Thin is a four-letter word

Over the last few months, I’ve gotten more and more “thin talk”. People tell me not to lose too much more weight or they tell me I am too thin. They say these things through a veil of compliment or joking and by “people” I mean friends and family, people close to me and none of them medical professionals. I state the last bit because I want to make it very clear that if a doctor told me that I had reached dangerously low measurements, I would rectify that, but I assure that is not the case. What I mean to do by telling you this is to divulge how this possibly well-meant discussion by others on my weight loss is actually a little …annoying? I think it annoys me partly because discussing the shape of someone else’s body seems like such a bad road to start down. It is always nice to hear compliments about getting healthier. Like I said, when people have made the “too thin” comments, they have been given more like a compliment, but to me it feels more like my whole journey has been completely disregarded, especially since these are people who know how I have gotten here- healthily and with so, so much research. I’m fairly certain that if I walked by someone on the street, they would not think “too thin”, but because these comments are coming from people so close to me, I think the change was so fast and drastic, especially after losing the last 40 pounds, that it looks like too much to them. I never quite expected this. I think, in this context, it starts to edge into the issue of how we so often feel it is our right to talk about another’s appearance and appearance only. It is simply preferable to hear constructive comments, rather than neutralizing. I suppose I’d rather hear “you look great” as opposed to “you look so thin”. I hope I look as great as I feel, I hope I look happy and healthy. My feelings toward “thin” are…thin.
I have lost just a little over 100 pounds since January 2014. This morning, I am officially “overweight” according to the BMI scale, when last week I was still considered “obese”. I am 183 pounds standing 5’6″ and I have a healthy waist-hip ratio (what is considered to be more accurate at calculating weight-related health problems). The BMI scale dictates that I should be between 115-154 lbs, but I honestly don’t know if losing another 30 pounds is on the table, especially when I want to build more muscle.  I am currently at a crossroads, wherein I am not sure how much I really should be focused on weight-loss at this point. I believe that I still have a little more body fat to lose just to be in a normal/healthy range (I’m talking a healthy body fat range, not necessarily BMI range), but I have found this blog post from Amber Rogers extremely enlightening and helpful. I feel like this may be where I’m at.
I was 286 lbs at my largest, so over the last year when my thinner friends would ask me about tips to lose weight, I’d do my best to help, but having to lose a large amount of weight is different from having to lose 10-20 pounds. For one thing, an obese person burns calories differently than just a slightly overweight person and it can be argued that it’s a little bit easier to go from sedentary to lightly active than to go from active to very active. However, I find myself here at the place where, if that’s where I decide some of my focus still lies, I could lose another 20 or so pounds and I am in a whole new leg of the journey. I’m paying more attention to my percentages and grams of carbs/proteins/fats/fiber and I’m feeling better about my overall nutrition. I am also changing up my exercise routines again. I am still CONSTANTLY researching methods and techniques in strength-training, particularly weight-lifting, and nutrition.
Those are my thoughts for today.
Love your bodies and respect others’.

Honesty is the best policy

Many of the pieces of advice I give on the subject of becoming healthier serve as more than ‘tips’- they, hopefully, have the power to change one’s perspective. At the very least, they have changed mine.
Something that became a fundamental piece of the fitness puzzle was being unabashedly honest with myself.

Over these last 13-14 months, I learned that I had to be tough with myself- not in a defeatist way or in a mean way. Simply, “no, you know you’re going to be way too full if you eat that whole thing”, “you already had one/two rest days this week, you need to move”, “you are making excuses”.

Everything became so much more manageable when I started cutting through my own bullshit. Or, perhaps, when I started making myself listen to myself. Either way. One of the (many) reasons I say starting out slowly with exercise and exercise schedules is because we KNOW we are bullshitting if we say we can’t get the gym once a week. Yes, we all have those weeks and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t ever missed a week of going to the gym this last year. However, more of oft than not, we should be able to make it to the gym or work out at home at least once a week and if we consistently miss, it should be very easy to point to ourselves and say, ‘Hey, buddy, you are not making this a priority’.

We can have a lot going on in our lives and we may want very desperately to make changes, but when it comes to making those changes, we fall short and feel we have the ‘busy/crazy/rollercoaster life’ reason. Any craziness happening in your life may be throwing you, but it is not reason enough to block you from being a healthier you. Having a work-out schedule will probably make your life feel more stable, regular endorphin highs will make you feel better, and this time you spend exercising is just for you- carving out time to exercise is a way to make time for yourself.

Honesty about excuses and becoming very cut-and-dry on how things needed to work changed my mindset. Working out is not just something I do to stay healthy or lose weight, it’s about doing what is right for me. I got there because I realized I needed to work out at home or at the gym so many days and, while I had to be flexible here and there, no one was allowed to get between me and those days, not even myself.

Even though being straightforward can be applied to other aspects of this journey, like food and measurements (weighing in), I find that most people get so much more tripped up on the exercise side of it because they do too much too fast and they aren’t honest or realistic with themselves. It is hard to start on the right foot.

Write down simple rules about what you need to make this work. Be flexible, but do not give up your ground. This is yours. For you. Take it.