The box of iron pills and creatine capsules I take with me when I’m not sure I’m going to be home in time for the next dose

Feels like my belly is going from an overstuffed bag to a merely stuffed one

Huh, it’s very faint, but my fingers can feel traces of the musculature underlying the fat of the upper belly now. (Well, it can feel my fingers.) Last time that was clear was elementary school, no idea what it’ll look like now.

Think the belly’s receding back to merely “stuffed” from “overstuffed”, it’s becoming a single mass tarped over by the skin without any of the further bulges upon that

kontextmaschine:

Within the week gonna go down to 4 scoops creatine/day, which is where I was before the 7th case echoes boosted it, so, progress

In earlier occurrences I tried to step down as soon as I could.

As this is winding down and I can project the ending won’t send me emaciated, I figure that yeah, I’ll take a bit more weight loss instead of my internal processes slowing down overnight until I take a new dose in the morning, so I’ll hold off stepping down until I’m just barely starting to feel drag in the morning when I wake up and refresh the dose

A big milestone today was when I woke up, got active, and then had to take a shit before creatine

The flank sides of the lower belly are contracting now. I’m losing love handles.

eightyonekilograms:

As these new weight loss drugs emerge you’re going to see a strange-bedfellows alliance between the “all weight control attempts are fatphobia” people and the “you have to WORK and SUFFER for weight loss or it doesn’t count” people, trying to get rid of them. But they’re going to get fucking streamrolled, because at the end of the day this is something a lot of people want very badly (and because it’s going to make certain pharma companies a metric fuckton of money).

Yeah I’m not sure what to think about the way I went through a period of genuinely miraculous weight loss right when they put that in a pill

Alright, when I went from “fat” to just “overweight” at the end of last month it was the fat side of overweight, basically everywhere but the belly was drained of fat, the pecs grew more (recall that as I do all this smashing with an 11lb maul, increased testosterone is boosting my muscle growth like steroids) drawing shirts tighter and I had to cinch in my belt even more to hold up my pants

With the result that even more than when I was fatter, I felt like just a big projecting belly walking around. I suspect that when I first reached this point about, aah, late in 5th grade, it had been increasingly sensorally prominent but continuing to gain weight had actually made that sense recede and register as addressed

But that’s starting to resolve as I continue to slim. Basically all of the belly is firm as if lashed down on deck now except for an increasingly narrow lip at the bottom edge that is basically the only grabbable flesh on the body now, I’m gonna project that firming up as the dividing line between the “fat side of” and median overweightness.

Seems to be a cycle like

1. I lose weight
2. The “water level” of my flesh recedes, exposing beyond the general swelling of the belly specific banks of fat deposit as if lying upon the surface of a general bulk
3. I lose more weight
4. They recede, smoothing out the underflesh mass
5. My next layer of skin is produced smaller, tightening everything up
6. Repeat

Have lost enough weight that ironically my belly looks more prominent in a side view, not rising from an otherwise plush torso, it’s the bulk of where fat deposits remain to be lost from

So, I’ve passed the point I had identified as the dividing line between “fat” and “overweight”, when standing up none of the lower edge of the belly folds over onto the skin at all, and the crease is fully open to air (it feels different from inside too, like a burden I’m suddenly not bearing), for the first time in my adult life.

It was not my intention for this to line up with my 40th birthday but damn, what a present.

I’m of course now at the fattest edge of “overweight”, though by the time this course of creatine resolves I might be nearer the “average” edge.

Oh huh, I’ve been having to swallow air to try to generate a burp to try and bring along air that’s already stuck down there, I remember that from childhood. I think that’s related to the same loose seal to the digestive tract that causes acid reflux, maybe removing the weight of the belly made it an issue again.

The lower edge of my belly, while not completely firmed up yet, feels like increasingly firm forms of not-firmness, rn it’s around “natural rubber”

Oh, hey, my belly tautening up makes it a much better drumhead to slap drums on

As I feel my belly shrink once again reminded of the weirdness that when you lose weight you really mostly lose it as the carbon that was broken off from other elements for the energy the bond represented and then exhaled as CO2 and not replaced

Looked at myself head-on wearing a hoodie I’ve had for a decade+ and yeah between the weight loss from the belly and the built up chest I’ve never looked this flat and broad. This is nuts.

You know, if you asked me to work up a scenario where for no particular reason I lost all the weight that had defined my entire life experience, I’m a good enough scriptwriter I think I’d eventually hit on the creatine-compensating-for-aerobic-energy thing, because that’s totally what it feels like, some made up bullshit there to serve the premise

It first struck all at once when I was in my bedroom at the end of the night, I struggled to bed, fell asleep, and was still so weak on waking my resting breath didn’t completely cycle the air in my lungs, so I manually took deep breaths.

That made me feel marginally better so I tried hyperventilating, that made me feel marginally better yet, enough to struggle to the kitchen.

I grabbed a few chunks of dried pineapple to eat and that made me even marginally better still, but I was still absolutely feeble.

I had a clever generalist’s understanding of things, though.

“Huh, more oxygen helps… more blood sugar helps… but even together they’re not enough. This sounds like an issue with aerobic energy generation.”

And I knew that creatine enables anaerobic energy generation from fat, which can be drawn on when energy demand exceeds aerobic capacity, and I had some on hand and I thought “may as well try”, so moving as if gravity was 3 times as strong I took a few scoops in a cup of water, shook it up, gulped down, a few minutes later I did in fact feel better so I did it again and I was back to normal.

And then I mad scientist laughed my ass off, I’m extremely proud of that one, made me feel like Batman reasoning his way out of the Riddler’s trap.

Like a week ago was like “haha, looks like I’m in a boss battle with the status of ‘fat’ now”, it hasn’t gone exactly as I expected.

What of the belly had been two distinct “rolls” of fat, upper and lower (and at heaviest phases leaned towards four quadrants) had, as I lost weight, ceased to be divided by any crease of skin but I could still feel (and grab) some distinction underneath.

The top had ceased to bulge out from the surrounding torso and sloped more directly, and I was expecting the bottom edge, the only deposit of fat still baggy and grabbable, to follow.

It hasn’t yet but instead what there still was of the fatty top-level mass has melted back into the broader torso, there’s maybe a pad of fat beneath where the stomach rises smoothly from the (quite broad now) chest.

So let’s say that was a mid-stage boss that changes color and retreats to be the stage boss when you beat it.

I’m still overweight – hell, I’m still fat – now, but every step for a while now is thinner than I’ve ever been in my adult life, and working out from under a 6-creatine scoop energy deficit I’ve got momentum

Wildly itchy and blemishy skin showing up at the top of the belly