So Far...

Earlier this year a friend introduced me to the band Delta Rae and I immediately connected with their music. One song in particular, Is There Anyone Out There, has become a little bit of an anthem for me on this journey, as the lyrics just seemed to land perfectly on my soul, especially these:

 

So far from where I started.

So far from where I wanna be.

I often feel like I focus more on the second part of that lyric than the first; only looking at the road ahead without appreciating the miles I've already walked. Finishing up my first year this week gives me the opportunity to do just that. So many changes have taken place over the last year and there are so many ways that I can measure the progress I've made.

 

The first and most obvious measure is my weight. When I started CrossFit last April my sole focus, driving force, reason to WOD, was weight loss. My big audacious goal was to lose 100 pounds in one year. I could have done it. I came pretty close. I decided back in January that I was going to give "not weighing" a shot and see how things went. I was only going to weigh at competitions. In hindsight, I don't think I was quite ready to let go of the scale. I started out last April at 353 pounds and I weighed in at 120 kilos (or 264.5 pounds) at the RVA Open, which is only 1 kilo (2.2 pounds) less than I weighed in for the Baltimore Open in February. 2 pounds in 2 and a half months is not what I'm used to. During my Whole 30 challenge and the first several months I was averaging 10 pounds a month.

 

The only things I can point to as to why I only lost 2 pounds from February to April are that I was too lenient about my diet and that my training has been more strength focused and less "high intensity functional movement" focused - ie, I've been focusing on my Oly lifting and not doing CrossFit workouts. It's likely that my diet has more to do with not losing weight than my training, but both are areas that I need to evaluate moving forward and make sure that I'm getting the most out of both if I want to continue to see the scale go down. I think I'm also going to bring the scale back out of the closet and weigh more often. It's one of the only things I have right now to keep me accountable. I always get the "you're building muscle" argument when I bring this up, and I get it, I really do, but I honestly don't want to be 265 pounds of muscle. I don't think I'm quite at the point where I don't still have fat to lose and or that I'm pound for pound replacing my fat with muscle.

 

Nevertheless, 88.5 pounds is still a lot of weight to lose in a year. It's more than I've ever lost with any other diet or exercise plan. I can't always tell the difference, but I can definitely see it in pictures. When I look back at some of the pictures from the year before I started CrossFit, I can't believe that I was ever that big. I knew that I was, but it has started to feel like I'm looking at a person I don't know anymore when I see them.

I'm starting to get more comfortable with and confident about my new body, but there are still things I'm not happy about. I'm having to come to terms with the reality that being as big as I was has consequences and even as I lose weight, things don't just spring back into place. It can be a little disheartening, but I try to focus more on what my body can do now rather than focusing on every minute detail of how my body looks. I can squat deeper, lift heavier, move and run faster, jump higher, and get up off the floor - all with less pain and less struggle than a year ago. Walking and standing are even easier. The other day I spent 3 hours on my feet prepping food and cooking for the week and didn't even realize that I had done so without pain until I was finished. I used to not even be able to stand long enough to wash a load of dishes without my back hurting. That's huge.

 

From head to toe I am a smaller person now. I have lost weight in my face, I have a neck now, I can feel my collar bones (it's much more painful doing cleans without that padding), I found my ribcage, my stomach is much smaller, I can feel the muscles in my arms and legs (no more cankles), and I even went down at least a half size in my shoes. I have replaced my work wardrobe 3 times in the last year. I started out wearing anything from a 26/28 to 30/32 or 2X-5X (depending on the store) and a 9 to 9.5 wide in shoes. Now I can wear a 22 in dress pants/jeans and a 12, 14/16, 18/20 in workout pants (again depending on the store). I can wear large unisex/women's XL or a 14/16 in shirts. My shoes are now 8.5. I am able to borrow clothes from my Mom for the first time in more than 15 years. When I lived at home and had to help with my sisters' laundry I used to fold their clothes thinking, "there's no way anyone can wear something this small" - now I say the same thing about my own clothes. I can't believe that I fit into these sizes...I still feel like I'm so much bigger than I am. Another big goal for me has been being able to wear the cute women's clothing options out there, especially in regard to workout clothes. I know it's not all about looking cute at the gym, but I didn't want to feel frumpy and manly either. Women's clothing is sized weirdly so there are still certain brands that I can't get into yet, but I recently got my first workout tank tops and am slowly building a dangerous Lululemon wardrobe.

It's a little weird mentally for me to exist in this new body. I don't know myself as an adult at this size and in my head I'm still much bigger than I am in the mirror. I look at myself in person and in pictures and I see the parts that I don't like magnified. I carried (and still carry) the bulk of my excess weight around my midsection, and even though my butt and belly have shrunk considerably, they are still the biggest parts of me. I need to just accept that for what it is and focus instead on the parts that I do like. I'm pretty fond of my calves and deltoids lately. I'm still not super comfortable letting people see my before and after pictures, but I think it's an important part of this journey and I'm proud of my progress. I have also found that being courageous enough to post them has helped others, so here is my full year of progress (though I don't have a picture for every month):

 

 I didn't get a good head on picture for day one, but this is a comparison of my progress at the end of my Whole 30 challenge and my progress after 1 year: 335 lbs vs. 264.5 lbs

 

 And finally everything comes full circle from Day 1 to Day 365:

 

I look forward to the day when I can shift my focus away from weight loss and be content to focus on my performance as the main measure of success, I'm just not there yet. Long term I don't really have a magic number in mind. I can't imagine myself at any weight lower than 200 because it's been so long since I was that small and I haven't seen the 100s as an adult. I've always thought it would be cool to be one of the "People Half Their Size" that get featured in People magazine, which would put me around 176. I've thought about it in terms of which weight class I compete in, but as a 75+ kg lifter, I would need to be under 165 for the next lowest class... that seems awfully small to me and I don't want to look sickly. What I do know is that I want to be under 200, just for the sake of not weighing 200 pounds. Once I pass that landmark I hope that I can be okay listening to my body, continuing to build muscle, and letting my performance dictate how I ultimately fall into a good weight for me, whatever the number on the scale ends up being. 

 

I also look forward to saying goodbye to Day One Ginny for good and letting Day 365 Ginny be my new "before." I may still be far away from where I'd like to be, but I will continue to move forward with frequent glances in the rear view mirror to appreciate how far I am from where I started.