The First 100 Pounds (91 - 100)

All these posts later, and I still haven't had a chance to go to med school. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Talk to a professional before you decide a poet is a good healthy lifestyle role model of any sort.

Also, thanks to all of you who have commented, sent emails, posted, or otherwise been supportive of these posts (and of me in general). Oh, and there might be a little swearing. Nowhere near enough, if you ask me.

If you'd like to start at the beginning of the list, you can do so here. But here's 91 – 100:

91. I LEARNED TO HONOR MY "GOOD" TIMES OF DAY.

I am terrible between 3 and 5 PM. I just am. If I'm going to fall asleep during the day, that's when it's going to happen. So I don't try to run during those times (I can cross-train if I need to, but those are seldom my happiest workouts). If I'm going to get my best workout, I need to do it in the morning or start sometime between 5 and 6 PM. That's just the way my particular circadian rhythms seem to work—I could try to fight them if I wanted to, but the workouts are much smoother if I honor my good times of day.

92. I LEARNED MY OWN RHYTHMS.

I've talked about rhythms a bit in terms of things like understanding the weird, non-linear progression of weight loss, but it applies to other aspects of the process as well. There are a few days every month where I am simply ravenous, all the time. Sometimes, I can finish an entire meal, be fully hydrated, and still be painfully hungry. It's not, of course, actual hunger—maybe I'm in a muscle-building phase, or losing fat, or maybe it's just that something happens that crosses my hunger/satiety responses, but during these periods, something is going on with my body that I don't totally understand, and while it's uncomfortable, I've learned to go with it. I eat well, I make sure I have plenty to drink, and I have reasonable snacks when I just can't stand it anymore. I recognize the symptoms and know to ride it out. Giving myself the time to understand my own body rhythms—or at least recognize them—helps a lot.

93. I BECAME GRATEFUL TO MY BODY, "FLAWED" AS IT WAS.

And is. This was another tough one. It's hard to look at myself in the mirror and see the good. We're trained to see our faults—just one glance at my Facebook feed gives me ads for reducing belly fat, removing hair, buying some sort of garment or makeup or pill that will somehow make my hideousness more socially acceptable. I read articles that claim to be reviews of running clothes but actually talk about whether a specific pair of pants might make my ass look too big and not about how the garment actually performs. Again, it's too easy to focus on what I'm not instead of what I am.

There's a full-length mirror in our bathroom. For whatever reason, I started looking into it right before I got into my post-workout shower. It was not easy at first. I saw the wrinkles and the bulges and the sags. But I began working on establishing gratitude to my body, for getting through another run, for getting through another day, for getting stronger, for staying uninjured. It's ridiculous and touchy-feely-self-helpy, and it is very, very effective.

94. I BEGAN TO UNDERSTAND THAT I COULD HAVE ANYTHING I WANTED.

Because I can. I just can't have everything I want. Because no one can. The key is in figuring out what I want. If I want to run well, I can't have eggs benedict for breakfast that day. That doesn’t mean I can never have it again—it just means it doesn't fit into my plans for the day. If I want eggs benedict for breakfast, I can't have a good run later. Again, that doesn't mean I'll never run well again—it means I won't run well that day. Both options are available to me, just not at the same time. On any given day, one will win out over the other. I know, for example, that I can do a perfectly acceptable walking workout if I've had eggs benedict several hours before—so maybe I just switch a run day and walk day that week. Or maybe I've been eating out a lot because we've had a bunch of events in the past couple of weeks. In that case, I'll go with a lighter breakfast and a run. It's all available, and I can do anything I want—just not everything I want.

95. I ALLOWED MYSELF TO REDEFINE MYSELF AS AN ATHLETE.

This might be the toughest of all. I was not athletic in school. The only teams where I was picked first were ones for which my size (I got tall FAST, hitting my full height of almost 5'8" when I was about 11) was an asset: red rover, tug of war. (Note to all phys. ed. teachers: you know who the non-athletic kids are. Why the fuck don't you make them team captains once in a while so that the same 3 or 4 kids don't always end up being picked last? You asshats.)

Um…where was I? Oh, yeah. Athlete. It's a weird word for me—certainly one I've never had applied to me by anyone else. And a lot of my personality had been bound up in not being very good at sports. I don't have terribly good eye/hand coordination. I'm not great under that kind of pressure (although I'm fine under other kinds). I was never taught how to build myself up to the point that learning how to push myself athletically might be fun—I was just pushed to go faster, farther, more, whatever, always with the implication that whatever I was doing simply wasn't good enough. That pushing almost never included any versions of the words, "You can do it," and never seemed to take into consideration where I was physically.

But I can run twelve miles. More, actually, since it's not like I drop to the ground when those twelve are finished. I can hike hills like nobody's business. I can do push-ups and crunches and lift heavy things. I have the resting heart rate of an athlete. What else do I need to call myself an athlete? It's not a label that I wear comfortably yet, but it's one that I wear when I can.

96. I BECAME SUPPORTIVE OF OTHER RUNNERS.

Runners might be the most supportive people I've ever met. We're competitive, but largely with ourselves. The vast majority of people who enter races don't do so because they think they'll win—they're looking for a personal record, maybe, or they're doing it as part of their training for another race, or entering racing gives them a reason to keep up with their workouts. The running community is ah-may-zing, and I'm happy to be a part of it, so when a running friend of mine is injured, I ask how she's doing. If another posts to FB that he had a good run, I try to "like" it. Seriously, it doesn't take a lot, but being supportive helps keep me positive, and where's the downside to that?

97. I WRITE ABOUT IT.

Writing is how I process—how I come to understand myself and the events happening around me. Everything I've learned about myself during the past year and a quarter or so, I've learned through writing about it. You might process things differently, but for me, it's not "real" until I can write about it. Learning-through-writing applies to mourning, love, hatred, fear—the whole gamut of human emotion—but it also applies to this…what? transformation?...I've been making. What little understanding I have has come through writing.

98. I SAY HELLO TO PEOPLE I PASS ON MY RUNS.

Just to prove that I can, because the fact that I can speak sometimes surprises the hell out of people, and that's fun. Also, it's neighborly. The saying hi part, not the surprising the hell out of people part. I once realized as I was approaching a runner that we were wearing the exact same outfit. She gave me a little raised-fist-power-to-the-people salute (it was in the days right after the Boston Marathon bombings). I said, "Nice outfit." Then we were both gone in our opposite directions. It made me happier than it had any right to. There's a kid who likes to hang out in his yard and kick a ball around. We say hi every time I pass him (he started it—I don't accost children, even when they're behind fences). I have no idea who he is, but why not, right? And if someone doesn't return my greeting (this is, after all, Massachusetts), what have I lost?

99. I TRY TO LET GO OF WHAT I CAN'T CONTROL.

Like whether someone says hi to me. Or when, exactly, I drop another five pounds. Or whether a given person respects what I'm doing. Or whether a particular skirt fits yet or or or or or. I try my best to let all that go. It goes against the entire nature of my being, but I'm much more content when I can manage it.

100. I FORGET WHAT I LOOK LIKE.

In multiple ways. I force myself to forget what I look like when I run, because I'm sure it's not pretty. I also—despite looking into the mirror to try on clothes or give myself pep talks or practice a little gratitude—quite literally forget what I look like sometimes. A friend of mine took a picture of me a week or so ago, and when she showed it to me, I said, "Holy shit, am I really that skinny?" I'm not skinny (I'm on the cusp of overweight and obese), but I couldn't recognize my own body in that picture for a bit. I don't think of myself as being that size. When I was at my heaviest, it was pictures that showed me how large I was—I had trouble recognizing myself in those, as well. When I started losing weight, it was pictures that showed me where I was. The day-to-day visuals, for whatever reason, mean very little to me, but once in a while, I see a picture and it reminds me of what I look like now. It's a little weird, but I'm figuring it out. I'm figuring it all out.

The First 100 Pounds (81 - 90)

Potential conversation for you to have with yourself:

YOU: Hey! This is some sort of medical advice right here in this blog post!

YOU II: No, it's really not. This is written by a poet with no medical background whatsoever.

YOU: Okay. Perhaps I should talk to some sort of medical professional or something.

YOU II: Good idea, Smartypants.

If you want to start from the beginning, you can do so here. Here are 81 – 90:

81. I GET RID OF CLOTHES WHEN THEY'RE TOO BIG FOR ME

This was huge. I don't have fat pants and thin pants. When I shrink out of my clothes, I donate them to Goodwill or give them to friends who wear that size. I don't need a safety net, and when my clothes are too big I look like I weigh more than I do. So off they go to Goodwill, as quickly as I can ship them out. This all means that I'll never have a picture of myself standing in a single leg of one of my old pairs of jeans, and that's fine by me.

82. I SHOP AT GOODWILL. OFTEN.

Speaking of Goodwill, I am cheap. I hate the idea of spending real money on clothes that might, if I buy them a little small, fit me for a season. I also have problems with the politics of a lot of clothing retailers—I don't want to support businesses that outsource their labor to countries where factories are unregulated and dangerous. I don't want to support businesses that treat women like prostitutes or porn stars or objects. I know I can't avoid this completely (isn't that sad?), but if I get my clothes from Goodwill, I'm at least not supporting those brands, even if I end up wearing them. Buying used also fits in with my environmental efforts—no packaging, little-to-no transportation costs and fuel use, putting to use something that might otherwise end up in a landfill somewhere. Plus, it's possible to score really good, well-made, classic pieces at Goodwill. I've got clothes from L.L. Bean, Ralph Lauren, Ann Taylor, Eddie Bauer, and probably some places I can't think of right now. The most anything has ever cost me is $4.99, and some items cost $2.50, sometimes with the tags still on them. Sure, there's plenty of worn-out stuff at Goodwill, but if it's worn out, I don't buy it. Problem solved. Yes, someone I don't know has worn it before, but that's why we have washing machines (if the idea of this grosses you out, you probably don't want to know how many people touch your "new" clothes during the process of making them). Building a wardrobe this way takes patience, and it can be sad to try on a cool piece only to find that it doesn't fit, but it works for me.

83. I SPEND MONEY FOR NEW CLOTHES WHEN I NEED TO

That said, I prefer to have some basics. I like to own one pair of black pants, a black t-shirt and a white blouse—the rest of my wardrobe can rotate in and out of color palettes, but those three items go with almost anything else I might buy. I think about them as my essential teaching wardrobe, but the fact of the matter is that I want the same things in the summer: give me a pair of black capris and a white short-sleeved blouse and I am good to go. These things can be hard to find used in good condition. Think about it: you might stop wearing a certain shade of blue, or maybe your mom bought you a green shirt that makes you look like you died a week ago, but if you have a great black t-shirt, you wear that sucker into the ground. I also don't rely on Goodwill for special occasions. There are some events—like weddings and funerals—where I'm willing to shell out for the right dress, even if it means spending more money on one dress than I've spent on the rest of my wardrobe all year. This doesn't mean I don’t check Goodwill first—I do. I'm just prepared to spend money when I really need to.

84. I BUY TOOTSIE POPS

I have a problem with sugar. I get very involved with blood sugar swings, for one thing—I eat candy, my blood sugar spikes, it dips, I crave candy, I eat it, my blood sugar spikes…you get the picture. I've read a zillion studies and articles about studies, and I could give you a bunch of different potential reasons why I have trouble turning off the sugar once it's on, but I know about myself that I can't have sweets in the house. Not baked goods, not candy, not ice cream. I'm not going to say that I'm incapable of regulating my intake, but I'm damn close. I do know, however, that it is physically impossible for me to eat more than two Tootsie Pops in a single day—it would tear up my mouth Cap'n Crunch-style. So I always have Tootsie Pops in the house. If I'm craving something sweet, there it is, in a little single-serve, 60-calorie package. And—and I think this is the key to the whole thing—it takes me a long time to eat a Tootsie Pop. Think about, say, how many M&Ms you could eat during the time it takes to get through a Tootsie Pop—certainly enough to get into those blood sugar swings I was talking about. One lollipop takes care of my craving and takes long enough to eat that it doesn't kick off a cycle. They might be made of magic.

85. I GOT RID OF ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS ENTIRELY

I tell people about this a lot. I'm convinced (and there are studies that back this up, although there are others who disagree) that artificial sweeteners cause more sugar cravings than they fix. I know I was never able to get a handle on my sugar intake until I gave up artificial sweeteners. I traded "lite" yogurts for organic yogurts made with actual sugar, and then, eventually, for plain yogurt sweetened with my own fruit; I turned in my Diet Coke Fan Club membership; I made the decision that if I was going to have sweets, they were going to be actually sweet—usually made in my own kitchen, and for some sort of event that would help ensure they didn't stay in my kitchen. A few months after I gave up my one lonely Diet Coke a day, I had one. It was disgusting. It tasted like a bubbly combination of the can it came in and some sort of industrial solvent. Which is kind of what it is.

What little control I have over my relationship to sugar, I have—I am convinced—because I gave up artificial sweeteners. For a long time I had a rule that I wouldn't buy sweets. It wasn't that I couldn't have them; I just wasn't a person who bought them. It kept me from having them in the house, but allowed me to have dessert when, say, we went out for a special occasion or had guests for dinner. At this point, I'm learning how to manage sweets and how to mitigate the damage they do. If I'm dying for a candy bar, for instance, I'll often get a Twix, because I can hand one of the sticks to Jed. The point is that when I'm craving something sweet, there's probably a physiological reason, and eating an artificially sweetened whatever-it-is isn't going to address the issue that caused the craving, and so I'll keep seeking it out, whereas if I just eat actual sugar, and figure out how to restrain the portion? I’m good.

86. I EAT FAT. AND CARBS. AND PROTEIN. AND PLANTS.

Because our bodies need them. Do lots of people eat too many carbs? Yes. Yes, we do. Do we eat too much fat? Yes. Protein? Often. Plants? Probably not so much. Although I love steamed vegetables with a love beyond measure, I have never said, "I just can't stop eating these steamed vegetables!" and I doubt anyone else has, either. But lots of people eat too much in general. If I go on a low-carb diet, I'll lose weight, but it will largely be water weight AND I won't be giving my muscles the glycogen supply they need to help me run well. If I go on a low-fat diet, I risk robbing myself of the fat-soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids (some of which my body cannot make) that I need to be healthy. I need it all—I just don’t need too much of it, and it's probably a good idea if I consider its sources.

87. I ADDED PROTEIN (AND FAT) TO MY BREAKFAST.

I was amazed at the difference this made. Half a cup of oatmeal plus applesauce and skim milk at 6:30AM = me hungry before 10:30. Half a cup of oatmeal plus applesauce and skim milk and about 15 grams of almonds at 6:30AM = me not hungry until after noon. An extra hundred calories of fat and protein buys me hours of satiety. If I'm going to have a long run that day, I'll add something to that breakfast: a bowl of cereal (the hours before a long run are not a good time to be adding fiber or worrying about excess carbs), or a hard-boiled egg, half an avocado, or a bit of peanut butter and honey on a piece of toast. Something like that. I'm going to need the energy.

88. I LISTEN TO CRAVINGS.

I've already said that if I'm having a lot of cravings for something specific, I usually eventually give into them. But I don't have a lot of cravings. When I start craving, say, ice cream, I wonder if it's because my body needs fat or calcium or sugar—or some combination. If I add a little more yogurt to my post-run snack or get a little more fruit into my diet and the craving goes away, I have my answer. It's not that I'm substituting one for the other. No one should ever try to convince me that yogurt with a handful of blueberries is "just as good" as an ice cream cone because all the people involved in that interaction know it's a lie. It's good in its own way, don't get me wrong. But it's not ice cream. Sometimes the craving is nutritional, and by meeting the nutritional need, I can get rid of the craving.  When all is said and done, if I still want the ice cream, I have it. And I love it. And all is right with the world.

89. I STOPPED THINKING IN TERMS OF "BAD" VS. "GOOD" WITH BOTH MY FOOD AND MY BEHAVIOR.

Eating broccoli is not "being good." Spending a day on the couch is not "being bad." If I say to myself, "I was good and ran ten miles today," then the next time my long run rolls around and, say, it's 90 degrees out (like it has been recently) with jaw-dropping humidity and I'm feeling a twinge in my left hamstring and it's the day before I'm supposed to get my period, but I manage to drag myself through eight miles before calling it a day, does that mean I'm bad? Of course not. Words are important. The way I talk to myself is important. I start most runs with the attitude that I will finish—it usually isn't even a question. If I'm not myself for whatever reason, I adjust that to, "Let's see what I can do," and far more often than not, I get to the end of my scheduled run. But behavior is just behavior. Food is just food. Look, brownies are delicious. Spending a whole day lying on a raft in the middle of a lake and lazily sipping something cool, fruity, and possibly alcoholic is also delicious in its own way. Then again, so is broccoli, and so is finishing a run strong.

90. I MAKE EXCUSES TO EXERCISE INSTEAD OF MAKING EXCUSES TO AVOID IT

This is related to prioritizing exercise, but it also has to do with me giving up the mindset that working out is something to get out of, like jury duty or dinner with relatives you don't like (I love my relatives, by the way, in-laws included). If I know I'll be spending a day with friends, I'll get up early and take a walk before breakfast so that I don't get lulled into taking a day off when  I end up not feeling like working out the evening after a day of socializing. It gets done first because it's the most important thing I want to do that day. Want to, want to, want to. Not need to. Not should. Want to.

The First 100 Pounds (71 - 80)

I'm not a doctor and I don't even play one on TV. Although I would, if the money were right.

If you want to start from the beginning, you can do so here. Here are 71 – 80:

71. I TAKE A MINUTE TO APPRECIATE MY STRENGTH WHEN IT SURPRISES ME

Sometimes, it's putting my hands on my hips and realizing there's muscle there. Sometimes it's what I can lift or how quickly I can move. It doesn't matter—if I notice it, I take a minute to appreciate it. Seconds, really.

72. I FEEL MY MUSCLES.

I know I've mentioned this before, in terms of celebrating (or at least acknowledging) my successes, but I also do it if I need a little pick-me-up. If I need to get my energy up for a run, I might slap my thigh or flex my calf. It sounds totally self-absorbed when I write it like that, and maybe it is, but I don't care. Does it work? Yes? Then I put it on this list (other criteria for this list: Can I use it to make a joke? Do I have anything to say about it? Did I think of it?). I make other people feel my muscles, too. Except the mailman. Damn restraining order.

73. I TAKE PRIDE

When I started continuous runs by distance instead of time, they were all between two and a half and three miles long. I ran three times a week, I walked hills a couple of days a week, and I took two days off. It was fine, but I knew I needed more challenges if I was going to stave off boredom, so I decided to extend one run a week, to do this "long run" that I'd been reading so much about. My first long run was three and a half miles. I had never run that far before in my life, and I was proud of myself. The next long run was four miles. Pride. My first five-mile long run was a major milestone for me, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the natural comfort of having a number that ended with a zero or a five (why do I like that so much?). At the end of those runs, I'd walk up to Jed and announce how far I'd run, and then I'd do a little body builder pose and say, Raaaaaaar! Because I was mighty. And I was proud.

74. I UNDERSTAND WEIGHT LOSS IS NOT A STRAIGHT LINE

People will tell you that losing weight is a calories in/calories out proposition. Those people are lying. Or oversimplifying, anyway. Sure, if I eat more calories than my body needs, I will gain weight. If I use more calories than I eat, I'll lose weight. But on a day-to-day basis, weight is also a factor of what I've eaten (carbs, which I need to run well, hold water—that's part of their job), whether I'm hydrated or not, how much salt I've eaten in the past day or so, hormonal shifts and other monthly changes, whether my body is in a phase of building muscle…I could go on. For me, the weight loss tends to run in a pattern that consists of trading the same three or four pounds back and forth for about three weeks, then losing five or six pounds in the course of about a week. It all just goes away at once. On a weekly basis, my diet and exercise routine are remarkably consistent. I have to look at it long term, because putting too much stake in my daily—or even weekly—weight will drive me crazy. I knew, for example, when I hit the 90-pounds-lost mark that I'd have about two months more before I hit 100. That did not stop me from riding the swings up and down as my body went through pretty much the EXACT SAME PROCESS IT HAS BEEN GOING THROUGH FOR THE PAST YEAR. Even though I understand it, and even though I know that losing a pound or so a week is the best way to keep weight off long-term—it makes me crazy. So I was glad to hit 100, in part because I can stop that particular obsession for a while. As I've mentioned before, intellectual knowledge is not always the same as emotional knowledge, and for obvious reasons I'm most content when they agree with each other.

75. I WEIGH MYSELF EVERY DAY

Experts differ on the wisdom of this. Early on, I didn't weigh myself at all—I let my clothing be my guide. Then, once I stopped being such a chicken, I started weighing myself once a week. Then twice. And eventually I came across some studies that said people who are successful at maintaining weight loss tend to weigh themselves every day. And since that fit into my naturally obsessive personality, that's what I latched onto. I don't tend to let my weight dictate anything—and it doesn't affect my mood or my behavior for more than a moment every morning anyway. It does help me keep on track, so I do it.

76. I DON'T DO IT FOR THE WEIGHT

I'm proud of the weight loss, I'm not gonna lie. But I do this because I love how strong I feel. I love setting goals and knocking them down. I love that I have become someone who knows how to power herself through a workout. I love the consistency and the control. I love knowing that I can outrun many of my friends during a zombie apocalypse (I'm looking at you, Mike).

77. I DO IT FOR THE WEIGHT

So all that in #74 and #76 up there, yeah. But also: I like how I'm beginning to look. And weight is one more goal that I can set up and knock down, so why not?

78. I TAKE THE COMPLIMENTS

This is a hard one. I am simply not good at this. When someone tells me I look good, or notices the muscles in my legs, or whatever, it's hard not to be self-deprecating or completely negate the compliment with some kind of explanation of where I want to be in 6 months or something equally diminishing. When you lose 100 pounds, people notice, and they tell you things like how good you look, or how great your skin looks, or whatever. When I wear skirts, someone often comments on how muscular my calves are. Here is what I have trained myself to say: "Thank you."

79. I WEAR SHORTER SKIRTS

Not super-short, but knee-length or above. I declared this to be the Summer of the Skirt, in part because I'm still shrinking out of clothes pretty quickly and skirts will last a little longer than shorts before they begin to look ridiculous, and in part because I like my legs. They're still bigger than I'd like them to be, but they're strong and getting more defined every week and I'm happy to have them. Plus, skirts are cute. Do I still own a couple of ankle-length skirts? I do. I'm a poet. I think it might be required. And they are also cute. But when it's 90 degrees out, something above the knee makes me much happier.

80. I STOPPED THINKING IN TERMS OF WHAT I DESERVE BECAUSE I DON'T THINK OF EXERCISE AS PUNISHMENT.

Look. Exercise is not punishment. When it felt that way to me, it was because I didn't enjoy the activity or because I was working too hard at it. I thought getting a "good workout" meant working so hard that I thought I was going to die. That is not fun (although as I gain fitness it can be sort of fun to figure out where that point is). I'm not a fan of team sports—I like exercise where the only person I'm letting down when I screw up is me. I'm not a fan of weight training because I find it boring. I like yoga because it forces me out of my all-or-nothing mentality and makes me focus on doing what's right for me. There's no schedule, no "should be able to do this by now," no ranking of top yogis (or maybe there is and I just don't know about it). There's just me, trying not to fall over. I like it. I like running because of the 8 million reasons I've stated on this blog already: the challenge, the meditative aspects, the personal goal-setting, etc.

That's all a long introduction to this: when you enjoy what you're doing, you don't need to reward yourself for having done it. I don't eat ice cream after a workout because I've "earned" it. I don't get a new running outfit because I "deserve" it. When I do eat ice cream, it's because I enjoy it. When I get a new running outfit, it's because I need it (or because it's super-cute). I'm not constantly bargaining with myself, and I'm neither undoing the progress I'm trying to make with exercise by eating ice cream all the time nor constantly trying to figure out what my next reward should be. The running is a reward. If it weren't, I'd have to find something else, because I wouldn't be able to stick to it.

The First 100 Pounds (61 - 70)

Damnit, Jim, I'm a poet not a doctor.

If you want to start from the beginning, you can do so here. Here are 61 – 70:

61. I MAKE AVOIDING INJURY MY MAIN PRIORITY

If I get hurt, I need to stop. And if I need to stop, I might not start again. Everything I have done—everything, since day 1—I have done with an eye on keeping myself injury-free. I do not need an excuse to stop, and this was especially true at the beginning. If it's really not about punishing myself and it really IS about getting healthy, then I can take a day when I need a day, or back off on a workout so that I don't get hurt. If I'm pushing through the pain or making myself run on a day when I know I shouldn't, then I'm no longer doing this for my health, clearly. And while I might not know for sure the reasons why people who injure themselves to the point of being sidelined do so, I'd be willing to bet that a good number of them have traded punishing themselves with food for punishing themselves with exercise.

62. I STUDY

I read a lot about running. I read terribly-written (really—they're very, very bad, and it saddens me that someone gets paid to write them) articles on active.com. I read Runner's World, which I enjoy quite a bit. I read better-written books about running. I started with a book for beginner runners, and I've read several since then—one for women runners, one on half- and full-marathons. Learning is how I deal with the world. It makes me feel prepared. I felt like I knew what I was getting into when I started running, because I'd read about it. When I started to feel nauseated towards the end of my long runs, I recognized that I probably needed fuel. Oh, I thought. This is what they were talking about. I didn't realize I was running far enough to need that. And I started putting a little Gatorade into my water for my long runs. I recognized it because I'd read about it—and I could have been wrong, but at least I wasn't wondering what the hell was going on. The reading I've done gives me a place to start trying to treat whatever problem I develop, be it nausea or pain or lack of focus, and I can usually fix the problem on the first try.

63. I ICE AT THE FIRST SIGN OF PAIN

That's right—I ice preventively. If I wake up in the morning with a stiff knee, I put an ice pack on it while I drink my first cup of coffee. If one of my tendons feels a little tender, I ice it. I don't wait. And it's worked like a charm for me. Which is good because:

64. I AVOID PAINKILLERS

It's not that I'm anti-painkillers. My mom was a nurse. I have various over-the-counter painkillers, and I know which one works best for me in different situations. But I don't use them after a run, and I sure as hell don't use them before a run. Pain is my body's way of letting me know something is wrong—why would I want to ignore that? If my workouts are causing me pain (besides the occasional muscle soreness), there's a problem that painkillers probably aren't going to solve. And covering it up could make the damage worse.

65. I FEED MY MUSCLES AFTER A WORKOUT

For me, that usually means low fat plain organic yogurt with applesauce and cinnamon—eight ounces after a long or hard workout, closer to five after a shorter/easier workout. Eating a combination of protein and carbs in the first 30 minutes after working out helps get those nutrients to my muscles faster, I'm told, and so I do it. I have no idea if it's bullshit science or not. When I started fueling after my workout, I experienced less muscle soreness, so I do it. The yogurt and applesauce combination works for me because I don't really want to eat anything at all right away. It's easy to stomach. By the time I've cooled down and showered, I'm ready for some real food. Other runners eat other things, like recovery shakes or smoothies or peanut butter on toast. I tried yogurt and applesauce early on and it worked for me, so I stuck with it. If I get bored, I'll try something else.

66. I GET ENOUGH SLEEP

And I’m unapologetic about naps. I don't know when we decided as a culture that busyness was our end-all and be-all. I'm a poet. I recognize the need for vast quantities of down time—I can't write if I'm keeping myself busy that way. When I am busy, when I'm making excuses for things that HAVE to get done, it's often because I'm feeling particularly uncomfortable in my own skin. I need sleep to function well. I need it to write, to work, and to work out. Forget the rules of thumb about how much sleep people need—you need what you need, period. I know that I'm happier, and my life runs better, if I get between seven and eight hours of sleep. I can run on less, and do, sometimes for weeks at a time. But everything is better for me if I get those seven hours. Your mileage may vary, but I'd venture to say that you know if you're getting enough or not. And that you're probably not. Or maybe you are—what the hell do I know?

67. I TAKE A LITTLE FUEL ON LONG RUNS

I've learned that if it's under 70 degrees, I can run on water until mile 8. Somewhere during the 8^th mile, though, I'm going to get nauseated. I've never gotten sick (knock on wood), but I've had some lovely long runs turn unpleasant quickly. I tried a bunch of different fuel to see what would work for me, and found that my body tolerates Gatorade the best—I mix it in a low concentration (less than 25% Gatorade, the rest water) and I'm good to go. If I'm going over ten miles, I eat one of those 100-calorie granola bars somewhere between mile 5 and mile 8 (in pieces, not all at once). I've also learned that if it's much warmer than 70, I'd better grab the Gatorade for any run that's six miles or longer.

68. I STRETCH (BUT NOT ENOUGH).

Yoga helps, although I've fallen out of my practice over the past few weeks (I think I need some new DVDs—the routine was getting a little, um, routine). I just know that I feel better if I stretch than if I don't. When I'm done with a run, it's tempting to just be done, and I really really really don't want to spend another five or ten minutes stretching, but I make myself do it if I can, and I'm happy when I do. I'm even happier the next day.

69. I TURN MY MIND INWARD

Yoga helps me forget about ridiculous stuff—even when I start out with my brain reeling, by the time I'm done, I've found some calm. It helps me tune out the static from outside and inside.  Running can be the same. If I'm really troubled, sometimes I can't focus at all, but it's fabulous for clearing out the cobwebs and day-to-day ridiculousness.

70. I PUT MY FEET UP

There is nothing wrong with relaxing. Do it more, and don't apologize for it. As a poet, putting my feet up is easy—I can do it while I'm working. But sometimes Jed and I make an appointment to spend a morning eating waffles and watching cartoons. It's awesome. I recommend it. Put on your PJs and come on over. We make really good waffles.

The First 100 Pounds (51 - 60)

I'm not a doctor. You're all clear on that, right? Get medical advice from a professional, um, medicine person. Not from a poet. Also, there's more swearing. Because I can.

I also want to remind you (and myself) that some of these realizations/developments/changes were 16 months or more in the making. Process, process, process.

If you want to start from the beginning, you can do so here. Here are 51 – 60:

51. I SMILE

If I can't smile when I'm working out, I am working too hard. It's not that I always want to smile, don't get me wrong, but if my face is locked in a grimace and my hands are so tightly fisted that I'm leaving fingernail dents in my palms, I'm taking energy that could be going to my workout (usually my run) and putting it into the wrong places. I slow it down if I have to, but often, just smiling is enough to get me to relax. Just because it's work doesn't mean it has to be agonizing. If nothing else, I smile during the last tenth of a mile or so of every run—fast runs, medium runs, long runs. I smile at the end of hard runs because they're almost over. I smile at the end of easier runs because I feel good. It sounds stupid, but it makes a difference, truly.

52. I SWEAR

I am mighty. My runs reinforce my mightiness—and not just the easier runs. It was the difficult runs that made me first declare my mightiness. I finished them despite their difficulty—that's what made me mighty. I don't have to be mighty to do the easy stuff, right? So when I say I swear, I don't mean that I swear in anger or frustration, although I suppose I probably do. I do, however, almost invariably swear in satisfaction at being the conquering heroine. When I finish a run at a higher speed than I've managed before, I swear. When I add a mile to my long run and get through it, I swear. When I have a tough run and muscle my way through it by sheer force of will, I swear. And that swear is almost inevitably the same every time: That's right, motherfucker. That's right. Don't question the swear. Don't ask who the motherfucker is. I don't know. But I have showed that motherfucker who is boss, and that boss is me.

53. I LISTEN

This is part of cutting myself a break, and it's how I'm starting to learn what my body needs: I listen. I know, for example, that an egg over root vegetable hash with some toast makes a good pre-run meal, as long as I give myself time to digest it. Hot sauce? Bring it on. I know that I can eat huevos rancheros the night before a 5K and be just fine. I also know that I never, ever want to eat tuna fish before a run, even several hours before. I know that I need to pour a little Gatorade into my water for long runs (or when it's really hot) and that coconut water and I don't get along well. You live, you learn. If I listen, I can avoid injury—I know when my shoes are losing their shape, when I need to invest in a couple of new running bras (and trust me, they're an investment, but totally worthwhile), when I'm fighting off a cold. It's experience, yes, but it's also paying attention to that experience. One isn't much good without the other.

54. I DISTRACT MYSELF

If I'm inside, that means Netflix. Instant Netflix is the savior of my treadmill workouts. I put my iPad on the treadmill and go. If I'm outside, it means music (kept at a volume low enough that I'm aware of my surroundings) or talking to Jed or having something specific to think about. But really, the outside world is distracting enough for me; it's the treadmill workouts that require entertainment. I recommend finding something with enough action (however you define it) to keep you occupied and enough of a story to keep you wanting more. This is not the time for Masterpiece Theater (not for me, anyway). It's the time for Alias. Or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Extra points if it's funny. Double-extra points if it's funny and has a good soundtrack. When I was watching Alias, I waited for the fight scenes (I never had to wait long). The soundtrack would pump me up, and I could get through a rough patch and come out the other side.

55. I TAKE INVENTORY

Speaking of rough patches, they used to be enough to get me to quit for the day. If my head wasn't in the run, I could use a rough patch to stop. But I read somewhere (who knows where) of a runner who said she (he? The research for this post is pathetic. Why are you reading this?) talked herself through rough patches by taking inventory. Mine goes something like this: "Legs? Okay. Breath? Okay. Shoulders? Okay. So quit whining, you're fine." The first two items are self-explanatory: if I'm not in pain and not having trouble regulating my breathing, I'm good to go. I've also learned (by listening…see what I did there?) that I slump a little when I get tired, and I can feel that slump in between my shoulder blades. So I check to make sure that my shoulders are okay. If my spine is in place and my shoulders are relaxed down (not forward, just not bunched up at my ears), I'm not slumping. And if I am slumping, I can tell myself to knock it off. During some runs, I don't take any inventory at all. During others, it seems like I never stop.

56. I SPEED IT UP

I have found, strangely enough, that some of the days when I'm just not feeling it are the perfect days to take the difficulty up a notch. I don't know why this works, but I suspect it's a matter of focus: I'm not feeling the run because I'm not paying enough attention. One day, I decided to use my "bad" run for speed work, and ran intervals—periods of hard running followed by periods of jogging for recovery—instead of jogging the steady pace of what I think of as my "regular" runs and damned if it didn't work. When I can't bear the thought of running five miles, I can often handle running a quarter of a mile (about 400 meters, if you measure that way), and if I set the pace to something challenging, I force myself to pay attention. Who knew? I'd say this works maybe three-quarters of the time—it's the first thing I try when I'm having a tough time, and if it's going to work, it usually starts showing signs right away. If it doesn't work?

57. I SLOW IT DOWN

Yes, it takes me longer to get the miles in, but really. The difference is minimal, and it's better to run five slow miles than to quit during the first. I should add that five miles is pretty much the shortest distance I run these days—and if none of my tricks get my head in the game, I make it my five-miler day and save the mid-length or long run for another day. The world isn't going to explode if I do 7 miles on Thursday instead of Wednesday, or if I shift my long run (right now between 10 and 12 miles) from Saturday to Sunday. This is, for reasons that should be obvious, my last resort—slowing down is better than quitting, and running a short distance is better than running no distance.  And it doesn't matter if you're running the same distances that I am (or if you're walking, or rowing, or elliptical…ling). The theory's the same. If you're scheduled to walk two miles and you can't seem to get into it no matter what you try, maybe you just need to slow it down. Or walk a mile (or whatever your light workout is). The road will still be there tomorrow.

58. I PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT WORKS

I listen to my body before, during, and after a workout and before, during, and after a meal. I pay attention to what I ate before a really good run, to what schedule of light and heavy days works best for me, to what time of day I'm more comfortable working out. If it seems to to work, I do it again. If it keeps working, I keep doing it. Am I setting up false corollaries? Probably. If so, they'll work themselves out in time. Or they won't—am I setting myself back at all by believing that a day off before my long run feels better than a day off after my long run? I seriously doubt it.

59. I DON'T PAY ATTENTION TO ANYONE WHO SAYS I'M DOING IT WRONG

Because fuck them. I've lost 100 pounds. I've done it without injury, in a way that feels sustainable to me, and in real-world conditions. Could I have lost 130 pounds by now if I'd used someone else's methods? Maybe. But so what? I've. Lost. 100. Pounds. If someone is that desperate to tell me I've done it wrong, I think that probably says more about their insecurities than my process.

60. I KEEP MY PHONE IN THE OTHER ROOM (OR LEAVE IT AT HOME)

Not only that, but I keep it on vibrate. As much as I talk about how helpful it is to keep myself distracted, outside distractions can derail me. I will take a workout-ending distraction if I can get it, so I make it so that I can't get it. Simple as that.

The First 100 Pounds (41 - 50)

The standard warnings still apply: I'm still not a medical professional, and I don't pretend that this is some sort of program. It's what I did, what I do, and what has worked for me. It doesn't even necessarily make sense. Your mileage may vary, and your doctor should have a say in the matter. What the hell do I know about this? I'm a poet, people. Get professional advice.

I also want to remind you (and myself) that some of these realizations/developments/changes were 16 months or more in the making. Process, process, process.

If you want to start from the beginning, you can do so here. Here are 41 – 50:

41. I COUNT

Remember yesterday's post when I said that sometimes I have to count off quarter miles to keep myself going? I do that kind of thing all the time to keep my brain occupied. I check my math and figure out how long it will take me to finish (or get halfway, or get through the mile…whatever it takes). If I have to, I count down the minutes. Much like I know I can run five miles, I also know I can run for a very long time. Sometimes, I have to tell myself that I'll be all right if I can make it to a certain point—an hour from the finish, half an hour from the finish, five minutes from the finish.  Most days, it's not an issue.

42. I TRACK MY NUMBERS

I don't do a lot with this, although I'm thinking about buying myself a running journal. I just have a small notebook, and I jot down the date, the approximate calorie burn, the duration of my workout, the distance, whether it was walking or running, and, for treadmill workouts, my highest speed and incline. If I also did some yoga, strength training, or a significant amount of other activity (like a day of yard work or hauling a ton of pellet fuel into the shed, for example), I'll note that, too. It takes way longer to explain than to do. Each week gets its own page, and at the bottom of the page I add up the calories and the miles run and walked (I track running and walking numbers separately). At the top of the next page, I write the year and the total miles run and walked since January 1. I also note how far ahead of my yearlong running goal I am, a figure that started as a negative number. The day my yearlong goal number went positive was a very happy day. I'll also put little happy faces or some other notation if I exceed expectations in some way—faster than usual, farther than usual, etc.

I want to make it clear that calorie counts are almost totally arbitrary—no two calorie counters online figure the burn in the same way, and the burn is affected by all sorts of different things, like weight and muscle-to-fat ratio. When I was at my top weight, I was burning more calories than the readout on the treadmill claimed. Right now it's pretty close to accurate, but twenty pounds from now it will be too high. It doesn't matter. I use the calorie count as a guideline—it's an obvious, clear indicator of progress. If the weekly number was 3,500 a couple of months ago and it's 6,000 this week, that's one more piece of data I can use when I need to give myself a pep talk.

43. I MAKE VERY SMALL GOALS

This is not unrelated to being patient, and similarly not unrelated to how much I count. My weight loss goals are five-pound increments (and are not tied into a specific time frame—I just like numbers that end in five and zero, and it's easy for me to keep track of them). My mileage goals, for a long time, consisted of increasing my weekly mileage by a mile at a time. That's right—one mile per week, and not every week. I increase my medium-run speed by maybe twenty or thirty seconds per mile at a time, and then I'll stick to that speed until it starts to feel too comfortable (often  months). My long runs are slower, and the speed on those increases even more slowly. It can feel tedious at the time, but when I look back, I can see that I've cut almost 2 ½ minutes off my medium-run mile and a minute and forty-five seconds (or thereabouts) off my long-run mile. Over the course of a single year—especially when I remember that at the beginning of that year, I could only run for a minute at a time—that's pretty impressive.

44. I PUT BIG GOALS OUT OF MY MIND

The thing is, if I started this process by saying that my goal was to increase my speed by as much as I have, or to lose 140 pounds, or even this first hundred, I would never—not in a million years—have made it even this far. I mean seriously. One hundred and forty pounds was close to half my weight. It's an entire person. I can't think about that sort of thing all the time. That is, I can, but I try not to allow myself to. It's self-defeating. But there's another thing I do.

45. I KEEP BIG GOALS IN MY MIND

I do know where I want to be. I know what I want to weigh, how I want my clothes to fit. But mostly, I know how strong I have become, and that I want to hold onto that strength. I want to keep improving on that strength. I want to find new challenges and beat my goals into the ground. It's fun, and it makes me feel mighty, and I like to feel mighty. RAAAAAAR!

46. I REEVALUATE MY GOALS

You know how just now I was saying that I made both big and small goals? The other part of that is evaluating those goals, and then evaluating them again. For example, my big goal for 2013 is to run 750 miles and walk 250 during the year. The walking goal is a piece of cake, and I knew it when I set it—I deliberately set a goal that I knew I could blow out of the water, and I attached it to the bigger, more meaningful running goal by making the total miles come out to a nice, even number: 1,000 miles on my feet sounds pretty, right? But the running goal is tougher: it requires fifteen miles a week from me (with a couple of weeks off for injury/illness/scheduling built in as a buffer), and when I set that goal, I was only running about ten or twelve miles a week. Ambitious, but do-able, I thought.

And here it is the end of June, and for the past two weeks, I've run thirty miles. I'm more than 100 miles above where I should be to hit my goal of 750, and I passed 250 walking miles last week, and we're not quite halfway through the year. Also, I'm running twice as much weekly mileage as I need to, so I'll surpass the running goal as well—barring injury—sometime in late summer/early fall. In my head, I've set new goals (1,000 miles running and 500 miles walking), both of which are totally manageable. I haven't made them official, even to myself, but they're there, so much so that I realized while editing this post that my discussion of the original goals was all in past tense. Whoops. Yes, I've done the math and know how many miles I need to run and walk every week to make the new goals. But my original stated goals stand. It would be easy for me to keep increasing my goals until I get to ones that are unrealistic, and that would allow me to quit. So the original goals stay.

I've added new ones, though: goals for increasing speed, for doing more speed work and other directed workouts, for increasing my upper body strength. Even though we're only halfway through the year, I'm starting to think about goals for 2014—what a reasonable mileage goal is, what other goals I might have.

I try not to make goals that are out of my control. I don't have a goal to lose a certain amount of weight by a certain time, because while there are some things I can control, like my diet and exercise, my weight is also affected by factors like hormonal shifts, muscle-to-fat ratio, and salt intake. Similarly, I don't have a goal to be a certain size within a certain amount of time. My goals are health-related, not size-related. If I knew how I learned to be satisfied with goals like that, I would tell you. But I don't.

Finally, I'll reevaluate my goals should my current goals no longer be realistic. If, say, I'm in some sort of accident and break my leg, my goals are going to have to shift to ones that support my healing and regaining strength during recovery. If I break my leg the day before the run that was going to put me over the 750 mile mark, it's not going to do anybody any good if I beat myself up over my inability to meet that goal. I'll mourn, I'm sure, and be really pissed off, and then I'll regroup and move on.

47. I HAVE A TRAINING PLAN.

I started with this C25K plan, then, when it became clear that I wasn't doing a very good job of setting my own goals, this half-marathon plan. Now that I've been at this a while, I feel comfortable adapting a plan to fit my own needs, but I always have something to strive for. It's usually a series of smaller goals inside a larger, more long-term goal (like increasing my long run weekly while I train for a half-marathon), but there's always something going on. At the moment, I'm pretty happy with a long run between ten and twelve miles, so I'm adding a mile here and there to my medium runs and working on speed—I alternate weeks between adding miles and adding speed work. I probably need to register for a race to keep myself focused.

48. I OBSESS A LITTLE

I have to be careful about this, because I tend toward the obsessive as it is. But I find it helpful to run through my game plan for the week as I'm getting ready to fall asleep—what's worked for me so far? What does the rest of my week hold? What new little goals might I want to set? I make Jed (and too many other people) feel how strong my quads are. I'm making this list. I'M BORING AS HELL ABOUT IT. It keeps me on track.

49. I MAKE PREDICTIONS

I think about where I want to be in a month or six months. I think about how I'll feel when I hit a goal (like these 100 pounds). If I'm on the treadmill, I do the mental math to see how far along I'll be at the end of an episode of whatever I'm watching. I play games with myself to pass the time on the long runs. I try not to get hung up on whether I make these—temporary, pointless—goals or not. I just make them and see if they come to fruition. Am I right about how far along I'll be after 20 minutes? No? Okay, then, where will I be after the next 20 minutes? Maybe it's practice for adjusting my real goals as my body strengthens. Maybe it's just a distraction. It doesn't much matter. It keeps me entertained.

50. I COMPARE MYSELF TO LAST YEAR

Or last month. Or last week. Whatever it takes. I have weeks where I'm at a specific weight, often a couple of pounds higher than the lowest I've managed, and I just hang out there. Once, I stayed there for more than two weeks. It didn't matter if I ate nothing or everything. It didn't matter if I worked harder or eased off. For whatever reason, my weight was just where it was. And I got through those two weeks by reminding myself how far I've come. Sometimes I can calm my emotions down with intellectual knowledge. Look, I can say. Look at this evidence of how much you don't suck. Understanding something intellectually and understanding it emotionally are often two very different animals—if I can use facts to make the animals talk to each other, I usually end up in better shape all around.

The First 100 Pounds (31 - 40)

More swearing today! Yay, swearing!

The standard warnings still apply: I'm still not a medical professional, and I don't pretend that this is some sort of program. It's what I did, what I do, and what has worked for me. It doesn't even necessarily make sense. Your mileage may vary, and your doctor should have a say in the matter. What the hell do I know about this? I'm a poet, people. Get professional advice.

I also want to remind you (and myself) that some of these realizations/developments/changes were 16 months or more in the making. Process, process, process.

If you want to start from the beginning, you can do so here. Here are 31 – 40:

31. I SHUT MYSELF UP

I am still obese. I am, right now, three pounds away from being simply "overweight," depending on if I want to believe the BMI calculators or not. Based on those same calculators, I'm about 35 pounds away from being "normal weight," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. I'd like to be the equivalent of 40 or 50 pounds lighter than I am, but I try not to put too much emphasis on the scale. How far did I run? How fast? How did I feel on my hill workouts? How many pushups can I do (not a lot)? I try, but I am not always successful. And even if I manage, I can still veer off into darkness: why aren't I faster? Why is it so hard to tone the insides of my thighs? Will I ever find running shorts comfortable?

It is tempting to focus on what I am not. It would be easy for me to complain about the rolls I still have in my midsection or the skirt I love that is still too tight in the waist. It would also be easy for me to beat myself up when I don't meet whatever bar I'm setting for myself at the moment (and in those moments, I am often not at all interested in setting a bar I can reach). But when I catch myself doing that, I try to shut myself up. I try to speak to myself as kindly and encouragingly as I would to someone else. It's more difficult than it should be. I'm getting better at it.

32. I TURN THE NEGATIVE TALK AROUND

The other day, I did not want to run. I just didn't. My schedule said I should run seven miles. Granted, I have some flexibility—I can mix up the order of my Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday runs, or switch one of them out for one of my cross-training days—but I don't like to do that unless I have to. I did all the things I should have done to get and stay on track (I'll talk about some of them in a later post). And somewhere before mile four, I found myself thinking about how I could just stop at five miles and I'd be fine. I thought about the different mileage I could run on Wednesday and Thursday (and even during my long run on the weekend) to make up for it. I asked myself if my legs were tired from their first 30-mile week last week, and convinced myself they were (they weren't).

And when I figured out that my thinking had been headed down that path for a while without me really noticing, I made some changes. Get to five miles, I said, and see how you feel. Because at five miles, you'll only have two miles left. I knew what I was doing. There was no way I was going to give up with only two miles to go. I can run two miles on my worst day. And while it was the ugliest run I've had in a long time in terms of my thinking, it was a perfectly fine run—seven miles, 20 seconds per mile faster than I'd ever run that distance. It was, by most measures, an excellent run. By changing my thoughts from get to five miles and quit to get to five miles and you'll be able to finish, I was able to stop the negative talk. I finished that run mighty. Those are not the fun runs, but they are often the most satisfying.

33. I AM AS PATIENT AS I CAN BE

This is, I should state up front, not very patient. And sometimes I end up using all the patience I have for the day by being patient with myself. It took me years to put on this weight, and a lifetime to be as out of shape as I was when I started working out. I needed to start at what felt like a glacial pace. I needed to give myself time to improve. And even now there are days where I don't feel like running, where I have to count off the quarter miles to keep myself going, where five miles feels harder than twelve. But I know—I know for a certainty—that I can run five miles, even on a bad day. So I do it, as patiently as I can. If I get sick or injured (which, thankfully, hasn't happened yet), I'll try to give myself the patience to take the recovery time I need. Fingers crossed.

34. I MOVE ON WHEN I'VE SCREWED UP

If you listen to me talk, I can make it sound like I'm a one-woman health-improving machine. I present myself that way on purpose, because I need to hear myself talking that way. I try to focus on the good runs, or the strength of getting through a tough run, or the smaller clothes—the positive, specific, affirming aspects of this process. Do not let this fool you into thinking I don't screw up, or even that I believe I don't screw up. I screw up in spectacular fashion at times. It's how I learn, if I'm lucky. I ate a Greek salad wrap with chicken and sweet potato fries for lunch and then ran 6 miles a couple of hours later. BAD idea. I tried to get my second pair of running shoes to last a few more weeks. BAD idea. I've overscheduled myself to the point that I've had to miss workouts. I've found myself unable to talk myself through a tough run and given up and felt crappy for doing so. And you know what? I survived. I didn't puke, I didn't do myself irreparable knee damage (although I could have), I got back to the workouts the next day, I've started to learn how to talk myself through AND how to recognize when I just need a day off. Any of those things used to be enough to derail me for good. Now they're just what they are: mistakes that I can learn from.

35.  I GIVE MYSELF PEP TALKS

You are doing great. Feel the muscles around your waist. FEEL THEM. You have strengthened your obliques just by running, because you are a fucking machine. Look in the mirror when you're done. You look like a fucking Gatorade commercial, with all that sweat beading up on you. LOOK AT YOU, you athletic wonder, you. This is why you do this.

It's not why I do this, although I do enjoy the swearing. But it's okay to lie a little bit when I'm busy convincing myself that my frizzy ponytail and sopping wet clothes are evidence of my mightiness rather than simply evidence that I need to hit the shower. Because they are. I do need to hit the shower (and probably do some laundry), but I will do so mightily. Because I am a fucking machine and an athletic wonder.

36. I ROAR

Try it. RAAAAAAAR! Try it while bending your arms a little bit at the waist and pointing your fists at your belly button, like you're Arnold Schwarzenegger circa 1975. In fact, I just did so simply for being able to spell Schwarzenegger correctly on my first try. Go ahead, try it. RAAAAAAAAAAR! You are mighty. (Please note, you are not a baby dinosaur: the calls of baby dinosaurs include a "w" and are much less determined and thus, less mighty. So no RAAAAAWR unless you are a baby dinosaur. Which you are not. Unless you are.)

37.  I CUT MYSELF A BREAK

Look, I know how it goes. You're gung-ho for the first week or two of a fitness program, be it exercise or diet, and then you start making excuses. I get it. I've done it. One bad workout—can't get my breath, my heart's not in it, my legs feel like lead—and I'm done. Well, I used to be done. As I've mentioned before, I needed to build. I'm not sure how I understood that this time around—I wish I knew, because I would totally market that plan and then take all of you out to dinner with a fraction of the first royalty check, but I don't. So I'm just going to tell you so that you hear it again, and maybe if you're in the place that I was in, this will be the time that you really hear it: you have to build. That means that sometimes you're just not feeling it. Maybe your nutrition is off. Maybe you didn't get enough sleep. Maybe you haven't given yourself enough time to recover. I don't know. But I do know that just because I tank one workout, it doesn't mean that I get to quit. I give myself a break, and then get back to it the next day.

38. I FIND WAYS TO TELL MYSELF IT'S EASY

Another time when it's okay to lie to myself a little bit. It's not always a lie—it's not, in actuality, difficult for me to run a few miles at this point, for example—but sometimes it is. I say, for instance, that when I gave up Diet Coke, I didn't miss it at all. I conveniently ignore the fact that I went from a habit of drinking more than a liter a day to drinking a single Diet Coke at lunch to skipping a couple of them a week, and after THAT, I didn't miss it at all when I gave it up. Still don't. I find myself saying things like, "If I can manage seven miles today, I'll only have to run five tomorrow," as if the concept of "only" running five miles is one that makes any sort of sense whatsoever. And when tomorrow comes, I'll be all, "Phew! So glad it's an easy day!" It boils down to equal parts determinedly Pollyannaish looking-at-the-bright-side and flat-out self-deception. But it works.

39. I THINK I'M A PAIR OF SCISSORS

When I'm having trouble with feeling tired during a run, it helps to think of myself as being hinged in the middle like a pair of scissors—my right arm is attached to my left leg, and my left arm is attached to my right leg. The pairs move forward and back at the same time. They hit the most forward point in their swing at the same time and they end their backward movement at the same time. Other people think about other things—being pulled forward by a balloon attached to the top of their head, for example, to keep them upright and moving forward. I think I'm a pair of scissors. Laugh if you want, but I will cut you, bro.

40. I KISS MY HUSBAND BEFORE AND AFTER A RUN

If he's around. Otherwise, I just choose a random neighbor or passerby. Okay, so maybe not that last part. I don't know that it's advice, exactly—and for the record, you're not allowed to kiss my husband (you'll have to find your own smooch-ee). But it's a positive way to start and end a workout session, so why not?

The First 100 Pounds (21 - 30)

There's a little more swearing in this post than usual. If that sort of thing bothers you, you probably want to skip this post. And, you know. The rest of this blog.

The standard warnings still apply: I'm still not a medical professional, and I don't pretend that this is some sort of program. It's what I did, what I do, and what has worked for me. It doesn't even necessarily make sense. Your mileage may vary, and your doctor should have a say in the matter. What the hell do I know about this? I'm a poet, people. Get professional advice.

I also want to remind you (and myself) that some of these realizations/developments/changes were 16 months or more in the making. Process, process, process.

If you want to start from the beginning, you can do so here. Here are 21 – 30:

21. I MADE SMALL DIETARY ADJUSTMENTS

Not huge ones, not all at once. I dropped down from 1% milk to skim. A chip fiend, I started looking at what was in chips, and choosing ones made with ingredients I could pronounce. I also started getting the individual bags, which goes against everything I believe in from a packaging standpoint, but is a necessary step in teaching me about portions. Once those portions are ingrained, I'll go back to bigger bags and divvy them up myself (please note that in no way am I promising to give them up), but at the moment, I don't trust myself with big bags of anything but pretzels which, for some reason, don't trigger the kind of mindless eating that potato chips or tortilla chips do. Basically, I identified troubling parts of my diet—that is, parts that troubled me, that I was unhappy about—and I changed them, one at a time. I'll talk about more of them later in some detail, but the point here is just that I made them and, more importantly, that they were SMALL.

22. I MAKE MY OWN FOOD

Well, a lot of it, anyway. I know this sounds like the exact opposite of a "small dietary adjustment," but it came in stages. My big shift in thinking started with bread. I'm not sure why I wanted to learn to make bread. Part of it was that I found it intimidating, and I'm sometimes contrary that way. Part of it was that I was following a food blog written by a woman who was making a lot of bread at the time. I started making most of our bread products (loaves, English muffins, pizza dough, bagels…you name it), and I was feeling proud of myself for eliminating much of the high fructose corn syrup from our diet. I don't think I'll immediately get diabetes if I ingest a milliliter of HFCS—I just think that if I'm buying whole wheat bread and using it to make sandwiches with locally-sourced cheeses and organic vegetables, maybe it shouldn't be full of preservatives and sugars of…let's call them questionable origins. I switched out the Miracle Whip (which I grew up on—no need to go hating the Whip) for mayonnaise. I started reading labels. And at some point, I realized that continuing to buy, say, a bag of jelly beans and eating myself into a diabetic coma might not be congruent with worrying about how much HFCS was in my bread. It took longer than that, and it went through several stages, and I still eat some processed food (not a lot, as it appeals to me less and less), but that's the gist of it.

I didn't make it a black-and-white issue—I already have too many rules like that in my life, and the problem with them is that when I fall off the wagon, I've got a built-in excuse for staying there. If it's an all-or-nothing situation, it's easier to go with "all." But if I make it a priority to make our food, then it doesn't matter if my schedule gets busy and I have to buy a loaf of bread. It's okay when we lose power for a week (like we did after Hurricane Irene) and we actually (gasp!) order out for pizza. The world doesn't end, and neither do I. Making this change in my thinking is, I'm starting to believe, the most important step I took in this process. And I did it by accident.

23. I EAT THE YOLKS

There will always be someone telling you that some kind of food is unhealthy (and I'll tell you that, later, too). I like egg yolks. I like them solid, I like them runny. Yes, they have cholesterol. Yes, they have fat. They also have Vitamin A, calcium, and iron. And both B-6 and B-12. A little fat can help keep me satisfied longer. And they're fucking delicious. I don't eat 27 eggs a day (I eat maybe 2 a week), but when I do? I eat the damn yolks. There are plenty of other foods like this, but you get the picture.

24. I THINK ABOUT WHAT I EAT

I try to eat mindfully these days. That means thinking about why I want what I want. It means shopping well and keeping healthy food in the house, but it also means considering a menu when I go out to eat. Do I want sweet potato fries today? Do I really want them? When was the last time I had them? Do I want them enough to make them worth the calories? What has the rest of my diet looked like lately—plenty of veggies, lean protein, the right amount of carbs? If I'm in doubt about the answers to any of those questions, it can make for a tough decision, but one that gets easier.

25. I EAT IT ANYWAY

Sometimes. Because sometimes I just want food because it's appealing at the time. What I think of as "normal people"—people who have a healthy relationship with food—sometimes eat things just because they taste good to them. They don't try to mentally calculate the calories of every meal they eat, and they don't debate the nutritional value of feta cheese over bleu cheese or skip the cheese they really want because it's going to add calories. Normal people sometimes eat sweet potato fries two days in a row. Normal people eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full, and normal people do not always eat all of their servings of vegetables. My diet is already tons better than it was two years ago, which was better than it was five years ago. Balance, people. I'm talking about balance. But if you're going to eat it, make sure you enjoy it.

26. I MAKE ROOM FOR ICE CREAM

Damn straight I do. I live in the land of Bliss Brothers Dairy, which makes some of the best ice cream I've ever had, in a part of the country where we do not toil under the misguided notion that ice cream is a seasonal food. I love ice cream. I don't eat it every day, or even every week. But when I do eat it, I enjoy the hell out of it. I don't add up its calories or skip a meal to make up for it (although having a sundae for dinner one night in the summer is a long-standing tradition that I refuse to abandon, it's got nothing to do with limiting calories) or think about how long it will be before I can have the next one. I have two rules about eating ice cream: first, I need to really want it, which means I need to have been craving it for a while (often more than a week). I don't respond to my first craving for ice cream, pretty much ever. Second, I need to really enjoy it. If I want sorbet, that's fine, and that's what I'll get. But if I want a full-fat peanut butter cup ice cream cone or a sundae with whipped cream and walnuts? Then that's what I'm going to get. And I'm going to appreciate it, because when it's gone, it's gone. It's not a mistake, it's not "bad" food or "bad" behavior. It's fucking dessert and it's awesome and if I try to tell myself that I'm never having it again, I've set up another all-or-nothing scenario, knowing full well that after enough time of nothing, I'm going to revert, no-holds-barred, to all.

27. I EAT MORE PLANTS

It's one of the dietary adjustments I made. It wasn't difficult for me, as I was already eating more vegetables than most people I know—I love vegetables. Raw, steamed, roasted, sautéed. I'm in. I'm not a huge fan of fruit, but I do what I can. At least two days a week, I keep vegetarian. That started accidentally, and it's not a rule by any stretch of the imagination, but it works for me. And rarely a day goes by that I don't get my full five servings or more of vegetables. Fruit…sigh. Fruit is a challenge.

28. I EAT WHEN I'M HUNGRY

I get hungry a lot. If you're running 25 or 30 miles a week and climbing hills for another ten or fifteen, plus going about your regular activities, you're going to get hungry. My body is working hard, with the workouts and the building of muscle and all. I make sure to get three full meals a day, and usually two snacks. If I get hungry on top of that, and I know it's actual hunger, not thirst, I eat—I just try to choose my snacks well.

29. I DRINK A LOT OF WATER

Thirst can masquerade as hunger. I drink a lot of water—it's easier when you don't drink soda—and probably half the time, having enough water in my system makes the hunger pangs go away. (If it doesn't, I revert to number 28). I know you probably hear it a lot, but water makes everything function in your body: your organs, your digestion, everything. Yes, I have to pee a lot. If that's my biggest problem in life, I'm doing just fine.

30. I DRINK A LITTLE WINE

Every couple of nights, I have a glass. There are reports that it's good for you, but I don't care. I like a glass of red with dinner, and I seldom have two, or even one glass two nights in a row. Relaxing is a good thing, and if people tell you that alcohol is liquid fat, tell them to shut up. Wine is liquid awesome. (So is sweat, but don't drink that, because it's gross.)

The First 100 Pounds (11 - 20)

The standard warnings still apply: I'm still not a medical professional, and I don't pretend that this is some sort of program. It's what I did, what I do, and what has worked for me. It doesn't even necessarily make sense. Your mileage may vary, and your doctor should have a say in the matter. What the hell do I know about this? I'm a poet, people. Get professional advice.

I also want to remind you (and myself) that some of these realizations/developments/changes were 16 months or more in the making. Process, process, process.

If you want to start from the beginning, you can do so here. Or you can move on to 11 – 20:

11. I HONOR MY DAYS OFF.

If I take a day off, I take it OFF. I don't take a lot of them (usually one every two or three weeks, although sometimes as often as once a week), but when I do, I don't decide that I'm going to take a little walk that turns into a long walk or an easy jog. This doesn’t mean that I'm a giant slug all day, but if I'm taking the day off, I'm doing so because I need the rest. I could say the same thing for cross-training: I don't sneak running into my cross-training days because the muscles I use for running need a chance to rebuild and strengthen (which happens during rest, not during the workout). Oh, by the way

12. I CROSS-TRAIN.

Yoga, hill walking, swimming, crunches, push-ups. I don't do all of these on the same day, but one or more of them are usually involved, and I'm okay with making it up as I go along.

13. I KEEP A PAIR OF WALKING SHOES UNDER MY DESK AT WORK

Because it's nice to just get the hell outside once in a while. I work at a lovely campus, and I sometimes unexpectedly have 15 or 20 free minutes in my schedule—just long enough to put on a pair of sneakers and  pop outside for a quick mile. I don't try to build a sweat or raise my heart rate, and it's fine with me if I'm so busy that I can't get outside that day. But if I can, it's lovely. It's more reviving than a cup of coffee, and it will actually help me sleep better rather than screwing up my sleep cycle with caffeine.

14. I GET THE RIGHT GEAR

(But not too much of it.) It's easy to get into outfit-buying mode. Or gadget-buying mode. I find I'm happier with a basic amount of gear, but I can still see myself going crazy—and I expect to have to fight the urge a little more once my sizes are consistent. At this point, I usually still shrink out of clothes before I can wear them out, so spending a lot of money on clothes—even for running—feels extremely wasteful to me. At the beginning, I picked up a couple of pairs of wicking capris (EVERYTHING I wear on a run—except shoes—is made of moisture-wicking materials. I'm generally an all-natural-fibers kind of girl, but trust me on this one: when it comes to running, cotton is Of The Devil. You can thank me later) and a couple of wicking t-shirts. I got 2 running bras and a 6-pack of wicking socks. I've added to the collection since then, because things wear out or get too big, and because I live in New England with its challenging climate, and also because I stepped up my workouts from three days a week to six or seven as I got stronger and I just didn't want to do laundry that often. But to start? I stuck with the basics.

15. I WEAR GOOD SHOES

That meant going to a running store, talking about what I'm doing, and getting fitted. Good shoes changed my running life. And if you think the people there won't take you seriously, you're wrong—or you need a different store. I weighed over 250 pounds when I got my first pair of real running shoes (Brooks Defyance—stupid spelling, but the right shoe for me). I wish I hadn't waited so long, but I just wasn't confident enough that I'd be seen as a runner. The woman there asked, "For running or walking?" and that was it. I volunteered some information: I have very wide feet; my long run at the time was 6 miles; I hadn't had any knee problems or anything else from the running (which surprised me, since I had knee problems in high school, never mind as a morbidly obese woman in her 40s). She watched my feet as I walked away from her and then back to her in the store, and we tried on some shoes. Then she watched me run in them, and I bought the Brooks. The cool thing about it? She treated me like a runner. When she asked questions, they weren't born of disbelief but of a desire to help me get the best shoes I could for my gait, my feet, my routine, and my weight.

The salesperson might toss around words like "over-pronation" or "supination" or whatever. Don't worry about that. If you answer their questions, they'll get you the right shoe. And if I don't like it, or it doesn't work for me, my store will take the shoes back (not all stores will). At this point, I could order my shoes online, but I'm not going to. That one woman at that one store earned herself a customer for life, and you should expect the same experience. If you don't get it, go to another store.

16. I REPLACE MY SHOES OFTEN

I read a lot of different opinions about when I could/should replace my shoes. Every 300 miles. Every six months at the outside. No, that's ridiculous—I should be able to get twice as much mileage out of my shoes as what the companies want me to believe. Blah, blah, blah. Everyone has a different opinion. My first pair of shoes lasted pretty much exactly six months. I wasn't keeping a running total of my mileage at that point, and I'm too lazy to go add it up now, but my mileage was pretty low. I also, as I mentioned, weighed 250 pounds. What I weighed, how often I ran, the way I ran—all of these things affected, and continue to affect, how long a pair of shoes will last. My second pair of shoes didn't last anywhere near as long. I'd bumped up my running to four days a week instead of three, and three of those days were consecutive, so the shoes didn't have much time to rest in between uses. I'd bumped my mileage way up, too, and my long run was sometimes twice as long as it was when I bought my first pair. So when I went for my third pair of shoes, I bought two—both neutral, from different manufacturers. I'm sticking with my Brooks, but I added a pair of Asics while I was at it. My hope is that having two pairs in rotation will help them last longer, but we'll see.

The thing is, I knew I needed new shoes because I developed a pain in my right knee. It started as discomfort at the ball of my foot while I was running, and showed up in my daily life as pain in my knee. When I got new shoes, the pain went away. Is it expensive? Kind of. Is it worth it? Absolutely. Now I keep track of when I buy my shoes, and I track my mileage. I also keep in mind that the outside of the shoe might look perfectly fine—it can still be breaking down on the inside.

17. I WASH ON HOT AND HANG IT DRY

In other news, I don't put my running clothes in the dryer. Some runners hand-wash their gear, but I've learned that I sweat enough that a hand-washing just ain't gonna do it. I bought some mesh lingerie bags and I put my running clothes in them and toss them in the wash on hot with the towels. The bags protect the clothes from getting worn down and drying them on a rack helps keep the elastic intact.

18. I WEAR ANTI-FRICTION, UM, STUFF

I don't know what to call it. Balm? A common brand is Body Glide, but my supermarket carries the Gold Bond brand, so I use that. It goes on like stick deodorant, and you can put it wherever you're worried about friction. Runners use it on their toes, their thighs, places where the seams of their clothing might rub, stuff like that. I generally use it where my bra band hits my ribs, and I only need it for long runs. Sweat + friction + time = ouch. If you've got friction issues, you'll know it as soon as you get in the shower, if not during the run itself. It's easily solved. Balm is not expensive, but I would pay twice as much for it if I had to (don't tell the Gold Bond people).

19. I TAKE THE STAIRS

Most of the time. My rule of thumb is five flights down or three flights up. If it's more than that, I'm 100% pro-elevator, but most of the stairs I encounter fall under those guidelines. There are other exceptions—if I'm wearing shoes that make stairs dangerous, or if it's a million degrees and I'm trying to get somewhere important without looking like I drowned, or if I'm carrying so much weight in my briefcase that I risk dislocating a shoulder even on a flat surface, then fine. I'll elevate. Generally, though, stairs. It's not about the exercise—I don't expect that taking the stairs is going to allow me to drop five extra pounds this year, and even if it does, five pounds a year is not exactly motivational. It's about having a different attitude toward moving my body. Movement is not a chore. It's what I was designed to do, and I'm happier if I do it.

20. I MAKE IT A PRIORITY

Sometimes, I have to schedule my life around my workout. It's a pain, but it's how I keep myself on track. If I don't prioritize it, it won't get done. Something else is bound to come up. There are days where I get up early to get a walk in. Other days, I just need to know what the schedule is. My husband's out of the house two nights a week, so on those days, I tend to run in the early evening, while he's gone—but if someone wants to meet me for dinner, I get the run in earlier. I'm flexible, but the workout—especially on a running day—needs to happen. Running complicates things further by requiring a certain amount of fuel. I need to be well-fed, but not so recently that I risk nausea (or worse). A long run can take several hours, between eating, changing, running, cooling down, refueling, cleaning up. I can accomplish other things during some of that time (it's not like I have to sit in my living room, staring into space, while I wait for my breakfast to digest), but it takes organization and scheduling. If I were a more casual runner—three miles, say, three times a week—it wouldn't be as big a deal. But the longer my runs get, the more I have to think things through. So that's what I do.