My Special Somepony!

This past weekend was spent on the final preparations for PAX East. I use costumes and events like this to mark weight loss goals and I'm really excited about this one since not only have I already surpassed my milestone goal of losing 88 lbs, but also because my boyfriend, Brandon, is going to participate in this cosplay event with me. I've been hard at work crafting and sewing our costumes and super anxious to see the whole thing come together. Brandon is leaving for spring break and meeting me in Boston for the convention, so I wanted to make sure he tried everything on in case anything needed to be adjusted.

As an actor, I'm used to assuming roles, playing make believe and transforming myself physically, but this is Brandon's first time cosplaying at a fan convention and I wanted to make sure he was as excited and happy as possible. When he finally put everything on, he just lit up! It was like he walked right out of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and into my living room. He was glowing and grinning from ear to ear. It was truly adorable and not only was I so incredibly proud and happy with my handiwork, but I found it so rewarding to give him the ability to experience one of my favorite aspects of conventions. 

You see, Brandon has really been there for me during this journey. He's dealt with my obsessions over calorie counting, my anxiety over not being able to constantly indulge in comfort food, my plateaus, my gains, and my victories. He's been the one to talk me through a lot of the inner turmoil I've had as my body changed, I saw myself differently, and I began to be treated differently by people out in the world. I think we all need people like that in order to process our changes and find lasting success.

I've read so many blogs and forum posts about couples, family members or close friends wherein one person is trying to get healthy and the other person isn't. Brandon is certainly supportive of my quest and aware of my choices, but I don't expect him to make the same ones in order to make me comfortable. Sometimes the posts I read are positive, but a majority of the time they describe sad tales of sabotage, passive aggression, and constant frustration that ultimate derails the person working on their health or causes them to slow their progress.

While I do believe in accepting that we cannot control every variable around us (i.e. expect other people in our lives to eat what we eat, ban all goodies from the house, workout all the time), I do think we all owe it to ourselves to create an environment that's conducive to our success. If what I'm describing sounds all too familiar, I really urge you to sit down with anyone who is causing this kind of strife and address it. Explain that you don't expect them to go through it step by step the way you are, but that you do expect them not to actively make it harder on you. If they still don't get it, go to that uncomfortable, vulnerable place and tell them WHY it's so important to you that you succeed. If they have any sense of empathy at all, they'll begin to understand how big a deal this is to you. 

The hardest thing to accept is that some people are just toxic. If you go through all of that conflict resolution and the person on the other side of the table remains defensive, negative, or unsympathetic, then you need to accept that he/she is not someone you can be around if you really care about your health. That might be easier said than done, but I truly believe it to be the case. When it comes to the behavior of others, the one thing you CAN control is whether or not you're putting yourself at risk by subjecting yourself their presence. That can make or break your success. We spend every day making choices about our health and this one is just as important. Make sure that everyone around you has your back and your best interests in mind.

I'm certainly glad to have my Special Somepony in my life because I know he's a big part of why I've been so strong throughout this experience and I hope he knows I don't take any of his efforts for granted. Sometimes it's nice to do something that let's the person/people who support you know just how much they mean to you. whether that means making them a bacon cheeseburger even though you can't have one or transforming them into pony from a children's cartoon about friendship and magic.

Find Your Fellowship

Quests for better health can be a lonely process, but they don't have to be. 

Every time I have failed at getting healthy it's because I made the process a secret. I was so ashamed that I even had to put myself through such drastic change to my exercise and diet that I didn't want to let anyone see me at my most vulnerable. I also removed a lot of the things I liked from my life under the pretense that "old me" was broken. I stopped playing video games because I connected them to binge eating and constant snacking. I stopped going to movies because I didn't feel like I could go and not eat candy. I stopped going out to dinner with friends because I hated the idea of not being able to partake in what other people were eating. My social life dwindled into near non-existence with very few exceptions. I'm an only child and I'm used to being on my own- it's even comfortable for me, but when I stopped hanging out with my friends as much, I really lost my perspective on my place in the world and began letting some of the negativity that can be a part of a challenging physical process take over in a very damaging way.

"I'm too fat to even exercise like a normal person."

"I didn't lose as much weight as I wanted to this week."

"I've lost a ton of weight but I'm still gigantic. It'll never be enough."

"Food is bad. Food is the enemy."

"I love food. I miss food."

"Why even try? This is impossible. It's going to take over  a year to lose all this weight anyways."

"I hate myself."

I didn't have any friends around to snap me out of my downward spiral because in my version of "focusing" on my health, I had to shut them out until I was worthy to be a part of the world in all my unattainable skinny splendor.

This method of getting healthy wasn't healthy at all, let alone the fact that it was completely unsustainable. I would habitually push myself till I broke and then binge eat all the weight back on. I was afraid the doctor, of scales, of anything that would make me face what I was putting myself through. I went through long periods of trying to eat less than 600 calories a day with my hair falling out in droves every time I showered. I can remember hating myself for "binging" on five chicken fingers after I lost my willpower to stick to that malnourished diet and sticking my fingers down my throat for the first time to erase the mistake. 

If I had been brave enough to face the world and to let my friends see what was going on, I probably would have gotten the help I needed a lot sooner and I would have had people to set me straight and support me as I picked myself up and got back to being healthy.

My point is that you need at least one person aside from yourself that you can be accountable to. You're going on a long quest and you need your Fellowship so you can toss your fat into the fires of Mount Doom! Your Fellowship should be people you trust. They should be people you see in person often and I would venture that you might want to make sure that some of them know a little bit about health and fitness, though that's not essential. The biggest factor is that they should love you unconditionally and you should feel comfortable succeeding and failing in front of them. These are people who you should chat with regularly about your process. They should make you want to develop your fitness around what you love in your life instead of shutting all the joy out till the turkey's done and ready to come out of the oven. Your Fellowship is there to reflect all the positive stuff back at you, help you find new ways to enjoy the healthier you, and speak up if it seems like you're derailing your progress somehow. 

The next level isn't for everyone, but I've found it very rewarding to use social media like Facebook, Twitter, and this blog (SURPRISE!) to share my trials, tribulations, progress, and goals. It makes me feel good when someone I haven't seen in a while makes a comment about how great I look or when someone whose fitness regime I've always admired shares some great advice. 

I'm not ashamed of what I'm doing anymore. I love it- and not just for the end goal, but because it's brought me closer to the people in my life, expanded my interests, and allowed me to participate in the things I love in ways I didn't think were possible before. I'm getting out and running three times a week (something I thought I'd never do!). I'm taking two or three yoga classes a week and today I caught myself in the mirror during the class and realized how graceful I'd become. Me? Graceful! INCONCEIVABLE! I get excited when I'm about to debut a costume instead of nervous about how I'm going to look next to everyone else. I treat myself to the special indulgences when I'm out with friends without going overboard because I've learned how! 

None of those breakthroughs would have been possible without my Fellowship. I'm sort of tearing up thinking about it because I'm super sappy and I don't even think they know how much it means that I've been able to bypass the pain and suffering I put myself through in the past in order to make real progress that will last my whole life all because they supported me through this quest. So if you're reading this, you know who you are. Thank you! 

Plateau! In the Name of the Moon, I Punish You!

So I'd been sorta stuck in a weight loss plateau for the last few weeks. I'd been losing 1 to 1.5 lbs a week and it just seemed like everything was fluctuating a ton more than usual from day to day. I'm pretty sure it had to do with me starting on "The Pill" for the first time and my body was just adjusting. Considering many people report weight gain, I suppose I should count myself lucky that my body was capitulating to weight loss at all. I was sort of afraid I wouldn't make my goal for the "Hot by Halloween" challenge on the Nutrisystem community forums if it kept up. Needless to say, I was sort of stressed out about losing weight the entire week and I was nervous I was losing my edge.

Well, today was weigh-in day and I lost 6.4 lbs this week. That's BANANAS! I stuck 100% to my food plan and worked out 4 days with some physical activity on the others. I've heard of downward "swooshes" after a plateau, but damn! This was pretty swooshified. Normally I would have given up at a plateau, but this time, I persevered. I just kept telling myself,

"If you've done everything you can to be healthy with your diet and your fitness routine and the scale isn't moving, then just let it go! Science says that what you're doing will cause you to lose weight so stop being so dramatic and stick to the plan."

I also think, "When I'm sad, I stop being sad and start being awesome," but I digress. Science says it, guys. Science. The whole weight loss thing can be as much of a mental battle as a physical one and it's important to take stock of what you're doing and troubleshoot, but sometimes plateaus happen. Just stick to your guns. Maybe switch some dinners for lunches, adjust the times you eat, or try some new workout stuff to keep your body guessing, but at the end of the day, your body will only go as fast as it can and impatience will only drive you crazy. 1-2 lbs a week is a healthy rate. Sometimes you'll lose more, sometimes less. Just go with it. 

Yesterday I posted a quick celebration of some sports bras fitting that hadn't when I first ordered them, but what I didn't say was that I also tried on some T-shirts I had bought that hadn't fit before. It's been one of my mini-goals to be able to fit into these and I'd succeeded with two of the four so far. So I decided to try on the other two yesterday and BAM! They fit! The one below was especially exciting because there was a lot of shame attached to it not fitting before. You see, a group of friends and I all ordered the same shirts from Teefury.com (a site that releases a new design each day). The image matched the symbol for our guild in World of Warcraft (The Unicorn Alliance) and we decided we all just had to have them to wear en masse to conventions and events. Well I ordered the biggest size available thinking it would be fine, but when it came, barely even fit over my boobs, let alone my belly. I tried to laugh it off by making jokes about being the token fat-ass, but inside I was really hurting and every time they all wore them together, I felt really bad about not being able to join in. So yes, it meant the world when I pulled this on yesterday and found that finally it fit. I shared it on Facebook and everyone was super supportive and awesome. I was filled with warm fuzzies because my friends and guildies have been my rocks throughout this whole journey so far.