Yesterday was "body day" at TPS. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and yet again I felt incredibly lucky to be training there, with like-minded people, and surrounded by rather spectacular views of Boston.

The view from my gym. 

I do a fair amount of conditioning on body day, and always some Prowler pushing. Sled pushing or dragging or tire flipping or any of that sort of stuff is great because it's fairly self-limiting. On days when I have less energy (like last week when it took me 9:43 to do my Prowler work) and my body is more tired and stressed out from the week's training, I just don't push as fast or finish as quickly, but when I'm feeling good and fresh and ready to kick ass (like this week when I did the same amount of work in 9:03), I can get more work done without having to change anything about my programming. Plus it's just really, really satisfying.

I set the goals listed below a few weeks ago and have been meaning to share them on the blog. I think they're all realistic, minus the bodyweight chin-up, which these days I am kind of believing is the impossible dream, but the other three I think I can absolutely do. I am actually taking a break from the scale for the next few weeks because I have been feeling really good about how I look, and regardless of how I'm weighing in, I won't be changing my nutrition plan for at least 2-3 weeks as my body is still settling down from the small amount of dieting I did pre-comp. So my plan is basically to stick to my nutrition plan, enjoy feeling good in my body, and then really re-assess how I feel before I step on the scale again. I think it's possible I may actually like myself just fine at or just above 200#. I still would like to maintain more in the 190s to make weigh-ins easier, but the mental practice of assessing how I actually feel without letting the scale dictate how I should feel is a good one, I think.

Goals (Set October 25, 2013)
1. Bodyweight 194-198# by December 31.
2. Maintain 194-198# all of 2014.
3. Compete in March RPS meet in 198# class with 215# squat, 135# bench, 315# dead (665# total).
4. Bodyweight chin-up by 32nd birthday (April 2014).

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Training yesterday:

1A) Single-arm Floor Press (4x10)
1B) Lat Pulldown (4x10)
2A) Single-arm DB Row (4x10)
2B) Standing Tricep Extension (4x10)

Prowler Pushing: Sled+90#x200', Sled+180#x6x100' (9:43 total)
Kettlebell Swings 16kgx25, 25, 25, 25
Plank: 1 minute

Letting myself off the hook (in a good way)

I took a long recovery walk today, over an hour in total with a break in the middle to sit in the park and meditate. It was after this break, walking back home that I had a bit of a breakthrough. I've had a sort of rough week in terms of adherence to my nutrition plan. My refeed day last Saturday included two additional desserts not accounted for in my macros, then watching the World Series win on Wednesday I ended up eating a few fun-size candy bars and handfuls of caramel corn and then to really make sure I felt super terrible about my behavior for the week, on Thursday I ate candy at work. This breaks the iron-clad rule I have for myself that I just absolutely do not under any circumstance eat the extra food available at work. There is free candy, cake, cookies, pastries, donuts and/or ice-cream available at the hospital LITERALLY EVERY DAY. When I started working I was in pre-comp mode so turning it all down was pretty easy, and at that point I decided that going forward, even after the comp, it would just be my rule to not ever eat the junk food at work. So breaking that rule sort of sucked, especially as I am prone to the slippery-slope of bad habits.

I emailed my nutrition coach on Thursday evening to try to get some help and perspective, and she definitely provided it. (Jen also recently wrote a great article about the temptations of the holidays and how we so often screw our future selves, it's a pretty entertaining read.) Essentially she confirmed that my behavior falls under the category of self-sabotage, which happens for multiple reasons. For one, we tend to think we have more wiggle room once we're close to our goals when what we actually need to do is stay the course until we REACH our goals; for another, there's often some self-doubt as to whether you actually deserve to achieve a goal and once it gets close that self-doubt can become a tricky little bugger of self-defeating behavior.

I tell you all of this to explain my own mind-set this afternoon. I was feeling a bit down because I weighed in at 204# this morning, up from 202.6# last Saturday, and heading in the wrong direction to meet my goal of being in the 194-198# range by the end of the year. I took Jen's comment to heart that "a couple of small dietary indiscretions didn't do any harm, however if they are repeated, they absolutely will," and was simultaneously beating myself up a bit for messing up and also resolving to do better, when it occurred to me that yes, I do weigh 204# but I was also walking around Cambridge in size 12 skinny jeans, a feat I never thought I would accomplish (the size 12 or the skinny jeans.) It's just too bad that competition classes aren't based on what size jeans one wears . . .

I tend to have a very black-and-white perspective on my own behavior, either it's fantastic or it's total shit, and so being able to realize that: yes, I made a few crappy decisions this week about food and I need to rein it in over the next two holiday months if I want to hit my goals but at the same time I am doing really well in the grand scheme of my life and my overall habits and patterns, was a pretty nice thing. I can cut myself some slack while also not excusing my behavior or allowing it to continue. This really is a revelation for me, and one I would like to remember.

Food prep, or the activity formerly known as cooking

It is an oft-repeated and (unfortunately) true statement that physique change (aka fat loss, muscle gain, body recomposition) happens in the kitchen more than the gym. While you certainly need to lift some weights to grow some guns, if you don't clean up your eating no one will ever see those rippling biceps, sick traps and beautiful quads because they'll all be covered up under a layer of fat, which you pretty much have to take off by adjusting your diet, as there's only so much high-intensity fat-loss training that you can do before you hit a serious wall of diminishing returns.

When I first started training and trying to clean up my diet it was enough to cut out alcohol and most sweets and generally just eat whole foods that I cooked myself. That helped me shed 20-25# of fat without making radical changes to the way I eat and that was awesome. At this point though, if I want to lose weight or shed fat I have to be pretty strict about what goes into my body and when. One of the most frequent questions I get from friends and family is what I eat and how I stick to my diet, so I thought I'd spend a blog post or two describing my usual weekly routine.

Regardless of where you are on the dieting/cleaning up your eating spectrum, I think it's immensely helpful to spend a couple of hours each week doing food prep. I spend about two hours every Sunday cooking food for the week, which allows me to not have to cook at the end of a long day during the week, and makes putting together lunches for myself a quick 5-minute process each evening. This morning I made:

• A giant frittata (made of 6 eggs, 3 cups of egg whites, 1# of ground buffalo, 3 bell peppers, 2 onions, 1 zucchini and 8 ounces of baby bella mushrooms) that I eat for breakfast every day along with salad greens.
• 8 zucchini turkey burgers. Perfect for throwing on top of salad greens for lunch.
• 2.5# of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, poached. I use Martha Stewart's recipe and just adapt with whatever I have on hand in the fridge for flavoring - today it was a lemon, garlic, carrot, salt and pepper in the poaching liquid. This chicken breast is easy, fast protein that can be tossed into stirfries or sliced on top of salads or eaten by itself when I'm feeling uninspired and just need to get the protein into my body (which happens some days.)
• Steamed sweet potatoes. For starchy carb fuel pre-workout and to throw into salads or eat as a side throughout the week.
• Steamed cauliflower. For salads or as a veggie side with fish. (I often will make a big batch up peppers and onions to eat with salads or as a veggie side through the week, but I got so much cauliflower in my farm share this week that I had no choice.)

I also always keep a big box of salad greens from Whole Foods on hand, as well as bags of frozen veggies and frozen fish from Trader Joe's (tilapia usually, it cooks up in 10 minutes in the oven) and also have lots of fresh vegetables from my farm share. Once I've got all these cooked and frozen and fresh options on hand, it makes putting together meals a lot easier and faster. For instance, tomorrow I'll be eating:

Breakfast: A giant piece of frittata (heated up in the toaster oven) on top of salad greens dressed with lemon juice, salt and pepper. Followed up by a tablespoon of coconut butter for a sweet treat.
Lunch: Turkey burger and cauliflower on top of salad greens dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Snap peas or carrots for a snack.
Pre-workout: Sweet potato, banana and a protein shake.
Post-workout: Low-fat granola and almond milk.
Dinner: Stir fry with fresh eggplant, frozen broccoli, poached chicken (spiced with dried ginger, garlic, mustard, crushed red pepper, sesame seeds and soy sauce) over brown rice (which I will make later tonight, and often include with the rest of my Sunday meal prep.)

The longest I'll spend making any of it is the stir fry which takes max 15 minutes including chopping time. Overall this is a system that works well for me, and I think is worth trying out if you are trying to eat healthier but are also short on time during the week. It can be adapted with any recipes you like, as long as they keep decently well for 4-5 days.

T-minus 5 weeks to my powerlifting meet.

If it were possible for me to bottle and sell the feeling I had for the majority of my workout this morning I would be a freaking millionaire. It was the elusive gym high that I used to get pretty consistently when I first started training but now only happens once a month or so if I'm lucky. I assume that's because I am essentially addicted to the rush of positive hormones that weight training/working out pumps into my body so rather than feeling it as a high at this point I usually just feel it as normal (and get super, super cranky if I don't get my fix at least every 48 hours.)

Potential reasons I felt so spectacular this morning:
1. I was in bed for 12 hours last night, and fast asleep for over 11 of them. I went to bed at 7:45pm. It was wonderful and so very, very necessary. The transition to clinic is usually exhausting, and this time is no different - there's something about being "on" so intensely mentally and physically for 8+ hours a day that always takes me a couple weeks to get used to.
2. I added 5g glutamine to my intra-workout cocktail (which already has about 8g creatine and 10g BCAAs)
3. It's the end of my deload week and happily my body is responding appropriately, acting refreshed and ready to train hard again.
4. Random luck.
5. I'm no longer struggling with my decision about cutting weight for the comp. I have decided to go for it, and do everything I can within reason to get to the 198 class. I weighed in at 208.4# this morning, and last time around I cut 10# with water manipulation alone, so I am feeling very positive about it being an all-around easier experience this time around. My nutrition coach has tweaked my plan and suggested I add in some morning fasted walking a couple times a week and we'll be adjusting as necessary for the next 5 weeks. I am excited and energized by having such clear focus for myself for the next month or so. Between giving my all in my clinic and putting the rest into competition prep (both training hard and dieting well), I know the next 5 weeks will be challenging but also super rewarding. I am happiest when I have distinct and specific goals and timelines to work with. It's game time, motherfuckers. Let's go.

_________________________

Training today:
Squat (deload): 6 sets working up to 143#x5. Supersetted with core work.
Accessory: Speed sumo deads and pistol squats.
Finisher: Kettlebell complex.

First day

Today was my first day of work at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where I will be for 6 months before rotating to outpatient, and so also my first time training post-8.5-hours-of-work since my last clinic ended in May (and that was a pretty relaxed site where my workday was usually closer to 7 than 8 hours. The day at the Brigham is likely to be closer to 10 than 8 once things get going . . .) Biking from the hospital to the Y today I was extra glad that this was a deload week, as the process of starting a new job is always sort of overwhelming, and as a PT intern I spend most of my first few days following my clinical instructor around but not actually DOING much, which I find way more tiring than actually working.

Regardless, it was a good first day at my new clinic site (I love my CI and I like the busy and intense feeling of the Brigham), and once I got started it was also a good first-training-day-post-work. I wrapped up in just over an hour and felt good and tired. I think I'll have no problem getting to bed at 9:30, which is my new goal and I don't care if it makes me feel old, I want lights out by 10pm so I can get 8 hours of sleep. And the NY Times totally agrees with me and my nutrition coach that those 8 hours are essential to my goals. So there.

Training today:
Kettlebell warmup
6 sets of conventional deadlift working up to 177#x5.
Accessory: Anderson front squats.
Finisher: Single-leg bridges and jump rope.

Scale struggles (apologies for all the swearing, sometimes I get frustrated.)

I am struggling.  I would say I have been struggling because my diet is not working, and over the past month my weight has been fluctuating between 206-210#, without too much reason why (there were a couple drinks where there shouldn't have been, and a couple off-plan meals that were larger than they ought to have been, but overall I've been eating well and on-plan for the last 8-9 weeks.) But really I am struggling with exactly why I am dieting in the first place (ostensibly in order to make weight for my October competition - I am registered to compete in the 198# class.) And then there's the fact that I'm not actually "dieting" per se, I am actually following a totally sound, normal nutrition plan that just seems like a diet to most people (including myself sometimes) because it limits sugar and alcohol and doesn't include gluten/dairy/soy. But it's not really a diet, it's actually a way to eat to train/live well and feel GOOD . . .  Ideally it was/is also supposed to help me shed some weight before the competition, but that has not really been happening.

So now I am at a self-created crossroads and I am struggling. Part of me wants to put myself back on a DIET (much lower calories, no carbs except around training) to make weight for the competition in 5+ weeks, because I think the 198 class makes sense for me based on my height and body type. And because I find it hard to swallow that at my last competition I competed in the 181 class and if I don't diet down I will compete in the 220 class at this competition. Just saying that makes me cringe. Which makes me realize that all of this dieting down to get into weight classes is only superficially about competition and actually about the fucking scale. Of course. It hurts my pride/vanity/scale-obsessed psyche to imagine competing in a class with the 220# label because in my head this means that I am fat. I have managed to convince myself that the 198# class means that I am not-fat. I previously felt the same about the 181/198 class distinction (that 181# meant not-fat and that 198# meant fat.) This is all obviously beyond fucked up and pointless.

My nutrition coach does not want me to try to DIET, because as she points out there is no competitive advantage (I'm competing against myself really and my own past performance, even when there are other women in my class, as my numbers are nowhere even close to competitive-powerlifting numbers), and it's possibly harmful for my long-term goals to try to diet hard again, especially considering what happened after the last go-round (crazy binging and subsequent spiraling exponential weight gain halted only by the acquiring of this nutrition coach.)

On the other hand, the last time around I dieted for well over two months and without any guidance or real structure and indulged in some crazy-pants behavior both during and after dieting, and this time around it will be 4 weeks with a coach to keep me on track/from going too crazy.

The act of writing this blog post has made me realize that for the moment I should just keep doing what I have been doing - eating clean and training hard. In an ideal world I would be able to just weigh in at the competition at whatever weight I'm at and compete in whatever class that puts me in and be happy with that. If it's really about the powerlifting and the competition and doing my athletic best, the number on the scale really should not fucking matter. . .  Unfortunately, my neurotic self does not live in an ideal world, and having this realization does not change how I feel. I still don't know what I am going to do. Like I said, I'm struggling.

"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" - Voltaire

My nutrition coach wrote an article recently about not letting small slips in behavior mess up your overall direction/plan. She's writing specifically about adherence to nutrition plans, but I think it's relevant for any sort of behavior or behavior change that one is trying to make. It really is so easy and so tempting to let one small error turn into an excuse to let the whole day/week go and just start over tomorrow. I think this is so tempting for me in the food arena because it allows me to indulge all the snacking/sweets eating that I want with at least a shred of (admittedly pathetic) justification (since I already screwed up, what's the point of trying any more.) This is truly counterproductive, as Jen points out, as my body doesn't follow this logic and a couple hundred extra calories in a small slip-up is going to have a way different effect than a few thousand extra calories in a day-long-snackathon.

I have been struggling a little bit over the last week to be as faithful to my nutrition plan as I was for the first 5 weeks. I think this is because I am on my last break between school and clinic and so don't have a regular schedule, which I know helps keep me on track, and I also have the "on vacation" mindset, which would be fine if I actually were on vacation for just a couple days and deciding to treat myself to some good food experiences, but it really doesn't work out so well when vacation is several weeks long and the eating is not unique food-while-traveling experiences but instead just over-eating after Whole Foods shopping trips (so guilty on that one.)

Acknowledging my mistakes helps me not make them going forward, so I'm hoping that for the rest of "vacation" (another two weeks), I will be able to enjoy my relaxed schedule and extra-fun activities (I've already seen two concerts, one ball game and spent time with a bunch of different friends in the past 4 days, so off to a good start), without using that extra time and freedom to justify trashing my nutrition plan. The RPS meet is only 8 weeks away and I still have pounds to shed if I want to come in comfortably in the 198 class. Every decision I make, big or small, will take me closer to or push further from making that weight class easily. The cumulative effect of all these small decisions really is significant, and I need to remember that.

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Training today was interesting. I ate my off-plan meal for the week in the morning at Veggie Galaxy - amazing gluten-free pancakes with berries and coconut whipped cream and tempeh-veggie-potato hash - all absurdly delicious. After the requisite carb-crash nap and a couple hours to digest, I went to train around 2pm. I'm trying to shift to later training times to get ready for the start of clinic, so 2pm is a good start. All the crazy carb ingestion made me feel sluggish as hell, but although I wanted to quit for most of my workout, I noticed that I was actually able to push through and get out quite a bit of work done. Lesson for the day: carbs make my brain lazy but my body into a pretty unstoppable, if somewhat slow-moving, force. Ah well, can't have it all, I suppose.

Training today:
Warmup: Is, Ts, Ys
Split Jerk: 6 sets working up to 110#x1,1.  Supersetted with single-leg inverted rows (which I swear get harder, not easier, every week.)
Accessory: speed bench and single-arm rows, single-arm floor press and midback work.
Finisher: 1000m row (knee felt funky, but not painful, so progress there!)


Random P.s. Though less renowned than Voltaire, the author/business coach Jim Collins has the quote "Good is the enemy of great," which I think is also true on some levels, but more applicable to life/business aspirations (and maybe training?) than nutrition plans.

Less exercise for better results (and also why that exercise probably shouldn't be steady-state cardio.)

One of my nutrition coach's major suggested changes for me was cutting down on the amount of exercise I was doing in order to make it easier to meet my goals of fat loss while maintaining/increasing strength for powerlifting. I cut out all my running (1 3+ mile run each week and treadmill sprints 1-2x/week) and about half of my metabolic conditioning work that ends my lifting each day.

This article from The Metabolic Effect website does a nice job explaining why too much exercise or exercise that lasts for too long can be detrimental to losing weight and/or re-comping your body (i.e. losing body fat while maintaining muscle mass.)

I also really like this piece from Rachel Cosgrove on how her body responded to training for an Ironman. She does a nice job going into the whole "fat-burning zone" myth perpetuated by women's magazines and elliptical machines with heart rate monitors the world over.

I think it's important to keep your goals and what you want out of exercise in mind when you're trying to figure out what to do. If you love to run every day, and can do so comfortably, then you should run every day! But if you're forcing yourself to work out every day or to do long sessions of steady-state cardio because it seems like if some exercise is good then more-more-more must be better, I think it is helpful to keep this stuff in mind. And then of course it all comes back to the fact that you can't out-train a bad diet, meaning that if you want to lose weight/fat, the major changes have to come in what you eat, not in how you work out. Sadness all around on that one, as if it were possible to eat cheesecake every night and work it all off the next day at the gym I. Would. Totally. Do. That.

_______________

Training:
Warmup: Kettlebells - one arm swings and rack squats
Deloaded Dead: 8 sets working up to 177#x3, felt clean and easy. Supersetted with core work.
Accessory: Smith machine single-leg squats. These deserve a post of their own at some point.
Finisher: 1 1/10 mile uphill treadmill sprint. My L knee still feels wonky and felt pretty unsteady with the sprinting so decided to cut it (potentially sandbagging here, but also erring on the side of caution vis a vis my knee.)

Keeping perspective

Keeping perspective is a constant struggle for me. Part of it is the desire to always be improving, which is one of the things I love about weight training and power lifting. Up until a point that most people don't achieve (because it's almost impossible without dedicating yourself exclusively to training 24-7), it is always possible to lift more weight if you put in enough work. That constant possibility of progress is like a prize just slightly out of reach, something to always keep striving for. Although this same thought process makes it difficult at times for me to be happy with my own progress, because it's never quite enough to satisfy me, I think in general it's a fine and healthy attitude to have regarding weight in the gym, as constantly striving to lift more is part of the point.

This constant striving gets trickier though when applied to scale weight. For one, it's not desirable or practical to always be trying for a lower scale weight. Although this was my standard measure of progress for many years (and appropriately so for a long time), at this point it's not terribly helpful and mostly serves as a way to make me feel worse about myself. I realized recently that I will probably never reach my old goal weight of 175#. I don't even remember where I got that number from, but it's always been in my head as my "perfect weight." Perfect for what, I'm not sure. I know at this point it would be far from perfect for my ability to lift heavy and train hard, as to achieve and maintain that body weight I would either have to drop muscle mass or get to such a low body fat percentage that I wouldn't be able to eat enough to have enough energy to lift heavy.

A lot of this reflection was prompted by looking at progress pictures from earlier this year, about a month before my comp, when I was at 190# and still feeling pretty good (though certainly dieting hard.) I remember at the time not being that impressed, all I could see was my saggy belly and floppy arms. Looking at them now, I can see that I looked good. Yes, I have some extra floppy skin from a decade+ of being obese, but I was also lean and looked strong and fit. I remember clearly thinking that I was still fat and being discouraged by that as 190# seemed pretty good to me scale-weight-wise. I know now that it is pretty good, and I wish I had felt better about myself and my progress at the time as perhaps it would have prevented some of my post-comp binge eating (which was, in part, due to the fact that I "didn't even look that good so what was the point." So. Dumb.)

I have been really down on myself recently for gaining so much weight post-comp. I am sitting around 208# these days. I haven't hit this high a scale weight since January 2012, and that sucks. What I need to keep reminding myself is though, that 1) there's a lot more muscle in that 208# now than there was in January 2012, 2) 208# is still an incredible achievement coming from 300#, and 3) I will get back to my "happy weight" of 195# or thereabouts in due time. I say it was "easy" to put so much weight back on post-comp, but in reality, I did a lot of seriously crappy eating and serious self-hating for that crappy eating over those few months. There wasn't much "easy" about it.

___________


Training today was a good reminder of the importance of perspective. My heaviest lift of the day was supposed to be a 221# squat for 1 or more reps, but on the set before which should have been 197# for 3 I failed on the 2nd rep. I re-racked the weight and failed again. This. Was. Frustrating. Laying on the gym floor post-fail I considered crying but then figured my time and energy would be better spent getting whatever strength training I had left out of my legs (my stupid, stupid legs which would not squat for me!!) I texted Chris to ask his advice and he recommended singles at a slightly lighter weight, which I was able to do at 177# for 5 reps.

Getting back to the apartment today and checking out my newly created progress calendar-tracker-thing which sits above my desk and where I record my max lifts each week, it was comforting to see that two weeks ago I hit 195# for 5 and last week I got 197# for 3. I know I am not suddenly dramatically weaker than last week, but am probably instead feeling the cumulative effects of a long weekend without a lot of sleep, three weeks of a pretty intense new training program and honestly probably still adjusting to my new nutrition plan (though I think this is probably affecting me the least of the three.)

At this moment still working hard to keep that all-important perspective. And I'm definitely looking forward to drop-in meditation class tonight.

In the beginning . . .

. . . God created deadlifts. Seriously. If you made THE WHOLE WORLD, wouldn't you just have to try to see if you could pick it up (you know, get the whole world in your hands? . . . . no? just me?  . . . sorry.)

What I'm talking about here is the beginning of the Era of Fitness Insanity, as a friend of mine has dubbed it. To call it 'the beginning' is a little bit (or a lot bit) inaccurate as the Era of Fitness Insanity is only the second part of the story, the first part being how I ended up needing an Era of Fitness Insanity in the first place, but that story has about 15 parts of it's own, and most of them are predictable and depressing and looooooong. This part is long too (and predictable? hopefully not depressing), but less so. But I digress (there will be a lot of that, apologies in advance for all the times it happens. You can place bets on how many times I do, or keep count if you want. There will not be a prize.)

In the beginning . . .

. . . It was November 2011.

. . . I was 29 years old, and felt like I was running out of time. I wanted a big change before my 30th birthday but I didn't know how to get there (I had made a "30 by 30" goal for myself to lose 30# by my 30th birthday and I had made zero progress on it, losing and gaining the same 5# over and over for about 5 months.)

. . . I had completed Couch to 5k the previous summer and was proud of that, but had never run an actual 5k because I still didn't think I was "ready." (I think somewhere deep inside me I still feared that if I showed up to an actual 5k race wearing a racing bib and my workout gear that every single person in attendance would turn simultaneously, point and call me fat and make fun of me for thinking I could be "one of those people who runs 5ks." This entire fear is both wildly narcissistic - nobody cares that much about what I look like/run like/act like - and obviously impossible. Still, it kept me from running an actual 5k race until March 2012, more than 6 months after I ran my first 3+ mile run on my own.)

. . . I had a years-long exercise history composed primarily of hours on the elliptical and Stairmaster and occasional bouts of Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper DVDs (I still mean to go back and put myself through one of them just to see how it feels. Did I always feel like dying because I was so out of shape, or are they really just designed to make you feel like dying so you feel accomplished at the end? I'm pretty sure that Jillian's 30 Day Shred is the latter.)

. . . I weighed around 225# and though proud that I was no longer monstrously fat, I still felt like the very first word I would have to use to describe my physical appearance would still be "fat."

. . . I was in outpatient physical therapy for a chronic, achingly painful shoulder that had been bothering me for years. Literally YEARS. I was 29 years old and my body was falling apart. And it took being in PT school to realize that oh yeah, duh, maybe a PT could help me. (I had seen a chiropractor for a while when I lived in DC, and that worked, but only while I kept seeing him.)

. . . the rehab was working. For the first time in years I could type and read and cook and do all sorts of terrible repetitive motions with my right arm and NOT have searing pain up and down my neck and back and shoulder.

. . . I had hope. I had the inkling of an idea that my physical therapist, Chris, also trained people, and told him of my plan to hire a trainer, asking him how I should go about finding a good one. He said I already had (in a much more humble and subtle way), which was exactly the answer I wanted.

[I would like to take a break here and thank the cosmos/God/planets aligning/karma for my blind, random physical therapy referral to Chris. It changed my life. Seriously. If he ever reads this he'll be all "shut up, Rachel, I did not change your life, YOU did." But between you and me? He changed my life.]

. . . I had so much DOMS during the first three weeks of training with Chris I could barely sit, stand, walk or even straighten my elbow without my muscles screaming at me. And. I. Loved. It. (My friends? Maybe not so much since pretty much all I said for three weeks was "ow" and my face was in a perma-wince.)

. . . I was pushed to my physical and mental limits. I had never been pushed to my physical limits before, and so I didn't even know what they were. I had very little concept of what it meant to just keep going in the face of fatigue and burning muscles. But Chris held my hand and no-nonsense'd me into doing whatever I was supposed to do that day. And provided me with the confidence to do it on my own the rest of the week. (I am almost jealous of myself then, because every new training day was SO EXCITING. Every day I learned what things I could do and what things were miles beyond my reach. (I say almost because I had to deadlift off plates because I couldn't deadlift 135#, so yeah, not jealous enough to want to go back there. I digress.)) <--- double end parens, woot!

. . . I made progress every single day.

. . . I had priorities. For the very first time in my life, they did not revolve around other people (getting them to like me, pleasing them, being surrounded by them so as to avoid myself, ok let's stop going down this road, it gets very dark there), food or getting drunk. My priority was getting to the gym and training. The clarity of purpose this provided me still brings me to tears.

. . . I actually, really, 100% quit smoking. I had been "mostly quit" for several years previous, but still smoked the "occasional" cigarette to the tune of 5-10 per month. Since starting training I have smoked 2. They were both gross and not worth it.

. . . I lost some of my social life. When I stopped wanting to go out and eat and drink and started wanting to get up early and train, I stopped seeing as many of my friends. Not because they didn't support me (they did) but more because our worlds just didn't meet up any more.

. . . I gained amazing new friends and deepened relationships with current ones, people with whom I can share this crazy Fitness Insanity and who don't blink twice at my turning down a drink or dessert or turning in at 10pm (or earlier . . . ) so I can get up early to train.

. . . I acquired a hilarious number of bruises from dropping weights on myself, bumping into things and from just generally flailing around like a crazy person. They showed up on my shins, arms, collarbones, shoulders and thighs, but the worst ones were always on my shins. I don't know why it took me so long to get deadlifting socks. I think because I felt like I didn't need/deserve them (as in, I wasn't hardcore enough.) So Chris gave them to me for my birthday.

. . . I lost the 30#. Not quite in time for my birthday, but close enough. In the 6 months between Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011, and my 30th birthday party on Saturday, April 28th, 2012, my body composition changed so dramatically that I was able to wear the kind of dress I had always wanted to, but ONLY if it looked good. And it did.

Also, let's be real, I'm wearing Spanx.

. . . I began to figure out who I was. Which as I understand it, is the point of your 20s now that we all get endless adolescences, so I guess I made it sort of just in time.

("We all" being privileged kids who get to go to college and pursue our dreams/fritter our time away/spend a decade "finding ourselves"/etc/etc.)
("Made it just in time" implies that I actually figured out who I was. It would be fairer to say I am still just beginning to figure it out. But I'm comfortable with that, because I'm 31, and in our 30s we're comfortable, or at least that is how it has been explained to me. Digression.)

(Final caveat: I hope this does not come across as too self-aggrandizing. It's my story told in bits and pieces. I love reading other people's stories and find them inspirational and fun, so I hope this is a little bit of that too.)