Walk with me: Pushing forward

Feel free to listen to this off-the-cuff rant & reflection of my recent progress. These monologues are recorded primarily for my own benefit. Very light edits are done to remove some pauses and repetitions, but the audio itself is very raw.

Recent Progress

Despite recent challenges, things are going quite well. I’m sore and quite tired a lol of the time, but I’m definitely reaching ahead. I’ve successfully completed three weeks back to my fall schedule of being active 5 days a week. It’s certainly very demanding, but looking at my weight loss spreadsheet I can see the difference. I have a daily loss averaged over the last month and it’s gone from 0.5/lbs/day to 0.7 since the start of February.

I’m very close to being below 450. This is incredibly exciting to me. Not only does this mean I’m down over 120lbs, but I spent a long time around 400lbs during my adult life. Getting consistently below that will be a concrete sign that I’m making serious permanent progress. Just the other day, I realized I can finally fit in the bus stop seating. As I’m writing this, I’m wearing a 4xl t-shirt I was gifted from the gym I signed up at. I can put it on without stretching it! Meaning I’m down from 6xl.

Am I losing the weight too fast?

In the recording I spend some time explaining why I feel the need to push as ambitiously as I can. In short much of it has to do with having the privilege of being able to focus on this as my top priority. The other major factor is just the fact that I’m sick of being this large and helpless. The progress I’ve made so far have really just given me a taste for a more capable life that I am desperate to start living. While I may be pushing hard, I know I’m quite far from any serious hard limits. I’m seeing that what I’m able to do is still far less what what I’m likely able to safely do. So I continue to gradually and methodically test my limits while trying to do the best I can to take care of the basics.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

I think the biggest paradox of weight loss is the advice “Don’t sweat the small stuff, then it’s all small stuff”. It’s genuinely important to not obsess over minute day-to-day stressors, but to begin making changes one does have to focus on basic living choices. So while starting out, it seems like you’re doing nothing but ‘sweating the small stuff’. Eventually, you can build good habits that begin to build the foundation for a better lifestyle. At that point, then you need to tune out “the small stuff” and stay focused on consistency without being completely derailed by stressing out about some small failure or setback.