I Lost 10lbs in Two Weeks

When I worked on staff for women’s magazines, there would often be promises screaming from the cover on ‘How to drop a dress size in 2 weeks!’. It was a tantalising idea to think that before the next issue came out, you could be a whole dress size down. But, in all the time I tried to drop the dress size, I don’t remember losing anything more than a couple of pounds.

I’ve grown up a lot since then. I dismissed the idea of quick or instant results and have focused instead on consistent effort over time. For me, that meant losing weight and then maintaining that weight loss, which would mean coming away from years of diets, restrictive and disordered eating and yo-yoing weight.

A year ago, I changed my entire fitness routine, moving from home workouts to the weights room at the gym. I’m 48 and I’ve seen the data on how important it is to maintain lean muscle as you enter peri-menopause and, with long-term health as my primary goal, I made the switch.

I bench 26kg, use a 30kg barbell for hip thrusts and RDLs and I leg press 95kg. I have felt myself getting stronger. I can feel the pump, I have felt my body changing but, as I wrote here, not in the way I was hoping.

My weight had crept up by seven pounds, my legs felt and looked chunkier, not muscular and I felt thick around the middle. Even though things weren’t moving in the direction I wanted, I was committed to the process.

That was until I had to take a forced break. Not just from the gym, but from eating too.

A few weeks ago, I had gum graft surgery. It’s a surgery that requires taking skin grafts from your soft palate onto areas of gum recession. In my case, several rounds of cosmetic dentistry, meant that my front four bottom teeth were in dire need of surgical intervention.

With so much having happened in my mouth, I was on a soft food diet and, for the first time in my life, eating was an inconvenience. I didn’t look forward to it and wanted it to be over as quickly as possible. For a couple of years now, I’ve been volume eating, packing plates and bowls full of nutritionally dense foods that give me a lot of flavour, variety and protein without pushing my calories up. The switch from a giant chicken salad to cheesy scrambled eggs, mashed up and eaten with chopsticks was a big shift.

Now, for clarity, I am not saying that adopting a soft food, highly restrictive diet is in any way advisable. It is not. Outside of the context of dental surgery, it’s dangerous. And, it’s why those ridiculous magazine cover lines are long-gone.

In fact, when I knew I was having my surgery and couldn’t exercise for a couple of weeks, I did panic a little bit. I had been so diligent about fitting in my workouts and had only missed two sessions in seven months. The gym being completely off limits was a really strange thought.

Five days after the surgery, I started to feel all that ‘pump’ deflate. My legs, which I was training regularly, drained their stored energy and water and where they had felt swollen and tight, they started to feel a bit more limber. I could cross my legs comfortably again. I also noticed soreness beginning to fade and the feeling of heaviness slowly drain away. In addition, the volume on the persistent pain in my hip was getting quieter by the day.

Read the rest of this piece for the full reflection on midlife strength training, bio-individuality, and find out what actually suits your body…