Rebuilding My Body – Well-Rounded Ryan

Undoing what was done in shame

A while back I restarted my journey to get healthy. (It’s going awesome, by the way!)

When I did, I came on here and looked back at all of my old weight-related blog posts and felt a ashamed and embarrassed. I left like if I leave up my failed attempts, it’s going to make people this that this time is going to be a failure, too. So, I made them all private.

Part of my personal growth is to be cognizant of these things and, when recognized, correct them. That’s what this short post is all about.

Today, right after I publish this, I’m going to set them all to “public” again. I want to own all of myself and my story. My life is one of many ups and downs, but always with an overreaching upwards arc. And I’m proud of that.

Back in the game

At the start of the new year I made a commitment to myself to stop procrastinating and get my health in order once and for all.

Yeah, I know I’ve said it before. But I’m not going to let that convince me that I can’t do it.

I originally jumped right in with trying to lose weight again, and it was very slow and up and down- only lost about 5 pounds in almost two months. During that time, I did a lot of mental work and reflection about my lifelong battle with eating. I’ve only said this openly to a select few people in my life, but I have finally accepted that this is an addiction. It’s not just lack of motivation or willpower. I am a food addict, and have been for pretty much my entire life. I’ll talk more about what that means in a future post, but the main reason I’m mentioning it here is that it changed the way I think about and approach my weight loss journey.

I really kicked things into gear mid-February and have stuck with an eating plan for just over 6 weeks now. As of today, I’m down 21.2 pounds so far. And I’m feeling very positive and confident about this finally being my time.

I’ve also decided to shift most of my weight loss posts in some other formats rather then a ton of daily/weekly posts here on the blog. Primarily, via a vlog on YouTube. Plus, I have created an Instagram account dedicated to this journey. You can follow me at wellroundedryan there. I’m also doing a sporadic journal over on the DietBet.com website, since I just joined a few there and that is a community more focused on that topic. You can find my profile there, if you care to follow me.

As you know if you’ve read my previous posts, a big part of my personal growth alongside my weight loss is to stop hiding. For so long I’ve avoided posting full body photos, talking about my weight, etc. On top of that, I’m painfully introverted, so it’s hard for me to put myself out there.

Now’s the time to find my voice and be the real me to the rest of the world 🙂 So, on the right you’ll find my brutally honest weigh in photo for the DietBet I’m about to start.

I’ll probably still pop in here from time to time with “rebuilding my body” posts, but it will be more of the big picture vs. the day-to-day nitty gritty of eating and exercise.

Now, back to it.

Stepping away from uncomfortably numb

After 20+ years as a bibliophile with a weight problem, I must say I am fairly well read on the topic of health, nutrition, and weight loss.

During that time span, I’ve read and watched many weight loss success stories. Of those that are successful in the long term, there seems to be a recurring component–where the person attacks not only the physical habits, but dives deep into the mental and emotional causes for their obesity.

While I’ve dabbled in this before, there’s always been a sticking point. A lot of those people go in knowing what their big issue is. Usually it is some type of sexual abuse. Other times great personal loss or perhaps severe trauma. Sometimes it’s a long term relationship with a parent or other family member that edges on emotional/mental abuse.

But for me, I can’t just pick something out and say, “yep, that’s it.” It makes it hard to commit to fixing my head when I can’t see the problem head on.

Before, I used to tell myself that wasn’t what my problem was. That it was just a lifestyle and motivation problem.

However, lately I have been thinking about it more and more. There must be a reason for the way that I am. My subconscious is way too good at perpetuating this self-inflicted pain as some sort of a defensive mechanism.

What am I protecting myself from? I have a few small ideas of things in my life that may have contributed. I need to look more into those things, write about them, feel whatever emotions come up. As I do, I truly think it will work to force myself to be more mindful about what I am doing to myself and why, so that I can course correct and move forward on the path of healing that I have been searching for.

I want to write about it here, because when I write in the public forum it feels more real. I hide myself enough already and putting myself out there–good and bad–is a big factor of the practice of me bringing to light the me that I love.

So, that’s the plan. It might seem stuck on this topic for a while here, but I’ll try to switch it up a bit.

Here’s to the first step towards a future where I take care of myself in healthy ways rather than numbing and masking.

3am Wake-Up Call

It’s just after 3am on a Friday morning and I’ve been up for hours.

My mind and my body were yelling a wake-up call at me, and I had to answer.

My head won’t let me sleep because my thoughts are racing since I haven’t given myself an outlet to write about them. I’m still doing the Bullet Journal thing, which is GREAT for the day-to-day to-do’s and calendar planning, as well as tracking ideas as they come up. But, I have been horrible with routine planning and journaling.

My body won’t let me sleep because my schedule has been all over the place, my skin is itching like crazy because I haven’t taken my daily allergy pill or figured out the trigger, and I’m uncomfortable and puffy from eating junk and not drinking enough water.

I could have pushed through the unease and gone back to bed, albeit fitfully. But I can’t do that anymore.

So I’m getting up, showering to relieve my skin, taking my medicine, writing this, and getting back on track with things.

Time to go back to living mindfully.

Week 6 Recap – It’s all connected

It’s Thursday and I haven’t written a post yet for this week. Going to be a long, busy holiday weekend so really wanted to get in here to keep up with my updates and also my personal goal of at least one post a week.

I weighed in after Christmas weekend to find myself up 2 pounds. It sucks, but it is what it is. I don’t have any good excuses, just didn’t stick to the plan with tracking and counting calories. Kind of threw caution to the wind and indulged in holiday morning breakfast, peppermint pie, etc.

My biggest lesson learned is just how much daily routine affects my success. On a normal week I go Monday through Friday with no issues. Then tend to slip on weekends, holidays, or when there are out-of-the-ordinary things happening. These past two weeks have been pretty tough in that regard.

But at least it is serving the purpose of me getting to know my strengths and weaknesses so I can work on improving myself for the future. I’ve had a full week of epiphanies about myself which I have captured so I can work on them later.

For now, I have to cut things short because I have family coming over soon for a late Christmas celebration with some of my family.

Watch out next week for some updated goals for the new year 🙂

Week 5 Recap – Small Failures vs. Big Successes

Today marks 5 completed weeks of steady focus on getting healthier. Happily, I saw another 2.8 pounds down on the scale this morning!

This week was one full of ups and downs in my progress. I had a couple of days during the week where I ended up about 250-300 calories short for the day (not really planned, it just happened). Then the weekend hit and we had 3 holiday get-togethers with friends and family in a row on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I did count calories through everything, but ended up being about 300 calories over on those days.

I wish I could say that I planned it that way and carefully rationed calories to allow for a splurge, but that wouldn’t be true. My calories overages on the weekend were not in the plan. I had plenty of calories in the budget for eating dinner and even some small treats, but I impulsively ate more than I planned on those days. In some cases, it was more like late night munching on the holiday treats that are sitting around the house, so I can’t even blame it on being around others and having a good time. I knew the snacks where there and I pretty much binge-ate them.

Also need to be honest about my exercise this week. I had planned on starting a strength training program this past week, but I never did. I thought about it a lot, but never got downstairs for some structured workout time. In addition to that, after giving myself a little rest from all the walking on vacation, I didn’t get back in the habit of wearing my fitness tracker. When that’s not on, the push to get more and more steps falls away.

But, I am going to pause right now. Literally–hang on–be right back.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

OK- back! Got my fitness tracker on and ready to move more today!

On the plus side, I continued to count the calories of what I was eating, which helped me to not get too out of control. Plus, I didn’t use those slip-ups as an excuse to quit altogether or to go off plan for a whole day. That is the real success here–changing the way I react to my own imperfections.

I’m learning that small failures and big successes don’t contradict each other. This journey of weight loss, health, and fitness can (and likely will) be filled with times that I don’t eat perfectly or days when I miss a workout. But, as long as I keep moving forward, I’ll reach my huge goals in spite of the tiny missteps along the way.

I was looking for a picture to illustrate my point and found this–I love it!

So true 🙂 I’m going to print this out right now and post it in my office where I’ll see it all the time.

Another sticky point I’ve been trying to figure out is my weekday vs. weekend routine. During the week I get up, take supplements, drink water, eat properly, etc. I have a routine and a structure that works. On the weekend, I wake up late, go visit with the hubby, relax…and more than likely miss out on completing a good size handfuls of my daily to-dos. That certainly doesn’t help when I already have a harder time staying on plan during the more social weekends.

For now, I am just putting that problem in my awareness to try and think of a solution. I don’t really want to give up the freedom of my weekends, I just want to regain a little bit of control. This weekend is Christmas and the next New Year’s, so it’ll be even more out of whack that usual, but I’ll see what I can come up with!

Other plans for the week?

Get in 1 strength workout
Don’t overdo food intake during Christmas celebrations

Let’s do this!

Weeks 3 & 4 Recap – 10 Days, 61 Miles, & 1 Pound

This will be a short post. Just returned late Monday night from our 10-day Disney World adventure (which was amazing, BTW!) and have so many things to do here before returning to work and prepping for for the holidays.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I knew losing weight was going to be a challenge on vacation. But when I first got back and stood on the scale I wanted to cry because I was up about 5 pounds. However, I also woke up feeling so puffy and swollen, as I tend to retain a lot of water when traveling. So I decided to give it one day to flush out the access water. So yesterday I just went right back to counting calories, staying on plan, and drinking quite a bit of water. Must have gone to the bathroom every 30 minutes! By the end of the day I was feeling much better and WAY less puffy.

Did another weigh-in this morning to find that I went down 6 pounds. Whew! I knew it had to be all water. That’s the number I’m going to stick with for my combined weeks 3-4 post-vacay weigh-in.

The goal was to just lose something while on vacation and dining out every single day, and that’s what I did. I was hoping for a little more since according to my app I walked a whopping 61.09 miles over those 10 days (my poor sore feet!), but it’s all good.

And I really can’t complain. If you’ve ever vacationed in Disney World on the dining plan, you know that everything comes in HUGE portions and dessert with every meal! So, if I can lose a pound eating things like this, I’ll take it:

Giant family style breakfasts..almost every day.

For this coming week? Back to counting calories and also feeling like it’s a good time to start incorporating some weight training. Nothing major, but I am going to put together a basic head-to-toe routine to do 2x a week and get started on that.

Week 2 Recap – Building habits that can survive the Disney Dining Plan!

weektwoweighin Wrapped up my first two weeks of staying on track to get fit and healthy. Weighed in this morning to be down 2.6 pounds, for a total of 9.8 so far.

I know it’s the beginning and just a couple of pounds, but I am not going to undercut any successes. I’m thrilled to say that I stuck within my calorie counts every day this week. Yes- even on Thanksgiving! I planned out my day in advance to plan what I could eat that day. It meant having way smaller meals earlier in the day followed by a big dinner with family, but that’s just fine with me. I did end up making a few small tweaks from the plan, but still in under the calorie cap.

One thing I am noticing already is that my appetite and cravings have gone WAY down even after just two weeks. There have been a few times that I took something to eat (within my limits) and then ended up either not finishing it or not eating it at all because when I actually went to eat it I realized I didn’t really want it. Love that listening to my body is helping to stop eating out of habit instead of for nourishment.

This week has also marked the beginning of moving more. I didn’t go ahead and jump right into a hardcore working program, but rather started fitting in some movement to my normally sedentary day.

How sedentary? I work from my home office for 60+ hours a week. That’s a lot of sitting time. I do take breaks often to do chores around the house, but still the majority of my day is spent in my office chair. So this week I took my under-desk cycle out of retirement and put it back where I can use it. I’ve been pedaling away during work meetings and for short breaks throughout the day.

Here’s the cycle I’m using–the DeskCycle. I did a lot of looking for something like this last year after I hurt my knee and needed something cheap and low impact to replace the cardio I was doing then. It’s really low profile so you can easily pedal while sitting at your desk without hitting your knees. It’s also super quiet. There is a display to keep track of time, distance, speed, etc. if you want. (I actually just clip my Up Move fitness tracker on my foot and track the activity that way.)

Results? I went from an average of about 1500-2000 steps a day while stuck in the house all the way up to 6500-7000 “steps.” That’s a big improvement! Right now I am working it at resistance level 2 and plan on upping that slowly over time. Eventually I’m hoping to get in a full 10K+ “steps” at at least 5-7 resistance every single day…PLUS regular strength training and other formal exercise.

This type of cycle is also great because I can move it wherever. It’s usually been under my desk, but I took it into the family room so I could pedal while I binge-watched “Search Party” this weekend. Felt so much less guilt since I kept moving instead of vegging out on the couch.

Now onto the plan for next week…

maxresdefault — Gearing up for lots of walking at the most magical place on Earth.

Things are going to be a little different. I am heading from chilly Chicago to sunny Orlando on Saturday for 10 days of Disney Holiday Magic, so my routine will be going kaput. We will be eating a all WDW restaurants and snack booths since we have the Disney Dining Plan covering all our meals. Disney doesn’t offer nutritional information on their food, so I am going to have to do some guesswork. Thankfully as a serial dieter I can usually get pretty close to what things weigh in at. The plan isn’t to strictly track while I am there, but rather to just eat mindfully, enjoy small tastes rather than huge binges, and only splurge on occasion. Movement won’t be a problem since we’ll be walking, walking, walking!

I’ll be missing my weigh-in next Tuesday, so instead I’ll do it the week after for 2 weeks combined.

The official plan for Disney is easy: Lose weight.

Basically as long as I go on vacation and come back weighing less than when I left, I’ll consider it a success–whether it’s a single pound or five pounds.

(hoping to squeeze in a blog post or two while I am away as well, but I know it’ll be tricky.)

Be back with an update in 2 weeks on 12/13!

Week One Recap – Retraining My Brain

weekoneweighin It’s been one week since I committed to a long term lifestyle overhaul to get my body back, and it’s been good.

This morning I had my first official weekly weigh-in and lost 7.2 pounds. Not bad at all.

Here’s what I’ve been doing:

Logging all food intake in the Lose-It app
Keeping calorie intake as close as possible to the daily calorie allotment that the app suggests–2201 per day (more on this later)
Wearing my Jawbone Up Move fitness tracker and keep track of steps/movement
Making a conscious effort to drink more water

That it for this week. It’s all about baby steps and consistency this time around.

The Lose It! app is the best calories tracking program I've used. — The Lose It! app is the best calories tracking program I’ve used.

When I saw that Lose-It wanted me to eat 2201 calories a day, it was a big mental hurdle to get around. That is much higher than I normally would have started with on a diet plan. But, as I outlined in my earlier post, the point is to do this at a steady, slow pace by making gradual change instead of dramatically changing everything and risking my body fighting it and myself quitting in frustration.

So I trusted it. In the end, I was just 127 calories short for the whole week. And I lost some weight! 🙂

I did go over on Friday evening. It was my birthday and the hubby and I went out for tapas and we totally indulged. But, didn’t freak out–I just cut back a little the next couple of days to balance it all out. I am relieved to see that it all worked out.

The big test will be to see if the losses keep up over the next 6 weeks or so. In the past, after weeks 1-3, my weight loss tends to stall. I am hoping that the problem in the past was that I was cutting to severely that my body was slowing down my metabolism in response. Eating a higher calorie amount to start and lowering that figure as my weight goes down should help prevent that from happening. It’s uncharted territory for me–the idea that eating more can actually help me have success.

I am feeling optimistic!

Never Stop Never Stopping (Happy Birthday to Me)

Yeah, yeah, I totally stole that from the Lonely Island movie. That’s sitting in a Netflix envelope on my family room entertainment center waiting for me to watch it this weekend, and when I thought about a title to convey not quitting, that’s all I could think of.

hbd1 — Getting the best present ever this year.

Today is my 37th birthday, and I have a great gift to give myself this year.

As I wrote about earlier in the week, I have officially committed to overhauling my lifestyle to get healthy once and for all. In that spirit of that, my present to myself is to do what it takes to be in the best shape of my life by 40.

Yes, you heard me right–40. That’s 3 full years.

In the past, there are two big traps that I have fallen into when attempting to lose weight.

1) Being entirely too restrictive with food and over-ambitious with exercise right from the start. As a result, after a couple of weeks I would binge or get be too sore to workout and just totally give up because I wasn’t being just perfect.

2) Sticking to a diet really well for a couple of months but the scale not moving much at all, causing me to get frustrated and quit yelling that “it’s not worth it.”

Logical? No. But that’s the pattern.

The worst part is that every time I do well and lose 10, 20, 30 pounds and then quit, I end up putting on even more weight even if I don’t eat more. It’s a viscous cycle and I have been stuck in it for my whole adult life.

This graphic I found from http://melaniesobocinskifitness.whoknowsaguyfitness.com/ pretty much sums it up.

This time I am breaking free by stick with these principles:

1) Making slow, controlled changes in my diet. For now, it’s just counting calories and sticking within the budget given on my LoseIt app. It says at that rate I can reach my goal rate by October 2018–two years away, losing 1-2 pounds a week.

Yes, 2-3 years is a long time, but I am making myself be OK with that. Previously, I would pick some upcoming event and think- “heck yeah- I can lose 50 pounds by then!” Well, it didn’t work and I always ended off worse than I started.

I will be more than happy with a pound or two a week. I even have a whole extra year of buffer time.

2. Slowly increasing my activity level from Current Status: Couch Potato to Goal Status: Weekend Warrior.

I am carrying around a lot of weight, and have been for a while. It hasn’t been easy on my body. I have several areas that act up (like a torn meniscus in my right knee). I want to get stronger without making those injuries worse, so I am going to do the slow and steady approach. First by just walking more and doing some basic body weight exercises, then building up to more intense cardio and heavy duty strength building.

I don’t really have the ambition to be an athlete. I just want to be strong and fit enough to do some outdoor adventures or maybe run a 5K with friends a few times a year. download-2

3. Never losing momentum. This is the biggest for me. Even if the scale stays stuck for weeks or I go to a party and eat something terrible–just stay the course and jump right back in. I will get to my goal if I just keep it up. Never stop never stopping 🙂

I’m excited and buzzing with energy and motivation to succeed. Documenting it here adds an extra level of accountability and encouragement. I am ready.

The 2016 to 2019 birthday comparison shots are going to be amazing!