181.8 pounds to 172.6 pounds.
9.2 pounds down in 32 days.
Yes, I am proud of myself.
Very proud, actually.
Probably not for the reason you think, though.
When I look at these numbers, the biggest victory for me isn’t really the 9.2 pounds.
It’s that I started showing up for myself again.
And the funny thing is, I don’t think motivation deserves very much of the credit.
I Had to Decide What I Wanted the Next Half of My Life to Look Like
There wasn’t one dramatic rock-bottom moment.
Nobody said something to me.
I didn’t see one photograph and suddenly decide everything had to change.
It was more like several things coming together at once.
Another birthday was approaching.
I was dealing with this hip injury and being in pain.
I felt heavier than I wanted to feel. Stiffer. My clothes weren’t fitting the way I wanted them to. I wasn’t moving the way I wanted to move.
The Future I Don’t Want
And I started thinking about what I absolutely do not want my future to become.
I don’t want to become someone who spends the next ten years talking about who she used to be.
“I used to be a bodybuilder. I was a dancer. I used to be really athletic and in incredible shape.”
I don’t need to recreate the exact body I had when I was younger.
That’s not even what I’m chasing.
What I do want is to remain strong, athletic, mobile and physically capable enough to live my life well.
I don’t want chronic pain and physical limitation to quietly become my new normal simply because I’m getting older.
And there is a deeper health component to this for me too.
My father died of heart disease. My mother has had her own health challenges as she has gotten older.
I recently had genetic testing that did not identify the particular inherited cardiovascular-risk variants they were looking for, and that was reassuring. But reassurance is not permission for me to stop taking care of myself. Family history is still relevant when we’re thinking about cardiovascular risk. (cdc.gov)
At some point I realized:
Roxie, you get to make some decisions about what the next half of your life is going to look like.
Not control everything.
Not guarantee that you’ll never become injured or sick.
But steward what has actually been placed in your hands.
So…
Let’s go.
I Didn’t Feel Like Myself Anymore
Around July 14, I just felt tired.
Heavy.
Stiff.
In pain.
Clothes weren’t fitting.
And I’ve used the phrase before that I didn’t “feel like myself.”
A Different Definition of “Me”
Interestingly, I’ve even been unpacking that statement with my therapist.
What does feeling like myself actually mean?
Because if I’m only “myself” when I’m lean, muscular and performing at some extremely high athletic level, that’s probably something worth examining.
The woman I am today is still me. So is the injured version, the heavier version, the former professional bodybuilder, and the woman figuring out what strength looks like in this particular season.
I don’t want to turn this journey into some frantic attempt to resurrect a former version of myself.
What I did know was that the way I had been living wasn’t making me feel good.
And I knew I had stopped consistently doing some of the things that had served me well for years.
Getting started was hard.
There was hesitation.
There was that little period where you know exactly what you need to do and somehow you’re still standing there looking at it.
Eventually I stopped trying to feel ready.
I decided to put one foot in front of the other.
That’s where something interesting happened.
The thing that began carrying me wasn’t motivation.
It was virtue.
Temperance: Putting My Appetites Back in Their Proper Place
One of the first things I knew I needed to confront was wine.
Now listen.
I love a good glass of wine.
I love the ritual of it at night. Pour something nice, sit down, relax, let the day come to an end.
And I wasn’t necessarily sitting there pouring some gigantic goblet every evening.
Mine was more deceptive than that.
A little pour.
Then another little pour.
Another little sip later.
And all of those civilized little pours apparently formed a committee. 😂
Before you know it, you’ve consumed a lot more than you intended.
When a Small Ritual Starts Taking Up Too Much Space
I had also been reading more about alcohol and women’s health, particularly the relationship between alcohol consumption and cancer risk. Current evidence does show health risks even at relatively low levels of alcohol intake, and breast-cancer risk in women is one of the concerns. (niaaa.nih.gov)
That mattered to me.
But this became about more than calories or cancer statistics.
It became a question of temperance.
Temperance does not mean that everything pleasurable is bad.
It means our appetites have to occupy their proper place.
I had to ask myself:
Am I choosing this because I genuinely want it, or has this quietly become something I expect every evening in order to relax?
So I stopped drinking.
Completely, for the most part.
There were a couple of social occasions right at the beginning. A friend brought wine to dinner. Another weekend, friends and I already had plans for jazz in the park and I had a couple small wine-spritzer-type drinks.
And after that?
Nothing.
What has surprised me most is that I don’t miss it.
I’m not sitting around fighting some nightly battle with myself.
The cravings haven’t been there, and I really haven’t even been thinking about it.
There’s something deeply satisfying about discovering that something you thought was part of your routine doesn’t actually have to own space in your life.
Prudence: I Didn’t Need the Most Extreme Solution
Then came food.
And this is where I had to watch another tendency in myself.
Because when you’re frustrated and you want change now, the extreme option becomes very seductive.
I originally started thinking about doing these big, aggressive fasts.
No food.
White knuckle it.
Get this weight OFF.
And then prudence had to enter the conversation.
Because what was I actually trying to accomplish?
I’m injured, and I’m not training at the volume or intensity I would be training at if my hip were completely healthy.
Still, I’m active. I’m walking, doing cardio, working on rehabilitation, and focusing on mobility and movement.
I also have decades of muscle that I very much intend to keep.
So starving myself into the ground because I’m angry about gaining weight would make absolutely no sense.
What My Fast Actually Looks Like
Instead, I went back to something extremely simple.
What I jokingly call my de facto Catholic fast.
In traditional Catholic fasting practice, the basic pattern is one normal meal with two smaller meals that together don’t equal another full meal.
Most days that’s roughly how I’ve been eating.
Sometimes I have two small meals and dinner.
Other days I have one small meal and one regular meal.
I’ve also added abstinence from meat.
This isn’t something I’m presenting as “Roxie’s new weight-loss diet.”
Please don’t turn it into that.
That’s not the point.
For me, the fasting has also been prayerful. It is a way of placing some boundaries around eating without turning food into an enemy.
And because I’m still an athlete and a coach who understands what muscle requires, I’m thinking about protein and adequate nutrition within that structure.
My staples lately have been things like eggs, tofu, chickpeas and beans.
Breakfast might be two eggs with a small bowl of Raisin Bran and whole milk.
Coffee remains.
Let’s not get ridiculous. 😂
I have, however, largely stopped doing the Starbucks thing and started making my coffee at home.
Lunch, if I have one, might be something simple with tofu, rice and vegetables.
And dinner lately?
I have gone fully down the tofu rabbit hole.
Apparently I Have Become a Tofu Woman
I recently discovered that if you freeze tofu and then thaw it before cooking, it gets this fantastic, meatier texture.
Where has this information been all my life?
I’ve been air frying it, sautéing it, doing Asian-inspired dishes.
But my current obsession is an Indian-inspired curry tofu.
I lightly coat and fry the tofu with a little cornstarch, then go in with curry powder, garam masala, cumin and spices.
Some coconut milk.
Shredded coconut.
Chickpeas.
Broccoli.
Rice.
And because apparently I enjoy violence, habanero peppers.
🔥😂
I make enough to give myself several meals, and it is legitimately delicious.
That’s what eating has looked like.
Not glamorous.
Not twelve supplements and seven Tupperware containers lined up like I’m six weeks out from a bodybuilding show.
Food.
Boundaries.
Enough nutrition.
A calorie deficit.
And consistency.
Fortitude Looks Different When You’re Injured
The other part of this story has been my hip.
And this may actually be the hardest adjustment for me psychologically.
I know how to train hard.
That has never been foreign territory.
I know how to push.
I’ve trained professionally for decades, danced, competed and built a professional bodybuilding physique.
But sometimes fortitude doesn’t look like pushing harder.
Sometimes fortitude looks like having enough discipline not to do what your ego wants to do.
Rehab Counts as the Work
Right now I’m working on mobility, flexibility, dynamic movement, functional training and rehabilitation.
I’m walking and doing cardio where appropriate, while staying as active as I reasonably can.
Some days the hip feels better than others.
I’m still dealing with symptoms, including some numbness and tingling down the leg, so this isn’t something I’m pretending has magically resolved itself. I’m continuing to pay attention to it and treat rehabilitation as part of the work.
And yes, that’s frustrating.
But my body doesn’t owe me the exact training capacity I had at another point in my life.
My responsibility is to work intelligently with the body I have today.
That’s prudence again.
Continuing to do that when it’s boring, slow and inconvenient?
That’s fortitude.
Perseverance lives inside of that.
Then the Scale Started Moving
On July 14, I weighed 181.8 pounds.
On August 15, I weighed 172.6 pounds.
That’s 9.2 pounds in 32 days.
My smart scale also shows changes in its estimated body-fat percentage and other body-composition measurements, but I don’t treat every one of those numbers as gospel. Bioelectrical-impedance estimates can shift with hydration and testing conditions. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
What matters most to me right now is the direction of the overall trend.
I’m lighter.
I feel better.
I feel less heavy in my body.
And probably more important than any number on that screen, I feel like I’m keeping a promise to myself again.
That has done something for my confidence.
Not because 172.6 is some magical weight.
It isn’t.
I’m not finished.
But I’m moving.
And movement changes the way you experience yourself.
I’m Not Chasing an Old Body
This is probably one of the biggest differences between how I’m approaching this now and how I might have approached it at another point in my life.
I don’t have some enormous final number written on the wall.
I’m not saying:
“I have to get back to exactly X pounds because that’s what I weighed when…”
When what?
Was that when I was competing, dancing, or living with a completely different hormonal picture, training volume and set of circumstances?
Why would that number automatically be the correct number for this body now?
Ten-Pound Chapters
Instead, I’m working in 10-pound chapters.
First goal: finish the first 10 pounds.
I’m at 9.2.
We’re basically standing on the doorstep.
Then I’ll go after the next 10.
When I get there, I’ll look at myself and ask:
How do I feel here?
How do my clothes fit, how does my body move, and what do my training and health look like?
Do I want to continue, maintain, or build?
I’m giving myself permission to answer those questions when I actually arrive there.
Because I don’t want to spend this chapter chasing the phantom of a body that belonged to a completely different chapter of my life.
I want to establish a new reality.
And yes, I absolutely want to fit into my clothes again.
I have some fantastic thrift-store jeans waiting for me that I bought thinking, Surely these will fit.
Reader, they did not. 😂
But we’re getting close.
Those babies are coming out this fall.
What I’m Aiming for Before My Birthday
My birthday is August 30.
I’d love to be another few pounds down by then.
I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.
Walking.
Cardio.
Rehab.
My fasting structure.
Staying away from the wine.
Keeping my meals simple and consistent.
But I’m also not turning August 30 into some pass-fail deadline.
The CDC generally describes gradual weight loss of around 1 to 2 pounds per week as a sustainable pace for many people. (cdc.gov)
Bodies don’t sign contracts with calendars.
If I hit the number, wonderful.
If I don’t, I keep going.
Because that is really what these last 32 days have been teaching me.
Motivation Wasn’t the Thing
I talk a lot about motivation in my work.
And one thing I have become increasingly convinced of is that we give motivation far too much responsibility.
I was not wildly motivated when I started this.
There was no movie montage.
No transformation-music soundtrack.
No sunrise jog while somebody yelled affirmations from a cliff.
I was tired, injured and frustrated.
And I started anyway.
Then something happened.
Once I began behaving consistently, I started wanting to continue.
The action came first.
The feeling followed.
Virtue Carried What Motivation Couldn’t
Temperance helped me put my appetites back into their proper place.
Prudence helped me stop looking for the most extreme solution and choose the appropriate one.
Fortitude helped me continue when the work wasn’t exciting.
And perseverance has meant simply doing that over and over again.
For me, as a woman of faith, even that strength isn’t something I look at as entirely self-generated.
I pray, depend upon God, and ask for the grace to order my life well.
Because underneath the desire to lose weight and fit into a great pair of jeans, there is something bigger happening here.
This Is Stewardship
Yes, I want to look good.
I’m not going to pretend I suddenly became too spiritually evolved to care about that.
Please.
I like a good outfit. 😂
I want to feel confident in my body, fit into my old clothes, and look athletic.
Those are perfectly real motivations for me.
But they cannot be the end of the story.
I want to be healthy enough to be present for the people I love, with the physical capacity, strength and mobility to enter the next decades of my life knowing that I did what was reasonably within my power to care for this body.
I don’t want to worship it, punish it, or desperately attempt to preserve youth forever.
Steward it.
And that’s why I’m celebrating these 9.2 pounds.
Not because smaller automatically means better.
Not because my worth changed somewhere between 181.8 and 172.6.
But because those numbers represent 32 days of keeping promises.
Thirty-two days of practicing.
Thirty-two days of learning that I don’t have to feel motivated before I act.
And now?
I’m going for the next chapter.
First, let’s finish this first 10.
Then another 10.
After that, I’ll stand there, look around, and decide where we go next.
One chapter at a time, one decision at a time, one foot in front of the other.
That’s enough.
If You’re Trying to Get Back on Track Too
Maybe you already know what to eat. You may have trained before, lost the weight before, or simply reached the point where information isn’t actually your problem.
Sometimes what we need is a structure that fits the life and body we have now, rather than another extreme plan built for some imaginary perfect week.
That’s a large part of how I approach coaching these days.
We look at training, nutrition, recovery, health, lifestyle and the season you’re actually living in, then build from there.
If that sounds like the kind of support you’ve been looking for, you’re welcome to schedule a complimentary Clarity Call and we can talk about what getting back on track could realistically look like for you.
