Throwback Thursday

September 20, 2018 ~ Jody Rich ~ Leave a comment

tbt

I found this picture this morning in the annals of my Facebook photos. It was an outtake from a photo shoot I art directed for the gal in the photo with me. We’d been photographing the DJs she managed in one of the many oh-so-photogenic alleyways in New Orleans on a hot September day. At the end of the shoot we were all having fun and goofing off and the photographer decided to get this shot of the two behind-the-scenes ladies. The photo was taken on September 19, 2010.

I had lost 93 pounds by this time and dropped from a size 24 to a 14 but I didn’t really see it. I knew I was smaller because I had to buy new clothes, because people kept telling me I was smaller, but I didn’t see it in myself the way others saw it. I didn’t own a full-length mirror (or a mirror any larger than the small medicine cabinet mirror mounted over my bathroom sink, for that matter) and the absence of mirrors was deliberate. Seeing this photo was one of the first times I truly saw myself at this size, truly realized how much I had changed. I couldn’t stop marveling at my legs – they were so much longer and thinner looking than I had ever seen them. I shared the photo online and reading people’s reactions to the photo on Facebook, too, helped me to see myself through their eyes.

It is impossible to genuinely fathom the happiness I was feeling at this time in my life, at this point in my journey. Those feelings faded and passed entirely as I fought the battle of regaining then losing weight over and over again. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would only lose another 8-10 pounds after this photo was taken before my struggle to reach my goal and maintain weight loss would begin, before I would begin the cycle of self-sabotage that would ultimately result in my regaining 46 of the 111 pounds I had, at one point, lost. For the past eight years the feelings I most experience with my weight loss journey are frustration, disappointment and pain. It doesn’t feel rewarding anymore, it feels empty, it feels punitive for having regained the weight and failed to reach my goal.

This week, I am (again) at the point of being close to 93 pounds lighter than I was at my highest weight and I have been trying to reconnect with the feelings of happiness I experienced the first time I’d lost the weight, to recapture the excitement and satisfaction of seeing all my hard work pay off. I want to feel pride in my accomplishment, an accomplishment that I genuinely felt was impossible and often, still, feel is impossible. I may never shake the feeling that my success is a fluke, that it is fleeting but I didn’t feel that on September 19, 2010. So, I write this blog today and I share this picture because I feel it is such an important reminder of what truly is possible, of how profoundly one can change, of how much you can impress yourself when you finally see yourself for the amazing person you are.

Motivation vs. Discipline

September 19, 2018 ~ Jody Rich ~ Leave a comment

It was a pretty typical Friday at the gym. The place was fairly quiet – common later in the week as all the members who were so enthusiastic on Monday have tuckered out and become scarce by Thursday. I didn’t want to be at the gym, either. I was tuckered out, dragging my feet begrudgingly from one machine to the next thinking about everything I’d rather be doing and lamenting my absentee motivation. Motivation is a slippery bugger. I have tried so many things to get it back. The motivation that initially got me so excited to hit the gym has remained elusive. It flickers in and out, sputtering like the flame of a candle.

Friday; however, as I caught myself half-assing my workout, the truth struck me. I’ve read the quotes, saved them to my pin boards, but I hadn’t really internalized the idea until now. Motivation gets you started but, eventually, you are going to have to rely on discipline. Motivation is fleeting; discipline is enduring. Motivation may flare up from time to time, fanned by some momentary inspiration like a good weigh-in or a smaller pair of jeans, but when it is gone (and it will go away) you still need to show up and you still need to work every bit as hard as you did when its fire burned in your belly.

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I have spent so much of my weight loss life (the years during which I have worked and fought to lose weight has truly taken on a life of its own, in so many ways separate from the rest of my existence) obsessed with motivation. Getting my “mojo” back, recapturing or replicating the moments of motivation that propelled my first steps on this journey. Recapturing that “lightning in a bottle.” It is as if I had come to believe that motivation was the key to success, was the element I had been missing all the years I tried and failed to lose weight. This time around, for reasons I may never be able to understand or explain, I am finding I am finally learning lessons in discipline. That, in fact, discipline may be that key I was searching for.

It is easy to work out, to make the healthiest food choices, to be focused and dedicated when you are motivated. At the end of your motivation is where the real work begins, where your true character is revealed, where your desire to meet the goals you’ve set for yourself are forged into habit. That is where a diet becomes a lifestyle, where a plan becomes a routine.

Yesterday evening, as I headed toward the gym, I felt the spark of motivation – the same spark so many people seem to feel at the beginning of a new week. Then I hit the weight machines and the reality of how hard this was going to be, how much I would sweat, how sore and exhausted I would feel hit me and my motivation was snuffed out. It was just the two of us: me and my discipline. And we, the two of us, killed that workout. We sweat, we ached, we pushed through the desire to ease up and the urge to quit.

I’m a work in progress, of course. I know there will be days I struggle to remain disciplined, when my character fails, when I don’t muster the strength to keep going without the unreliable external force of motivation. I am understanding, though, the role discipline is going to make in my success and it is exciting to feel I have turned that corner. Perhaps this will be the difference between achieving my ultimate goals and petering out before I get there.

Someday Section

September 12, 2018September 12, 2018 ~ Jody Rich ~ Leave a comment

You have it, too, right? That area of your closet, all the way in the back, where those few precious clothing items hang? I call it the “Someday Section.” I don’t have a lot of space to store clothing so I don’t hang on to much if I can’t wear it. However, some items are just too nice to let go as I hold out hope of squeezing back into them someday. Some of the items fit at the time I bought them only to get progressively snug as I regained weight. Some were a smidgen too tight to begin with but I brought them home anyway believing the desire to wear them would motivate me. Regardless, they were spared from the thrift store fate to which many of my clothes are destined and they hang on a few hangers in the back corner of my closet, behind the winter coats and scarves and camping clothes.

As I have dropped weight – just over 23 pounds since March – I have started thinking about some of those clothes. A few weeks ago, I brought out one of my favorites: a pair of black and white pinstriped Banana Republic dress slacks. I was delighted they fit again and, as the last few weeks have gone by and I have put them into regular work wardrobe rotation, they’ve gotten a bit roomier in the thighs. This morning, as I dressed for work (much to the detriment of my morning schedule) I brought out a hanger draped with a few pairs of smaller dress slacks. One-by-one, I tried them on and, one-by-one, I discovered they fit.

It is easy, when focusing on losing weight, to lose sight of the progress which may not reveal itself on the scale. We get stronger, we get fitter from the inside out. We get more confident and more determined. Our clothes fit better. Sometimes our clothes stop fitting at all and we find ourselves with the joyous chore of buying smaller ones. We crave physical activity when once we would have craved a soft spot on the couch. Our workouts get easier, we can push ourselves harder and longer at the gym. We see muscles and clavicles and cheekbones emerging. We tighten our watchbands and bra straps. We catch glimpses of ourselves in mirrors and have to stop to do a double-take. Our feet and our knees stop hurting after a day of standing or walking. Our skin glows, our smiles become brighter and wider (that last one might be in our heads but who cares?). Our friends and coworkers start commenting on the changes they are seeing.

I can never stress enough how important it is to recognize these changes in ourselves. I, myself, become obsessed with the scale and can blatantly disregard any and all real progress I’ve made in lieu of agonizing about the earth’s gravitational pull on my body. That may be the single most unhealthy thing I do in terms of weight loss. This morning, however, as I delved into my “Someday Section” and paraded back and forth down the hallway, prancing around in my smaller pants and showing them off to my boyfriend, I forgot all about the scale. I forgot I was nervous to weigh in this coming Saturday. I forgot I was heartbroken after my weigh-in on September 1. I forgot I’d convinced myself that I’d stopped making progress and become an overnight failure. I remembered that weight is just one marker, one of many ways to see and feel progress, and often it isn’t the most reliable or profound.

Pity Party

September 6, 2018September 6, 2018 ~ Jody Rich ~ Leave a comment

Last week I was 1.6 pounds away from Onderland. After three consecutive weeks of losing 2.2 pounds per week, I felt Onderland was a shoe-in but I still wasn’t taking any chances. I worked my ass off at the gym adding extra cardio to many workouts, I shaved calories from each day’s meal plan to ensure then previous weekend’s indulgences didn’t derail my progress. I woke up Saturday feeling the giddy nervousness of a child waking up on Christmas morning. I headed to the bathroom scale (cell phone in-hand to photograph the momentous occasion of being back under 200 pounds for the first time in more than three years) stripped down and stepped on.

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2/10ths of a pound lost. That’s it. No Onderland. After all those long workouts, after all those missed morsels my hopes are dashed, my excitement squashed. I must have gotten off and back on that stupid scale four times before I accepted the results, slunk off to the sofa and had myself a good, long cry. I told myself I would take the day to emotionally recover from the setback then carry on but here we are, Thursday, and I am messaging Karol about my struggle to get motivated this week, my conviction that (somehow) my pants are getting tighter and how I have been sleep-walking through my workouts all week. And then she gives me exactly what I need – not the gentle coddling my drama-queen self is looking for but, instead, the swift kick to the ass I deserve.

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She informs me she is not pulling out the balloons and the confetti to throw me a pity party. We are on a mission and one disappointing weigh-in not a setback, not a failure. Good weeks are good weeks despite the scale and any week on-plan is a good week. She’s right, of course. She’s right to not let me wallow and she’s right about everything else. I am sick of my own drama, sick of the yo-yo mood, sick of hearing myself complain every time a weigh in doesn’t go the way I want, sick of comparing my results to those of other people. I’ve been doing this too long, I have too much experience on this journey to continue to let this bring me down.

There is a mental toughness aspect to losing weight. It’s a toughness forged from bad weeks, from setbacks, from injuries and disappointing weigh-ins. It is an ability to quickly recover emotionally, an ability to harden your heart in the face of failure, to steel your mind against self-doubt. It is skill in getting and staying motivated without any external influence, without results to push you. It is a toughness you build like any other muscle and, like any other muscle, it will atrophy without use. The fortitude we hone through weight loss can be applied to every other aspect of our life just as the strength and endurance we build in the gym can be applied to our daily lives. This week, as I work in the gym to get my body strong I realize I’ll be working everywhere else to my mind right again.

Today, I am deciding the pity party is over. Today I am moving forward, reminding myself exactly how strong, how resilient I can be. Today I am done feeling sorry for myself, done believing that losing 2/10ths of a pound is a failure, done worrying about Onderland or any other milestone. I’ll get there. Maybe this week, maybe next week, maybe three weeks from now – I’ll get there. What I won’t get is a second chance to make the most of this week, of today. It’s time to quit my crying and toughen up.