Weightloss Milestone

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have been aggressively working on losing weight and becoming healthy while living in Chicago. I started on September 1st and have been pleased with my progress. I have lost 70 pounds in the last 10 months. I definitely have a long way still to go. I would like to lose at least another 50 pounds, though ideally another 80. While I don’t want to belittle the progress I have made, I have to also keep in mind that I am just now half way there.

The whole process of losing weight is incredibly time-consuming and emotional. I had no idea how mentally challenging it would all be. I have had to do a lot of getting to know myself and coming to an understanding as to why I let myself become as heavy as I had. I have also had to learn how to not be angry at myself for the past, but rather direct that energy towards becoming healthy for the future. I have always been a really stubborn or rather persistent person which has been my advantage as I have not allowed myself to slow down or go backwards. I want to be the person that I never dieted or attempted to lose weight before and was able to do it all the first time

I have a pretty strict routine for myself. I work out six days a week, two of those days being with a personal trainer. I wear a heart monitor and watch that keep track of time, heart rate, calories burned, etc. I make myself burn at least 700 calories a workout, though sometimes with my trainer we get close to 1000. My trainer is also a nutritionist so I am maintaining a nicely balanced diet. I am definitely not living a starvation lifestyle and easily eat over 2000 calories a day. Basically, the lifestyle I am living now has become a lifestyle I can keep forever and don’t fear ever not being able to keep it up.

One of the many things I didn’t anticipate when I started this journey was how expensive it would be to lose weight. I don’t regret it at all, but belonging to a gym, paying a trainer, and keeping up with the lost inches gets difficult on a full-time grad student budget. I have not been able to keep up with my clothes nearly as well as I wish I could. I never thought that wearing clothes that were too big would make me feel so uncomfortable with my body. I really do feel the best when I think I look the best. There are some necessities I have had to update but I haven’t been able to do it as much as I like. With not updating my wardrobe often I think I have lost track of the progress I am making. I also thing there is a huge mental component to becoming comfortable with who I am. It really is a bizarre feeling to look in the mirror and not recognize yourself. The second I think I know who I am I have lost more weight and look different yet again. I am not really complaining but its hard to have a strong sense of self during all of this.

This past weekend I was back in Des Moines and a friend suggested we go shopping. I am the first person to agree to go shopping with others, but I never shopped with others when buying clothes for myself. There are so few places to buy clothes for larger sizes and even then they are so “old” as if overweight people only exist from the age of 50 and above. I sort of laughed at the suggestion but then gave in. We found ourselves in the Gap and I was picking out some shirts to try on. I was quite nervous heading into the dressing room as I was convinced nothing would fit. As I was putting shirts on……THEY FIT ME! They weren’t even tight. I showed my friend and then stepped back into my dressing room and started crying. I have NEVER purchased clothes from the Gap before. All of a sudden I felt like I could be a normal person. I honestly felt like I was never normal.

It was a weird experience because I have an image in my head of what a woman’s size must be in order to wear clothes from “normal” stores and I still don’t fit that image. I know that the long process of figuring out who I am and what I look like will continue. I still see myself as a fat person and don’t really know how I appear to others. While I couldn’t buy much because of money and because hopefully I keep losing weight, I would be lying if I said I am not looking forward to seeing what other “normal” stores I could buy clothes from and starting to find out what my personal style really is. I have never felt like I could have a style since I had to buy whatever was available in my size in the limited stores. I am looking forward to the opportunities to actually be picking about what I wear and go shopping with others and not just being the friend that gives opinions and holds hangers.

It’s my turn to have my hangers held!!!!

EDIT: Someome suggested I had a before and after picture. I don’t really have any good ones that are full body images but I do have one from two weeks before I started and then one that a friend took when visiting three weeks ago.

This one is the before:

Here is the most recent: (I don’t want to say after, since I am not done yet!)