I’m pleased with my weigh in this week. This morning I weighed 199.8, which is a loss of 2.6 pounds from last week. Plus, of course, it puts me back below the 200 mark. I’m feeling hopeful today. I’m feeling like this time my weight is going to keep going down, instead of bouncing back above 200 like it has been for a couple months now.

It blows me away that I’ve been at this – the clean eating, the working out – for a little over a year now. On the one hand I’m blown away that I’ve kept both up for an entire year. When I started, I never would have guessed I’d manage it. On the other hand, I’m blown away by how much things have changed in what, after all, doesn’t feel like that much time. I keep having thoughts about what I was doing a year ago. A year ago I had already lost around fourteen pounds, taking me down to 288. I was hoping to reach twenty pounds gone by Christmas. A year ago I was working out with weights three times a week under Brian’s direction and doing cardio on the elliptical four times a week on my own. The weight workouts were simple, but I could barely get through them. I remember step-ups in particular, the way stepping on and off a low step practically made me hyperventilate. The elliptical was a workout I found strangely exhilarating. When I first stepped on the elliptical in November I could barely manage ten minutes. By this time last year I was able to stay on it for a full forty five minutes and that was such a triumph for me.

Now a year later I’m doing weight workouts three times a week under Brenda’s direction. Twice a week those workouts are with three to four other women, something I never could have done a year ago. I couldn’t have kept up with these other women physically and I couldn’t have managed it psychologically. I was struggling with such shame over my body and its abilities last year. I simply wouldn’t have made it in a class setting. But now I manage the class setting twice a week, completing tough workouts beside other fit, active women. And the third time a week I complete a workout on my own, and Brenda makes sure that one is tougher than the group workouts. These workouts take it out of me, make me sweat and breath hard and, sometimes, hurt, but I know how to handle that now. I never feel the panic I used to feel last year when stepping on and off that low step. I’ve learned how to push myself.

And a year later my cardio workouts are completely different. I no longer even go near the elliptical. I find it too boring. Instead I run three times a week and swim three times a week. Neither of these things were on my radar a year ago. I would have laughed if you’d told me I’d be doing both three times a week in a year’s time.

Things have changed so much for me, and I never seem to tire of reflecting on these changes. A year has passed and I’m not just stronger and fitter. I’m happier, calmer, more confident. And it isn’t just because I’ve lost 100 pounds. The 100 pounds gone are more of a happy side effect. The happiness, calm, and confidence come from how I’ve learned to push myself physically, and how I’ve learned to practice a healthy discipline when it comes to eating. Learning both of these things has been so good for me. They haven’t been easy. I still have my days where the last thing I want to do is move my body, and days where the binging takes over. But over and over, I’m able to come back to my healthy disciplines, and doing so has changed the inside of my head and the outside of my body.

I value both, but I think it is my head which has changed my life the most. I never, but never, would have thought a year ago that my head could be in such a healthy place. The last time I saw her, my psychiatrist said that of all her bipolar patients, I was the most stable one with the healthiest lifestyle. She talked about how unusual it was for a bipolar patient to eat as well as I do and exercise as much as I do now. She said that these lifestyle changes of mine had changed my energy substantially for the better, given me a calm that she’d never sensed from me before. I want to keep at these lifestyle changes. I’m eager to see where another year will take me.