Journeys Can Happen in Reality Too

 Two, maybe three, weeks ago, I decided things desperately needed to change. 15 pounds crept on while quitting smoking, bringing me way too close to my heaviest weight. Believe me, I’ve started to feel it— moods, mobility and motivation have all tanked over the past few months especially.

In a sort of desperation, I ended up ordering three more dolls— a 1/4 Soom Soa in lavender skin, a 1/3 Iplehouse EID Bichun and a 1/3 Soom Topaz. I’ve also slowly been chipping away at doll accessory projects, but for the most part, I’ve been practicing grounding, which is where I clean and organize and just walk around and touch things, enjoying what I have and looking for peace in it.

Anyways, the desperation to change started at seeing 222.6 lbs on the scale. Ouch. 200 was toeing obesity and this is cannon-balling right into the deep end. I am happy to say I weighed in at 215.8 this morning so it’s been slowly and safely going in the right direction.

I decided to use a popular lifestyle app called Noom to help this time. It uses a psychological approach to help you identify and correct destructive habits without restricting you or letting you batter yourself with negative thoughts and words. Nothing is bad or off-limits, just something to be more cautious with and moderate. Instead of saying you can’t have something, it encourages you to include it once or twice a week or find healthy alternatives where you can indulge in bigger portions.

I paid for the diet and exercise add-ons, though I’ll be honest, I’m not interested in the diet just yet. Food prep can be daunting and I may ease into that later. For now, I’ve been focusing on healthy water additives, low consumption of tea and coffee, protein bars, small breakfasts and lunches so I can have a more indulgent dinner. With exercise, I either turn to the custom plan they gave, just go on long walks to increase my step count, or do some vigorous house work. I’ve also been easing into a program that increases strength and mobility through stretching. While the eventual goal is more vigorous exercise and a daily 10,000 step count, Noom warns that trying to be aggressive with a habit results in big setbacks and crashes, which is okay; you can recover from those and set more realistic goals to grow into.

When you’ve got a couple hundred bucks riding on it, it’s a bit more motivating too.

In any case, I wanted to offer some advice to those who hit a plateau, something that always seems to work with me. Low calorie diets can be SO discouraging. I get hungry or get these monster cravings that beg for bad bingeing, which could possibly lead to guilt. What a lot of programs don’t emphasize, that does work for some of us is... cheat days. Now, I know personally that 2300 calories is maintenance calories for me. If I need a day to gobble up 2300 calories, I consider it a guilt-free indulgence. Why? Because sometimes, after days of low-calorie discipline, that scale goes absolutely nowhere. Sometimes I even gain a pound or two. Rather than get aggravated, I go ahead and eat more. Now, if you only believe in what plans tell you (the whole calories in, calories out deal), then you think it’s sabotage and you’ll just gain more. Wrong. After my last big calorie day, I lost two pounds on the weigh-in the next day. So what happened? It’s likely I went TOO low calorie and kicked my body into starvation mode. My body started to hoard calories and slow down my metabolism. I might have been burning more than I was eating, but I was also kick-starting processes like gas build-up, bloating and even inflammation. Now, I still stuck to *mostly* healthy foods (I say this because pizza was also involved) but there is a good chance I was way lower in protein and carbs than I needed to be to feed my metabolism as well.

And this always works for me. 1-3 days after a bigger calorie day, there will be a rather sizeable weight drop. Every week or two, I incorporate at least one maintenance calorie day where I drop the low calorie discipline. It almost always nudges a plateau back into weight loss mode. I say almost always because it’s not always immediate, but I can definitely correlate the big losses to at least 3 days after those days where I relax my diet.

It’s also true that low-calorie is very temporary. Once I get to around 165 lbs., I may shift to 1700 calories. 1200 can get me about 2 lbs a week of weight loss, but by then I’ll be more active and can still lose that much through diet and exercise combined. Right now, I’m relying primarily on diet while I slowly increase my ability to exercise more. When I reach my goal weight (150) I may decide to maintain at more than 2000 or keep aiming to lose a few more. I don’t want to go lower than 135 but that’s pushing it. 150 is super healthy for me and 135 is very strict to maintain. I may just wish to maintain a healthy weight and enjoy concentrating more on my creative projects.

Ultimately, that’s why I want to go on this journey. I want the energy and motivation to create again. I want to churn out books and art and crafts and doll projects. I miss that and I could kick myself for letting my health slip again. At 167 pounds I was on top of the world, but it was too easy to let the weight creep back on over 2-3 years. Ideally, getting to 150 then being aggressive if it creeps up to 155 is where I want to be. But goals change and I’ll play it all by ear.

Annnnd yes, I want a blog called the Unconventional Author to be more literally about my journey as a writer, squeezing in my other hobbies too. While technically any practice of writing qualifies, it’s not the ideal. I want the energy and drive to indulge in the actual practice of writing and publishing books again. I already have my work cut out for me, digging through my notes and drafts for the half-done UnHeard book, when I go back to that.

And it will happen. The pandemic has thrown me off but I’m hoping I started something three weeks ago that will get me back on track. But that means staying in the present and proceeding accordingly. Right now, accountability is what I need to focus on to reach those later goals.

I’ll get there. The move has brought on a lot of environmental changes to work to adapt to as well. This is why I can’t push change too fast. There are more factors than just what is going on inside the body and mind. The big picture and the details both have parts to play. Rather than demanding they all receive attention, I must carefully prioritize and focus when possible.

Annnd hell, I’ve got ADHD so focus is a five-fucking-letter word. 

Big Changes Have to Be Selfish

 And as I’ve said before, there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’ve been scarcer about my digital trail these days but I’m enacting some much needed life changes and I’ve always been the self-motivating type. I didn’t want either encouragement or discouragement and I didn’t want to resort to the old habits of telling too many people what my plans were only to break them. I needed pure personal accountability, not an unwilling audience to beg platitudes from.

I quit smoking back in mid-January. Not cold turkey, but weaning with nicotine gum, which at least let my lungs heal from smoke damage and get rid of the cough. Really, the less you think about it, the less you talk about it, the easier it is to not get hit by cravings or start to psychologically miss it. I needed at least a solid month of it behind me to finally admit I was serious about quitting. Either way, there was still some irritability and risk of giving up so the less I talked about it, the better.

I also realized the effort made me gain an unsafe amount of weight again and I reverted to a weight loss diet and more exercise. Winter was rough and my muscles were tough to move. On top of that, seasonal depression smacked me hard this year. I didn’t want to share that because there’s nothing anyone can do and it’s another thing I know is best to let run its course. I’ve had to adjust to feeling hungry and peeing a LOT as my body is made to adjust to increased hydration and lower calories. But it’s a temporary setback; once I’ve lost the right amount of weight, a maintenance diet is a lot more forgiving. As long as I walk at least 10,000 steps a day and eat for maintenance, I don’t have to worry about gaining it back. I would actually like to do a more rigorous exercise program eventually; I have gorgeous lean muscle sculpt if I put in the extra effort. I might be genetically fucked in some ways, but I’m pretty gifted with muscle mass.

I’ve also put myself on a creative hiatus. I was forcing it too much and I started to resent all of it. I’ve done a little crocheting here and there, even poked at my doll projects a bit, but writing, drawing and editing are all on temporary hiatus and I’m not pushing them right now. I’m using a great deal of energy since I quit smoking and started dieting and exercising. Once I can build up stamina, I’ll likely get slammed with a reserve of creative energy so there’s no point in forcing a constipated trickle right now. In time, I know being physically healthy reaps mental and creative rewards. Giving myself ample time to really crave my creative return. 

I let myself go into neglect and crawling back out inevitably means I’ve had to say no more or even neglect just explaining my absence. I’ve had some friends go silent or even hostile about me moving away. I can’t coddle their feelings and, anyways, we’re adults; they can get the fuck over it or let a petty grudge keep them bitter. I can’t maintain the energy to help them work out their own feelings when I’m struggling with my own. I didn’t ask them to run it by me every time they fell in love or got married or had kids and they went silent on me. I’ve always understood that growth and change require a shift in priorities. Perhaps my problem is that, having not done those things myself, they’ve gotten too used to me always being available to them. 

But really, I’m 45 minutes away. Get the fuck over it, get in a car, come visit. We’ll grab lunch at my favorite café here and I won’t even ask why you ghosted me. You had feelings to work out, but if you’re ready to grow up, no hard feelings. I’ve never been conventional or socially correct, so while I’m sorry you feel like I left you out or left you behind, I’m never sorry that I did what I needed to do to adjust. Your girl survived well into her 30s with undiagnosed ADHD and I’m not going to apologize for practicing self-care now. How I made you feel, it’s valid too, but I can’t beg you to get over it. You will or you won’t. I’ll think about you more than you know, but I’m not going to waste time mourning the loss either. 

I hate to say it, but it’s always the females. My male friends still message or even visit. But I get deep in my feelings too, so I’ll give it time. Honestly, I kept the whole moving thing quiet because it really didn’t seem like it was even going to happen until, bam, it did. Then I had to focus on packing and time got away. I don’t text often as is; didn’t even touch my phone for months through the moving process.

And I survived a week without WiFi.

Either way, the fact that I’m opening up more about the last few months is proof I’m lining up in a better place. There’s still a lot of progress to be made. I’ve only lost a few pounds of the 15 I gained trying to quit smoking. I have more than 50 to lose after that. Don’t bother asking how it’s going; I’ll blabber when I’m ready. 😂 In a few months time, you might see proof of a creative explosion. Just gotta be a bit selfish and single-minded a while longer.

Social media kind of conditioned us into thinking we need to maintain an audience. I’m a little bit old school there; I don’t want an audience until I’ve got a damn good show going. Working on it!😜