Exercise!

Yay! Exercise! I forgot how good and proud of yourself you feel after completing a workout session. I've pretty much started at a beginner's level again just because it's been so long that I've lost what little endurance I had acquired. I did my elliptical machine (good old Steely Dan) for a good strong pace for thirty minutes. Then I did two sets of twenty with my resistance band to work out that flabby part of the back of my arms (triceps, right?) Then I got down on the floor and did two sets of twenty crunches. Sebastian was overjoyed by the fact that I was down on the floor at his level and assumed I was down there to play with him. He attacked my head (he’s in a hair chewing phase and assumes my ponytail is a doggy chew toy) while I was doing my sit ups. That totally adds a whole new dimension to a crunch when you have three pounds of naughty little dog hanging off the back of your head!

Know Your Eating Habits

The following was on my Yahoo page the other day when I logged on: YAHOO GENERAL HEALTH TIP: Broth-based soups are a great way to fill up with few calories. Research shows that when you start a meal with a broth-based soup, especially one swimming with vegetables, you'll likely consume about 100 fewer calories at that meal. No, I’ll just likely consume soup in addition to the meal I would have eaten anyway. I just don’t work in a way that would make that tip helpful. I wish I were but I tend to be the type of person who eats whatever is put in front of her until it’s all gone. I clean my plate, people! Add on top of that the fact that if I don’t make an effort to track what I eat, then I begin to graze throughout the day without realizing just how much I’m taking in. I’ll think that I ate sensible meals and am on track but I’ll conveniently forget that I ate Hershey Miniatures all day in between those meals. Then I’ll get frustrated and wonder why I’m not losing weight or worse, why I’m gaining. Things that aren’t pre-portioned out for me pose the biggest challenge. I can eat one packaged sugar free Popsicle and be fine but open candy dishes, jars of nuts, and cans of whipped cream are harder because it’s easier to fudge on the correct serving size. (Ummm, fudge!) Anyways… I’ve gone back to weighing, measuring and counting my food so that I can get back to eating correctly sized portions. Already I feel less bloated and not so lethargic. I’m sure a lot of that good feeling is just because it feels so nice to be back on track!

Weigh To Go! …Kinda, Maybe, Sorta, I Don’t Know. Part 3

So I woke up this morning and miraculously I feel better than I have felt for the past few weeks. I went to work and was going to leave for my doctor’s appointment anyways but decided to cancel because I really wasn’t feeling too bad anymore. No sore throat this morning, no hacking cough. It’s like my body found out that I had threatened to take it to the doctor’s and decided to kick out any lingering sick germies overnight while I was sleeping. I really didn’t want to take time off from work for the doctor to tell me that I was at the tail end of a cold and that it should clear up soon. So in the end, no evil doctor’s scale for me! There was my evil little bathroom scale this morning however. It said that I’m at 160.2 pounds (72.82 kilos) down from 161.7 pounds (73.5 kilos). That means it took me a whole friggin’ month to lose 1.5 pounds (.68 kilos)! I’m glad for any loss but I really had hoped to see the 150’s at this point and I think that my goal to lose 15 pounds before April 30th might just be undoable at this point. The sad thing is I was probably in the 150’s for the majority of this month and on schedule for reaching this mini-goal until I started eating like a maniac the past few weeks. Oh, and here’s the weird thing! I’m into my size 10 jeans as the 11’s were getting too big. The 10 jeans are very tight but the fabric does have a lot of give, so who knows, maybe my ass and stomach have stretched them out to size 11’s! I would like to say that this phenomenon can be explained by exercise and that I have built muscle and lost fat and that the numbers just don’t show this glorious conversion but I can’t lie to myself. I have done less exercise this month than any of the other months so far. Maybe it’s the opposite effect; maybe my muscles have atrophied from lying on the couch for 20 of the 24 hours out of the day, everyday, for the past few weeks. Who knows what’s going on… Anyways, here I am at 160 still. I have gotten to this weight before and then gained back. This seems to be that weight where I need to really start pushing myself to keep losing but I often end up losing momentum and then start going back up. Do you guys have a weight where it seems that it’s as low as you can reach and then to move past that number takes Herculean efforts? Mine has proven in the past and still seems to be 160. The thing is I can’t say that my body wants to naturally stay around 160 or even try to call 160 a plateau. I know that my body needs to weigh a lot less than 160. I know that it isn’t a plateau where I’m on track, doing everything right, and just not seeing results that should be there. It’s more that I’ve slipped in being disciplined, I’m making less effort and I just don’t have that extra push in me. I think I start to fizzle out from pushing to get this far right when I reach a point that requires a doubling of effort. Don’t worry I’m not giving up; I’m just trying to figure out this pattern so that I don’t get emotionally discouraged. Right now is about that time where I start thinking, “I can’t do this!” So I’m going to start telling myself, “Yes, you can!” This may be concerning matters of the body but it’s going to take the power of the mind to get past this and succeed.

Last Cold Of The Winter, Continued

Ok, so I have broken down and made an appointment with my doctor for this stupid cold that is still bothering me. It’s been like three weeks, people! I hate going to the doctor and it takes a lot to get me in. I hate that it requires taking off work and driving to the other side of town. I hate sitting in that germ infested waiting room and playing “Guess what sickness that is” by listening to the sound of the hacking cough coming out of the person sitting three feet away from me. I hate the fact that even if the magazines weren’t covered in God knows what kind of nasty germies, they’re all from August of 2003 so I wouldn’t read them anyway. I hate that the nurse weighs me and tells me not to bother taking off my shoes not knowing that she’s forcing me to violate my rule of half-nekkid, empty stomach and bladder, once a month weigh ins! I hate that when you get to the individual waiting room there’s that biohazard box full of needles reminding me of how I’m totally scared of getting a shot. I hate that when the doctor does come in, he always turns out to be young and cute and then I have to lift my shirt up so he can listen to my heartbeat and I’m thinking about how nice the view of my fat rolls and love handles must be for him. Ok, I could go on and on but those are my basic reasons for avoiding the doctor’s! Yet for all my avoidance of seeing my doctor, I sometimes can get a little hypochondriac-like about the littlest aches and pains. Note the following: Ache in my foot? It must be bone spurs! Wait, don’t you actually have to exercise and move around a lot to get a bone spur? Yes… but you never know! And so goes the thought process of my silly little brain. So how did I come to the conclusion that like it or not, I better go in? Well, I was watching a really fascinating program on the brain and how it works. They were showing this teenager who had strep throat that he had let go untreated and then it spread to his brain and resulted in his displaying Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Well, I am prone to strep and have had a sore throat on and off for a few weeks now. Instantly, some crazy little part of my brain was like, “Shit! That’s it, I’m going to the doctor because knowing my luck I would totally end up with OCD!” Yes, I know that’s really far fetched and stupid. Don’t worry; you don’t have to tell me I’m silly, I already know! Regardless of how crazy my reason why, I broke down and made my appointment for tomorrow, the 28th, which coincidentally happens to be my weigh in day. Therefore, I’ll be weighing in tomorrow morning before my appointment and I’ll just be ignoring whatever the doctor’s scale tells me. Aren’t medical files permanent, though? If only I could get her to write my number in the chart instead of her evil scale’s!

On Being Happy

Have you all read Purl’s post? Basically she posed the question of how happy are you with your life and are you remembering that happiness often enough? I really wanted to write about this because it’s something I always put a lot of thought into. As Purl’s post said, she once read that women need three things in life (she added a fourth) to be happy but we just don’t ever get all of these things at one time and so always feel that something is missing. Those things are apartment, job, boyfriend, (and added by Purl) health. So I thought I’d go down the list of things. Apartment – I live in a house that I love because it’s our first home together. However we are trying to move because we’d like to be closer to both our families and to live back in the area that we both grew up in. Where we live now is kind of remote and going to a store, work, or anywhere is always a real hassle. We’re just waiting to see what the housing market is going to do before we make any big decisions. It’s hard to make big financial changes also because as a grad student I don’t have a steady career yet which brings me to… Job – I’m in school getting my practicum hours and so I know that the career I’m preparing for will be satisfying. (It’s good to know that all this hard work was in the right direction!) Currently as a job, I work for a non-profit agency so even though I don’t really love my job I love doing it because I think it makes a direct impact on people’s lives. I don’t have much longer in my position because it is grant funded and in the non-profit world it’s hard to figure out where the next dollar will come from. So we’ll see where I end up in a couple of months. Boyfriend – Or in my case, husband. I love my boy, I’ve known him for a long time and we have a great friendship in addition to our relationship. We seem to be very opposite personalities but the basic core of us is where we connect and the differences between us make for fun and interesting times. Health – This is both mental and physical. I have to admit that out of all areas in my life, this is the only one that presents a pressing concern for me. It always has. I am always trying to figure out exactly how much my weight factors into my life. Some days I feel guilty that so much of my emotions and energy are consumed by it. There are many other facets to who I am as a person but I do admit that my weight has an influence on me daily. I’d have to say that I have three out of these four things going good for me and I’m working on the fourth. I notice that the majority of these areas of my life are in transition. We’re anxious to move, my job is facing the unknown and my body and self-image are constantly under change. Yet the uncertain nature of home and job don’t worry me like body image. I guess three out of four isn’t too bad, especially when I’m dedicated to working on it. I guess my long rambling point is that I’m happy, I really am very grateful for everything I have. It’s nice to be able to post about this because I like to remind myself that although things may be up in the air and unpredictable, I’m enjoying this adventure called life!

A Bump In The Road

Well, last post I said that I would be getting back on that horse. Unfortunately I didn’t get on in a blaze of glory and gallop away down the trail of success. Instead, I half-heartedly heaved my big butt on to the poor, tired horse, slumped forward over the saddle and then proceeded to tumble right off at the first bump on the trail. My eating hasn’t been utterly despicable; it’s just that it hasn’t been regulated. I’ve pretty much been sticking to the foods that I normally eat except that I’ve been grazing all day and late into the evening; any food, no matter how healthy, cannot be good for you if eaten in large quantities. For instance, J-ello sugar free chocolate pudding cups are great snacks. They’re low in fat, carbs and are only 60 calories a serving. Except the whole health aspect goes out the window if you eat six in a row with half a can of whipped cream. The same is true of almonds. They’re believed to lower cholesterol and be heart friendly. Yet they’re not figure friendly if you shovel handful after handful into your mouth and then realize you’ve demolished half the can of them. Or another example is baby carrots. Crisp and healthy and naturally sweet but not great for you if you dip them in buttermilk ranch dressing and polish off half a bag. I have so much going on right now with playing catch up after that bad cold and the great Cheesecake Factory Incident of 2006. I’m trying to makeup work and time and am facing deadlines at my job, trying to do laundry and other housework, studying for midterms and writing two papers for school. All my energy is going to other things and so the eating and exercising are getting only slight attention at best. I’m not giving up however! I need to get things organized and settled down a bit and then I’ll be back in it. I just need to get through this week without eating like a mad woman and then I can saddle up!

A Different Kind Of Sick

Boy, what a crappy weekend after the crappy week I’ve had! The cold that I had really took it out of me. I actually still have traces of it lingering with me. Sometimes I get sick and I get well enough to resume normal life but I don’t quite shake the cold completely. This is one of those colds. Yet the cold was nothing compared to what happened yesterday. I don’t know if it was food poisoning or if it was my body’s reaction to a week of small amounts of food and then large amounts of crappy eating but I spent yesterday sick as a dog. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for my dad’s birthday. I love me some Cheesecake Factory! I indulged in the taquito appetizers, the honey oat bread with lots of butter and then dove head first into my Chicken Thai Pasta. Then we went back to my mom and dad’s house where we ate the double layer double chocolate cake I had made for my dad. I also had a few Twinkies. It was wonderful and decadent and a prelude to disaster. How do I say this delicately without grossing you all out? Everything I ate yesterday came right back up. It was horrible, awful, indescribable! I hate to throw up more than anything! I will fight it, even if I know it would make me feel better, just to avoid it. Yet yesterday, there was no controlling it. I was sick several times and then had to make the thirty minute car drive from my mom and dad’s house to my own, seat laid down and moaning and groaning the whole way. On top of everything, my mom had sent half the cake home for my husband and that’s all I could smell the whole ride home. It was the longest car ride ever. Yuck! I woke up this morning feeling like I had just received a major ass kicking and surprisingly hungry as all get out. I wonder who else would have food poisoning all night and then wake up hungry the next day. I guess I am never long deterred from my passion for food! You know how some people eat something and if sickness coincides with the eating of that food, they no longer like that food? My dad developed an aversion to Hot Doritos after eating them right before he came down with the flu. My sister got food poisoning off of jalapeno poppers and will now no longer touch the suckers. Me? I don’t blame the food; even after yesterday, I will still continue to love Cheesecake Factory food, chocolate cake and Twinkies. Any other time where I have been sick, the food remains my friend. I don’t know, it’s a gift, a curse, an oddity so typical me. Well, I'm off to take a midterm exam that I am woefully unprepared for. Tomorrow I'm going to gather myself together and as my lovely blogger buddies jen and alea put it, "get back on that horse". Blog to you later!

Undercover Lynne

Thanks for the well wishes guys! Your comments make me feel better! I really intended to do some exercise today but I am just so sick! I actually feel very frustrated because I’m impatient to start. I’m trying to get myself up to the next level of this whole weight loss thing. I want to feel strong and healthy, I want to see some muscle in my body and to start challenging myself physically. Also, I’ll admit this to you guys, I have a vanity reason to start kicking it up. My first year wedding anniversary is April 30th. That’s less than two months away! On my wedding day I weighed 136 and I know that I won’t get back down to that weight before the 30th. I would have to lose 13 pounds in March and another 13 in April and I think that’s an unrealistic goal to set. I’m going to try my best though to take off at least another 15 before the end of April and I would like to think that if on our anniversary I tried my wedding dress on, I could at least get it on even if I can’t zip it up. I’m looking at our wedding pictures hanging on the wall in front of me right now and I still am puzzled by how I let myself get this heavy again. I would love to look like the girl in the photos right now! She’s only 10 pounds away from goal weight, not the 25 I’m facing right now. I’m thinking that you guys would probably like to see pictures too so that you know what I’m talking about. I feel weird about just posting out to the internet for all to see but I have no qualms about sharing specifically with my blogger buddies. So here’s my idea if you’re willing to indulge my paranoid secretiveness. I’d love to be able to e-mail you some photos of myself if you’re at all interested in seeing them. My digital camera has gone kaput but I think I can find some pics of me at my heaviest, near my current weight now, at my wedding, and at my thinnest to send. Just drop me a few lines at lynne2lean@yahoo.com and I’ll send those to you! Tell me about yourself, who are you, where do you live? I love e-mails and I’d love to hear from those of you reading. (Sorry about the whole James Bond 007 setup just to see a few pictures of my fat and don’t worry, this post won’t self-destruct!)

Last Cold of The Winter?

I had a great time on Friday night. I had a margarita, about three quarters of my chimmichanga, some chips and salsa, grapes for dessert and then three Girl Scout Thin Mints cookies. Not too bad, a more than reasonable meal for anyone and a success for me! Even better is the fact that I had this meal on Friday night and then didn't spin out of control into a full on weeklong binge. My eating has been very healthy and I really haven't eaten very much since Friday. I can't take full credit for this sudden expression of willpower though. I woke up Saturday morning with a really nasty cold. A sore throat is about the only thing that can deter me from eating! As I mentioned in my last post, I had these great plans about starting an exercise regiment. I have this next week off from both work and school for spring break. I never get time off like this so I thought it would be the perfect week to get my exercise program down and practice being consistent with it. I was even considering trying some running, weather permitting. Instead, I woke up Saturday morning feeling yucky and now here it is Monday and I still can’t shake feeling sick. I have a cough, stuffy nose, sore throat and I get out of breath getting off the couch. I’m just not feeling a lean, mean exercising machine. I think I’ll baby me today with medicine and hot tea and maybe try some exercise tomorrow.

Viva Mexican Food

We’re going to dinner with my mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law and my little nephew tonight. We’re going out for Mexican food and I figure I’m not going to worry about the nutritional value of a chimmichanga or a margarita. Sometimes you sit in agony over should I eat or should I not eat? Sometimes you stress about making good choices and avoid the chips and salsa and ask for no cheese on your meal because it shaves off at least a few calories. Then there are times where you just decide to go and eat and have a good time and you don’t feel guilty about it. You just enjoy a fun Friday night out with the people you love. I’m looking forward to good food and a lot of laughs tonight with a crapload of exercise tomorrow!

Now If Only I Can Get The Paranoia To-Go

I went to lunch with my friend this week at Claim Jumpers. Are you guys familiar with this place and the unholy portion sizes they serve? They are famous for serving gigantic, oversized meals that are a challenge for even the fattest fatty to finish. They have a six-layer chocolate cake they call The Motherlode and a mother-f###ing load it is! Whoo, what a beauty! Anyways… I was a good girl and had their gigantic house salad. Not the lowest in fat or calories that you can get but at least it wasn’t their chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes, biscuit and vat o’ gravy (which is what I really wanted!) My friend ordered the bread bowl of potato and cheddar soup and bowtie pasta with chicken. While the waitress took our order, my friend asked if we could also get a cheeseburger and fries to go. Then my friend paused for a second and added, “for my fiancé”. She looked at me and smiled and I smiled back because we both knew we were thinking the same thing. This skinny ass little waitress might think that the chubby girls in the corner booth not only ordered a full meal each but they also got a second one to-go, you know, as a snack to split for the ride home. I very highly doubt that the waitress would have assumed that this second meal was also for us to eat. I bet she gets requests like this all the time and would never have given it a moment of thought. I think that feeling it’s necessary to clarify that the meal is for someone else results from the experience of having actually secretly ordered a second meal for yourself. See, I have actually gone through a drive-thru and ordered so much food for myself that I have to try and pass it off like it’s for two people. I’ve actually ordered a meal and then said, “I’ll also have a combo # such and such… oh wait, (mumbling loudly to myself) he didn’t want onions… Can you make sure that doesn’t have any onions?” As if to say to the drive-thru worker, “I may be alone in this car but I’m also ordering for somebody at home.” Although it’s been a long while since an eating binge like this, I’ve done it enough in the past for me to still feel paranoid that someone might find out that all that food is just for my fat self. So much to the point that even when really honestly ordering food for someone else, the paranoia still lingers. My friend’s clarification of “it’s for my fiancé” suggests that she has had the same experience also. Even though the cheeseburger really truly was for her fiancé there is still that compulsion to explain it anyways so that no one thinks you’re a fat girl eating a disgusting amount of food. My friend and I didn’t discuss the situation; there was no need. Sometimes fatgirl experience transcends the need for language or explanation. Our smiles to each other pretty much said it all.

Forced Exercise

We spent this weekend putting our backyard in. The past two weeks of standing outside in dirt and rock and begging Sebastian to go potty got me to thinking that it would be nice to have some grass and flowers to look at while I’m out there. My husband did the pick axing and sprinkler laying but I didn’t shy away from getting in there and getting dirty to help move things along. I carried sod, bags of rocks, stone pavers and stone planter edgers. I was out there on my hands and knees digging holes and planting plants. I really gave it my all because I wanted to just be done with it. If you knew what a big sissy I am about getting dirty then you’d really be impressed by all this! So after a whole weekend of that, can I tell you how sore I am today? My arms, legs, and back are killing me! It even hurts to laugh or breathe because my stomach muscles are so sore. That was the best workout I have had in a long, long time! Right now Purl is kicking ass in Boot Camp where they do straight up hard core exercises like they’d make you do if you had enlisted, which got me to thinking, wouldn’t it be awesome if there were a Yard Work Camp too? Everyday you would show up at someone’s house and the goal would be to put in their yard, all with the motivation of some guy yelling at you like a drill sergeant. It would be really intense too, like we’d have to do lunges with bags of potting soil lifted above our heads or we would run wind sprints while pushing a wheel barrow full of rocks, or we’d have to dig sprinkler trenches while the Yard Sergeant yells, “You call that shoveling, Maggot?” in your face. The only break you would get would be a drink from the garden hose. If there really were such a thing as Yard Work Camp I would totally sign up, I had no idea that gardening had the potential to whip your ass in shape!

Exhausted

Is it possible to lose weight from chasing an adorable but spoiled rotten little dog all over your house? Between potty training, sleepless nights, and teaching Sebastian that the house and myself are not personal chewtoys, I have managed to be constantly moving and I swear it's resulted in losing at least two more pounds since Tuesday. Wish me luck with the two-pound terror that is my puppy!

Weigh To Go! Part 2

So yesterday was my second weigh in and things went well! I'm down 6.5 pounds (2.73 kilos)! That takes me to a current weight of 161.7 lb or 73.18 kilos! Also, in perhaps an even bigger milestone, I'm wearing my size 11 US jeans! As you can tell from the exclamation marks, I'm pretty excited! I had to double check the math for a second because I didn't believe it at first but I've lost 17.2 lbs (7.73 kilos) since the holidays. Doesn't that sound like a lot? It sounds like a lot to me too! It doesn't look like that big of a difference on me, I look less bloated and more comfortable in my clothes, but I still look kind of flabby. I'm not trying to bitch about a loss, believe me, but last time I was 160 I was a much more fit, shapely 160. This time around I have a lot less tone and so it makes me feel fatter perhaps than I am. Is this making any sense? I just think that it shows that while I've been fantastic about the eating right I haven't been good about the exercise. My exercising is sort of sporadic at best. I get a day or two in and then life happens and I go for a few days without stirring more than a few feet from my desk and couch. I also think that as wonderful as cardio is, it can't solve all your problems. I think that it's time that I start doing some strength training to shape up my muscles. Ha! Look at me talking about adding weight training into my exercise regiment when I can't even be consistent with simple cardio. I know that it's time to start doing it though. I think I've just come to the realization that it's better to be a fit and toned 160 than a skinny fat.