Well, after 3 arduous months that I'm pretty sure were about 60 days each, the Biggest Loser Challenge at my gym is finally officially over!
And it's official. I am a big loser. Infact, I am the Biggest Loser. I WON!!!
My final weigh in, which happened yesterday, Friday August 10th, was.....drum roll please.
199.6 pounds!
WHAT????!!!!! unreal! I had to weigh myself twice and get the exact same weight before I would accept it, because the day before I had weighed myself and I was 4.5 pounds heavier than that! Evidently I had eaten something salty the day before. Water weight is my nemesis!
If I still weigh in at under 200 next week I will truly celebrate being in ONE-derland, but I still remain suspicious of my body and it's quirks. Meanwhile though, I can celebrate. At 199.6 or at 205, I still won the challenge. I blew my competition away! Here's the stats!
My starting weight at the beginning of this journey (March): 242 pounds
My starting weight at the beginning of this challenge(May): 224 pounds
My weight at the end of the challenge (Aug 10): 199.6 pounds
Total weight Loss to date: 42.4 pounds
Total lost during challenge: 24.4 pounds
Theres some other exciting stats:
Since March 6th I've lost:
5.5 inches around my waist
5.0 inches around my chest
6.5 inches around my hips
2.5 inches in my thigh
1 inch in my arm
1 inch in my neck.
Not only have I lost inches, but I've gained muscle. I've never felt as strong as I do now. I have never felt a bicep muscle in my arm in my life until the last month or so, and though it's still buried under some fat, you can actually feel the hard lump of muscle in there! My Abs and back are getting stronger, my endurance is getting better. My calves are downright sexy, if I do say so myself! Slowly and surely I'm building my health and strength and losing the unhealthy layers of fat.
My BMI has gone from a 42 to a 34. Still way above where it needs to be, but no longer in that imminent death by heart attack zone.
I've been on this journey for 5 months, and though I have a long long way to go, I've come a long way too!! I've learned so much about myself, and have much more I know I will learn. This is as much, or more of, a mental journey than it is a physical one. The farther I get the more I realize that my mindset is everything.
I give glory to God in the highest for helping me to transform my mind throughout this journey, and pray he will continue to help me have a deeper understanding of why it is so important on so many levels for me to follow through on this commitment and lifestyle change.
Now that I have celebrated, I want to discuss something else that's been on my mind.
FEAR.
What's fear got to do with it? For the last month of this challenge I've been fighting over about 5 pounds. Gaining, losing, gaining, losing. I keep sabatoging myself with food. When the pressure is on to finish strong, I whimper and lose momentum. I struggle mightily and berate myself and wonder why, with all eyes on me, I can't stick to a simple diet for a few weeks longer. I had this goal to get under 200 and I thought it would be a piece of cake, but I still think it was a fluke that I made it at all, and squeaked in at 199.6 yesterday. I haven't been doing what I need to do to lose that weight. I've been trying, but I've been messing up. I've been tracking religiously every day, these last few weeks, I miss more days tracking than not. I've been exercising monday to friday for 5 months. The last few weeks I've missed two or three days. I've been exercising self control with snacking and sweets. The last few weeks, not so much. I won't just have that treat, I'll have it twice. I'm telling you, it's self sabatoge, and as I eat the food I KNOW it is! However, I don't seem to be able to stop myself. I have this internal dialog AS I eat the food. I argue wih myself about the calories and if I "deserve it or not, and I make all sorts of excuses and I refute the excuses. I swear sometimes there are two people inside me, these conversations get so lively!
My trainer and friend Melissa suggested that I have been scared to hit that under 200 milestone. She said maybe part of me feels safe where I am. I've visited this thought many times in my life. I lost over 70 pounds a few years back, and right after I did, my husband left me for another woman, took me to court, and tried to take my kids from me. I gained it back and more to add to the pot (belly that is). There is sexual abuse in my past. I have often heard that victime of abuse "hide" behind their fat. I have explored these things, and I truly don't know if my subconcious is telling me, "lose the weight and Josh will leave you too! Men will be attracted to you and you won't be safe!" The subconcious is a tricky tricky thing. It doesn't matter how much your rational mind tells you what a bunch of hooey those thoughts are, your primitive reactive mind will think what it will. Sometimes I just think I love to eat, love food, and feel deprived not eating it. Maybe that's all there is to it. Maybe there is no deeper psychological thing going on, but my heart tells me its more than just that. If it was just that I didn't want to be deprived, I could work in treats on a regular schedule to my diet (and I have done that on this journey) and be perfectly happy. The reason I think there is more going in is because I get to these points where I just can't stop. I get obsessed with the thoughts of the foods I want and I will eat it to excess. I remember being this way for many years. I can eat an incredible volume of food, especially if it's bad for me. I feel completely unsatisfied with a small portion of anything. Much of my diet planning is me trying to figure out how to get the most food for the least calories. I want and crave volume.
I feel almost at an impasse, to where I am considering going for some professional counselling. I know I have these impulses and feelings, I know some of them are not natural nor healthy. I think I might be deeply afraid of succeeding. Maybe more than I am of failing. I know one thing, I want to get to the bottom of it, and I want to understand what is driving me once and for all, and I want to conquer it,whatever it may be. I don't necessarily like self discovery. It's hard, and it hurts more times than not, but I am determined not to end up back where I started yet again in my life. I'm sick of looping around and around. I want to keep moving FORWARD. I want to FACE MY FEARS. With God's help, I want to face them down and overcome them, whatever they may be.
I think what I do in the next few months will be critical to my success or failure. I think the mental work will be the hardest, but the one I really need to face straight on and tackle. I don't want to be writing a year from now how I've gained back all the weight and I'm trying to lose it again. A year from now I want to be speaking to and inspiring others in their own health journeys, proving to them that it can be done if you are honest enough to ask yourself the tough questions and strong enough to face the answers head on.
Keep on praying for me friends. The best (and hardest) part is yet to come.
