But every morning, I went out again.
After a few weeks, I added short workouts while she napped—squats beside the couch, exercises on the living-room rug, anything I could stop the moment she woke.
I also started paying more attention to what I ate. I wasn’t starving myself. I simply planned meals instead of surviving on crackers and whatever Ryan had left in the refrigerator.
Progress came painfully slowly.
Sometimes I lost two pounds in a week. Other times, the scale showed the same number for three straight weeks.
Ryan always seemed interested.
“How much now?” he asked one Saturday as I came out of the bathroom.
“Eleven pounds.”
He smiled. “See? Wasn’t so hard.”
Another week, when I told him nothing had changed, he only said, “Huh,” and returned to his phone.
I hated how much that tiny reaction bothered me.
Still, I kept going.
Around the same time, Ryan started coming home later.
