Introducing the World's Skinniest Athena

*Disclaimer:  I am not a medical professional, nor am I in a position to give medical advice.  This post is based solely on my experiences.  Please consult with a doctor before embarking on a training or meal plan.

It's been about three months since my My Fitness Foe, Part Four blog post.  When I last checked in, I had lost 11 lbs.  Today, according to My Fitness Pal, I've logged on for 193 days & lost 16 lbs.  Sixteen pounds!!!

In the last week or so, a few people have asked what finally worked, or clicked, for me & I realized there's a gap in my posts.  I have a lot of earlier posts about how nothing is working, I'm not losing any weight, this is so hard, etc.  And then I jump ahead to today where I'm losing weight.

I remember when I was at that place where I just wanted someone to tell me what black magic they were using to lose weight.  Because I was trying everything & nothing was working.  I assumed that once I understood what they were doing, I would do it & immediately transform into an Olsen twin.  When you want something so bad & other people around you seem to get it with minimal effort, you just assume there's some trick that everyone knows but you.

But there is no trick.  Believe me, if there was, I would weight a lot less than 178 lbs.  I'd be so skinny I was invisible & I'd move back to NYC & walk around trying to get photographed wearing old man cardigans & holding Starbucks cups bigger than my body.  Real talk.

What worked for me was seeing Mari-Etta Parrish.  You can read more about my initial appointment with her here.  When I met Mari-Etta, she told me I wasn't ready to lose weight, which infuriated me, until I realized she was right.  I don't know when it happened, but at some point this summer, I decided I wanted this.  And then it started working & I started losing weight.

I think that initially I wanted to lose weight because I thought other people looked at me & thought I needed to.  I wish I knew exactly why or when that changed, but I don't.  Maybe because I was pushing my body so hard & I needed it to work.  Maybe because once I finally started losing weight, I wanted it to continue.  I don't know.

Also, I quit feeling sorry for myself & I quit treating this as a punishment.  I no longer feel like a pathetic, sad, fat girl who can't eat nachos every day.  I don't eat nachos every day because I care about myself, I care about my health, & I care about being able to do a 4-hour athletic event.

This is me at the Oak Barrel Half Marathon in April, at 195 lbs.

And this is me at Tri Fall Creek Falls two weeks ago, at 178 lbs.

For those of you who want to know the day-to-day mechanics of my plan, here they are.  I'm at 1420 calories a day.  And that daily calorie goal is the same every day, regardless of exercise, meaning I don't get 600 extra calories because I ran for an hour.  I track my food on MyFitnessPal.  And I track everything - lattes, office candy, handfuls of tortilla chips, soft drinks, etc.  I also weigh myself every day.  In a typical week (when I'm not in training, which I'm not right now), I work-out about an hour a day 6 days a week.  And I typically go over my daily calorie goal one day a week - either Saturday or Sunday.

What I'm doing is completely do-able.  You don't have to train for an Olympic triathlon to lose this much weight.  Yes, I spent the majority of my summer working out for hours a day, but that's not what did it.  Honestly, I've lost the most weight since I quit training.  I lost 2 lbs the week I was tapering for Fall Creek Falls & I've been losing like that since.  So please don't think that training for a triathlon is "the trick".  It's not.  If anything, my training slowed down my weight loss.  I'm losing weight a lot faster now that I'm only working out once a day.

I still don't know what my end goal is, aside from 'Fabulous By Forty'.  I have one last triathlon tomorrow & then I'm kind of done.  I'll find something else to start training for, but in the meantime, I'm going to try & add in more strength training & get back to yoga once or twice a week.  I honestly have no idea what weight I'd like to be.  A few months ago, this weight seemed absolutely unobtainable, & yet, here I am.  I assume at some point, I'll plateau & have to lower my daily calorie goal, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.  I guess in the meantime, I'll just keep on keeping on & enjoy being the world's skinniest Athena.

To be continued...