” I said. I’ve never been a fast runner by any stretch of the imagination but I’d noticed about a year ago, when I started training for the Brooklyn Half Marathon, that I was moving like molasses. I’ve also never been one to knock anyone’s pace because a mile is a mile in my book and good on ya for getting out there and doing it, but still I wanted to pick up the pace. At the very least so I could pretend to keep up with some of my friends who are, let’s face it, really just gazelles pretending to be human.

Anyhoo, I digress. Goal 1: FASTER MILE. 

I’m using my time in the BK Half as my base because it’s my best time since I started counting. I averaged a ten minute mile for the first ten miles and didn’t drop much for the last 3.1, which isn’t fast for some but was like lightning for me.

Goal 2: LOSE 30 POUNDS.

I know. Sounds like a lot. But keep in mind I’m 5’11 so I can gain a bit of weight without anyone really noticing. Which is a good and bad thing. A 5-10 pound weight gain isn’t going to result in a drastic change and likely won’t affect clothing sizes, so by the time I notice I’ve put on weight, I’ve actually put on quite a bit of weight. It’s terribly cruel math but there you have it.

And I don’t know if you know how hard one has to work to lose 30 pounds, but trust me, it’s hard work. Losing two pounds a week is really ambitious and at that rate it will take me 15 weeks to lose it. That’s nearly four months. MORE MATH. But hey, I didn’t gain it overnight so I won’t lose it overnight either. Must be patient. Or start doing meth. KIDDING. I’ll be healthy and take the patient, “slow and steady wins the race” path.

Goal 3: BIKINI READY BY POOL SEASON!

Now this is one of the most vain statements I’ve ever made but I really would like to, for once in my life, not be self conscious in a bathing suit in public. I was a chubby kid and teenager who was painfully aware of how ridiculous I looked in a swimsuit and, like most of us, carried that body image into adulthood. Sure, I can laugh about it now, but there were a lot of years there that just weren’t kind. I have a hilarious yarn from a Florida beach trip where I spent probably ten minutes wedging my roly poly five year old body into an inner tube that was clearly designed for a much smaller child. The plastic made horrible sounds as I inched that tube up and around my belly but I was determined. I was also oblivious to the audience I’d attracted who was watching and chuckling at my struggle. I finally heard the giggles when I’d gotten the tube situated so my triumph was short-lived as I, mortified as a kindergartner can be, jumped into the pool and paddled and splashed my way to the other side to pout.

So, yeah, bikini ready by pool season. If we want to examine the actual fitness behind my bikini goal it’s this: I know getting in shape isn’t just about getting thin and that there’s a huge difference between being skinny and being fit. I’m working toward the latter and hope that poolside confidence is just one of the many benefits that comes with the territory of being fit. If not, I’ll be working through that Florida poolside trauma with a therapist.

The Trainer

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It all started with a text. From him. I’d heard about him for sure. The brutal personal trainer at my gym who kicks your butt and pinches your fat. And now here he was on my phone screen, an unknown number offering his services.

My own friends had sold me down the river saying, according to the text, that I “would be able to benefit from (his) help.” What the hell did that mean? Did they just call me fat? Ugh. But they were right. I could use some help in that department because I had kind of let myself go in the last several months. They knew it. I knew it. And now this trainer knew it.

So after firing off a “how dare you?!” text to my once beloved girlfriends, I hit Trainer back and set up a fitness evaluation for early the next week. I even introduced myself when I saw him at the gym later that night because now that the cat was out of the bag there seemed to be no sense in hiding.

Well, that was, until I heard how the other girls’ fitness evaluations went. Friend One said he called her “squishy,” and he told Friend Two something along the lines of her having the “gait of a toddler.” These are two of my tiniest friends and women I consider to be quite fit. I am nearly twice their size and had fallen far out of anything resembling a workout routine. What on earth would he say to me? Actual fear started to sink in and I became a nervous wreck as I got closer and closer to judgment day.

It was a Tuesday. Trainer and I were sitting at a desk in an office, discussing my fitness history, goals and whatnot. It was, surprisingly, a pleasant conversation and a good reminder that I’d actually been a fairly fit person in the past – I was a college soccer player, I ran half marathons, and I’d logged thousands of miles as a cyclist in my day.

Trainer: So what happened?

Me: I dunno.

But I did know. I love food. I love drinks. And as much as I love running and jumping and climbing trees, there was no way I could do enough of that to counterbalance my love of mac n cheese, tacos and craft beers. (To be fair though, most days I eat pretty healthy. It’s just that when I go off the rails, I GO OFF THE RAILS.)

So there I was. Time to face the music and step on that scale. Ho-LEE shit. Actual proof that I’d let myself go. I’m way too embarrassed to say what it said and I know that flies in the face of fitness blogging but TRUST ME. It was the highest number I’d ever seen on my end. However, before I could let that sink in, Trainer asked me if I had a sports bra under my shirt.

Huh? Yes. Why?

Because it was time to pinch the fat. Mortified, but committed to this journey, I took off my shirt and finally understood how contestants on Biggest Loser must feel at the weigh-in wearing only a sports bra and pants, with their fat rolls exposed for all the world to see. In my case it was just Trainer but STILL.

Oh, and have I mentioned that Trainer is hot? Well he is. Like, super fit and really cute. And if I’m going to take my shirt off for a hot dude, I certainly don’t want him pinching or otherwise acknowledging my fat. Miserable. So I just kind of pretended I was somewhere else while he used fat calipers to assess my body fat percentages.

When it was finally over, I put my shirt back on as he did the math on my Body Mass Index. It wasn’t pretty: 36.56% body fat. That’s borderline obese. OBESE? I’m not obese. I don’t look obese. I’m not sitting on a Hoveround in Walmart. How am I obese?

But I guess the numbers don’t lie and I have a lot of work to do. The good news is, Trainer says it’s doable and that I’ll be surprised how quickly I can turn things around and get myself back into college athlete shape. That last part is the extreme dream but he says it is possible. And I believe him. Now that we’ve been through all this ugliness together I trust him and am willing to put my fitness in his hands.

Now, if someone would just slip a ton of money into my hands so I can afford him. It ain’t cheap but I guess you can’t really put a price on health and happiness, eh?