When hikers set out to climb Mount Everest, they spend some time at “base camp,” acclimatizing to the altitude changes, before getting ready for their final ascent. This period of my weight loss journey feels a lot like that, as I haven't really lost weight; I've essentially just been maintaining around 167lbs. Instead of just plowing forward, I’ve been focusing more on self-reflection, and getting myself ‘acclimatized’ to the changes I’ve worked so hard to make for myself. This has turned out to be a harder task than I expected, but one that has been absolutely necessary.
A lot of things have changed for me in the last few months, and, weight loss aside, this has been one of the worst (personal) times in my life in recent memory. But, I really wanted to address some feelings of body dysmorphia that I have been dealing with. And, tightening down on my diet didn't seem like it would give me the boost I wanted. So, I decided to focus on building a strength training routine.
I have lost a lot of weight so far (about 115 pounds/52 kilos), and am roughly 6.5 kilos (~15 pounds) over the top of a healthy BMI range. There's nothing dramatic that's going to happen from here on out, and I am also not in a hurry to get anywhere. As I wrote in my last post, I'm not an optimization problem, and, beyond that, rushing to the "finish line" is a fool's errand anyway. There is no finish line. I have to keep doing what I'm doing if I want to keep my weight under control. So, I have the rest of my life to keep fine-tuning. I'm fine if my daily deficit is not particularly large. The way I eat right now is sustainable, and, on day 800, that's all I care about.
But, and, I have to say this, I don't look like I thought I would at this weight. Loose skin is real. It is contributing to my feelings of body dysmorphia, and it has started to make me feel a little negative about myself. I don't think that losing more weight will change my body substantially. My goal is still just to hit a healthy BMI -- and I will keep working towards that goal – but, I have started to think that pure weight loss should not be my primary focus. The last 15 pounds/6.5kg will happen when they happen. I wanted to change my focus to start feeling more comfortable in (and proud of) my new body sooner, rather than later.
I thought that going to the gym, and looking at myself in the mirror while I do the exercises would be a good start. I made an agreement with myself that I would try to look at the person in the mirror neutrally: I was going to focus on my form during the exercises, not immediately look at my lumps and bumps, and feel self-critical.
So, I started strength training seriously in July (aiming to go 3x per week), using the Push, Pull, Legs program. My diet was the same as it's been for a long time, 1600 calories (+ 1-200 calories or so, as needed). My weight trended upward during the month of July, by about a pound/half kilo. That was to be expected- it was the height of summer, so it was pretty hot, and I had started a new exercise program. Water retention happens. Maybe I made some "newbie gains" of muscle in the gym. It's hard to know, and, ultimately, doesn't really matter.
By mid August, I got the whoosh I was hoping for, and saw my first goal weight on the scale for a day (74.8kg/165ish pounds). MyFitnessPal congratulated me with a brief pop-up, but Happy Scale, based on the July data, was a little more skeptical. At the end of August, I went on a hiking vacation for a week, where I roughly estimated my calories, and, as a result, my weight drifted back up nearly two kilos. I spent September back on the gym grind, staying closer to my 1600, and my weight drifted down again (settling in around 76 kilos/167 pounds).
So, even though there was movement on the scale, it all eventually cancelled itself out. But, that's not my focus right now. Learning how to go to the gym, and, working on feeling less self-critical is.
I did the PPL program for about 2.5 months, and it was a good start. I wrote a long post in r/xxfitness, talking about how I prepared myself to go to the gym (so, you can check that out, if you're so inclined). I liked the program, but after a few months of it, I was tired of doing 100 calf raises /100 "face pulls" in a workout. It wasn't very enjoyable to me, and I started to feel like I didn't have the muscular base that some of the low-weight/high-rep accessory-focused exercises were designed to enhance.
So, I switched to the GZCLP program, which is more focused on the (fundamental) compound lifts, and therefore is a slightly shorter workout. I will stick with that for a while, and plan to give it a trial period of 3 months. My goal has always been to introduce changes, including exercise routines, that I am willing to do indefinitely. I might want to work on my strength more intensely at some point in the future, but for now I am happy with the time commitment and structure of GZCLP.
Beyond the scale, and the minutiae of a workout program, what is mostly occupying my thoughts these days is working on feeling less self-critical. I think that’s going to take long time. Losing weight can be a series of rapid changes, and especially in the beginning stages, the attention to building all the new habits can kind of blot out all of the rest. As I’m sure many people can relate, 2020 has been a difficult year, and in my personal life, things are extraordinarily stressful right now. I’m having a hard time. The body dysmorphia is certainly not helping anything.
What I can be grateful for, however, is that the changes to my habits (that I have worked hard to put in place over the last two years) have been largely unaffected. Maintaining an 115-pound weight loss is certainly no punishment. So even though I’m not quite at a healthy BMI, I know it will just take time to get there, and it’s fine to be where I am right now. Working on fitness goals is actually even more satisfying than seeing numbers go down on a scale.
This feels OK for me, because my weight has always moved pretty slowly in time: I didn’t gain weight very fast (became overweight in childhood, and slowly gained weight over the years). So, taking the time to go slowly on the way down feels necessary anyway, to learn how to adjust to the changes that have happened so far. I feel like I am in a very transitional stage of re-learning a body awareness I never quite developed (from having grown up as an obese child/teenager). For example, I was very used to clothes not fitting because they were too tight, but I still struggle with knowing whether or not something is too loose.
To explain that a little more, and I know it might sound dumb, but I understand that I can’t physically wear clothes that are too small. What I am faced with learning is how to adjust to clothes that are too loose. First, when are they actually too loose? This requires an understanding of “fashion,” -- or at the very least, body shape -- which I have never really thought about before, and am just now starting to appreciate. Are the loose clothes contributing to my feelings of body dysmorphia? Are they hiding my body/making it look bigger? Does the next size down feel too small because it actually is too small, or because I have been used to wearing looser clothing? Writing it all out, it sounds really basic, but, I am still struggling with it. It doesn’t help that I have some loose skin on my torso, which creates the appearance of a “muffin top” (from skin) if the waist of the pants isn’t high enough (to tuck it in).
Working on my self-image, adapting to changes, and accepting my body is just as much a part of my process of working towards a healthy BMI as losing weight is, and I have a lot more work to do. I think the strength training is really helping – and, to fix an error I made when I first began, I am going to take “real” progress pics for myself, to track the changes in my body from my gym routine, and help myself along in the process of dealing with the body dysmorphia.
While I don’t feel ready to call myself a ‘maintainer’ -- as I am still working to get to a healthy BMI, however long that will take – I also don’t mind this period of maintenance right now at “base camp.” Discovering that I have my core habits locked down, even during times of overwhelming stress, has been a real bright spot during this otherwise arduous time.
