It has been almost 6 weeks since I did the Everest the Crunch challenge. I was about 3-4 pounds lighter than my regular weight when I started it and I lost almost 7 pounds over the 2 days. I also lost my appetite during that time. Other than overall fatigue, getting food into me at the top of the crunch was the hardest part of the event. And I haven’t regained my appetite since.
Then I went on an 8 day hike of the West Coast Trail, and I can tell that the past 6 weeks have taken a bit of a toll on my body. I’m the lightest weight I’ve been in over 4 years. I recently took a body scan at my gym and my body fat percentage was 11%. I’ll note that this was after a workout, which tends to lower the result, but quite frankly that’s too low.
If I was a high performance athlete training for an event, that would be great, but walking around day-to-day at under 15% isn’t really ideal in my eyes… and being about 10 pounds lighter than my usual weight is not where I want to be. But I’m also not walking around hungry or feeling exhausted, so while this isn’t ideal, I also don’t think this is detrimental.
That said, my goal starting retirement was to bulk and add 10 pounds and instead I went completely the other way. I’m not going to lie, that’s weighing on me. It tells me that if I’m not in the gym 5-6 days a week, my body wants to drop weight. And now I’m heading out on a 3+ week holiday where I’m not going to have access to a gym for most of it, and I’m going to be eating out a lot. I want to add weight, but not burger and fries kinda weight.
My goal over this holiday is to not miss a meal, make healthy choices, and not think about stepping on a scale until I return. I’ll reevaluate my goals in November when I’ll finally have time to establish a retirement routine. Until then I just need to let go of where I am and where I want to be with regard to my weight.
*Note: I feel like a bit of an ass talking about accidentally losing 10 pounds when I know many people struggle to lose weight, but I’ve been there too. I was 20 pounds heavier than I am now and it took me 2.5 years to get to my current weight and another 4.5 to add 10 (desired) pounds. My experience has been that adding muscle is as hard or harder to do than losing fat, and watching myself lose 4.5 years of hard work is very discouraging. We are all on our own health journeys, I hope sharing mine doesn’t create unnecessary compressions in anyone else’s mind.
