In the last stage my chest went from feeling like fatty man-tits to smaller cupcakes of fat atop solid muscle, now interestingly it’s all blended together into some gel pack-feeling mass.
Just a bit of reclined back to my chair and there’s no pressure between the bottom of my stomach and my lap attempting to occupy the same space, I don’t think I had even noticed that as a distinct thing.
I can’t wear extra large gym shorts anymore, even with fresh elastic they just start out too loose.
Oh, huh, once you get the fat off to notice, I’ve built decent pecs.
Okay the bottom edge of the stomach has continued to firm and by now it’s a solid shell. Perhaps I should have waited until now to mark the transition to “plain overweight”. Oh well.
wait so why are you losing so much weight? you got a parasite or something?
Long covid. Which doesn’t itself make me lose weight, but somehow screws with the way I draw energy from blood sugar and eaten food so I don’t get enough and I’m slumped fatigued, but by taking creatine I can boost anaerobic energy generation enough to compensate. Anaerobic generation is when your body extracts energy from breaking down stored fat and I’m using a lot of it.
From all the signs and patterns I’ve experienced so far, I think the energy issues – and thus the weight loss from compensating for then – will end in time to leave me weighing somewhat less than unmarked normie “average” (which is by now itself probably below the actual average weight of the population) but to a minor, “slim and fit” degree, currently I put myself as solidly overweight – not on the “fat” or “average” side of that, but only going down.
Yeah part of saying that weight loss is like a matryoshka doll of fatness is it keeps feeling like I “drain the pool” of loose fat around a harder central mass, am left with that alone, and then within days that softens to a looser periphery around a firmer core, and then…
And so yeah, at this point the core is the thicker “spare tire” around the very bottom of the stomach, and the entirety of the old “top roll of fat” is loose periphery to be lost.
Getting harder for me to call out “landmarks” coming up because it’s been so long since I was this thin (and had no muscle) I don’t remember much about from here on and what “surfaces” next.
Just now, the feeling of sitting back in my chair and crossing my arms across my chest atop my stomach – not the feel of torso on arm or vice versa but the whole gestalt of my overall distribution of mass and force – that’s something I haven’t felt since childhood.
Yeah, the overall sensation of existing in my body now is one that I associate with “being a little kid”, that’s something.
See I’ve been in this body a while, I know what it is and how it feels, and I put my hands on my stomach and I’m like “no, this is a half-size cardboard novelty prop, what the fuck?”
Looking down my body, the swell of the stomach is distinctly shallower in arc than it used to be. Not shallow, yet, maybe “medium”.
Just now, the feeling of sitting back in my chair and crossing my arms across my chest atop my stomach – not the feel of torso on arm or vice versa but the whole gestalt of my overall distribution of mass and force – that’s something I haven’t felt since childhood.
I suppose one cause of all the aerobic energy issues could be that something in the chain is limiting the amount of oxygen to make it into my bloodstream to react with blood sugar in the first place. Early in the plague when we had waves of death in Boston and NYC you heard about effects on the alveolar tissue. In trying to figure things out I got a sphygmomanometer and blood sugar testing strips but nothing to measure oxygenation, though.
But I mean you can’t just take enough creatine you completely sideline aerobic and don’t need to breathe, can you? Can pearl divers use it for more endurance?
My chest, at least, is now fairly broad and solid under a padding of fat like a pre-80s male lead, even my for feeling fat shirts are fairly tight now and I was like christ, has it really grown that much? but I guess all the maul swinging was building my back too in a way that doesn’t show up as much in the mirror or to my touch.
The tight fit is different though, you feel it in different areas and some of it is like “wait, I actually don’t mind if it plasters tight to that part for display”
My chest, at least, is now fairly broad and solid under a padding of fat like a pre-80s male lead, even my for feeling fat shirts are fairly tight now and I was like christ, has it really grown that much? but I guess all the maul swinging was building my back too in a way that doesn’t show up as much in the mirror or to my touch.
Huh as the stomach fat continues to retreat I’m noticing a band not equivalent to the old “bottom roll of fat” but maybe coincident with the bottom 2/3 of it that’s not receding as fast as the rest, this might be the “spare tire” I’m left with as the more barrel-abdominal stuff ends.
So it turns out that inside every fat man there’s a matryoshka stack of successively smaller – but still fat! – men trying to get out.
The bottom edge of the stomach is now firmed and tightened up enough it not only doesn’t fold down over the skin crease to lie against the skin below, it actively stands away from the torso.
Kinda counterintuitive (“my belt is too tight since I lost weight!”), but I think I need pants with a narrower waist so I don’t have to cinch the belt this tightly to keep them from falling down.
The top side of the stomach has felt smooth like a baby’s bottom for a week.
I don’t know what that is, months ago rubbing it would exfoliate it. Maybe somehow related to the usually blemish-inducing shrinking of the skin where it creates smaller new bottom layers?
Alright, went to clean up the lower backyard, do more grass weeding in the side yard, then went to finish smashing Blueberry Hill but I’m closer to the energy limits of my creatine dose and it was another tease, only halfway. Then I blocked some parking spaces for the crew coming tomorrow (at 8 AM!) to get up around power lines and trim the last untouched tree on the property.
Good enough. (Putting those up, my pajama trunks were constantly falling off my ass – even if the elastic’s still good at the waist size I had been wearing these at, it’s no good)
