That being said, I've still come a long way, and I'm proud that I'm doing my best, even if my best can fluctuate from day to day. Here is a before pic, and a current one.
Was this the kind of weight loss I wanted to see this year? In isolation, no- of course not! I was hoping to be at my goal weight by now. Given the year I've had? I think it's bloody amazing that I lost any weight at all and didn't put myself back on the track to regaining.
In May, I lost my life partner suddenly and unexpectedly, and I have a parent in palliative care and I'm expecting a phone call any day now. I still have my child to care for, and trying to take care of myself too when I'm deeply grieving has been beyond difficult. Weight loss at this point has become one of the least important things in my life.
I have tried to solve as much as I can. I don't have the emotional or physical energy to cook or plan meals, so I've been ordering meals from Factor so that I have something reasonably healthy I can grab from the fridge without having to meal plan/grocery shop/mise en place/cook/clean and then still have to want to eat at the end of it. I'm 100% sure that having food I could just grab that isn't fast food/horribly unhealthy frozen food is one of the main reasons I haven't gained back a lot of my weight.
Secondly, I'm looking at F45 as a coping mechanism at this point. Going to the gym lets me forget, for that 45ish minutes a day, all the pain and sadness in my life and instead I get to focus in the very purest sense, simply on breathing. Seriously, because apparently my body actually does forget to breathe when I'm weightlifting and I need to be reminded!
My body still hasn't made a full recovery from all the damage that grief has inflicted. As I've said in previous posts, I found it shocking what kind of physical impact grief and stress hormones actually have on the body; while you read about it, it's kind of hard to believe and accept that it's not purely psychological. When my partner died, I immediately lost so much physical strength that I had to drop the weights I was lifting to about half of what they were before. It's been nearly six months now, and I was just starting to get back to that level again when my parent went downhill much more rapidly than expected and while the hit wasn't as bad as before since this was at least on my radar, it has set back my progress. Instead of using the weight I'm lifting as my progress monitor though, I'm instead just making sure I show up.
Regardless of how my body is responding to stress, which is not something that's in my control- neither are the stress hormones that affect the scale- I can control the choice to go to the gym or not. And whether or not I can lift heavy, whether or not I get endorphins (I usually don't anymore, which I think is the grief and depression), I still get that short window of reprieve where all I have to focus on is that next 30 or 45 or 60 second set, and just breathing.
That being said, I have hit a couple of milestones at F45 that I'm proud of. Just yesterday, I was doing a set that incorporated pushups, and the trainer said to me that the progress I've made since I started is incredible. She said it's too bad I don't have a video of me doing a pushup when I started to compare it to now. Before, I was doing pushups on my knees and still struggling. Now, I can do pushups on my feet. They're not perfect, and when I get tired I still do drop to my knees, but my form is much better and most of the time I can finish the station on my feet. Secondly, I did my first chin up just yesterday! Granted, I was using resistance bands for additional support, but I managed to get my chin over the damn bar, and that's a heck of a lot more than I could do when I first started. It's a pretty awesome improvement, and I'm going to keep working at it.
I have abs! I find that kind of crazy, since with as much body fat as I still have, I'd figure they'd be covered up. Also, I still have a pretty weak core and struggle with quite a few movements. But looking at myself in workout gear leaves no ability to deny there has been a change in my body, even with my dysmorphia.
In other nonscale victories, I'm down a few more clothing sizes. I'm not quite to the very bottom of my smallest clothes yet, but I'm getting there. I'm wearing jeans from the late 90s/early 2000s and my main lament is that the pockets definitely are NOT designed for smartphones! That being said, I like the fit better than a lot of jeans I've seen out there, so I'm going to keep these as long as they're still fitting. Love my Gap 1969s!
My diabetes is in remission; my last A1C was 4.9 which isn't even at risk; it's a normal, healthy A1C. My blood pressure is down. My cholesterol is down. All the markers my doctor was monitoring are becoming healthier. BMI is still obese at 31.9, which I find kind of crazy, but there it is. I am not sure I'll even get down to their healthy range, especially with the weightlifting, but we'll see how it goes. I would like to at least be into the "overweight" category rather than "obese".
The only part where I'm even really paying attention to the scale is so that I don't lose my HealthyWager. I won my first wager last year, and placed a second one because I knew I was going to be able to keep up my healthier habits this time. That being said, I had no idea this year was going to bring so much trauma, and I'm beyond grateful that I kept my goal fairly conservative. I still have concerns about reaching it in time given that I can't control the damage that stress hormones are doing and will continue to do to my body. I still have 16lbs to lose by the end of April 2025, and the holidays are looming. I guess we'll see how it goes. I'm already struggling with the idea of the holidays missing two pillars of my life, and I don't think that further restriction will be mentally healthy for me. That being said, I don't want to eat myself into a food coma, either. That's how I got to where I was in the first place, and I'm never going back to that. So, I'm back to taking things one day at a time and doing the best that I can. Baby steps can take you a long way- as you can see from those photos above!
I'm still taking a dose of 0.85mg, and I haven't felt the need to increase it. I have gotten food noise on bad grief days, but I don't think that's abnormal. I didn't realize I've only increased by 0.10mg this year though. At some point I will raise to 1mg- possibly after the New Year so I can really buckle down to win my wager. My side effects are very minor at this point. I occasionally have a small bout of nausea, but sucking on sugarfree mints always takes care of it. Occasional minor constipation. My main side effects were headaches and nausea, and both are fairly rare now. I never vomited or had sulphur burps or anything like that, partly which I think has been due to my very slow progression with dose increase. I'm glad that I chose to increase more slowly, as it's been this far and I haven't even reached the therapeutic dose yet, which hopefully will give me a boost when I need it.
OZ Week 99 loss: 1.8 lbs
OZ Week 101: no weigh in
OZ Week 102 loss: 0.6 lbs
