Things aren’t always as they seem, especially when it comes to weight loss. Sometimes things are better and sometimes things are worse…or sometimes things are just normal but a new normal.
Willie had a break through a few weeks ago and he’s handling it well. He identified his problem areas and he’s really going after it. I’m very proud of him. He’s committing to really finding his new normal and living with it. He’s good like that. He is a pretty even in his emotions so he doesn’t let things get away from him.
I’m having problems adjusting to the new normal. I posted about this sometimes last year and someone suggested I was eating too much. While I was probably eating too many pancakes post-race, that wasn’t the culprit of my body changes. Running is the blame. It bothered me a lot more last year than it does now, but I can’t sit here and tell you I still don’t think about it.
Every morning I ask Willie if he thinks I’ve gained weight. I have gained weight because a 127 pounds is not something I am willing to maintain but that’s not the type of weight gain I was talking about. When I started the weight loss journey I envisioned the way I thought I should look and that didn’t always match up with reality. But the way I once looked is not the way I look now.
The thing is now. I have an athletic build body and I’m learning to accept it. When I lost weight I was just a stick. Stick arms, stick thighs…I was a size zero. I wasn’t weight training, I wasn’t running…I was just doing my normal workouts. When I started to go back to weight/strength training and started running things changed.
But the thing is, there’s nothing wrong with the way I look now. This may sound stupid but I spend a lot of time literally looking down at my body instead of looking at it straight forward in a mirror like normal people do. Maybe it goes back to the times when I was losing the weight and I use to gauge my weight loss on if I could see my feet and not just my tummy. But the looking down instead of facing myself straight on hasn’t done good things for me. It’s never really what it seems.
All I see if big legs when I look down! But I have to always remember those legs get me through life and across every finish line I attempt to cross! It’s not the worse thing in world, right?
We’ve come a long. I’ve come a long way and I’m always proud of that.
P.S. – I wanted to give an update on my foot just in case you were wondering. I think it’s better. This past weekend during the half there was a dull ache in my foot but it didn’t really hold me down. My true test comes the day after because I know if it’s hurting really bad or stiff there’s a problem. The half marathon was the farthest I had run on the foot and it seemed fine on Monday. Monday and Tuesday were really pain free days, even after teaching my cycle classes.
Yesterday I went for a run and that run was pretty much pain free but it was also slower than my now pace. During the half marathon, I started to feel the ache when I pushed my pace a little. The run yesterday was hotter (compared to lately) and little more humid. I slowed it down a bit BUT I was pain free. That’s all I could ask for.
