My Journey With Weight Loss – Mental & Physical Changes

Since it is Tuesday it means it is a training day for me. This week my 3 training days will be 8 intervals of 2 minutes running and 2 minutes walking (training is always started with 10 minutes of walking followed up by another 40 minutes of walking then stretching). Yes, the length of my intervals changes very slowly because my coach is bound and determined to increase my endurance while protecting me from injury. The way I look at is walking 3.5 minutes then running 0.5 minutes seemed impossible to start where as today I though wow, this isn’t too bad.

I want to talk about some significant changes I have seen along this journey. The first is some very unexpected mental changes. After I started walking I was able to build up enough strength to walk down to our beach, along the promenade and back up the hill. If I did the full walk it was 4.5 miles (about 7km). I admit, I am a fair weather walker meaning I only walk outside during the nice weather. However, I am fortunate enough to live in White Rock, BC which allowed me to walk the beach nearly every day last summer for over 4 months (remember I didn’t start walking until June of 2020). What I noticed pretty quickly into those walks was how light I felt. I don’t mean in the terms of weight but rather in terms of the burden that seemed to leave my shoulders. I spent the hours I walked everyday looking at the beautiful nature (ok, not so fond of the rats you sometimes see at dawn). To keep myself positive I greeted everyone I saw along the walk and I have to say the vast majority responded. Eventually I realized there was a large number of us who walked at about the same time each day so we started to recognize each other. The bottom line is my head got clear. I let go of the useless things that I had let bother me for a long term. I focused on how I was feeling and appreciated the beautiful city I live in. There is nothing better to clear your mind and lift your spirits than doing a big inhale of air spiked with salt water from the ocean. I swear it changes how you look and feel everything.

The physical changes are more obvious but at times were subtle to see. That first year that I lost 37lbs I swore most of the weight simply came from my face. I knew I had lost a few sizes because of how my clothes fit but it was nowhere near as noticeable. But then as more weight came off there were some other things I started to notice. It was kind of like, hey, are those hip bones? Wait, I haven’t seen those collar bones in nearly 3 decades. Holy crap, are those really my arm muscles that are showing? I admit, I have become a bit obsessed with the fitness of my body in particular those collar bones. It was the reappearance of those collar bones that made decide to keep going along this path. I think much of my body is now more toned that it has ever been. My legs are like tree trunks, I can see ab muscles and I joke about the ‘guns’ in my arms.

I think in order to fully feel the success of weight loss you need to have both the mental and physical change. I know I needed to find a way to not be guilty about spending some time on myself. Once I did that and started getting serious about all this I realized that it wasn’t only by body that had been so unhealthy for so long, it was also my mind. Now, I appreciate the changes in both and my overall goal is to keep healthy mentally and physically long into the future.