Acceptance

A few ideas from different sources have recently converged in my brain. They haven't all quite congealed into a cohesive thought, but they're trying.

I rode a Segway for the first time at The Next HOPE in New York. Upon seeing the pictures Aaron took of me, my first thought was, "Look how puffy my arms are!" Only secondarily were ideas of a.) how much fun it was to ride a Segway, or b.) how awesome it was to wear a cute girly-cut shirt, because I can now.

Aaron and I had dinner and drinks with a couple in NYC whom we hadn't seen in person in about four years. Their first comment to us was, "You're so slim!" Sure, I've lost 30 pounds since I saw them last, but Aaron's lost over twice that much. Mentally, I just assumed that his massive weight loss was making us as a couple look thinner. Hey, I'll take what I can get!

I watched a TED talk last night (via Whore of All the Earth) about happiness. In a nutshell, psychologist Dan Gilbert posits that the human brain has the capability to synthesize happiness. It comes off like sour grapes... until he relates the results of an experiment with amnesiacs, which supports the hypothesis that this is an innate function of the human brain, rather than a conscious decision to just be happy with what one has.

I related an incident to my Weight Watchers meeting today, one that happened a few months back, in which a co-worker asked me, "So, have you always been overweight?" Rarely have I witnessed the entire meeting room being so taken aback. They all insisted that the comments were harassment, that I should contact HR — but I disagree. At the time, I actually didn't think much of that particular comment, and merely responded that, yes, I have always been overweight.

I've had a hard time wrapping my head around the Fat Acceptance movement — not because I think weight should be a reason to discriminate, but because I've always been overweight, and have wanted to be a "normal" weight instead. I have a hard time accepting myself at the size I am, whether it's 80 pounds overweight or just 20 or 25. I can't imagine — literally can't fathom — being obese and seriously happy about it, or even OK with it... because I wasn't. I'm still not, even though I'm only "overweight" now.

Although I'm no longer an active practitioner of Zen Buddhism, I still appreciate and adhere to many of the teachings. One of these, one that helps me considerably, is the concept of non-attachment. I'm not attached to any given outcome. It's like ambivalence, but not. It's not basing my happiness on this or that. This weight or that weight. This job or that job. Kids or no kids. This city or that city. Every outcome has pros and cons, and I don't need to prefer one over the other. Either can make me happy.

I can be happy as I am now, or I can be happy 20 pounds lighter. Preferably both.

Aiming High

When I decided last week that I'd be pushing toward my 10% milestone for this week's weigh-in, I failed to factor in the Fourth of July.

Good thing, too — I wonder how much I would have gained if I hadn't? As it is, I'm up 0.2 pounds from last week, which is fine by me.

Even before the Fourth, though, I'd gained a little back of what I'd lost so far. I think it has to do with white rice, especially when served with Mediterranean or Indian food. Either my body doesn't process it well, or I don't estimate the serving size well, or both. I guess I'll be shying away from the rice for a while.

On Sunday, Aaron's uncle grilled some chicken and German natural casing hot dogs and cheeseburgers, served with baked beans and mustard potato salad (vegan, with jalapeños) and salad and fruit. Ice cream in waffle bowls or cones for dessert. Overall, I ate about 50 Points worth. My normal daily allowance is 25, but I also have 35 Weekly Allowance (aka "Flex") Points to play with.

So, last week was practice. This week, I'll be doing the same thing (minus the Sunday extravagance, of course): not eating any of my Flex Points, running three nights a week, only having one sweet treat in the evenings (even though they're low-cal), and maxing out my fruits and veggies. In addition to that, I'll be eschewing white rice this weekend — excepting, perhaps, stuffed grape leaves and/or sushi.

Next weekend, there's nothing fancy going on. In upcoming weekends, I'll be in New York City; Ann Arbor, MI; enjoying a couple of local ethnic festivals (the International Festival and the Festival of India); and maybe visiting friends out of town.

While I'm not going to eat boring this week by any means, I'm definitely going to avoid unnecessary splurges... so I can splurge when warranted, later on.

Flirting with Milestones

One of the major milestones in Weight Watchers is losing 10% of your original starting weight. I reached that milestone on March 17, 2009.

I hung around my 10% mark for a few weeks, then went back up a few pounds. And a few more, and a few more, until I'd finally regained half of what I'd lost. That was this past January. At that weigh-in, I set out to get back to my 10% milestone again, then to keep going.

I did see that 10% mark again this past April, right before I went on vacation. It was a quick drop of four pounds in one week, maintained for one more, after which I promptly gained back all four (and only four) during vacation. Since then, I've been slowly — ever so slowly — on the decline again.

This week, I'm going to push to my 10% milestone once more. I have barely more than two pounds to lose, and I can safely do that in one week. This is the week when I eat even more fruits and vegetables, drink even more water, and exercise. This is the week when I limit myself to one "treat" (usually a diet ice cream bar) per evening. This is the week when I focus on my goal.

Two pounds? No problem.

Slow and Steady

I don't blog much about my weight loss anymore, really. I check in with Twitter and Facebook every week at my weigh-in with my slow and steady progress, but I kind of feel like the weight-loss lifestyle is old hat.

My progress, like I said, has been slow and steady:

There was quite a while there when I'd "lost that lovin' feelin'" and wasn't working the program as much as I could — marked on the graph by that slow gain over the majority of 2009.

Topping 200 pounds at my weigh-in on January 5, 2010 made me refocus my efforts. I started tracking more regularly and more accurately, especially on weekends. I worked on increasing my activity (something I've had to refocus on lately, since I've been working through my normal lunchtime walks). I tried harder to find healthy options when going out to lunch with my co-workers, rather than throwing up my hands and succumbing to a piece or three of veggie pizza.

Last weekend was kind of an eyeopener of sorts for me, though. My Mom came to visit from Texas, and we spent some quality time together in Toledo, and some time in my hometown of Medina, two hours away. And not only did I track every meal (including stupidly large breakfasts and a trip to Olive Garden with friends), but I also stayed within my weekly allotted Points... and I lost almost a pound at this week's weigh-in!

It is a lifestyle change. It can be done.

I am doing it.

Sure, I have 20 pounds yet to lose before I reach my (tentative) goal weight, but it's only a matter of time now. I'm not one of these ladies who never hits a plateau, and loses all of her excess weight in a single 17-week session. It's a little more challenging for me, a little more time-consuming. But still possible.

Run For Your Life

The good news: I've started the Couch-to-5K running program!
The bad news: I gained 1.6 pounds this week.

I've deposited the requisite amount of money into my Oops-I-Gained-Weight-This-Week savings account, to be withdrawn only when I reach Goal. And that's all I'm going to think about this week's gain, except for the acknowledgment (or possibly just the hope) that it was due to starting a new exercise program.

Truth be told, while I was staunchly strict during my first 20-Point week, I was a bit lax last week: I only stayed at or below 20 for two days. Most days, I ate around 25 Points, and I went absolutely batshit overboard on Monday night (yes, the night before my weigh-in). Linda told me to increase my Points just a little this week, but I'm inclined to try to do another true 20-Point week, just to see if it makes a difference.

Tomorrow is a retirement send-off lunch for one of my IT co-workers... at Spaghetti Warehouse. The good news is that they have detailed nutritional information online, so I can decide on a few options before I head out. There are actually a few reasonable lunch options above and beyond spaghetti with marinara sauce, thankfully.

My plan for the week is to eat slightly larger lunches, focus on fruits and veggies (but be sure to eat my protein — my muscles will need it), and to continue with the C25K program. One month until my beach vacation, and I'm going to look good in the pictures this time!

Keep On Moving

As you may recall, my Weight Watchers leader suggested at last week's weigh-in that I cut down from eating 25 Points a day (plus my 35 weekly allowance) to 20 Points a day, period. Since I regularly spread out my weekly Flex Points over the course of the week, that essentially cut down my intake by one third, from 30 Points to 20.

It wasn't easy, but I did it. I rediscovered tasty salad options and reasonable portions of lean protein. I was reminded that eating complex carbs for dinner tends to stall my weight loss. (That's one benefit of daily weighing.) And I realized that, yes, I do have willpower to draw upon. It all depends on my mindset.

See, Weight Watchers has me trained well. This is a lifestyle change; this is how I eat now. "Diets" don't work.

Except when they do.

If I have the mindset of "I'm going to be eating this way for the rest of my life," then I will naturally take all of the built-in flexibility that the program offers. I'll use my weekly allowance to let me eat things that would be verboten on a normal diet, or to expand my portion sizes, or to otherwise play with the rules. Because, damn, if I have to eat this way forever, I'm going to find ways to make it tolerable.

This is why I've been plateauing for the past year-plus: I've been training myself on how to be in the Maintenance phase, apparently. I've got that downpat.

When I discover the tipping point, when I realize that I have to be more strict for now in order to lose weight, I'm on a diet again. And, for me, that's a good thing.

I woke up on weigh-in day five pounds lighter than I had been a week before. Of course, by the time noon rolled around, the official Weight Watchers weigh-in claimed I'd only lost 2.6 pounds.

Only. Hah. That's more weight than I've lost in one week since... let's see... *checking WW eTools* ...September of last year? And I've been in a holding pattern for much longer than that: since September 2008.

You'd think I would have thought to change it up long before now.

At any rate, I'm moving in the right direction again. I'm learning how my body processes food and how much it needs, and I'm getting more active with the nicer weather and longer evenings. I feel so much better, both physically and mentally, when I bring my A game to this whole health and fitness venture.

I'm on the 20-Point regimen again this week — I'm off to a rocky start, having gone over by a few points yesterday and today, but I'm stepping it up tomorrow and through the weekend.

Looking forward to seeing what I look like at my lowest weight ever. Just need to lose another five pounds... then keep going!

<mantra> I am a strong and confident woman! </mantra>

Turn The Beat Around

My weight loss has been slow but steady of late: between ½ and one pound per week. Last week, though, my progress slowed; I only lost 0.4 pounds, and this week I gained that 0.4 pounds back.

Granted, since my weigh-in is at noon, right before lunch, that fraction of a pound could have been one well-timed bowel movement last week, or a mistimed glass of water this week. Even so, I agreed that I would put money into an account for every week I gain at Weight Watchers this year, so I did that this evening. I set up a new savings account at ING Direct, and called it "Goal 170" — when I hit my weight goal of 170 pounds, I'll take that money and buy some new clothes for myself. (I wonder what size they'll be?)

My Weight Watchers leader, Linda, took a good hard look at my numbers after she wrote down my weight this morning. She paused, squinted, and asked me, "Can you do 20 Points this week?"

For those of you not familiar with the Weight Watchers plan: I currently get 25 Points per day, plus 35 per week to use whenever I want. A Royal Red Robin Burger is something like 30 Points by itself, while I can have one of those Weight Watchers meals at Applebee's for around 9 (for an entree plus soup).

I've been spreading my Weekly Allowance Points across the entire week, eating about 30 Points a day. Cutting down to 20 a day is going to be a challenge. But, like I assured Linda, I don't have anything special going on this week that I need to save them for. So, here we go.

This, my friends, is a diet. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Turns out that Linda used this tactic on another member today, who just happened to sit next to me at the meeting. She's been stuck within the same five-pound range since October. Even though my plateau has been considerably longer than that, it does make me feel validated (vindicated?) to know that I'm not the only one a.) having plateau issues and b.) having to cut way back this week.

The other two people who sat down by me today are Lifetime members (meaning they've hit their goal weight and stayed near it for a goodly amount of time). Between my fellow plateauer and the Lifetime folks, I really felt like I was experiencing a sea change in my diet attitude, just by association.

Dinner tonight was an iceberg and spinach salad with strawberries, onion, black beans, and fat-free poppyseed dressing (1.5 pts); a 4.3-ounce baked chicken breast with 1 tablespoon of nonfat vanilla yogurt, plus thyme and rosemary (4 pts); and carrots with ginger and garlic (2 pts). Those seven-and-a-half Points were about the most filling Points I'd eaten in some time. Plus, I actually sat at the dining room table to eat my meal, rather than watching the news or playing a game or even browsing on my iPhone. I focused on my food, enjoyed it, ate slowly, and was comfortably sated by the time I was done. Dessert, a couple hours later, was a small glass of fat-free milk with zero-calorie chocolate sauce (Walden Farms; surprisingly delicious).

If I continue to plan ahead, treat myself to food that's tasty AND healthy, and not give in, I can turn this thing around. Tomorrow is our team lunch at work; I can easily be good enough for lunch that a large salad and a chicken breast will be sufficient for dinner.

No worries. I'm looking forward to this.

Meet Linda

Linda, my Weight Watchers Leader, was featured on 13abc last month in their "4 Ways To Lose 100 Pounds" series. In this interview, she shares her before and after pictures (which still amaze me) and a very abbreviated overview of what losing 120 pounds meant to her — and how she did it on Weight Watchers.

(Incidentally, the interviewer, Rebecca Regnier, was also in one of Linda's Weight Watchers meeting groups, so I understand.)

Weigh and Measure

It's been a full year since the last time I did a full weigh-and-measure, and the numbers... well, truth be told, they're not as bad as they could be.

Weight: 195 lbs (on the home scale - up 4.4 lbs from last February)
Bust: 43" (up 1")
Chest: 36" (up ½")
Waist: 40" (up 1")
Hips: 46½" (up ½")
Upper Arm: 13" (same)
Lower Arm: 10" (same)
Thigh: 25" (up 1")
Calf: 15½" (up 1/4")
Neck: 14" (same)

The good news is that my weight has been on a steady decline since the beginning of the year: I'm down four pounds (according to the Weight Watchers scale), which is an average of 0.7 pounds per week. It's slow loss, yes, but at least it's consistent.

I'm taking a kind of carrot-and-stick approach right now: when I reach a weight of 190 (on the home scale), I get to buy a new bathing suit for my Mexico vacation. The snag is, the vacation is at the end of April, so I need to get a move on if I'm going to order my suit online and get it in time. (If I don't, though, at least I do own a swimsuit that fits.)

On the punishment side of things: if I gain weight one week to the next at Weight Watchers, I have to put money into a savings account. Since I calculated that each pound I gained last year cost me $64.75 in WW fees, that's how much I'll put in per pound. (Pro-rated for partial pounds gained, of course.) In the end, I'm going to use that money to buy myself clothes when I reach my ultimate goal of 170... so it'll be untouchable for a while. Luckily, I haven't had to pay into that account yet, and I hope to avoid it altogether.

I haven't been as vigilant as I should be about diet and exercise for some time now. I hit my first plateau over a year ago; I tried pushing through it at the beginning, but the lack of results just drug me further down, until I started just coasting. (At least I didn't give up entirely, though: things could be much worse right now!)

For now, I'm trying to mix up my food and my activity, fill up on fruits and veggies, appreciate that slightly hungry feeling, get muscle-sore on a regular basis, all those sorts of things that I haven't been doing.

If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.

How much can I push myself to lose in the next four weeks?

On Body Image

The Lane Bryant catalog arrived yesterday.

I pulled out the coupons and leafed through the pages, coming to a stop at the swimwear section. My first thought was, "Why would I buy a zebra-striped swimsuit? It just screams out, 'Look at my rolls!'"

Then, of course, I felt guilty. Big women are beautiful, too, and I shouldn't be projecting my feelings about my own body onto these plus-size models.

I realized at that point that the LB swimsuit models seemed to run the gamut of sizes. Without knowing how tall they are, they seemed to go from the low end of Lane Bryant sizes (12 or 14) to maybe a size 18 or 20 — again, depending on height. I'm relatively tall for a chick — 5'10" and a size 14/16 at 197 pounds — so I'm no judge on sizes. Some of the women didn't look "plus-sized" at all, while others... well, I just wished I could stick a pin in them and let a little air out, and then they'd look just about right.

Which led me to realize: I don't know which of these women I most resemble, shape-wise. Am I really that fat? I don't know! I can't tell. When I look at the thinner plus-size models, I think of them as "normal." Not stupidly skinny. They have some meat on their bones, but no rolls. But I don't think I look like them; I must be fatter than they are. Then I look at the larger models, and I hope I don't look like them... except, well, they look good, too. Sure, they've got rolls, and thighs, and upper arms, but they're pretty and confident and they fill out their clothes well. They don't look sloppy, just big.

It wasn't until I did my own private swimsuit photo shoot in the basement this evening that it occurred to me: plus-size models get airbrushed, too! It felt like the biggest "duh" moment ever. You can't make me believe that none of those big and beautiful ladies has any cellulite on her thighs.

Still, though, I'm having trouble with the mixed signals I'm getting. The Health At Every Size/Fat Acceptance movement would have me be perfectly OK with being a size 14/16, as long as I'm healthy (which, as far as I know, I am) and not eating unreasonably. Weight Watchers says that my health will improve significantly if I lose just 10% of my body weight. The Wii Fit tells me I should be some skinny damn weight I haven't seen since elementary school.

I just want to feel comfortable in my own skin. I want to stop feeling self-conscious and embarrassed around fit people. In addition to the social aspects, though, I'm curious what I'll look like when I drop another 20 pounds (on top of the 50 I lost a few years ago).

I think I have some psychological fine-tuning to do, beyond the physical and behavioral that I already knew was ahead of me.

Starting Over

I started writing the outline of a blog entry this morning at work, while I was waiting for my computer to process some reports I was working on. My Piccadilly notebook now contains a page of notes that say I should start this year off with a graph of my weekly weights, a report on miles walked this week, and some other stuff. It also says I need to take time out to pamper myself, including getting exercise and plenty of sleep.

That was this morning. My weigh-in was at noon.

I weighed in at my heaviest in a year and a half: 200 pounds.

That set off the weirdest emotional rollercoaster I've experienced in quite some time. Shock, disappointment, depression, anger, motivation, and did I mention anger? Finally, I got an infusion of Get Over It from various sources, both intentionally and indirectly, and I started to feel less pissed in general and more focused.

The last time I weighed in at or over 200 was on July 29, 2008. At that point, I'd already lost close to ten pounds in the three months I'd been on Weight Watchers, and I would continue on a steep decline for another two months before hitting The Plateau.

First thing this morning, long before The Dreaded Weigh-In, I got an e-mail from Weight Watchers. Seems that my eTools (which I get for free with the At Work program) have expired. I'd already known about this; we'd had to have a special extension of our session to get us past the holiday season, and our eTools didn't extend with us. What I hadn't known was that, back in April 2008, I gave WW a credit card number that apparently expired in the interim, so they couldn't automatically charge me the minimal charge for eTools.

When I went to the WW website, I saw that I actually have six months to reactivate my account. Since I've been saving my daily food tracking logs to my home computer, and I'm completely and thoroughly anal-retentive about tracking my weight locally (see graph, above), I wasn't concerned about losing my historical data, so I decided to switch things up for a week and track on SparkPeople instead.

I think this is going to be a helpful switch-up for me, even if only for a week or two. I'm being especially mindful of what and how much I eat, since SparkPeople tracks actual nutrients, not Points. Today, I ate what I knew were normal meals, then calculated the Points values at the end of the day. I did pretty well, eating only two of my 35 Weekly Allowance Points (which I know won't mean much to anyone outside of Weight Watchers).

I've also been doing the cardio I've always known I need to do. On Sunday evening, and again this evening, I did a 30-minute kickboxing workout on DVD. It kicked my ass in a Very Good Way, and I'm glad I didn't skip it this evening, like I was tempted to.

Honestly, I think that this 200-pound weigh-in might be the best thing for my weight-loss regime right now. What got me off the couch and into my kickboxing DVD tonight was that number, rotating in my head, taunting me. I don't want to be this weight. I don't want to feel like this — physically, I mean. Frumpy, doughy.

I mean, sure, I used to be over 250 pounds, and this is definitely an improvement over that... but I can do so much better.

I deserve better.

Taking Stock

Every year, in early January, I post an entry about what's gone on in the past year. Major life events, vacations, tragedies, what have you. This year, I'm planning to do things a little differently, and present a Feltron-esque display of charts and graphs and visuals to sum up 2009. Seems only natural, being that I've been working in Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing for the past two years, and reporting is what I do.

Reporting on one's own life can be a strange and tedious thing, depending on how OCD one is with oneself. Since I've been tracking my weight on either a daily or weekly basis for the past seven years or so, in the same Excel spreadsheet, I thought I'd go for the "low-hanging fruit," as they say, and create a simple graph of my average weight by month:

Granted, December is far from over, but still. This graph isn't pretty — or, rather, the data it's showing isn't pretty. (Whether it's aesthetically pleasing enough is beside the point at the moment.)

This isn't a plateau. It's worse.

I have three weeks to get my average December weight down below where it's currently hovering. We'll see how that goes. I'm hoping to revise this graph for the better for inclusion in my official year-end retrospective.

Thanksgiving Vigilance

The good news: I'm down 0.6 pounds this week!
The bad ambivalent news: I'm up 3 pounds total this year.

Today was the annual Thanksgiving meeting, and it was actually more helpful than I'd counted on. Linda, our leader, passed out pieces of paper and had us write down what we were going to eat for our Thanksgiving meal.

At first, I wrote, "Whatever Uncle Pete serves us." Then I decided that maybe I should play along and actually do the exercise, so I wrote:

• Turkey, probably smoked, 4oz
• Stuffing, 1 cup
• Carrots and veggies with low-fat dip
• Acorn squash (I hope!), 1 cup
• ...with butter and brown sugar
• Green bean casserole, 1/2 cup
• Sweet potato
• 2 butternut squash cheesecake cups
• Pumpkin pie, 1 piece

When I totaled everything up, I came up with a whopping 41 Points. For those not familiar with Weight Watchers, a full day's food for me is 24 Points, plus I get a weekly allotment of 35 Points to use whenever I want.

Looks like I'm going to be using them on Thanksgiving Day next week.

I unashamedly shouted out the total Points value of my meal when Linda asked. Later on in the meeting, I shared that my battle plan is to eat only one plate of food, and not go back for seconds. Which is totally true. Although I'm still going to eat appetizers (OMG Nate's spinach dip!) and dessert (accounted for above, for the most part).

So, this week is a dry run. Can I get through an entire week and not use ANY Flex Weekly Points? Evenings and weekends will be the test; I won't have the buffer of Weekly Points when I eat them all on Thanksgiving. And, yes, I think I'll probably just assume that I'll use them all, in lieu of actually counting and tracking my Thanksgiving meal.

Not going to gain 10 pounds this holiday season. Nope. I didn't gain anything last Thanksgiving, although I did gain a good five pounds the Thanksgiving before, and the Thanksgiving before that was in the middle of a slow five-pound gain over the end of the entire month of November. Something to keep in mind: it's so, so easy for me to go off the wagon for a long weekend and undo months and months of progress in one fell swoop.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Sick Day

On Friday, I had a discussion with one of my co-workers. Seems he's only taken a handful of sick days in his three years at our work, while I've taken full advantage of any available sick days during my two years. He was absolutely flabbergasted when I admitted that I only had one sick day available to use — just ONE? — when he had literally weeks accumulated.

I'd had this idea that I should really start saving my sick days, just in case I need them. After all, using your last sick day is kind of like wearing your last pair of underwear before it's laundry day.

Fast forward to this weekend: last night, I went to bed at a relatively reasonable time. Laid down, read a mindless Star Trek novel for a while, then turned off the light.

And laid there.

Awake.

I finally put a bottle of lotion in front of the minutes display on my alarm clock, so I wouldn't be tempted to keep checking the time. I fell asleep for a while, around the time Aaron came to bed (sometime in the neighborhood of 4am), but I remember being awake and exhausted and uncomfortable at six-something.

By the time my alarm went off, I'd just managed to drift off into a dream-filled sleep. I turned off my alarm, got up (eventually), hobbled into the bathroom, and stared into the mirror for a while.

Am I going to work? I really should go. I have deadlines. But will I be able to concentrate? How much work will actually get done today? But I really shouldn't use my last sick day. Again. But I feel like hell. I'm exhausted, and my back hurts from sleeping in some weird position, and my brain feels full of cotton.

And, as in all cases where I start arguing with myself, the Devil On My Shoulder was the victor. I went downstairs, fetched my iPhone, and emailed my boss, telling her that I didn't feel well and was taking a sick day. And I went back upstairs and crawled back into bed.

But I didn't sleep. Not well, anyway.

read more...

Progress and Recommitment

Apparently, my Weight Watchers leader has taken a bit of an interest in seeing me succeed. Which is cool, except for when I come into a weigh-in knowing that I haven't been applying myself for the past week, and I end up stepping on the scale feeling like I came to class without my homework.

This week wasn't such a raging success — I gained two pounds in one week, from succumbing to doughnuts during training and from failing to track my late-evening "snacks." The sub-par tracking I did over the weekend might have had something to do with it, too, although we ate fairly healthily: Korean, Mediterranean, our usual dim sum Sunday brunch.

During today's meeting, I accepted Linda's challenge to follow all of the daily Good Health Guidelines, including:

• six 8-oz glasses of fluids (anything except alcohol)
• five 1/2-cup servings of fruits and veggies
• two 1-tsp servings of healthy oils
• two servings of dairy
• one daily multivitamin
• 30 minutes of daily activity
• two 3-oz servings of lean protein
• whole grains

I didn't get my exercise in today, but I'm doing great otherwise. Committing to following the Good Health Guidelines means a decent amount of planning will have to go into my meals, and that's a good thing. I can't just go throwing frozen meals and sugar-free puddings into my lunch and call it done. I also need to plan dinner around what I need: veggies? protein? grains?

So, the good news is that I continue to be 15 pounds lighter than when I started WW about a year and a half ago. The better news is that I haven't quit after a year-long plateau. The best news? I know I can break through this plateau if I can just stick to program for more than a couple weeks at a time.

Wii Fit Revisited

I bought the first Wii Fit game and balance board back in May 2008. I used it for a while, but eventually got tired of not having the option of doing an entire workout — just individual exercises, one at a time, even when the game suggests several specific exercises to do together. ("Is that a yoga pose or a strength exercise that it thinks I should do next? It doesn't say...")

Today, I picked up Wii Fit Plus for $19.99 — not a bad price for a new game! Despite the "Plus" moniker, which might suggest you need Wii Motion Plus to play, it seems to only require the normal balance board (as far as I can tell). So far, I've only had it re-weigh me (I've gained six pounds since the last time I played, earlier this year), so I can't speak to the game's new features (including customizable workout routines), but you can bet I'll be talking about them later.

What was particularly fun, though, was getting Aaron back on the balance board. I made him get on it back in May of last year, to record his weight and input his info, and he hasn't touched it since. It's been 508 days, and he's lost over 67 pounds:

It took his Mii from looking like a Weeble-Wobble to looking like a normal, cute, superdeformed Aaron. Awesome!

Progress!

I'd be happy with a 3.4 pound loss any week, but it's even sweeter after three straight weeks of gains, the last two fairly substantial. I've brought myself back to where I was three weeks ago (which is the same place I was three weeks before that), and am looking forward to continuing the downward trend.

Honestly, I attribute a good deal of my success this week to tracking — and, therefore, to the new Weight Watchers iPhone app. It's so much faster and more functional than the mobile site, and I only have a few qualms about it (which I plan to address at length in a later post, and in an iTunes review). It's just so helpful to have a big, bold number there, in my face, telling me YOU ONLY HAVE 3 MORE POINTS TODAY.

By extension, I've discovered that the eTools are actually more helpful than my paper-based 3 Month Journal. I can tabulate how I did during the week, as far as Points intake and exercise goes. For instance, I can see at a glance that, holy mare, did I go ballistic on Friday! Ate up half of my Weekly Points Allowance (formerly known as Flex Points) just during that one day alone. Note to self: watch out for Friday nights.

My leader asked me what I'm going to do this week. I told her, "The same thing I did this week!" Truthfully, though, I'm going to take it to the next level. When I was getting down on myself this weekend, feeling all frumpy and weak-willed, Aaron said that this week was the week of getting back to tracking, and next week will be the week of eating better and following the program more closely. And that's what I plan to do.

Tonight, I ate exactly all of my Points by the time I was done with dinner, and now I'm using two of my weekly allowance on a hot apple cider with sugar-free caramel syrup. That's way better than, say, blowing seven or twelve points on snacks or imitation crab or soup (or all of the above) to keep my cakehole occupied.

Tomorrow is Team Lunch Day. Wherever we go, whether it's the Mediterranean place or the sports bar, I'll come up with something tasty to enjoy, without blowing all my extra points for the week. Yep, this is do-able.

Diet Mentality

Sometimes, I wish I could hold onto the anger and frustration I've felt in recent weeks at my Weight Watchers weigh-in. Had I sat down to write this blog entry at, say, noon today, it would have been vitriolic and self-deprecating and full of fight. Instead, I've had nearly nine hours to come to terms with the fact that, yes, I gained two pounds this week, on top of the 1.8 I gained last week, bringing me all the way back up to 198 pounds.

It's gotten to the point where I don't even want to publicly (or even semi-publicly) announce what I'm planning to do in regards to my weight-loss plan, because I so rarely follow through anymore. I could tell you that I've decided to work out with weights three days a week and take a lunch walk three days a week, but even I won't believe me until I've actually done it.

Weight Watchers likes to stress that it's a lifestyle, not a diet — this is true of any Way Of Eating. Even so, I think I'm more likely to successfully drop pounds and stay on-program if I have a "diet" mindset: I'm in this to lose weight, and I'm going to lose X number of pounds by X date. I understand that I'm going to have to eat like this indefinitely, for the most part, in order for me to not gain my weight back. (Case in point: the last two weeks, wherein I slacked off.) For now, though, I need to have that diet mentality in order to succeed.

Tomorrow is my weekly lunch out with my co-workers. I'm planning to choose the healthy option wherever we go, but I'm going to try to strongarm my co-workers into going to my favorite downtown Mediterranean joint instead of the sports bar. If I fall face-first into a giant fried fish sandwich for lunch, though, I'll balance out dinner accordingly.

Next week, the scale will be moving in the right direction.

Climb That Mountain

Once again, the Weight Watchers scale told me something I wasn't expecting, but this time it wasn't good news like it was before. From this morning's weigh-in at home, I expected to hold steady or maybe have gained half a pound since last week — after all, I weigh in the buff right after my morning pee, so I have to expect that I'll weigh a bit more at noon, what with clothes and breakfast and water and all.

I can always tell that I've either gained or stayed the same when I step on the scale, and as she's starting to write my weight down in my book, the nice lady manning the scale says, "Got it!" instead of "Good job!" So, I knew before I even read her upside-down writing that I'd gained since last week. Imagine my surprise when I saw her write +2.8 in my weight log.

I haven't gotten a 5-pound star since... let's see... last December. It's disappointing. (By the way, if you can't quite see them, only four of those 10 stars on my bookmark are 5-pound stars.)

Linda, my WW leader, used the analogy of climbing a mountain to describe our weight loss journey. Sometimes it seems insurmountable, and sometimes we slip backward. I'm not sure how far I want to take the analogy, but it definitely seems like I'm running up and slipping back again, or just kind of walking around the base of the next peak. If I want to make headway against my weekend slippage, I need to be reasonable during weekday evenings and during my weekly department lunch at work, and I need to keep up with this jogging thing.

I let myself slack last week on the jogging. Sunday, my energy was sapped by Becoming A Woman (again); Tuesday, I was just exhausted from work and lack of sleep; and Thursday, it looked like it might rain, so I psyched myself out of jogging. (Of course, it was actually beautiful and sunny by the time I got home from work, but there was no turning my attitude around at that point.) I also didn't get up early to jog this past Sunday — but today, I got back with the program.

Actually, today I tried to switch it up a little. My first week of jogging involved me jogging through the first verse and chorus of whatever song was playing on my iPod, then walking through the rest, until the next song started up. Today, I tried doing it opposite: walking through the first verse and chorus, then jogging until the end of the song. I wanted to push myself harder. Alas, pushing myself that much harder after a week off resulted in much less actual jogging this time around, since I wore myself out early in the jog and walked for the last third or so of my 1.3-mile course. Also, I need to spend more time out on my walk/jog, as I only racked up 17 minutes of aerobic steps on my pedometer.

This weekend, Aaron and I go to visit my bestest friend Amy in Dayton. We'll be going to King's Island, where I haven't been since I was a VERY little kid. I'm expecting the usual weekend slackitude, as far as food goes — but we'll likely be walking around the park quite a bit, and we might even hit the water park, so exercise might offset the badness a little.

How bad do I want to lose this last 25 pounds? Bad enough to jog it off, even when I'm not in the mood? Bad enough to say no to the pasta salad at Grumpy's? We'll see.

Moving In The Right Direction

The Weight Watchers scale said that I'm down one more pound this week. Again, the scale at home said no such thing, but I'll believe the WW scale, I suppose. This puts me officially on a downward trend, which is awesome.

I went for a walk-jog three days last week: Sunday morning, Tuesday evening, and Thursday evening. My "Aunt Flo" showed up in time for the weekend, so I opted to skip Sunday morning's jog. Today, I was recovering from a busy day at work, after a late night watching YouTube videos, so I not only skipped my evening jog, but I inadvertently took a half-hour nap on the loveseat downstairs.

I'm going to make a concerted effort not to let this new habit fade out before it has a chance to take hold. Surprisingly enough, I've really been enjoying my jogs, once I get out there and do it. I used to think I hated running, but I think I just hated running in gym class, at the ass-end of the pack, feeling like people were staring at me because I still had two more laps around the gym when most everyone else was already done. Running at my own pace makes me feel fantastic.

This weekend, Aaron and I ate lunch at the International Festival, at the mosque in Perrysburg; had Korean with friends; made takoyaki (octopus dumplings) at home; and I *still* lost a pound. This gives me hope for the future: maybe this way of eating is totally sustainable for me, if I can eat especially healthy during the week, eat fun things on the weekends, and still lose weight.

15.4 Down, 25 To Go

Yes, I did actually drop a full pound this week, according to the Weight Watchers scale. According to my scale at home, I didn't lose shit, but who am I to argue?

Last week, my leader told me to cut two Points from my daily allotment, in hopes of jolting me out of this damned plateau. I'm not sure if the lack of two Points per day actually made any physical difference, but it made me rethink my meals and snacks. Granted, I still didn't tally my Points on Saturday (sushi, Indian, and Korean food all in one day!), but I was much more conscientious during the rest of the week. I've been eating 24 Points per day for so many months that I think I just needed to throw a wrench in the works, to mix things up a little.

I've also started running. I've been thinking about it for literally years now, and only Sunday did I get out and do it. —Well, to be fair, I did do some running back in Spring 2007, but it was short-lived. See, back then, I drove out to Wildwood Metropark to do my running, while today I'm just running out my front door and around my 'hood.

I've realized why I never wanted to go running before, and it had nothing (or very little) to do with any sort of physical pain or discomfort. It all boiled down to self-image: I felt like everybody would be staring at me as I ran past. Recently, I've come to the realization that no one really cares — and I don't mean that in a negative way. I've crossed paths with joggers and runners on the trail and downtown, and it's not like I look every one of them up and down or anything. Actually, when the heftier ladies jog past, I'm usually impressed that they're out there, kicking that ass. I'm not judging them. And, hopefully, neither will my neighbors judge me as I jog past on Sunday mornings and Tuesday/Thursday evenings.

My iPod playlist still needs some tweaking, but I've discovered that Mint Car by The Cure is just about perfect. Now, if I can build a playlist around that tempo and upbeat vibe (that's one of very few upbeat Cure songs, to be sure), I'll be good to go.

The short loop that I've been jogging is 1.3 miles, and I've only been going around it once. I think I'm going to try to build up to jogging the whole thing without any walk breaks before I switch up my route. I may change my mind, though; we'll see.

My legs are sore, my back muscles are sore, and my throat still burns just a little... but I still feel fantastic. And I actually enjoy running. I really hope I can keep this going.

What's New With Me

I rarely do these catch-all blog posts anymore, but since I've committed to blogging every weekday for a while, I figure I can let one of these slip in.

Last night I bid on (and won) a Yashica FX-3 35mm film camera on eBay. I bought it specifically so I could have a battery compartment cover that will also fit the Yashica FX-D Quartz I already own — I think that's all that's wrong with it. This particular model of camera won't work with a dead battery, and the battery cover is completely stripped out, so it's nigh on impossible to remove the cover once it's screwed in. So, if a fresh battery fixes it, then I have two cameras to play with, and I just have to swap the battery cover between them. (Also? Once I get the FX-D working, I'm planning to re-leather it for cheap.)

Today I finished running a test roll through the Spartus Full-Vue. Brought it to work, in fact, and got several comments about the fancy/old camera sitting on my desk. The test roll will include photos from my house, the Hindu Festival, and downtown Toledo. I really hope I kept the camera on "instant" exposure instead of "time" exposure — when I went to remove the film this evening, it was on "time", which could mean that the last part of the roll will be especially blurry and overexposed. Crossing my fingers that I didn't accidentally fuck up my test roll...

I mentioned the Hindu Festival — Aaron and I went to see my supervisor perform a Bollywood-style dance with a group. Well, to be fair, that wasn't the only reason we went — we wanted to try the food and see the sellers' stalls, too — but it was the main one, and the reason I knew the festival even existed. My supervisor, it turns out, once did classical dance (she's built for it like I never was — my height, but long-limbed), and she was a joy to watch.

And now for something completely different: I went on my first walk/jog in a VERY long time yesterday morning, and I'm feeling it today. I only ran for a total of maybe three or four minutes out of the 20 I was outside, but I'm OK with taking baby steps. My plan is to walk/jog — or do "interval training," as it were — on Sunday mornings and Tuesday and Thursday evenings. How I do it: I have an exercise playlist set up on my iPod, where the songs are mostly four minutes long, and between 100 and 150 beats per minute. I run through the first verse and chorus, then see how I feel — run through another verse, or switch back to a walk? I should probably stick to more brief jogging stretches for now, and not try to push myself too hard in the middle of my jog like I did on Sunday (damn you, Kool and the Gang). I also should add more songs in the neighborhood of 150 bpm, as I think that's about the pace I jog (gauged from running around the basement for less than a minute just now).

Well, It may not be terribly coherent, but that's the latest in a nutshell. Looking forward to the International Festival this coming Saturday, going to King's Island with Amy and Aaron in a few weeks, and going to Chicago over Labor Day Weekend. Which reminds me: I need to go research the conveyor belt sushi joints in Chicago...

Obligatory Weight-Loss Post

Official weigh-in yesterday: gained less than one pound this week. I still consider that basically maintaining my weight. I'm about eight pounds above my all-time low weight (attained just before Christmas last year).

Someone remind me again why I decided to resume posting these weekly updates?

Oh, yeah. It was supposed to get me off my ass and back on Program.

I'll spend a day or two in a row totally on-program and doing awesome. Then some food obstacle excuse will make itself known, like our weekly department lunch at work, and I'll dive face-first into a plate of deliciousness that I don't have any idea how desire to count Points for.

I'm back to my old, post-Atkins mentality: one won't hurt. One untracked meal. One day without my walk. It won't kill me. It won't make me gain back all 20 pounds I've lost on WW, or all 60 pounds I've lost in the past six years. Not all at once.

I'm not sure what, if anything, will give me a Eureka that will keep me going for more than a few days at a time. It seems like I can't stay rigidly on-program without someone (read: Aaron) hand-holding me every step of the way. Once I'm given "permission" to go off-program for a meal, I grab it with both hands. The option of being "good" in the face of adversity barely flits through my mind. Granted, I'm not as "bad" as I once was — I'll get the grilled tuna steak sandwich and pasta salad instead of a plate of sauce-laden noodles — but it's still not good enough.

So, here I sit, waiting for motivation to strike (and stay struck). A few days at a time? That I can do. Forever? That's a little daunting.

Weekly Update: Figuring Things Out

I feel silly writing these weekly updates when my weight stays the same. Identical to the tenth of a pound to what I weighed two weeks ago, officially.

I've gotten into a bit of a routine at my weekly Weight Watchers At Work meetings: I choose my seat in the meeting room, set down my purse and my water (and some small part of my lunch — I'll eat the rest at my desk later), dig out my weight log booklet, and head to the scales. I get my official weigh-in happening, make some sort of positive-sounding comment about my meager loss or gain ("At least it's heading in the right direction!" or "Not as bad as I expected!"), then head back to my seat to eat my food and Twitter about my weigh-in.

Recently, I've added one more step to my routine: checking the #weightwatchers trending topic on Twitter. It makes me feel like a part of an even bigger community, even beyond the meeting room, when I see who's twittered about their own weigh-ins, or about counting points, or about their own successes and failures.

We're all in this together. The people in my At Work meeting who've lost 80 pounds in a year, the people who have lost nothing in that same year, and the others like me who have stalled in their weight loss. The people on Twitter whom I haven't met. The people on LiveJournal (most of whom I also haven't met). My husband. My friends. All of us are in it together. It helps to remember that.

In lieu of my weight graph and scans of my food tracker, allow me to share some insights I've had into my own actions and habits this week.

1. I eat when I'm tired. I've always, ALWAYS hated going to sleep at night (and, oddly enough, hated waking up in the morning), as a child, a college student, and as an adult. When I'm sleepy, and don't want to admit it, I'll refuel in an attempt to re-energize myself (among other more psychologically-based reasons, I'm sure). I should really try to get more sleep, though, since studies have shown that lack of sleep can lead to hormonal imbalance and potential weight gain.
2. I need to drink more water. Dehydration can contribute to fatigue, and while I don't think I'm seriously or continuously dehydrated, I did note that I haven't been drinking my six glasses a day recently. Although caffeine isn't as dehydrating as some would lead us to believe, I should still probably lay off my mid-morning Diet Dew.

With that said, I need to wash the dishes and go to bed already.

This Week in Weight Loss

The good news: The scale is moving in the right direction.
The less-good news: I'm still not maxxing out the program as well as I could.

We didn't have a Weight Watchers At Work meeting this week, since all the meeting rooms were pre-booked with quarterly personnel meetings. My unofficial weight loss for the week, as measured by our home scale, was another 0.4 pounds.

Aaron convinced me to buy myself some new clothes for work this weekend, since I've been bitching about my lack of nice summery clothes that fit for months now, and it really made a difference in my attitude about myself. I think it also improved my posture, since I bought some shirts that are a little more form-fitting than I usually wear; I'm not used to my clothes touching my midriff, so I've been sucking in my gut activating my core muscles more during the day.

I've also re-started the 100 Push-Ups program — there's a nifty iPhone app for that, don't ya know. My pecs are righteously sore, but in a good way.

Weight graphs and food logs after the jump:

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Weekly Weight Loss Update

The short version:

Official Weight Watchers weigh-in was 0.4 pounds more than last week. Not surprising, as I had a bit of a snack food binge after dinner last night. Why do I always have a problem with that on Mondays, the night before my weigh-in?

I did write down everything I ate last week, although I didn't track the Points for all the deliciousness I had over the weekend. Had a bit of a cheat on the Fourth: Myles' Pizza and ice cream in Bowling Green. We walked nearly eight miles, though, so that kind of balanced things out... almost.

Read on for more details...

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Long Weekend Extension

I'm going to go on record here and admit that I have a liberal interpretation of the term "sick day." If I have a shitty night's sleep and can barely get my eyes open at 7am, and I have a sick day in my arsenal, I'm most likely going to head downstairs, grab my iPhone, and email my supervisor my regrets.

That's basically what I did today. I did take note of a mild sore throat, too, but that's since gone away. Must have been snoring, once I finally got to sleep.

I need to modify this behavior. It's not good to be using my sick days willy-nilly as soon as I accrue them. I really enjoyed my one week of waking up before my alarm and getting to work early or on time; on the flip side, I hated only having three hours of usable "me time" before bed in the evenings.

I think that this week would be as good a week as any to bump up my bedtime. If I can get to sleep at the right time, waking up at the right time should take care of itself. Computer off by 9:30pm, lights out one hour later. We'll see how this works.

If nothing else, I need to convince myself not to use my sick days as soon as I get them. I should always, ALWAYS have at least one full sick day to spare, in case I need it.

This all boils down to me growing up and learning to make more mature decisions without arguing with myself and rationalizing what I want to do over what I SHOULD do.

But that's a post for another day.

Return of the Weekly Weight Loss Update

Funny that I'm sitting on a bench, blogging about weight loss, when I really should be out getting in my walk for the day. Anyway.

I was searching my blog for a link to the Three Amigos Chili recipe that Sheryl shared with me a good while ago, when I discovered to my chagrin that I was blogging about the same weight loss issues over a year ago that still plague me now. Needing to get to bed earlier, do more cardio, that sort of thing.

Actually, I stopped blogging weekly weight loss updates because I started just saying the same shit every week: same weight as last week, need to exercise more, getting discouraged with my lack of progress. It's been quite a while since those weekly updates, and I think it's time to reinstate them. Maybe, just maybe, being accountable to the entire Internet will give me a little more motivation to follow the guidelines I set for myself each week.

This is a new strategy -- or, rather, the return of an old one. I set myself a few goals and guidelines under the category of "what am I willing to change?" This week, the main strategy is staying within my daily Points allowance in order to allow myself a tracking-free Saturday.

See, I've been a bit of a tracker slacker, especially on the weekends, and I know that's been a big contributor to the length of this plateau I'm in. It started out as a normal plateau, back before the holidays... but it just kept going. I stuck to Program, and it kept going. So I stopped caring. Started slacking. And gained back six pounds. I've re-lost some of that -- this morning, my scale said 192.8, and my all-time low is 189.

I'll be checking in every week with my progress. I'm counting on my readership (that's you) to keep me honest. Maybe I'll even scan in the pages of my food tracker, so anyone can give me detailed feedback (including my WW leader). Who knows?

At any rate, it's time for me to switch something up. Eight months is too long to be in a plateau that's 20+ pounds from my goal.

Motivation

When my Mom came to visit this past weekend, she brought along the family photo albums for me to hang onto. I mainly wanted to check out the photos of me as a little kid, of Mom when she was my age, of my Memaw when she was Mom's age.

While paging through the later albums, though, I found some photos I'd rather have forgotten: me when I was obese, back in the early 2000's. College graduation, wedding, that general era. It's been a good five years since I lost 50 pounds on the Atkins Diet, and I've lost another 15 since. I'd almost forgotten how fat I looked and felt. Aaron, too: I literally almost didn't recognize him in our family photo with Mom, Gary, and Philip.

I'd been complaining that I've "lost that lovin' feeling" when it comes to my diet. If I needed motivation to get back on program (instead of tracking my food and watching my daily Points balance sail into the negative, and not giving a shit), this was the motivation I needed.

I have about 25 pounds to go before I reach my goal weight. That may not be quite as transformative as that first 50, but it will change me, for sure. My goal is to reach and maintain my ideal weight, so that my future offspring literally won't recognize the "me" in that embarrassing family portrait.

(I look a lot like my Mom, and she was pretty smokin' when she was in her twenties and skinny. Maybe I can do almost that well in my thirties...)

Getting Back on Track

The week after we got back from vacation, I was totally exhausted by 9:30pm every night, and waking up on my own around 6:40am. After one "normal" weekend of sleeping in until 10am, my jet lag was "cured."

Damn.

With such an obvious benefit in waking up earlier, I'm forced to act like a grown-up and set rules for myself. I'm going to have my computer off by 9pm every night, because it's too easy for me to stay up waaaay too late surfing teh internets. Instead, I'm going to head to the living room and chill out in my yukata (Japanese robe) with a book and a cup of tea. And we'll see how this works.

It's said that sleep is a big part in weight loss, too. Maybe, in addition to just being happier and feeling more awake, I'll boost my weight loss up another notch. Anything's possible...

Weight Watchers: One Year

So, here we are, exactly one year later. How am I doing?

Considering that question around noon today yielded the following tweet:

After having revisited the Weight Loss category of my blog, and seeing titles like, "Mini Weight Loss Goals Work," "A Red-Letter Day in Weight Loss," "Feeling Fitter," "Noticing the Little Things," and "The Result Is Its Own Reward," I'm reminded of how far I've come in the past year. I've lost 20 pounds and about one pant size (give or take). I'm looking and feeling better.

Still, though, I have a long way to go yet.

Today's meeting topic helped me realize a couple of things. Number one: tracking what I eat isn't particularly helpful if I never go back and revisit what I wrote down. It's also less effective if I do it half-assed — like on the weekends, when I write things like, "lunch: Indian buffet = 14pts?" Number two: If I kind of do the diet right, it kind of works. If I really do the diet right, it really works.

Remember back in February, when I decided to regroup and set myself some short-term goals and means to accomplish them?

I'm going to shoot for a small and quite reasonable goal: 185 lbs by my birthday (April 22nd). Even if I only lose half a pound a week, I'll get there. I can do that.

How will I do it? By drinking at least six glasses of water a day, eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables, keeping up with my push-up program, and doing at least 60 minutes of cardio a week (not including lunch walks). I can do that, too.

Let's recap how I did, shall we?

Today's weigh-in was NOT 185. In fact, I gained four pounds in two weeks. (Easter itself was fine; it was the week after that I slacked.) My official weigh-in was 192; two pounds heavier than I was two months ago. Granted, I know from experience that, since I gained it fast, it'll come off fast — likely by next weigh-in or sooner. Still, it's disappointing not to have reached my mini-goal.

And how did I do on the means I'd set out to accomplish my goal? I only met my daily goal of six glasses of water 35% of the time during the month of March; my daily fruits and veggies goal was even more abysmal. I quit the 100 Pushups program not long after that February post, and I never actually managed to do any cardio.

Sounds like I need a new battle plan.

Finally, long after Weight Watchers launched their Momentum Plan, I went through my booklet and made a list of the Filling Foods that are most frequently on our shopping list and in our pantry/fridge. I'm making a two-pronged dietary attack: pre-plan an entire day's worth of meals in advance the night before (not just lunch and a half-assed breakfast), and plan them around Filling Foods as much as possible; and meet all of the Good Health Guidelines every day (water, veggies, whole grains, dairy, lean protein, oils, multivitamin). And it's totally doable, especially if I plan ahead.

I would love to lose five more pounds before our vacation on May 11th. Honestly, though, I don't think it's going to happen. Whether or not I lose any weight beforehand, I'll be content with maintaining my weight over the two weeks that we're eating delicious Japanese cuisine and walking all over the damn place.

One year down. Hopefully less than another year to go.

Tired of Being Tired

Synopsis: Diana complains about the effects of her menstrual cycle of late, including the usual mood swings, but also unusual fatigue and cramping. Most people won't need to read on, unless you want to commiserate or offer suggestions.

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Tracking and Trending

I've often felt like I'm a little anal-retentive about the things I track and record on a regular basis. But nothing I do holds a candle to Nicholas Felton.

In one sense, the Annual Reports started in 2004 with a single-page, best-of-the-year survey. While this “Best of Four” was filled primarily with items I’d enjoyed the most over the previous year, it also contained some smaller, objective items I could excavate from the year without trying too hard. These items, such as the “most-played song,” “air miles traveled” and “digital versus analog photos” formed the basis of the following reports, while the subjective elements have become much less prominent.

I looked at Felton's most recent Annual Report, and found it both intriguing and excessively OCD. Then it occurred to me how many things I track in my own life:

• Music - tracking listening habits via Last.fm and iTunes
• Food - tracking eating habits for Weight Watchers by hand in a journal
• Weight - tracking daily/weekly weight over the past six years via Excel spreadsheet
• Photos - geotagging on Flickr, cataloguing and tagging via Adobe Bridge
• Concerts - via Last.fm Events (and physical ticket stubs saved)

I'm sure there are other data and trends I could extract from my online interactions (like Facebook and YouTube), and I know there must be daily actions that it would behoove me to track more regularly (like my sleep habits).

I'm sure it would also be helpful if I actually looked at the trends that the data reveal — do I gain more weight after a weekend including sushi or Indian food? Is there a correlation between amount of sleep and weight loss/gain? How does my diet directly affect my weight; how many Flex Points can I eat before I stop losing and start maintaining or gaining? What's the effect of eating five or six servings of vegetables versus only one in a day? There are so many possibilities, depending on how obsessive I want to get about the various aspects of my life. (Right now, my weight loss and food intake is the most trackable and accessible, so that's where my focus goes first.)

Might be worth some thought for me, as I'm already an anal-retentive bastard when it comes to tracking and listing certain things, anyway. Maybe dialing up the OCD will help me on several fronts.

Coasting

Time for a reality check.

I haven't lost any weight since before Thanksgiving. The trendline curve on my anal-retentive weight-loss graphs is starting to bow in the wrong direction, for the short term. Something needs to be done, and just complaining isn't going to cut it.

I need some new, measurable short term goals.

And that means a starting point. Since my last officially blogged weigh-and-measure, the following measurements have changed:

Weight: 190.6 lbs (down 3.4 lbs in just over 6 months)
Chest (not bust): 35½" (down half an inch)
Hips: 46" (down one inch)
Thigh: 25" (down one inch)
Calf: 15.25" (down 0.75 inches)

All other measurements have stayed the same. I've been flirting with the 180s since late summer, though — honestly, today probably wasn't the best day for an official weigh-and-measure, due to monthly bloating. TMI? Perhaps. But that's how I roll.

So, what's my reasonable, measurable short-term goal, and how am I going to get there?

I'm going to shoot for a small and quite reasonable goal: 185 lbs by my birthday (April 22nd). Even if I only lose half a pound a week, I'll get there. I can do that.

How will I do it? By drinking at least six glasses of water a day, eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables, keeping up with my push-up program, and doing at least 60 minutes of cardio a week (not including lunch walks). I can do that, too.

I'm tired of being so down on myself. I'm ready to do it up right. I'll feel so much better, physically and mentally, once I get back on track.

Self Control

It's nights like this that prove to me exactly why I've been in a plateau for the past three months. This evening, I chose to indulge in an evening of TV, which is extremely rare for me. Unfortunately, my evening of television turned into an evening of I Can't Stop Eating.

The same thing happens on Friday nights: I sit down to enjoy myself, in whatever solitary pursuit I find myself on a Friday night, and I end up falling face first into a bowl of noodly goodness. Followed by a diet fudge bar, followed by another snack, followed by a frozen meal, followed by me no longer tracking my Points.

On weekends, I assume that I'm OK if Aaron's OK; he tracks more religiously than I do, especially on weekends. Sometimes I forget that he has many more Points than I do, since he's male, and has a more active job. Even though he takes his last meal of the day after I'm already in bed, I should still probably say no to that last fudge bar of the day, or be more careful of what I order at Starbucks.

I also can't remember the last time I exerted myself to the point of sweating. The gym membership we were going to buy ended up bring too long of a commitment, and I never got around to activating my free 30-day membership at Bally's. Really, though -- if I'm not going to exercise at home, what makes me think I'm going to make a special trip to Bally's in the snow and cold, even if it is less than ten minutes away?

Point being, I need to get back in the game and start giving a shit again. I was so excited when I was consistently losing. Ever since the holidays, I've stalled; and the more momentum I lose, the less motivated I am to ramp things up again.

It's easy to see what needs to be done. The challenge is in actually doing it.

Being Sick Sucks.

I've taken the past two days off of work, thanks to being sick to my stomach and generally achy. Could I have done my job feeling like this? Yes, probably, if I had to... but I wouldn't have been happy about it. This is what sick days are for, after all: recouping, recovering, and not getting everyone else in the office sick. And, although I was sad to miss the annual IS Christmas Luncheon, it's probably better off that I didn't go touching the serving utensils and infecting the person behind me with my touch o' the flu.

I'm feeling better than I was this morning, and about the same as I was this time yesterday. That means that, by the time my friend Dan shows up in about an hour, I should be OK to go to dinner and coffee with him before he crashes on our sofabed for the night.

Hopefully I won't get him sick. Crossing my fingers.

Purge

Aaron and I have spent the past couple of weekends purging our lives of various media that we no longer need. First, he went through his videogames and got rid of some stuff he wasn't going to play anymore. Then, we weeded out our CD collection, ripping some of them to iTunes before trading them in to Allied Records with the games. After that, we went through the records and laserdiscs, offloading 150 LPs and 40 laserdiscs.

Today, we went through books. As avid book-lovers, we tend to collect cheap books that sound interesting. Sometimes we get a good deal; other times, we pick up books that we can never actually bring ourselves to read. We finally bid farewell to a few of the latter this evening, along with some books that aren't relevant to us anymore... like these diet books.

I had picked up some of these early on in college; The Hilton Head Metabolism Diet, along with The 200 Calorie Solution, actually helped me lose 10 pounds one summer. The Setpoint Diet and Farewell to Fatigue were some other early purchases, and I do recall that they had some helpful (if typical) ideas. Of course, Atkins' New Diet Revolution helped me lose 50 pounds (and keep 80% of it off). The rest of the books were in the review queue for my now-defunct Low Carb Lifestyle Podcast. I read The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet and found it to be something I wouldn't feel comfortable following. (I hesitate to use the word "hogwash," as I am not an M.D. like Drs. Heller.) I never got around to reading The T-Factor Diet or Protein Power, although I do remember scanning Sugar Busters and trading e-mails with an avid follower of that diet. It seemed fairly reasonable, as low-carb diets go.

Now that I'm having moderate (if plateauing) success on Weight Watchers, though, I feel quite comfortable giving these books to the thrift. Maybe they'll be what someone else needs to get themselves on the road to good health.

Thanksgiving Battle Plan

I don't know his name, but he pushes a trash can around downtown, picking up litter. He's employed by the Downtown Toledo Improvement District, identifiable by his bright blue-and-yellow attire. He's very polite and friendly, as are most of the Clean & Safe Team members, and always nods and says hello when he sees me.

Last week, we crossed paths during my lunch walk, and we stopped to talk for a moment. He told me I was looking good (in a sincere, non-creepy sort of way) and that he almost hadn't recognized me. When, in the course of our conversation, I told him I'd lost 20 pounds, he asked me what I was doing. So I told him: Weight Watchers. I don't expect that he'll *really* look into it like he said he would, but maybe I helped to plant the seed for him, like so many people did for me.

I'm 1.2 pounds away from my 10% goal — that is, having lost 10% of my initial body weight when I joined WW. Things have been moving slowly in the weight-loss arena lately, but mainly still moving in the right direction. I've been so close to my 10% for so long, it seems.

And I'll be damned if I let Thanksgiving pull me farther away from it.

Even so — and I don't plan to admit this to my Leader on Tuesday — I don't plan to track Points tomorrow. I'm going to eat breakfast before we head out to Cleveland, and encourage Aaron to do the same. I'm going to try to get up early enough to do a little exercise in the morning (my normal pushup training, plus some calisthenics — we'll see how that pans out). I'm going to bring a bottle of water with me in the car for the two-hour trip. I'm only going to eat things that really appeal to me (passing on the mashed potatoes, but definitely going for the sweet potatoes and the stuffing). And I'm going to stop BEFORE I'm full. But I'm not planning to actually write anything down, either during the meal or after I get home.

The offset for this unthinkable day of debauchery is the assumption that I will have used up all 35 of my weekly Flex Points in that one day, thus precipitating a more strict weekend than I usually have. I plan to bring my journal with me wherever we go out to eat for the rest of the weekend, and stick to my daily allowance. (I usually use up the majority of my Flex Points on the weekends.)

I'm hoping that the carrot-on-a-stick in the form of my 10% Goal will help me not pig out like a fiend tomorrow, and help me stay the course this weekend. This is the lowest weight I've been since... shit. Since drum corps, in early college, over ten years ago. I'm feeling good, better than I have in years (if not quite as good as I used to after three straight months of intense drum corps action). In my early thirties, feeling almost as physically fit as I did in my early twenties — I'm not going to screw this up. No fucking way.

One day like this could easily set me back a week or two on my weight loss. And I'm not going to let it. I'm too close to my goal.

Well, my FIRST goal, anyway...

The Gift of Fitness. My Own.

I first learned about one hundred push ups back in October, via the LJ of this fantastic artist from whom I bought cute mousie awesomeness at PAC.

Like almost every fitness venture I think about starting, I thought about starting this for weeks. I mentioned it to Aaron. I looked over the program. I forgot about it, then I remembered about it. Then, recently, Aaron asked me about it and showed some interest in trying it himself. So, I decided that I would go for it.

The idea is to complete an initial pushup test, to see how many you can do in one go, then jump into the six-week program at the place that's right for you. The site gives several different modification options, including knee pushups (a.k.a. "girlie" pushups, although the website is kind enough not to call them that), knuckle pushups, and even wall pushups. I chose to do my initial test, and my six weeks (or more) of training, by doing girlie pushups on my knuckles.

I did four.

I was never good at pushups, not even in drum corps — I know for a fact that my form was poor and my range of motion was shallow, and even then I could only manage about ten, as I recall. I wouldn't have survived long in low brass — a 25-pound horn and me just wouldn't have gotten along.

At any rate, it doesn't surprise me that I only managed four girlie pushups with good form. The "on the knuckles" thing actually relieved some stress in my wrists, which was nice. (Later that day, Aaron bought a pair of swivelly pushup handles, which are even nicer.)

Tomorrow I do four small sets of pushups as my first official pushup workout, then I'll be doing four more small sets of pushups before heading off to Thanksgiving on Thursday, and four more sets on Saturday. Slowly but surely.

I enjoy the feeling of empowerment this gives me, with such a minimal time commitment. Plus, knowing that Aaron and I are both doing the program (with him doing more manly pushups than me, of course) will probably make me more likely to stick with it.

One hundred pushups, here I come!

Self-Acceptance

Self-acceptance has been a challenge for me since puberty, I've realized.

Before then, I didn't really believe little Tyrone when he called me fat and punched me in the stomach when I was five or six years old. I didn't see a problem with being a size 14/16 at age eleven. It wasn't until sixth grade, when I changed schools and started growing boobs and zits and had some of my first really unpleasant academic and social experiences, that I started to get down on myself.

For me, the concept of loving myself for who I am right now is just foreign. I'm always trying to fix myself. Lose weight. Stop procrastinating. Get organized. Treat myself better. Have better hygiene. For me, self-acceptance is merely the lack of self-deprecation, or just not thinking about my opinion of myself at all.

This week, Sheryl e-mailed me with a one-liner:

Have you heard about this “fat acceptance” movement? What do you think about it?

I hadn't heard about it, so I hit Wikipedia, where I read the condensed version. It's exactly what it sounds like: "a grassroots effort to change societal attitudes towards individuals who are fat." So, I formulated an opinion:

Are fat people discriminated against? Do people make unfair assumptions about them? Definitely. Is being overfat unhealthy? I’m not a doctor, but I’m going to say yes.

I’m going to lump this into overall tolerance. I can’t be sure it requires a “movement,” but being socially tolerant of people in general is a good idea. Medically, though, I can’t see being OK with a loved one being obese. I wish [my BFF] would lose some [more] weight, for her own sake (and the same with all my other obese friends), but I don’t love her any less for there being more of her to love.

Sheryl then introduced me to Kate Harding's Shapely Prose blog, where Kate and two other bloggers write about the importance of Health At Every Size. Sheryl also told me, "I’m not saying 'DIANA. Stop losing weight and love yourself!' I’m saying, love yourself at every step. :D It's kinda liberating."

Until she said that, I completely hadn't realized she meant ME. I need to accept MYSELF.

But it's so hard.

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Before and ...During?

A few years ago, back when Napoleon Dynamite was all the rage, I bought myself a Vote for Pedro t-shirt on Amazon. Alas, when I got it, I discovered that it was just a touch too tight. ...OK, maybe more than "a touch."

I held onto that shirt for a year before I decided that it would make a good before-and-after weight photo. So, I put on my best-fitting pair of jeans (read: least tight in the waist), put on my too-tight shirt, and took some pictures. As expected, once I saw the pics full-size on my computer, I swore I would show them to no one until I had an appropriate After picture.

And here we are, twenty pounds later. I'm wearing a different pair of jeans, mainly because these fit better than (read: are not as loose as) the other ones (which I do still own), but the difference is still obvious:

Differences that stand out for me:

• The smaller waist. No more jellyroll / spare tire. Or, at least, not as noticeable of one.
• The neck. I have bones and tendons and shadows!
• The pants fit. Properly.
• I like my short hair. Having some hair to frame my face suits me.
• The upper arm is smaller. Hard to see unless you're looking for it. Like I am.
• Even my fingers are thinner! Lookit that!
• The boobs. They have shrunk. Part of me is sad to see them go.

So, I wonder what the picture for 170 lbs and 24 BMI will look like? We'll find out next year...

Shopping Trip

I spent the normal amount of money for a clothes shopping trip, but came back with a lot fewer clothes, and nothing that was actually on my agenda. Sheryl talked me into a pair of jeans from Buckle, and I got two tops and a skirt from Torrid (which is no longer totally Hot Topic for Fat Chicks). Alas, I did not get any more work pants, as the ones I tried on were unbearably frumpy. I also didn't get any more blouses for work, although I'm thinking that I'll be fine on that front, once I unearth the cold-weather clothes.

I'm having mixed feelings toward my body right now. Don't misunderstand: I'm still super geeked about dropping a size, and it's awesome to be feeling bones in places where only a layer of fat existed before. And to be wearing a wedding ring two sizes smaller than my high school class ring. And to have been able to buy pants at a non-specialty store.

But.

Goddamn, I have a long way to go.

My new low-rise jeans reveal the same paunch that I see on other chicks and say, "Why is she wearing that in public? Doesn't she know that's too tight?" My more form-fitting shirts remind me that I most certainly do not yet have anything resembling a flat stomach. I feel like the frumpy girl who's trying SO HARD to look stylish... and almost succeeding. But not quite.

I know, I know — I've lost over 60 pounds total. That's nothing to sneeze at, as they say. But, Jesus Christ, when am I ever going to be done? How long do I have to consciously be eating to lose weight? When do I get to reap the final reward? When do I get to be a normal fucking human being, instead of feeling like the fat chick?

*does some calculations*

Well, shit.

According to my anal-retentive weight-plotting chart, if I keep losing like I have been for the past four months, I should be at my target weight by Valentine's Day 2009. That makes me feel a lot better, and more focused. I'm almost halfway there!

Push through for another five months, and maybe I'll have to buy myself a smaller size of too-expensive (but oh-so-stylish) Buckle jeans.

Dangerous Spiral

I was going to post, for lack of anything better to say, about how I've been kind of lethargic and apathetic lately. In the mornings, even if I've gotten almost eight hours of sleep, I want nothing more than to turn off the alarm and curl back up on my pillow and sleep for another two or three hours. In the evenings, all I want once I come home is to see Aaron off to work, feed the cat, and then alternate between reading, playing video games, and feeding my face until it's time for bed. No Zen, no cleaning, no exercise.

No exercise. There's the rub. I'm pretty sure that's what's causing this mess, and that's a sticky widget, because the less I exercise, the less I want to exercise.

Somehow, I have to jolt myself into giving a damn again. I need to stop giving myself stupidly long to-do lists in the evenings, and focus on just accomplishing one major task. Regimented. Scheduled. Productive. With a little play built in.

Tomorrow evening, however, is devoted to a shopping trip with Sheryls. Which will be productive in its own way, as I already have an agenda, which I may or may not detail post-trip.

The cat is meowing and purring and rolling around on the floor beside my chair in my lap, which is a sign that she thinks it's time to me to go to bed. I think that's a good idea.

Phases

Is everyone like this? I'll go all-out on something — say, a diet — for a few weeks, then I'll just coast for a week or so. Same thing happens with web projects, or major cleaning endeavors at home, or an exercise plan, or anything sustained over a decently long period of time. (Unfortunately, my collegiate academics were like that, too, but I didn't "coast" as much as "quit going to class.")

I'm in the middle of the slack phase of my diet right now. I'm actually eating my Flex Points (the built-in cheaty part of the diet) instead of ignoring them like I usually do, or saving them for emergencies (e.g. "I had no idea that Indian dish was made with clarified butter"). I'm also in the midst of an exercise slack phase; I haven't done my prescribed nightly exercise for a couple of weeks. I'm maintaining my weight fairly well, and I'm wondering if these phases of slackerdom aren't related to my body needing to chill the fuck out with the weight loss, and just catch up with itself.

Thing is, I'm taking a mental vacation in other ways, too. I'm having a bitch of a time focusing on my job. I'm taking days off of working on my freelance site, even though one or two evenings of nose-to-the-grindstone work would wrap things up once and for all. My desk (at home) is getting messy again. I wonder what's up with me?

The Result Is Its Own Reward

Official weigh-in today shows that I'm less than five pounds away from my 10% goal. I lost 1.2 pounds this week, despite sharing a strawberry rhubarb pie with Aaron at the Fulton County Fair.

This weekend, I was eyeing my Sterilite container full of too-small clothes that were too cool to thrift off. I'd told myself that I wasn't going to try any of them on until I had dropped another size, just so I wouldn't be disappointed... but I was curious. So, I pulled the box down from the top of the closet, pulled on an XL girly tee from Wizzywig — and it fit.

OMG. I can haz cute clothes?

The XL girly tees I bought from Threadless aren't quite fitting the way I'd like them to — the armpits are bunching up a little — but it won't be long on those. They fit well enough that they're perfectly serviceable for bumming around the house after work, though.

I can comfortably wear 2XL girly tees from Steve & Barry's (which is what started this whole process of wondering about my other cute clothes), but I couldn't find anything terribly awesome to buy last time I was there.

The only thing that's kind of frustrating is that there's really no way to target fat loss from particular places on the body, like thighs and upper arms and upper belly. I can exercise them and firm up the muscles underneath, but that won't burn off the fat on top. So I'll just have to wait. As a next step to teh cuteness, I'd really love to feel comfortable in non-knee-length shorts.

Maybe by next summer. For now, I'm at least on the right track.

Weight Watchers Milestone

Today I received my 16 Week "Clapping Hands" award for attending 16 weeks of Weight Watchers meetings. This falls under the "eighty percent of success is showing up" category, and I'm not as proud of it as I am the simple star sticker I also received today for losing another five pounds. (Our leader didn't give out my five-pound star in front of everyone in the meeting, though, since it would clue everyone in about at what pace I'm losing weight. Not that I really care if everyone knows I'm losing about one pound a week.)

I have just over five pounds to lose per the official Weight Watchers scales until I hit my 10% goal — it's been statistically proven that losing 10% of your body weight can have a major positive impact on your health, and that goal is built right into the WW program.

Slow and steady wins the race and all that... If I ever need a pick-me-up, though, I look back over the past five-plus years and see how far I've come:

Thanks to the wonders of blogging (and journaling in general), I can map most of these trends in gains and losses to a particular time in my life: pre-wedding, Atkins, complacency, dieting, unemployment, Weight Watchers. It's a valuable tool, and I'm glad I've been anal-retentive about weighing and charting over the years.

Since I'm a shutterbug, too, I can map photos to all these weights: obese Diana in 2002, post-Atkins Diana in 2004 (still wearing pre-Atkins clothes), almost-obese Diana in 2006, and less-overweight Diana now, in 2008.

Yo-yo dieting? Not exactly. Actually, not at all. I lost 50 pounds — and I still maintain that low-carb diets are a valid way to lose a shit-ton of weight and see the results you need to keep you motivated — and I hovered within a ten-pound range over the course of three or four years. And now I'm back on the wagon and picking up where I left off.

Perspective. I haz it.

Weight Loss: Noticing the Little Things

I'm starting to step back from myself and see the differences between then and now. It's surreal, almost.

For instance: when I reach around to scratch my shoulder, there's a definite lack of a fat layer there. I can feel the boniness of my shoulder blade, and the existence of that little hollow at the top and back of my shoulder area.

Also: when I lay on my side to go to sleep at night, I'll sometimes wrap one arm around myself and kind of tuck it under my rib area. This rib area is actually starting to feel like ribs, and not like some sort of water balloon or something.

I've always had a gut. I think the anatomy of this gut is partially hereditary, being that all the womenfolk in my family have had the same shape of lower-abdominal fatness. Anyway, I was sitting on the john today, and realized (as I had some time on my hands) that my gut is deflating. I actually picked it up as best I could and squished it around and noted that it feels much less dense than it once did. I can still quite easily pinch more than an inch, but now it at least feels like skin with some fat underneath it, rather than a big, dense girl gut.

It's fun to notice the small things as I lose weight bit by bit. Funny — back in late 2002, I noticed I was getting fat obese when little things caught my attention: like the fact that the fat-roll creases in my love-handles were permanent and only went away with a major side bend, and like the fact that there was no space between my arms and my torso when I stood up straight.

I guess little things can make a big difference — in a good way — if you let them.

Feeling Fitter

I mentioned earlier that I am now at the lowest weight I've been in probably ten years. What's interesting is that I'm actually starting to feel it.

This week, I started actively working out in the evenings again. On Monday, I dug out one of my old PUSH DVDs from two years ago and did a 40-minute full-body strength-training workout. Yesterday, I did a grow-your-own sort of lower body and ab workout (focusing on the muscles that weren't already sore). Today was Zen, so no workout, although the deep breathing involved in a half hour of zazen really garners some of the same effects, I think.

I'm not sure if it's my body glomming onto the exercise it's been craving or what, but I feel taller and thinner this week. Plus, swear to Jebus, I reached up to scratch my upper arm today, and actually felt the definition between my triceps and my deltoids. I don't think I've ever noticed that on me before.

Also: I recorded a video clip of myself yesterday (that's a different post entirely), and noticed that my face and neck are getting noticeably thinner. I even filmed from what would normally be a horribly unflattering angle for me — basically, up my nose — and the double-chin only flashed into existence once or twice, and only because I was looking for it. For the most part, my face looks more square than round now, and my neck has definition instead of flab. Not much jiggle happening, despite the fact that I was playing "drums." (More on that later, I promise.)

So. This Weight Watchers thing seems to be coming up roses so far. I'm losing an average of about... *crunches some numbers* ...just over a pound a week since the middle of May. Assuming I keep at the same pace, that would put me at my 10% goal by the first day of Autumn. Maybe we'll see if I can't step things up a little, and speed up the pace to two pounds a week.

First on the horizon, though: making it successfully through Thursday evening and Friday in Cleveland, at funeral services for Grammie, where there will almost certainly be some sort of comfort food to be had at some point, and not much opportunity for a nice long walk around Lakewood with Aaron. Real life doesn't re-route itself just because we're on a diet, though... and Grammie did Weight Watchers herself in the '70s, and frequently sang its praises, so she'd want us to stay on program. And we will.

A Red-Letter Day in Weight Loss

Today, I weighed in at the lowest weight I've been in over five years.

When I started logging my weight back in November of 2002, I was about six months away from getting married, and I was obese. I thought that by being more conscious of what I was eating and by documenting my weight, I would manage to somehow lose weight before the wedding. Unfortunately, my wedding pictures ended up being my "before" pictures, as I weighed somewhere between 245 and 250 pounds on my wedding day.

In September of 2003, one week after I'd broken myself of my Mountain Dew addiction and was beginning a pasta-free week, Aaron decided to go on the Atkins Diet; I decided to join him. I lost 33 pounds in four months, and continued to lose for the next six months after that, eventually coming to a stop after having lost 50 pounds total. At that point, in July 2004, Aaron had reached the upper end of his normal weight range, and decided to go on Maintenance. After a year of dieting, I was glad to "take a break" myself, even though I still had thirty pounds to go.

For the next few years, we still ate low-carb, but weren't in active weight-loss mode. I slowly put on ten pounds over the next two years ("Chinese won't hurt me, just this once..."), then slowly took that ten pounds back off with the help of my friend Sheryl and a diet plan she e-mailed me. Actually, I took off more than ten pounds with that plan; it took me a whole year, but I got all the way down to 195, which was lower than my Atkins all-time low.

My next major hurdle came when I found out I would be losing my job of five years. My entire building was being eliminated due to a merger, so we all tried to make the best of it by having lots of parties on work time and organizing potlucks and generally trying to keep chipper with food and games. My weight loss had already stalled by then, but my lack of willpower — or, rather, my desire to join in and eat all the yummy consolation food — helped my weight start to creep back up. I'd gained a few back by the time I became unemployed, but I then proceeded to gain ten pounds in under six weeks of unemployment.

The past seven months or so have seen me succeed in losing ten pounds, gain five of it back, then lose another ten on Weight Watchers. I'm now down to a weight I haven't seen for probably ten years or more.

And this is just the beginning.

After the jump: weights and measures...

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Little Bit of Everything

I don't do these massive update posts much anymore — I prefer to keep my blog entries on one topic at a time — but I figured I'd do one catch-up post, then maybe expound on parts of it later. So, working backwards from today...

Weighed in today at 196.5 lbs on my home scale — that's one and a half pounds away from my recent all-time low of 195 from May 2007. (Yep, I gained 15 pounds in six months, and it took me longer than that to lose it again.) It was a bit of a disappointment, then, to weigh in at my Weight Watchers meeting at 200.4 lbs, even after I had an ultra-light breakfast and didn't drink much water before the weigh-in. My mini-goal had been to weigh in under 200 pounds at the meeting. Oh, well — I guess I'll wait until next weigh-in to hit my mini-goal, and to reward myself with some shorts and dress pants and blouses that fit.

My supervisor asked me this morning if I'd like to attend a User Group meeting in Lansing (two hours away) this Thursday. Then she asked me if I could drive, since her car doesn't have air conditioning. D'oh! So, I'll be getting up at the buttcrack of dawn on Thursday, driving with my supervisor for two hours, attending four hours of Business Intelligence lectures and panels, then having lunch and driving two hours back. At least we don't have to work for the last couple hours of the day; basically, my day gets shifted forward by two hours.

I landed a freelance web design gig yesterday. Actually, I pretty much "landed" it last Wednesday, when he asked me if I do web design, but yesterday's client meeting was the first official sealing of our new business relationship. He's the resident conductor of a local orchestra, so I'm basically making him a PR tool, which is perfect work for me. I underpriced myself, as per usual, but I made sure to leave myself an out: a flat fee for the first 20 hours, then an hourly fee for the next 20, topping out at 40 hours. So, I won't have totally hosed myself.

This past weekend, Aaron and I went up to the Ann Arbor Art Fairs. Great time, as always. I took a few pictures (with the Holga, too, although I'll have to wait until those are developed to post them), and I bought one expensive thing and one not-so-expensive thing.

Oh, and I still need to get this blog moved to its new home on another web host, and not just because something's borked with my MT installation/upgrade (as you will have noticed if you tried to comment on a post lately — your comments ARE going through, I promise). I have until the end of August to get my stuff moved — which, incidentally, is also the deadline for getting my freelance site done. I'm going to be looking at some mighty busy evenings here. I'll need to carefully ration out my time.

And now I should get to bed, because I need to ready myself for my epic early-morning wakey-wakey in another day or so. I haven't gotten up at 5:30am since... um... well, it's been a while. Not counting jet lag in another timezone, of course.

Weight Watching, Week Ten

I gained one pound since last week's weigh-in, but I'm OK with that. See, I've kept up with the practice of weighing myself daily at home, and I know that I've actually maintained a slow but steady decline. For last week's weigh-in, I ate a ridiculously tiny breakfast and drank just enough water to take my multivitamin, just so I would weigh in at hair-cutting weight at noon. It only makes sense that today, after eating a normal breakfast and drinking a full glass of water (at least) before noon, I could weigh more.

I've also noticed small things, like the looseness of the dress pants I wear to work — even the ones I just bought recently. My bras fit better now. Some of my shirts hang just a little funny in places. I think my neck / double-chin is shrinking. My posture is better (for the most part).

A big part of my recent successes is the companionship of Aaron on the diet bandwagon. Since he's decided to officially eat healthier and exercise, I'm less tempted to eat things I shouldn't. He's the main grocery shopper, so the food in the house is now overwhelmingly healthy (although we still have some throwbacks in the fridge and cupboards), and there's very little to tempt either of us. Plus, the weekends are on their way to becoming times to try out new recipes (like Asian Mushroom Stir-Fry) instead of eating out at the Indian buffet (and not stopping at one plateful).

Overall, I'm doing well. I'm slowly ramping up my exercise — I don't allow myself to watch Good Eats unless I'm on the mini trampoline — and I'm eating my fruits and veggies and drinking my water.

I'm learning to work the program... so the program will work for me. That's my mantra.

Mini Weight Loss Goals Work.

I announced in my Weight Watchers meeting a few weeks ago that the way I was going to Treat Myself Well (the theme of the meeting) would be to reward myself with a haircut after I lost four pounds. Today, I weighed in precisely four pounds lighter than I was that day.

I've been looking forward to this for weeks; even though I only declared my intention publicly a few weeks ago, I'd been wanting to cut my hair since before we went on vacation in May. Although it's not the perfect cut, I do like having thirteen inches off of my hair — and, as always, I like the thought that my hair will go to help a cancer-stricken kid have a head of hair again.

Literary Dichotomy

I recently purchased two books on Amazon.com; one was a book on macrobiotics, and one was a book on mindless eating. One was recommended by someone I trust, while the other was one that I'd stumbled across online.

After reading both of these books (actually, I'm not quite done with the second book), I'm amused by the completely opposite nature of these books, and am intrigued by my reactions to each.

Before purchasing this book, I Googled the title and found the author's blog. I followed her posts for some time before deciding that, yes, I did enjoy her writing style, and she seemed like a reasonable and intelligent person, so I would buy her book. Plus, the price was right, at about $12.

I probably should have Googled more of the actual practice of macrobiotics before purchasing the book.

This book was a quick read, and I loved Ms. Porter's witty and accessible writing style. I still subscribe to her blog. But I just can't get behind the actual practice of macrobiotics. The book explained everything to me, clearly and simply — enough for me to realize that I just can't get behind the idea of foods having yang or yin energy by virtue of the direction in which they grow. (The fact that I keep getting my yin and yang mixed up is no fault of the author's.)

I would read about the different grains, about vegetables, about ways to prepare these foods — then get jolted out of whatever credulity I'd developed when I would read a passage about how a sludgy liver stifles creativity. The left-brained me was craving an excerpt from some sort of scientific study, or discussion about the acidity or alkalinity of certain foods (which was mentioned on occasion), or anything to bolster my belief in this way of eating. Alas, I rarely got anything of the sort out of the text.

(In fact, when I Googled the words "macrobiotic" and "scientific" later on, I was gravely disappointed to find that studies rarely find in favor of the macrobiotic diet, in terms of reversing illness and disease.)

As a freethinker who doesn't take anything on faith — not even teachings from my Zen teacher — I wasn't able to buy into the idea of macrobiotics for the sake of yin and yang and its effect on the body. I can appreciate eating whole, unprocessed foods; or "slow" foods; or even vegetarianism. But I can't link my spirituality to my eating habits.

I almost didn't post the name of this book, or the author, or a link of any kind, just because I did appreciate the book itself so much, and I'd hate for someone to find this review and decide not to buy the book because of what I have to say about it. The fact that I didn't personally get behind the ideas within is secondary to the fact that this is honestly a very good book about macrobiotics. Just because I wasn't converted doesn't mean it didn't explain things well. It also doesn't mean that I won't be using those 80-some-odd recipes contained therein; I'm actually looking forward to trying barley and couscous and quinoa. Just not quite to the degree the book suggests.

The second book, on the other hand, is chock full of scientific studies centered around the science and psychology of eating. Every chapter has multiple endnotes cited, references specific studies, and gives provable information about what makes people eat more or less. Mindless Eating is so full of tips and tricks and facts and ideas that it will probably take me another reading before I can actually absorb it all. It's a much slower and methodical read than the macrobiotics book, just because of all the densely-packed information written in a more formal, scientific tone.

It seems backward that I would have so much to say about a book I disagreed with, and so little to say about a book I'm so enthralled with, but the truth is that I'm unsure how to sum up all the information I've gleaned from Mindless Eating — especially since I'm not quite done reading it yet. One thing I can say, though, is that the reader might be better served to get this one from the library. Granted, I did just say that I'll need to read it through again to get everything out of it; after that, though, I don't see me using this as a reference book. This will have been more of a source for diet strategies, party food tips, and Jeopardy answers questions.

I just found it so amusing that I simultaneously bought two books about food that represented such different stances on the process of understanding one's food consumption. They did agree on one thing, though: we should rely on internal rather than external cues to decide when we're full, and we should eat more slowly, and chew more. Now that I can get behind.

Starting Week Seven

So, here I am, at the beginning of Week #7 of Weight Watchers. I've acclimated myself to how the program works. I know the Points® values for the foods I eat most often. I've adjusted my way of eating, slowly but surely, toward more veggies and less meat.

Now it's time to really make the commitment.

Because I've lost less than three pounds in the past six weeks. And I want to see more results.

Meetings are helpful, and weigh-ins impose a sense of accountability that might not otherwise be in effect (despite my incessant blogging about my weight). Still, when I've gained nearly a pound in a week without meaning to, it's hard to hear about the woman who's lost 57 pounds — and not just hear about her, but hear HER, herself, explaining what's different now, saying how she's still got a long way to go, and referring to Flex Points as "devil points."

It makes me want to cry sometimes. What are these people doing differently from me, that they lose five pounds in a single week, and I can't even do that in a month and a half? What's wrong with me?

I ask myself that a lot, it seems.

Of course, when I get like this, it makes me want to crawl into a little hole and eat one-point fudge bars all evening, and not do the things I should be doing (mainly exercising), and that doesn't help matters. Me skipping out on Aikido tomorrow would be a Very Bad Idea™, since I need to get back into the swing of things.

But, damn, I'm just so depressed. I'd rather curl up on the couch and take a nap.

Aaron tried to cheer me up, and he did a pretty good job of it, too. "You're all depressed over 0.8 pounds?" he asked, and reminded me that I'm still headed in the general direction of where I need to go. That was helpful, and made me feel better, to an extent.

I need a little Aaron on my shoulder all the time, to drown out the little Diana on the other shoulder that berates me for sleeping in too late and not exercising enough and generally being a schmuck in so many ways.

One Small Step For A Diana

I had this carefully crafted blog intro I wrote out at work today, all about this song I remembered from Junior High choir called "Little By Little," and how the lyrics apply to my life.

Instead of using said intro, I'm just going to tell you that I started my running program this evening, after much hemming and hawing and giving up before I started and getting reinvigorated by things I read online.

Tonight, I spent 20 minutes alternating a one-minute run with a three-minute walk. I just went around the one-mile block that I generally walk if I want a pleasant but not too lengthy walk. It was just about dusk, which made me a little more comfortable about running in the potential presence of other people (since, even if someone were outside at dusk, they wouldn't see me very well, anyway).

The first running minute was a piece of cake. I could have kept going, no problem, but I knew better. The second stint of running was a little more challenging, but not bad. Actually, none of them were "bad" at all. They were all short enough that I didn't feel like I was going to die at the end, like I usually do with running (because I push myself too hard right off the bat). The only stretch of running that felt long was the last one, and that was partially because it WAS long — I was almost home, and there was someone outside in his driveway; so instead of stopping right in front of him, I ran past and crossed the street toward my house and tacked on another 20 seconds to my running time.

Tomorrow is Aikido, for the first time in over a month (the longest break I think I've taken from Aikido since I started nearly one year ago). I'm going to ease myself back into Aikido, going every Wednesday for a while, then easing back into a Wednesday / Saturday routine, and maybe eventually going to Mon / Wed / Sat. For now, though, I'm planning to do an evening walk/jog on Tuesdays and Thursdays, try to do one on Sunday mornings (can I make myself get up?), and do Aikido on Wednesdays. After I'm sure I'm acclimated to that, then I'll start filling in Aikido and maybe some strength training in the remaining days (or in addition to my run?).

Man, that felt good. I always forget how good exercise feels!

Beyond the jump: unfair comparisons, and current weights & measures.

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Weight-Loss Battle Plan #1: The Short List

Aaron and I like to go out to eat on weekends. It's what we do. It wasn't what we did once upon a time, when we were both poor college kids, but it's what we do now.

Eating out wasn't easy when we were on Atkins, almost five years ago, but we knew what we could eat and figured out how to adjust our dining to suit. Once we got into the groove of Atkins, there were very few places where we couldn't finagle ourselves some meat and veggies without bread or starch.

Enter Weight Watchers.

This isn't a more challenging plan overall; in fact, I appreciate being able to eat pretty much whatever I want in moderation. There are things to stay away from, as a general rule, but very few (if any) completely forbidden foods. It's all about planning ahead.

In that vein, I decided to make a "short list" of restaurants and entrees that would work out well for my current diet. So, when Aaron gets up on Saturday morning and asks me where I want to eat, I can pull a name out of my arsenal of good choices, instead of playing the "I don't know — where do YOU want to go" game until we're both so hungry that I just give in to the siren song of the Chinese buffet.

Some places have online menus with nutritional information; for those places, I look online and decide on two or maybe three different menu items to choose from when I get there. For restaurants that don't have their own nutrition facts online, but that are easily researchable, I take my digital camera (for lack of a cameraphone) and photograph my plate of food. That way, I can go back later and tally up what I ate (and compare it to my mental calculations of what I'd *thought* I ate).

So, without further ado, I present The Short List:

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Wii Fit: After One Week

I'm still regularly checking in with Body Tests using the Wii Fit Channel, although I don't actually "play" Wii Fit every day. It's been helping me notice and start to correct posture flaws and habits that I hadn't noticed before — for example, I tend to put more weight on my heels than on the balls of my feet. My center of balance also tends toward the left, presumably as a result of (or at least related to) a long-ago drum corps injury.

The balance tests that Wii Fit uses in the Body Test can be... well, they can be learned, shall we say. There are certain tests that start out challenging, but your reaction time can be increased once you learn the pattern (lean to the right to anticipate the first stage, then tweak your balance slightly until you clear the stage, then lean to the left to anticipate the next stage, and so on). There are other, more random tests that I haven't yet found the pattern for, though. The combination of predictable and unpredictable tests makes my Wii Fit Age volatile sometimes; if I get two predictable tests together, my Wii Fit Age can be as much as 12 years younger than my actual age. If I get two challenging tests, it can be several years older. Usually, with a reasonable mix of tests, I end up either at or just below my actual age.

I have noticed that my tricky left knee (again, from that old drum corps injury) has been acting up lately, and I'm guessing it might be from either playing Wii balance games or from tweaking my balance during the day. I'm thinking that it's a combination of both, as my knee doesn't take well to being put in different weight-bearing positions than it's used to. This will likely improve as I strengthen my leg muscles (and lose some weight, too).

If I wasn't already an anal-retentive bastard about recording my weight on a regular basis, the Wii Fit weight chart would be a new and swell thing. As it is, the Wii Fit chart is but one more weight charting tool in my arsenal, added to my multiple Excel graphs (tracking over the past five years) and the widget on my iGoogle page. Even so, it is nice to stand in front of my giant HDTV and see a slowly-declining weight plotted before me.

In other fun news, Wii Fit asked me yesterday how Aaron's doing. Not rhetorically, either — it had me answer whether I thought he was losing weight, gaining, or staying the same. Aaron did create a profile in Wii Fit, so it knows that he exists, even if he hasn't actually "played" Wii Fit. That makes me wonder what kinds of questions and comments it would throw out there if Aaron were actually using the game regularly...

When I do play actual mini-games in Wii Fit, I tend to stick with the balance games, and sometimes aerobic games like Hula Hoop. I'll do the occasional yoga pose, but I rarely delve into the strength training (although I probably should, judging from my performance on the push-up / side plank exercise).

Overall, I'd still give the game a B. It's not the awesome breakthrough hit that I thought it might be, but I'm not disappointed that I bought it.

And, finally, here's the difference a set of balance sensor extenders can make.

Before adding the extenders:

And after, with my correct weight (and Mii proportions):

Sigh.

Wii Fit: A Clarification

After discussing our respective Wii Fit experiences with an old college buddy (specifically, an RCC employee, for those RCC alumni playing at home), I decided that the Wii Balance Board can't be that flawed. So, I installed the Balance Sensor Extenders that I had assumed would be unnecessary for as short of carpet as we have.

Voila! My weight registered today as... well, as my correct weight, shall we say, and my BMI was the 29-and-change I had expected it to be. Unfortunately, it means that my Mii got way fatter, since Wii Fit extrapolates from your BMI and adjusts the corpulence of your Mii accordingly.

So, I take back my assertion that the Balance Board is not a good scale, and instead replace that assertion with the completely valid concept of RTFM.

I tried a couple of new exercises in Wii Fit today, while I was waiting for my dinner to get done: one new yoga pose (sun salutation — again, simplified in a big way), one strength (torso twist), and a few balance games (soccer ball headers, ski slalom, and ski jump). Apparently, I just skipped the balance games last night entirely, in favor of the aerobics. The balance games are by far the most fun for me at this point, as far as actual gameplay is concerned, and I did myself and my readership a disservice by deeming the game meh-worthy before playing said balance games.

I will, therefore, give Wii Fit a tentative rating of a B. I may change my mind after I play it a while longer.

Wii Fit

My first impression: OMG, I've spent $90 on a piece of crap that I'll never use. Go me!

I warmed up to it after a while, though, really. It just didn't hit me as totally awesome right off the bat like Wii Bowling did, or like Dance Dance Revolution did years and years ago.

Things that made me a little doubtful from the get-go:

1. The Balance Board is NOT an accurate scale. It shows me as being at my ultimate goal weight, some 30 pounds less than I am now.
2. I took the initial Body Test twice (once before dinner, and once after), and it gave me two VERY different Wii Fit Ages. The first time, it said I had the fitness level of a 34-year-old; the second, 27. I'm actually 32. How can I be so unfit and then so healthy in the same day?
3. The first activity listed is Yoga. While I understand why — stretching is important before exercise, and yoga is all over that — doing deep breathing, half-moon pose, warrior pose (a simplified version), and tree pose is not exactly party time.

What saved it for me was the aerobics. The Hula Hoop® is actually quite a workout (especially when you open up SUPER Hula Hoop®). Step aerobics are done much like DDR — step off behind or to the side, and back on, in time with Miis on-screen and simple, easy-to-understand footprint graphics. Running is actually fun, too, which I hadn't expected, since you're just putting the wiimote in your pocket and jogging in place (not on the balance board), basically changing the speed of your footfalls to keep up with the Mii in front of you.

I tend to think of the Wii as a party-game console, as many gamers do. This *could* be used as a party game, I suppose, if you hang with people who like to point and laugh at their friends trying to twirl a virtual hula hoop. Some of the balance games could be mighty fun, too... especially if you're drunk.

Will I actually use this for fitness? I'd better, since I paid almost $100 for it. Seriously, though, some of the games and activities are engaging enough, while still being quite the workout. (I was breaking a good sweat after 10 minutes of Wii Fit aerobics.) It'll be more fun than throwing in a 45-minute workout DVD, and I can decide when I've had enough without feeling guilty for ducking out early on Billy Blanks.

Spring Challenge, Week #6

I know it seems like weight loss updates are all I've been posting lately; at least, it does to me. I've been spending more time playing Culdcept Saga and figuring out some blog coding tweaks than sitting down and blogging, so I haven't really been posting any substantive blog entries of late. I wish I could promise that will change... but I can reliably promise no such thing. I can but try.

At any rate, I'm back on the decline! Tuesday's WW weigh-in had me down 2.4 pounds from last week, and today's Spring Challenge weigh-in had me down 1.5 pounds from my spring starting weight. Any way you look at it, it's good news.

BUT. Next week starts my vacation.

Am I taking a vacation from healthy eating and exercise? Not entirely. I'm planning to continue tracking my food until the day we leave for Hawaii, and begin tracking again the day we return (or once the jet lag subsides). While I'm in Hawaii, I'm going to stick to reasonable eating habits: not stuffing myself overfull, not going completely ballistic on booze and sweets, and definitely staying active. We'll be in Hawaii, for gods sakes! Beautiful weather, all the time. Swimming, walking — I might even join the local Aikido club for an hour's romp.

I honestly don't expect to gain much (if any) weight during those seven days. That's the plan, anyway.

Quick Update

On my to-do list for this evening was posting more about the Japan Trip of 2007, since I'm running out of time to finish up with that before the next vacation. However, the other things on the to-do list took precedence.

I've rediscovered the joy of cooking, and spent a good part of this evening preparing food for the upcoming week. I cooked two cups of rice and portioned it out into six servings of one-third cup each. I made the Pureed Broccoli Soup recipe I read in this month's Women's Health magazine. Add to that the two single-cup servings of Three Amigos Chili I have stashed in the fridge from this weekend, and I'm loaded for bear.

Also on the agenda: a cardio workout with PUSH (quickly aborted ten minutes in, when the yoga-cardio chick started doing a V-step and some sort of jazz hands) and processing / uploading audio files from my Zen teacher's most recent retreat with his Zen teacher.

In the foreseeable future: Tomorrow is my second-ever Weight Watchers weigh-in and meeting. I have four more days of work before I get two weeks off. And I have only nine days to wait until I can see the sunny shores of Oahu!

I'll try to post some more substantive entries within the coming week. We'll see...

Spring Challenge, Week #5

I'm not sure why I keep posting updates. Both James and I are sucking it up big time, and really can't seem to keep focused on our weight loss goals. I'm back above my spring starting weight again.

However.

I took a big leap on my birthday (Tuesday, for those of you who aren't keeping track): I joined Weight Watchers. My employer sponsors a Weight Watchers At Work program, so I can go to a WW meeting with my co-workers during my lunch break every Tuesday. It seems fairly well attended — I think there were at least 25 people there, probably more.

I didn't get the standard-length Getting Started talk; instead, I got a quick explanation and the Week One materials. I'm OK with that, though, as everything seems fairly self-explanatory. The program isn't difficult to understand. Take a short assessment of your activity level, current weight, gender, and age to calculate the number of points you should eat in a day; use the nifty slide rule to compare fat and calories and fiber to calculate the points value of a food; and track what you eat as you eat it.

Easier said than done.

I'm discovering some important things about myself. Firstly: I am an evening eater. During the day, at work, I'll eat something small every two hours, and I'm fine. Once I get home, though, it's time to relax and kick back — and part of the comfort of home is the comfort of food. I enjoy the physical act of eating.

Which brings me to my second point: if it's in the house, I'm going to eat it. Before I decided to go on WW, I asked Aaron to buy some cans of Beefaroni during the weekly grocery run. (I knew I was being naughty, but I didn't care.) Once I committed to WW, I could easily have stuck them in the back of the shelf and pretended they weren't there. Did I? No. Instead, I calculated that one can of Beefaroni is ten, count 'em, ten points, and proceeded to eat the Beefaroni anyway.

Also during last weekend, I had a moment of weakness and bought some homemade sweets from a guy at the flea market: coconut-covered date rolls, chocolate-covered banana chips, and chocolate-covered espresso beans. I've been fairly good at keeping my hands out of those, though. Somehow.

Not only am I finding it challenging to slow my evening eating, but I'm finding Weight Watchers to be a major paradigm shift from eating low-carb in general (I haven't been on the Atkins Diet proper for some time now). Things that I used to think were fine — unbreaded catfish nuggets, protein bars and shakes, peanut butter — are now taboo. Things that were once taboo — fruits galore and real milk, among others — are now encouraged. Where before I could satiate my snackie fix with an Ostrim (ostrich/beef stick — very lean), now I must go with strawberries or pickles.

I'm not expecting big things out of this first week. I've already eaten through most of my flex points for the week (even if you don't count that first day, when I just ate "normal" to see how many points that would be). I know I'll get the hang of it, and learn all the tricks of the Weight Watchers masters. For now, I really just have to focus on being dogmatic about the diet: Do what they say to do. Don't question. Don't go outside the lines. They know what works.

I've also discovered some motivation that I wish I would have thought of sooner: trying on the swimsuit I'll be wearing on vacation in two weeks. It's a one-piece that I bought a couple of years ago and haven't had the chance to wear for real. While it does fit... I really feel like a sausage in it. My husband is probably the only person who will think this is sexy. And now there's no time to do anything about it. I can't take care of this in just two weeks. Well, I could, but it wouldn't be healthy.

So, without trying to sound too down on myself, that's where I stand. Can't keep focused. Feel frumpy. Thinking that 175 pounds is a pipe dream.

I'm not as fat as I was. I have a lower BMI than many people in my Weight Watchers group. But that doesn't mean I'm happy with the way I look and feel.

You'd think that would be enough motivation, wouldn't you? Meh.

Spring Challenge, Week #4

Another quick update: back to spring starting weight, after re-losing the few pounds I gained from eating so well much during the Anime Punch weekend extravaganza.

Seriously contemplating either a.) a new low-carb diet or b.) Weight Watchers. Either will require me to be good mindful of what I eat on weekends. Either would be more effective than what I'm doing now (a grow-your-own sort of calorie-counting almost-Zone diet).

It would be easy to berate myself here, but Sensei charged us during Zen yesterday to practice doing no harm this week, both to self and others, and berating myself would only be harmful. So, I will instead accept my shortcomings, bow to them, and let them go.

And come up with a new plan.

Spring Challenge, Week #3

Just a quick update: I'm down 0.7% from my spring starting weight, and James is down 1.6%.

I've been having some weird fluctuations in motivation and mood lately. On one hand, I can see how these fluctuations are directly related to what i eat and when; on the other hand, it's damned hard to change habits sometimes, even when they're detrimental to one's well-being. Basically, I need to eat lighter in the evenings, and lay off of the carbohydrates late in the day (even whole grains), otherwise I'm more inclined to munch all night (or until I manage to make myself full).

CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Spring Challenge, Week #2

James is kicking that ass, and is down 1.6% from his Spring starting weight.

I, on the other hand, am 1½ pounds up from my Spring starting weight. I ate poorly during my weekend Aikido seminar, on top of having sore and swollen muscles, so my weight shot up drastically. Then, as I was finally starting to drop the excess weight mid-week, I got a cold — the kind of cold that, at the beginning (while my nose still worked properly), made me just want to curl up on the couch under a blankie and eat mac & cheese while watching TV.

Where's my motivation?

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Spring Challenge, Week #1

The short version: Both James and I lost one pound each this week, after a weekend of poor food choices and general culinary debauchery. That makes him down 0.4%, and me down 0.5%, just by virtue of our different starting weights.

The long version I'll put after the jump, as it's come to my attention that not everyone wants to hear the same diet and fitness crap week in and week out. Which is pretty much what it's come to, isn't it?

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Spring Challenge Begins Now

Happy Spring Equinox!

Today is the day when James and I reset our Weight Loss Challenge. Since both of us did relatively well in January, then started to slack in February and March, James came up with the idea of having a do-over starting the first day of Spring. And here we are:

(I know my feet look grotesquely veined and aikido-scarred in this light. So be it.)

James has informed me that he's going to win before I leave to go on vacation on May 7th, so I guess I'd better step it up. I'll have to lose just under two pounds a week to hit my goal of 194.5 in time to maintain it for a week before leaving for Hawaii. For those of you keeping score, 194.5 will be a recent record low for me; I think my record is 195, actually, and I only saw that for a day or two several years ago.

So, how am I going to do it? Well, I figure that doing what I was doing back in January would be a good start, since I lost an average of just under two pounds per week through January and into February. My plans would therefore include a.) attending Aikido regularly; b.) planning my meals in advance (sometimes making a week's worth of lunches on Sunday night); and c.) practicing restraint and portion-control on weekends. My general guide will be the Reasonable Diet's "I-Week Diet," at least in the beginning: fruits, veggies, lean meats, whole grains, and no sweets (although that's a terrible oversimplification). As for calorie breakdowns, I'm planning to keep it reminiscent of the Zone Diet: 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein, and 30% calories from fat. That seems to work well for me.

As usual, I'll be tracking my food with my DietOrganizer Palm OS app, which totally rules. It's actually a big part of my strategy, as I can see my calorie percentages as they readjust during the day. The only thing it doesn't do that I wish it did is sync to my computer so I can see the graphs and manipulate the data on a larger scale. I also bought myself a fancy pedometer that I'm going to calibrate tonight and start wearing tomorrow. It came with tracking software, too, so I can sync it up to my PC and track how far I've walked over time.

Something else that's going to be important is sleep. Yes, sleep. I've read about enough studies that link changes in sleep with changes in weight, so I'm going to make a concerted effort to get a minimum of 8 hours a night. I usually only get around seven hours during the week, if that; I tend to sleep in on the weekends, though, usually getting about ten hours, and sometimes twelve if I'm feeling especially lazy/snuggly. My plan is not to expect too much of myself during the evenings, as far as productivity goes, and to turn off my computer by 9:30pm. (So, if you see me on Google Talk or AIM after 10pm on a weeknight, tell me to wrap things up and go to bed already!) :-)

I've lost 7½ pounds so far this year. (More than that, actually, but I gained back a few and re-lost them.) I'm back to where I felt stable and quasi-comfortable last year. Now it's time to step it up and get down to where I'll start to actually feel good again.

The Challenge Reboots Next Week

It's been a week of ups and downs for me, weight-wise. The weekend was bad. Very bad. Worse than it should have been, mainly because of my inability to STOP EATING.

(One piece of Enchilada Casserole for Sunday dinner would have been OK. Two was pushing it. Three was definitely being bad. But four? Four was redonkulous. And I knew it. And I paid for it in physical discomfort for some time afterward. Aaron and I polished off an entire 9"x13" pan of Enchilada Casserole in one sitting, and it was a Poor Idea™. But not really Aaron's fault, as I could easily have begged off after having seconds.)

All last week, I chose not to log my food, just to see what would happen. What happened was that I steadily lost weight: half a pound a day, give or take. Then the weekend happened. But on Monday, I turned it around, and by today's weigh-in, I was back down to having lost 3% of my body weight since January 1st.

James and I have really been having a time of it. I did really well for the first five weeks, then my weekly average weight chart started heading the wrong direction for the next four. This week, I'm finally on the decline again, so far:

Today, when James and I were checking in with each other via e-mail, he made a suggestion: Why don't we make this challenge a Spring Fling and call a redo starting March 20th — the first day of Spring? I'll go with that, sure! (Especially since a Thursday weigh-in will keep me going to Aikido on Wednesday nights.)

So, next week begins a new challenge, a new starting point, and a new attitude. Rather, a continuation of the new attitude I've cultivated so far this week. Plus, I could use a new starting point to determine a new ending point; I want to have this competition in the bag by... *calculates a reasonable date by which to lose ten pounds* ...by the time I go to the World Crokinole Championship in Ontario, early this June. (No joke. I'll tell you all about it later.)

Really, though: there's no shame in calling a do-over when both parties would benefit from a fresh perspective.

Mindful Eating

I thought of this earlier today, and wanted to at least touch on it here. I'll probably flesh it out a little more thoroughly later on, but I at least wanted to get it out there.

Some diet coaches and programs impress upon dieters the importance of "mindful eating" — that is, eating with a purpose, rather than just standing in front of an open fridge with no recollection of how you got there. For me, it's not so much the idea that I just happened to start eating, and how did I get here? It's more of an attitude of, "Oh, fuck it. I want to eat something, so here I go, so I'll stop arguing with myself."

So, to help cut down on this occurrence (that word never looks like it's spelled right to me, even though it is), I thought of three questions to ask myself. Not the "How do I want to feel?" that I've mentioned before, although that can be helpful. That's more of an invitation to yourself to be introspective about your potential food choice. No, I want to get straight to the point:

1. Why am I eating?
2. Why am I eating THIS?
3. Why am I eating this NOW?

These questions are pretty straightforward, and the answers are pretty clear-cut as to being either acceptable or unacceptable. Question #1 will determine if I'm really hungry, or if I'm just eating to eat. Question #2 will determine if I'm eating the wrong things for the wrong reasons. And question #3 will help me in planning future meals, or avoiding poor timing.

For example, good answers to "Why am I eating?" would be things like, "I'm hungry," or, "It's been four hours since I last ate," or, "I won't be able to eat again for another three hours." Poor answers would be the standard grazer answers: boredom, thirst, because I'm reading, because I'm tired, watching TV, et cetera, et cetera.

Good answers to "Why am I eating THIS?" might revolve around its nutritional content. Or, they might be more superficial and be simply that it's what was in my lunch, which would then hark back to the planning stage. Poor answers might be that the food is convenient and quick to prepare, or that I'm craving sweets, or that it just sounded really good.

"Why am I eating this NOW?" could be a repeat of the first question, in a way. It could also hone in on meal timing. If I'm eating crap, and I'm eating it NOW because I'm freaking starving, then maybe I need some better preparation in the future. If I'm already planning my meals and eating on a schedule, then the answer here should reflect the answer to question #1.

Like I said, it's not exactly a dissertation or some grand self-help article. (That's what separates us hobbyist bloggers from The Professionals, I suppose.) It's just a general idea of what might help me eat a little better. Honestly, it's kind of a psychology tactic: maybe I can either guilt myself or logic myself into not eating the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

I'm afraid that the only thing that'll get me into the shape I want is to morph myself into some sort of OCD scheduler, where I eat at certain times, and exercise every day at a certain time, and do certain workouts on certain days, all the time, and somehow manage to get my ass up out of bed earlier than I do now. It worked well enough in drum corps, when it was planned out for me and pretty much forced upon me; I'm not sure how I can do it for myself, though. I always come up with an out, an alternative plan, another choice to make. When I was half-awake on a gym floor and the drum major would say, "Good morning, Bluecoats! It's 7:30! You have fifteen minutes to be outside for morning stretches," the options were: a.) get up, pee, put my contacts in, pull my hair back, get a bra on, put my socks and shoes on and get outside; or b.) stay in my sleeping bag and... what? Get sent home? Get made fun of? Get yelled at? I wasn't really into any of those options, and so they never occurred to me as actual options.

(It so happened that one mellophone player, Scott, actually did fall asleep during a lunch break once. This was during a stay at a school that didn't have a practice field adjoining, so we had to be bussed to a field for rehearsal. It was maybe half an hour or so before someone realized that Scott was missing from the drill, and a full hour before one of the volunteers discovered him asleep in the gym and drove him to the field. He was dubbed "Sleepy Scott" from that day forth. He didn't get in trouble.)

Wow. That went on a tangent. (Again, separating myself from the Big Time Bloggers, I suppose.) Point being, I should at least be mindful of why and what I eat. Then, maybe I can start forming some positive habits so I don't have to be on a weight-loss plan for the rest of my life.

The Challenge: Weeks #8 & #9

These weights are snapshots of each Tuesday, not weekly averages, but dang. We're both slipping off course in a big way.

Aikido will be a big help in upcoming weeks, as I start going back to class. I'll be ramping up my participation in Aikido over the next few weeks in preparation for the weekend-long workshop with Bill-Sensei, my Sensei's teacher. It's a big deal, and not to be missed, but I'm concerned about me being able to last through a Friday evening, all day Saturday, and Sunday morning. Hence, the ramping-up of activity to prepare.

I choose to give myself one week of not journaling my eating habits, during which I'm going to take a long, hard look at what my goals are and what I'm willing to do to achieve them. I'm just coming off of a weird time at work, with lots of training out-of-town (well, two out of the last three weeks, anyway), and I feel like I need time to settle my brains.

I've also been kind of slightly depressed/jealous after seeing a friend's vacation photos from Barbados. (I know you didn't mean it, but girlfriend, you look super-curvy-hot.) My friend — we'll just call her BG, but she can speak up here if she wants — is probably my same BMI, but shorter, and... well... there's no sensitive way to put it: she has HUGE hooters. Huge. And she looks mighty fine in a bikini, let me tell you. Curves in all the right places, and all smooth textured skin. If I were into girls... well, since I'm not, we won't go there.

I looked at last year's "before" pictures of me in my first-ever-as-an-adult two-piece swimsuit (that will probably never be seen by anyone in public), and was highly disappointed. My stomach has this weird indent around the waistline from wearing too-tight jeans all through junior high and high school (why didn't anyone ever tell me about the Muffin Top?). My thighs are all dimply, and I'm a little knock-kneed (although I'm probably the only one who notices).

I know I shouldn't compare myself to my friend BG, but it's hard. I can compare me now to me back in 2003, fifty pounds ago... but that seems like an old victory. I've stayed within a ten-pound range for the past four years or so, but I'm not done with myself. I have a good thirty or thirty-five pounds before I'm where I'd love to be, although I'd be satisfied with losing another fifteen for now.

It's all a matter of what I'm willing to do. I need to sit down and give that some thought this week.

Aikido: My Triumphant Return

Earned the rank of rokyu (6th kyu) on January 26th.

Got bronchitis and missed two weeks of class. Almost went back on February 6th, but was exhausted and not into dealing with the inclement weather. Last week, I was in Columbus. So, yesterday, I attended aikido keiko for the first time as a rokyu, after having missed lots and lots of class.

As an aikidoka with rank, I am now not only permitted but required to wear hakama during practice. Luckily, there was a loaner hakama available, as I hadn't ordered mine yet. Phil was kind enough to show me how to tie the hakama (which is quite the production, let me tell you). I was being frank with Phil-san when I informed him that the whole process would be a lot easier if I didn't have boobs getting in the way. I don't think he quite knew how to react to that.

I actually felt a lot more... at ease? Normal? Accepted? Clothed? ...while wearing the hakama. I hadn't realized that part of my unease in class had been the fact that I was dressed differently than most of the others. I consider it a giant stroke of luck that I didn't trip over my hakama once during class — which, incidentally, was taught by one of the yudansha (black belts), as Sensei was out of town.

My loaner hakama did give me some neat bruises, though. There's actually a rigid plate in the back, called a koshiita, which Phil told me is supposed to protect your lower back. All it did for me was give me bruises on my back, on either side, just above my ass. Fantastic.

As for class itself, we did a lot of rolling. While I am getting better at taking rolls, especially from my left side, it does still make me dizzy and nauseous. We also did a little work with the jo (staff), which was totally new to me. During our warmup, Phil led us in a jo exercise with which I wasn't familiar; it looked like everyone else knew it perfectly well, though. I had a hard time following along and reminding myself that Phil was NOT a mirror.

After class, I finally got to participate in the folding of the hakama. The whole class gathers by the edge of the mat and removes their hakama (hakamas?), and folds their hakama on the mat while chatting and having a grand social time. Petra was kind enough to help me out with the removal and folding and tying of my hakama; I would have been totally lost without her help.

Aftermath? Sore everything. Shoulders, arms, sides, back, abs, ass, calves. My abs and arms/chest were already sore from Monday's and Tuesday's homegrown workouts, so it's hard to tell how much is aikido and how much is my other workouts finally catching up to me. What I can ascribe to aikido, though, are the bruises. The nifty matching ones in the back from the koshi plate, and the ones on my wrists from grabs (ryote-tori: two-handed grab, one on each wrist; katate-tori: one hand grabbing one wrist; and morote-tori: two hands grabbing one wrist).

So, yeah. Successful, if exhausting. Thanks to another business trip, this time to Chicago, I won't be attending keiko again until after the Weapons Seminar on March 1st. So, I'll have to really start training hard after that to be ready for Gleason-sensei's visit at the end of March. He's teaching a gasshuku, an intense weekend of aikido training, and I'm worried that I might not last the entire weekend. I'm going to give it my damnedest, though.

I'll have to bring my camera to the dojo and take a picture of my name up on the wall, with the other students'. I'm officially a rokyu. That was fun to see.

The Challenge: Weeks #6 & #7

Famous last words: "If I stick to my diet and ramp up the exercise, I see no reason why I shouldn't reach my 5% goal this week."

Blah.

I actually did very well while I was out of town for my training. I ate a small breakfast every day, ate a sensible lunch (though not always nutrient-rich — lunch for a couple of days was jerky and trail mix), and ate whatever for dinner. I didn't let myself get overly stuffed, though, even at the Chinese buffet. This past week's downfall was — drumroll, please? — the weekend. Mediterranean food and Max & Erma's were both part of my weekend. I can't remember what the third meal out was, but it wasn't good for me, obviously. I ballooned to 207 after the weekend's food festivities.

My weekly average weight chart is starting to curve the wrong way; I need to get this under control NOW and get back on the wagon. I'm going to aikido tomorrow for the first time in three weeks, and I've been doing strength training for the past couple of days (yesterday was abs, today was arms). I've been continuing to walk at lunchtime, even in the sub-freezing cold, although the colder weather leads to shorter walks.

This week, I'm focusing on not just getting to bed earlier, but establishing a nightly routine. I get my lunch ready, gather my iPod and PDA and whatnot (and tonight, "whatnot" will include packing my aikido bag), then sit zazen (seated meditation) for 20 minutes. I've found that really helps me slow down my mind at the end of the day. I'm not sure if it helps me sleep better, but I know it's good for me on several levels. After zazen, I wash my face and brush my teeth and get into bed, and allow myself to read for a half hour before lights out.

Speaking of my nightly routine, it's about time for me to go do that. Before I go, though, I want to commit to eating LESS this weekend. Not avoiding eating out altogether, but at least making more sensible decisions. Like getting the chicken salad croissant with tortilla soup instead of the cajun chicken pasta. Like eating an appetizer or half of an entree-sized salad for lunch. That's my goal for this week: eat sensibly in restaurants.

Next Tuesday, I go with my co-worker to Chicago for more training, so I may or may not be able to update. We'll see how I do in Chicago...

Tired Of This

Several years ago: New Year's Eve at Aaron's apartment on Enterprise in BG. After a long evening of adult beverages, food, and video games, I find myself lying on Aaron's bed, with the room spinning around me. "I don't want to be drunk anymore," I say, as rationally as possible. Aaron patiently puts me to bed to sleep it off.

Last week: Bronchitis. The first case I can remember having — or at least, having officially diagnosed (I couldn't remember back when I had it at age one). One week after being diagnosed and getting prescription meds, I find myself still hacking and coughing and not yet at 100%. "I don't want to be sick anymore," I say, between coughs, knowing full well that only time and meds will cure what ails me.

Now. Overweight. Still, after years of struggling (sometimes all-out, sometimes admittedly half-assed). I see myself in a video, full-length, doing aikido, looking frumpy and out of shape and unattractive. And it hits me: "I don't want to be fat anymore," I say to myself.

I'm steadily losing a pound and a half per week, and have been doing so since January. I've lost nine pounds, give or take. If I keep going at this rate, I could potentially be at my "ideal" weight by the end of August. I'm just so sick of looking and feeling the way I do, and so frustrated with the amount of time (and willpower and planning) it's going to take to do it right.

I guess all I can do is keep doing what I'm doing. Keep moving in the right direction, one step at a time, and eventually I'll get there. I'm still curious to see what I'll look like in thirty pounds. It's just... damn. I'm sick of being fat.

The Challenge: Week #5

As you may recall, I had a really fun case of bronchitis last week. I'm still getting over said bronchitis — I still have another day and a half of antibiotics to go — but I at least met my week's goal of maintaining my weight and diminishing the nasty rattle in my chest.

Highlights of the week include me skipping aikido on Wednesday and Saturday, due to a nasty and persistent cough; eating a deliberate all-out cheat meal on Saturday at Famous Dave's with Aaron, Mark and Rocky; and caving to my own desire for Chinese at lunch on Sunday. Other than that, my week involved going to work, not walking much (probably a poor idea to walk outside in sub-freezing temps with bronchitis), and being miserable and annoyed with my breathing difficulties.

However. Now that the nasty hacking cough has diminished to a mere occasional rattle, it's time to step things back up. Last night, I did some upper body work: three supersets of dumbbell chest presses with bent over rows, and three supersets of concentration curls with tricep extensions (12 reps per set). This evening, I can feel mild but noticeable soreness in my pecs, my upper back / shoulders, and my biceps. I think that workout's a keeper.

Tomorrow, I plan to go to Aikido for the first time since my test. How I feel during and afterward will determine whether I attempt to go on Saturday morning or not.

As an aside? Watching the video of kyu testing made me realize how frumpy I look in real life. It almost made me not want to go back to aikido at all. I was so embarrassed — I look sluggish and dumpy, especially compared to others (even others of my same rank). Anytime I feel my will for weight loss fading, all I need to do is watch the thirty seconds of my close-up; THAT should scare me back into line.

I feel like President Skroob: "Why didn't somebody TELL me my ass was so big?!"

Anyway. Plan of attack for the coming week. Exercise, and lots of it. Daily lunchtime walks are a given, but I need to add in strength training in the evenings. I'm planning to do some abs tonight (after I work on the Toledo Zen Center's podcast), then tomorrow is Aikido, then I'll probably rinse and repeat with the upper body thing I did yesterday. (Aikido is not only a decent cardio workout, but the falling down and standing back up for an hour is a great leg workout, too.)

If I stick to my diet and ramp up the exercise, I see no reason why I shouldn't reach my 5% goal this week. Maintaining said goal for seven consecutive days? That's the next challenge.

Highlights from Kyu Testing

The especially good parts:

0:24 to 0:40 - Check me out with my shomenuchi ikkyo omote osai. OMG, does my gi make me look fat? ;-)
2:00 to 2:25 - Parts of Rich's test. He really had the energy happening. Fun to watch.
3:30 to 3:52 - Part of Andy's test. This part involves some fun hip-throws and breakfalls.
4:28 to end - More of Andy's test, starting with jo (staff) work and ending with randori (multiple attackers).

Andy was on his third round of randori by this point, and these were the black belts (yudansha) coming at him for his final test. If he looks a little exhausted... that's because he is. :-)

And that's what I did on Saturday the 26th. If it looks like fun, maybe you should give it a go.

Rankless No More

Saturday the 26th was the long-awaited day: the day I tested for my rank of rokyu (6th kyu, the lowest actual rank) in Aikido.

The day started with a Basics Seminar from 9am to noon, wherein we spent the first two hours learning kneeling techniques. I was already familiar with most of the techniques we reviewed, although we did manage to go into more detail than I ever had previously. I also became familiar with techniques that I won't have to know for another few ranks yet, which was fun.

After the morning session, I asked one of my classmates to help me with my rolls for a few minutes. He did so gladly, and even pulled out one of the tumbling mats for some extra cushion. With his guidance, I finally managed to figure out where I was going wrong with my rolls, although I could tell it would take some time before I could consistently fix the problem. (For those of you keeping score: I was turning myself just before my shoulder hit the mat, so my forward roll turned into more of a sideways roll. The key is to keep forward momentum and think about looking at the knot of my belt.)

The entire dojo usually goes out to lunch together after the morning session; to a local buffet, either Indian or Chinese. I ended up passing on lunch with the dojo, and instead drove home and had a light lunch with my sick hubby. Then, per Sensei's instructions, I laid down on the couch and just chilled out for a while, letting my sore muscles rest. Once it came time to go back to the dojo for testing, Aaron actually seemed well enough to go along to watch me test. So, after running past Kroger to pick up a veggie tray for the post-testing potluck, the two of us headed over to the dojo just before 3pm.

The first half hour or so was used as a loosening-up period; we paired off and took some rolls, did some basic techniques, and Sensei answered specific technique questions from people who would be testing. Then, after a short break, formal testing began.

The five mukyu (those of us with no rank) went first. I beelined for the side of the mat closest to Aaron and furthest away from Sensei — not so Sensei wouldn't see me, but so Aaron would. Five volunteer uke presented themselves, we made our formal bows to begin the testing, and so it began. The ten techniques I'd been so worried about flew by in a matter of minutes, and before I knew it, it was time to take my ten rolls. After the first three or four, I felt like I started to understand how forward rolls are supposed to feel, and I got into a bit of a rhythm.

(Unbeknownst to me, several people in the dojo were specifically watching me to see if my rolls had improved. From their comments after the test, it sounds like I have indeed improved. I still need to watch the video for myself, though...)

We formally ended our 6th kyu test with bows to the front of the dojo (the shomen) and to Sensei, and we were done. We returned to our places with the applause of the dojo.

Every other level of testing only had one aikidoka at a time — it just happened to work out that way. Highlights, for me, included Rich's test for... fourth kyu? Third? I forget. At any rate, I enjoyed watching him really get into his technique. Plus, he got his glasses knocked off halfway through his test. ^_^

The real highlight of the day, though, was Andy's test for ikkyu — first kyu, brown belt, just one step down from black belt. Not only did we get to watch Andy do sword (bokken) and staff (jo) work, but we also got to watch him perform randori, or fending off three attackers at once. I hope Sensei posts the video to YouTube; if he does, I'll embed it here for your viewing pleasure. Because it was indeed a pleasure to watch.

After the formal end of testing, there was much congratulations by all. Then there was much food and drink, and some live music provided by members of the dojo (including Sensei, of course).

Thanks go out to Rich and Chelsea for helping me out with my forward rolls, and to Robert for volunteering to take ukemi for my testing. Thanks also to Aaron for coming to watch and cheer me on! That really meant a lot to me.

Maybe I'll post a photo of me in my fancy hakama pants (not to be confused with Hammer pants) once I get them. ^_^

The Challenge: Week #4

Over the course of the week, I gained and lost three pounds, ending up today where I was at the last weigh-in: 204.5. Considering that I've been sick with bronchitis since Saturday evening, I'm OK with that result.

I focused my sights this week on Saturday's Aikido test (which I still need to document), attending class on Monday and Wednesday, and the Basic Seminar on Saturday morning. I was surprised when that didn't bolster my weight loss, and I gained weight instead. It's possible my muscles were retaining fluid while they were trying to heal (isn't that how it works?).

Another thing that may have hampered my weight loss was a lack of meal planning. In weeks past, I've had brown rice pre-made for every lunch, just waiting for some ground turkey or canned chicken or tuna and whatever healthy goodness goes with my protein of choice. This week, though, it's been mainly fruit and ready-to-eat foods like low-sugar yogurt, or a pita with hummus. Still not bad for me, but not as protein-rich and fiber-full as my lunches should have been.

Last week's goal of "Early To Bed, Early To Rise" didn't work out so well. Actually, it didn't work at all. I'm hoping that this week, in trying to get myself healthy again, I end up getting to bed earlier and sleeping more. I don't think I'm going to set any other goal for myself this week, honestly. Get the rattle out of my chest. Maintain my weight as well as I can. Take care of myself. Pamper myself. Be gentle, and not go for walks out in the sub-freezing temperatures (probably not so good for bronchitis). Stretch out my still-stiff muscles. Pass on Aikido until I feel truly healthy again.

James has almost caught up to me this week, after having his own sick time during Week 3. It's still anyone's game.

Yay For Bronchitis!

Aaron wasn't feeling so well on Thursday night. When he got up on Friday, he was feeling downright shitty. He stayed home from work on Friday night, sick and feverish and hacking up a lung.

Saturday was my Aikido seminar and testing. I left Aaron sleeping when I went to the morning seminar, and returned after noon to find him still sleeping (which is pretty normal, considering his schedule). He'd had a hard time sleeping; once he got up and around, he started feeling better. He came with me to the testing on Saturday afternoon, to watch me earn my rank in Aikido (more on that later), and we stuck around for the potluck dinner afterward. He didn't seem so bad — his cough had died down considerably, and he wasn't feeling as warm.

I, on the other hand, started getting a tickle of a cough while watching the tests that came after mine. By Saturday night, I was hacking almost as much as Aaron had been.

On Sunday, both of us were completely miserable, although he seemed to be doing better than I was. I was feverish, dizzy, nauseated, not hungry in the least; I basically just beached myself on the couch with water and tea and books all day. I took my temperature while Aaron was out doing grocery shopping: 101°F. That made me feel even worse.

Knowing how Aaron had felt, I e-mailed my supervisor in advance and told him I wouldn't be in on Monday. I went to bed with the intention of sleeping it off, sweating it out, and being well enough to go to work by Tuesday. Aaron was feeling fine by the time he went to bed a few hours after me.

Last night sucked.

I couldn't get to sleep, thanks to my Aikido soreness and my periodic hacking, rattling cough. I dozed in and out, and kept waking up either in pools of my own sweat or shivering like a mofo. I finally managed to get to sleep around 6:30am, and slept until around 10:30 or 11am. Aaron didn't fare as well, as he barely slept all night.

When we both dozed awake, he informed me that we were going to get up, shower, eat something, and go to Urgent Care. Both of us. Turns out, he'd woken up in the middle of the night to hack and cough and get a drink of water, and had looked up the closest Urgent Care place in the phone book because he was so freaking miserable.

So, that's what we did. We got to Maumee Urgent Care at 12:15pm, and Aaron got called in to see the doctor at 1:30pm. I got called in shortly thereafter. Long story short, I was diagnosed with bronchitis and pharyngitis, and Aaron was diagnosed with much worse bronchitis than mine. I didn't have any immediate treatments at Urgent Care; just a prescription for antibiotics and a decongestant. Aaron, on the other hand, got a breathing treatment and a shot in the ass at the clinic, plus three prescriptions, including an inhaler and an antibiotic.

Per doctor's orders, I'm off work tomorrow, and Aaron's off work until Thursday.

Aren't we the pair?

The Challenge: Week #3

Running Weight Loss Totals:

Official Tuesday weight: 204.5 pounds. This was a one-and-a-half pound loss from yesterday, and I attribute it to yesterday's hefty two-hour session of aikido, after which I was too queasy to eat more than a small bowl of cereal for dinner. I fully expect to bounce back by a pound by tomorrow morning. And I'm OK with that.

The big accomplishment of the week was a steady weight loss over the weekend. We still ate out once, at Zoup, where I had a bowl of seafood chowder with multigrain bread. (I love eating at places where I can narrow down my meal choices ahead of time by checking the nutrition facts.) We made all our other meals at home: leftover salmon and green beans for Saturday dinner, omelettes for Sunday lunch, and Three Amigos Chili (thanks, Sheryl!) for Sunday dinner.

Exercise for the week was basically aikido on Wednesday — and yesterday — and a few days of lunch walks. I didn't do aikido on Saturday morning because I was too exhausted to bother (thanks, womanhood). I've had aikido on the brain, thanks to my upcoming test, and I'm hesitant to do any strenuous exercise during the week (read: strength training) other than aikido, for fear of hurting myself so that I can't test. This is also a great lame excuse for me to avoid cardio, as well, even though it's what I need.

This Saturday is my aikido test, after which will be a potluck with all kinds of food. Hopefully, some of it will actually be good for me, being that there are plenty of vegetarians and proponents of macrobiotics and general health nuts in the dojo. If the Zen Brownies make an appearance, though, I'm definitely going to partake. :-) (There's nothing overly untoward / weird / illegal in the Zen Brownies; they're just REALLY good.) If I gain weight from that one meal, so be it. I give myself permission to indulge after (hopefully) earning my rank in aikido.

My focus for this week is going to involve getting enough sleep, and getting up at a reasonable time in the morning. I'd rather have my breakfast at home than just bring a banana to work and call that a meal, and I'd also like to start showing up to work ON TIME (even though, yes, I am salaried, and no one's said anything yet). I'm going to spend a goodly amount of time on ME before bed, including all the normal hygiene (that I sometimes skip — I'm so bad), plus some quiet time sitting zazen, and generally helping myself calm down and relax and make myself feel just a little pampered. So often, I'll just let myself get ridiculously tired, and finally throw together a lunch, tromp upstairs, braid my hair, strip (er, I mean, put on my jammies), get in bed, read a few pages of a book out of habit, then turn off the light once I can't keep my eyes open. This is, I fear, not the healthiest of nighttime rituals. I resolve to change that this week, and see if it changes my attitude and mood (and possibly my eating and/or exercise habits).

Thanks to Lauren (a.k.a. "Bouffa") and Sheryl and Aaron for their support this week. It's helpful to know I have friends who want me to succeed and be happy, as simple and cheesy as that sounds.

The Challenge: Week #2

Running Weight Loss Totals:

Official Tuesday weight: 209. My low weight for the week was 208, though, and I've been hovering between 208 and 208.5 all week (except for last Tuesday's weigh-in, of course).

Last week, I declared that my strategy would be to eat out only once during the weekend, and eat the remainder of the weekend's meals at home. I managed to successfully stick to my plan, only eating out for lunch on Saturday, after aikido. I also managed to track everything I ate over the weekend, including my lunch at the Reynolds Garden Café.

Next step: eat HEALTHY at home and in restaurants.

Lunch? At the Reynolds Garden Café? Racked up every last calorie I'd burned in aikido that morning, plus some. Ninety minutes of martial arts wiped out by one giant Smothered Chicken Omelet. And I knew better, but I ate it anyway. Dinner that night was Sweet Mustard Chicken and frozen green beans; still a calorie-laden meal, though, since I ate two chicken breasts instead of just one.

It was Sunday's lunch that was really the kicker, though: I broke down and made alfredo sauce. With full-fat cream cheese, and butter, and parmesan, and 2% milk. Ate it with baked chicken over low-carb organic whole-wheat elbow macaroni. It was a great low-carb meal, but not so much a good balanced meal. Incredible amounts of fat and overall calories... and with no aikido to balance them out. Dinner was super-spicy Thai Coconut Shrimp over brown rice: still a little high in calories, actually. Or maybe my portions are a little out of kilter. Either way, Sunday was a learning experience. I guess I should count myself lucky that I only gained a pound and a half from Sunday to Monday.

As far as exercise goes, I've been doing OK. I take half-hour walks during my lunch most days of the work week (although I'll sometimes work through my lunch one day a week as personal penance for coming in late, even though I'm salary). I went to aikido on Wednesday and Saturday (finally, a day of no bleeding!), plus I did some pilates last Tuesday, and yoga last night.

My goal for next week is going to be portion control, especially on the weekends. I want to make a concerted effort to eat small, frequent meals on weekends, like I do during the week. Weekend weight-gain is my biggest challenge right now; once I can maintain a steady weight from Friday to Monday, I'll move on to another challenge, like exercise.

Hippie Shit

1.) Meditation Accessories:

I ordered a zafu (meditation cushion) from Four Gates last week, and it arrived today. I got my first choice of color, Zen Black, and it's quite tall for a zafu — almost overstuffed. I like it, though. I haven't given it a full half-hour sit yet, but the ten minutes I've spent on it leads me to believe that the days of my left foot falling asleep 20 minutes into a session of zazen may well be over. The novelty of having my own zafu may even get me to practice zazen at home on a more regular basis, which would be helpful in so many ways.

2.) Yoga:

Saturday's Aikido class left me sore as all hell, both yesterday and today (and probably tomorrow, too). Shoulders, arms, glutes, hams, and quads, mainly. To balance out my stiff soreness, today's evening exercise was working out (well, I guess you could call it "working out") with my Yoga for Dummies DVD. Damn, yoga makes me feel good.

My only beef with the DVD is that I'd like to be able to do the practice with the instructor leading, but not explaining every single move. I needed that the first two times I watched the DVD, but I don't need the explanations anymore; I do want some sort of instructor-led something, though. A happy medium between the super-explainy Basic practice and the bonus Intermediate "sun salute" practice would be nice.

Still, though, I feel awesome. Still a bit sore in places, but awesome overall.

3.) Macrobiotics:

After Aikido on Saturday, Sensei and I sat down and connected for a while. It was very pleasant, and a little unexpected. I sometimes assume that he's a busy guy with other concerns and lots of stuff on his plate and lots of students senior to myself, and it makes me feel just a little more special to be invited to sit down and chat. Among the things we talked about were my new job, Mormonism, and macrobiotics.

I'm not sold on the idea of going whole-hog into whole foods. I'm still a product of my environment, and I like my convenience foods. Even so, I don't know much about macrobiotics; as a student of Aikido, though, and in our lineage in particular, it seems highly recommended to at least know what it's all about. Sensei recommended a book called The Hip Chick's Guide to Macrobiotics as a very cool and accessible introduction to the subject, so I Googled it. Turns out that the Hip Chick has a website and a blog, which is hip indeed.

Don't worry: I'm not turning all hippie on you all. There's nothing weird or counterculture about wanting to a.) be in touch with oneself, b.) not be sore and stiff, or c.) not feel like crap.

Aikido Recap

Wednesday, Jan 2: Reviewed suwari waza (kneeling) techniques for sixth kyu test: shomen uchi ikkyo omote and shomen uchi ikkyo ura. Spent the full hour working on just those, with occasional moments of showing sensei the same techniques tachi waza (standing). Learned a lot, refined my skills. Realized later that I had developed blisters on my knees that had since burst, leaving my knees skinned.

Saturday, Jan 5: Returned to Aikido class for a second time in one week, which is not the norm for me. I need to prepare for my test on the 26th, though, so I stepped it up. My knees sported standard band-aids.

Before we broke into ranks to study for the testing, my fate was foreshadowed by unexpected bleeding from a shaving oopsie on my ankle. Later, once we broke into ranks, we once again started with suwari waza; within ten minutes, my band-aids had failed and my knees were bleeding all over my white gi. That class ended up being pretty much a wash, as I kept having to leave the mat to re-band-aid or re-secure said band-aids with medical tape. After class, everyone claimed that I was "hardcore," although I knew that the initial blisters that had caused the bleeding had to be a result of poor or incorrect kneeling technique on my part.

Wednesday, Jan 9: This time, my knees sported the proper wound attire: large, fabric band-aids made especially for knees. i brought one extra, just in case, and left it in my bag in the changing room.

Again, we mukyu (unranked students) began with suwari waza techniques; this time, though, I was basically forced by my now-delicate knees to use proper technique. I made sure to keep my toes curled up under me, and to walk purposefully on my toes and knees, rather than just scooting and pivoting myself around. I also found myself pulling up my pant-legs and checking my knees whenever I got a free moment; the left knee was generally fine, and the right knee did start bleeding, but not enough to soak through the band-aid.

We then spent some much-needed time on two tachi waza techniques: mune tsuki kotegaeshi (the link shows a slightly more physical version than we practice) and yokomen uchi shihonage. Near the end of class, while I was acting as uke (the attacker/throwee), I felt my ankle scrape across the mat. I'd already gotten a mat burn on that ankle recently, and it hadn't quite healed, so I wasn't surprised when my training partner pointed out that I was bleeding. I excused myself, ran off the mat and into the bathroom to clean up, then into the changing room to apply my Band-Aid Of Awesomeness. Once I got myself all squared away and back on the mat, it was time to line up and show the class what we'd learned.

The mukyu demonstrated the two tachi waza techniques we'd studied. It was the first time I'd done any techniques in front of Sensei and the entire class, and it was good practice for how testing will feel. After we were done, the other ranks showed what they'd learned. The next rank up from us did a more advanced suwari waza technique, and the rest all demonstrated weapons work. I see now why we've been focusing on weapons more than before: weapons work is apparently a major part of testing for some of the higher ranks.

Assuming I go to two classes a week from now until testing, I have four classes left until testing day. If I step it up and attend three classes a week, I could make it six classes total. I could probably use the extra classes; there are ten techniques total that I need to know, and of those ten, I only feel totally confident with seven. I'm not entirely sure what the other three are. I probably know the techniques, but don't know them by name. Actually, after a YouTube refresher, I'm feeling OK with identifying most of them, but I know I need some detail work with the techniques.

I also need to get some more practice with rolling, as I haven't really had to roll for some time now. I was feeling fairly confident with it at one point. In the test, I'll have to do at least ten forward rolls consecutively (not like these, thankfully — something similar to this, but more of a roll than a breakfall), and I don't feel comfortable enough with rolling to do that right now. I will in a couple of weeks, though.

The Challenge: Week #1

Week 1 Summary:
Diana: 0.5% body weight lost
James: 1.5% body weight lost

The good news is that I got back on the wagon. I lost one pound in one week, which is healthy and sustainable. I became more aware of my eating habits.

The bad news is that, while I became more aware of my weekend eating habits in particular, I failed to change them this week. This allowed James to pull ahead. Had I not regained weight over the weekend, I could have potentially tied James with a 1.4% loss (or more) in the first week. I did see 209 on Friday, but I said goodbye to it on Saturday with my day of Indian and Mexican food, and continued to wave farewell with Sunday's lunch of Chinese.

My strategy for the coming week is to only eat out once over the weekend, and to make it lunch, not dinner. That will give me the chance to burn off any evilness during the rest of the day. Usually, Aaron and I will eat out for three out of four meals during the weekend, only eating Sunday dinner at home. That's going to change. I'm going to be trying out some new healthy recipes this weekend, to make eating at home fun.

I'm going to continue my current plan of eating 1400 Calories per day, broken down into 40% carbohydrate / 30% protein / 30% fat. I've been doing fairly well with not overeating in the evenings, thanks to my DietOrganizer application. It's like Deal-a-Meal: when my DietOrganizer Palm app says I have no calories left, I'm done eating for the day.

I'm also going to continue attending two aikido classes per week (Wed and Sat) instead of just on Wednesdays, although that has more to do with my upcoming test than the weight loss challenge.

I'm surprised at how much a challenge can motivate me. When I found out today that James had lost a higher percentage than I had, that immediately intensified my resolve to improve in the coming week. I know that I should be able to just compete with myself, go for a new personal best, make it a game, all that self-improvement stuff... but that doesn't seem to work for me. I always rationalize that it doesn't matter if I screw up, because it's not like there's anything at stake in the short run.

But now? Now, there's bragging rights to consider. And a dinner. Preferably steak.

January Thaw

I always find it fascinating how many people go outside to walk during lunch when it suddenly becomes unseasonably warm. I'm one of those who will bundle up and go on my walk regardless, whether it's 30 degrees (which is normal for January) or upwards of 60 degrees (like it was today).

When it's cold outside, the outdoor contingent along the Maumee River downtown seems to be myself, one or two middle-aged men, and a few joggers of each gender. Today, I lost count of how many people were outside. Some were walking, some jogging, and some just looking out over the river.

If you've never gone on a walk in the snow, I highly recommend you give it a try. It's quite invigorating, even if you're like me and absolutely HATE the cold. Love the briskness, hate the physical pain the frigid temps can cause. Love getting my sunlight on, ramping up the Vitamin D and the serotonin and all the other goodness sunlight provides. Plus, the physical activity ramps up the serotonin by itself, giving me one seriously undepressed lunch hour.

Aikido Quotable

Senior student, to me, after class: "You're hardcore! I've never seen anyone with that much blood on their knees!"

Yikes.

2008 Weight Loss Challenge

Starting weight: 212.5 lbs. That's up fourteen pounds since August. My goal weight for this challenge is 202, at which point I will have lost 5% of my body weight. It's a start.

I got James's starting weight and calculated his goal weight; I'm not sure if he wants that posted here or not, so I'll let him add it in the comments if he wants.

I had a good first full day of paying special attention to what I eat and how active I am. (I don't want to call it a diet, per se — that has such negative connotations. Let's just call it the Challenge.)

I look forward to getting back down to the weight I was, so I can start over and lose the weight I wanted to lose in the first place.

In other fitness news, tonight's aikido gave me sore toes, skinned knees, and new mat burns. I plan to go more often this month, though, since I test for rank in only four weeks. I'll be either adding to the collection of aikido-related almost-injuries, or figuring out how to avoid them. We'll see...

A Present To Myself

I never thought of myself as competitive; in fact, I usually find that I'm quite the opposite. In general, I like to be behind the scenes, making things go, rather than vying for attention and praise or fighting to be seen amongst the elite.

Last March, though, when my co-worker James and I had a friendly fitness wager, I discovered that striving to prove that I had just a little more oomph than someone else really helped keep me on the straight and narrow, fitness-wise.

A couple of weeks ago, I proposed a new challenge to James, and he accepted. I had been going to hold off on announcing the challenge until January 1st, but I got to thinking of it today as not only a challenge, but a present to myself. It's not even a New Year's Resolution — it's a present to myself. I will help myself to lose weight and get more fit; plus, I'll do it before James does. :-)

The terms of the wager:

• On the morning of January 1, 2008, each party will weigh and make their weight known to the other party. This may be done privately, via e-mail, or publicly, via dianaschnuth.net.
• The first party to lose 5% of his or her body weight AND maintain that loss for seven consecutive days wins the challenge.
• The party who loses the challenge must buy dinner for the winning party and the winning party's spouse.

(I realized afterward that weighing on the morning of January 1st might help me avoid indulging too much on New Year's Eve, too — bonus.)

After we agreed on the terms, I thought that maybe it would be fun to get our spouses into the challenge. After all, I know Christina was on a weight loss kick for a while, as was Aaron; plus, it's always easier to keep with a program if your significant other is on the same program. I haven't gotten a definite yea or nay on either spouse. If one or both of them decide to get in on the game, though, it'll make winning and losing a little less clear-cut, as there will be a first, second, and third (and possibly fourth) place. Will the winner disqualify him or herself by gaining back a certain percentage of weight before one of the last two challengers loses their five percent? I suppose we'll have to solidify that once we find out who's in.

As it stands now, I'll have to lose 10 or 10½ lbs to make my five percent. Expect a detailed post in one week for the beginning of the challenge. The participants are encouraged (but not required) to post their initial weigh-ins in the comments of that upcoming post.

As a side note: the aikido dojo is closed for the week between Christmas and New Year's. Since tonight is when I usually go to aikido, and my lower body is usually what's sore afterward, I did a short lower body workout in lieu of keiko. My set consisted of 25 leg adductions with a resistance band, 25 wall squats with my balance ball (body weight only; no dumbbells), and 25 stiff-legged deadlifts with 5 lb dumbbells. I did 25 reps of each exercise in a superset (no rests), took one or two minutes for a drink of water, then did them all again.

My short but intense (for me) lower body workout promises to give me the weekly soreness I crave, in the absence of my normal aikido workout. We'll see...

My Weight History

I got to thinking about the home videos I digitized from back in 1999, and how the first thing that pops into my mind when I see that image of myself is how fat I was. I was 23 years old, in a stable relationship, living with a roommate who had become my best friend, spending the holidays with my family, generally happy overall — and all I can see now, looking back, is my weight.

That's sad on so many levels...

read more...

Turn The Beat Around

Now that I have a new job (OMG!), I think it's about time to start turning over a new leaf in a few other areas of my life. Namely, fitness — both physical and mental.

I've been trying to eat better this week. Not necessarily go back on a diet, but do the things I know I should be doing, but haven't been. Avoiding sugar and high fructose corn syrup, eating only whole grains, drinking more water, getting more protein, stuff like that. It feels like I'm running in place, though, or doing a one-step-forward, one-step-back sort of dance.

For instance: dinner was steamed cauliflower, homemade cheese sauce, and frozen salmon. When I checked the package of salmon, the fourth ingredient was sugar. Farther down was MSG. And I think I saw high fructose corn syrup in there, too. And here's another one: we decided to splurge on graham cracker crusts for a couple of cheesecakes I want to try to make (that's another mildly amusing story). When I checked the ingredients on those, not only did they contain HFCS, but they also have some kind of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Trans fats. *sigh* Of course, I'm still going to use them, and eat the yummy cheesecake I'll be making.

At least I'm making a conscious effort to monitor what I eat again. These several weeks I've been unemployed have helped me pack on several pounds.

One big part of that increase is my abrupt change in activity level; I don't walk at lunch anymore. I see that my new office building has a fitness center on the first floor, though, so I plan to see how I can take advantage of that over my lunch breaks or before work. Plus, we're right across from Promenade Park, so I can go walking by the river or something, too.

Also, I had a discussion with Sensei this evening about my stamina. I brought up the fact that I can't really go all-out for an entire 90 minute session, but I can do an hour. He said that it's OK if I show up and only do an hour, then excuse myself. That seems like a pretty obvious solution, but I wasn't sure if that would be acceptable form. So, I'm going to make a concerted effort to go to aikido twice a week, instead of just once. And if I have to either sit on the back wall for 15 minutes or excuse myself entirely, so be it.

On top of all this, I should really be practicing zazen daily, instead of once a week with the sangha. It's so hard to make myself stop everything — literally everything — for at least ten or fifteen minutes so I can meditate. It feels like everything else is happening without me, and I'm getting behind. But those ten of fifteen minutes a day can make a world of difference to my mood and my physical bearing.

All this is a matter of convincing myself to do these little things one at a time, even if I don't feel like it. Eventually, I'll realize that they all make me feel better, and I'll look forward to doing them.

Aikido for Wednesday 10/24

When I read on the dojo blog that we would be focusing on weapons training leading up to the weapons seminar in mid-November, I thought that maybe this class would be a little less strenuous than the previous week's keiko. After all, it wouldn't be an entire hour of standing up and being thrown down. Right?

I had no idea how wrong I was.

We separated into ranks, with the mukyu and some new rokyu perfecting a basic solo exercise while the higher ranks faced off with one another. Basically, we faced the walls, chose a knot in the wood as our opponent, and swung the bokken diagonally up, behind / over our heads, and diagonally down the other side, attacking our chosen knot. Very basic form, just getting used to how the weapon should feel and where the energy should go. It was a very powerful feeling, though, once I got the hang of how low my stance should be, where my weight should stay, how my center was supposed to drive the movement, that sort of thing.

Then the cardio kicked in, along with the arm fatigue. And the wrist funkiness. Holy crow, what a workout. My hand and arms are still weak and shaky (to my embarrassment in Zen practice later).

Then we did the usual throwing and rolling. I actually started being almost comfortable with my lame bastard forward rolls, with the occasional flub. At one point during that exercise, one of last week's scabbed-over mat burns on the top of my foot started bleeding, and I had to take a breather to hit the first aid kit.

After the rolling, we worked on everybody's favorite, irimi nage, except this time uke begins with a wrist grab before running around behind nage to (try to) grab his other wrist. Nage then ducks under uke's arm and performs the irimi nage I know and love.

A note: I love working with Rich-sempai. He's one of those who is always smiling, always seems to be enjoying himself, but won't half-ass the technique. If I'm supposed to be moving him and driving him to the floor, he's not going to just flop down and say I did it right. He's going to require me to put the energy into the movement and feel how it's supposed to go. He's also good at subtly indicating which way the energy should be going, if I'm unsure about a technique. I always learn a lot when I pair up with Rich.

After Sensei told us to switch partners, I had to sit out a round. I was just so exhausted, and my legs were jelly. We wrapped up with a suwari-waza (kneeling) tenshi technique that I didn't know, and I watched another mukyu work with Amy-sempai's brother until class was over.

So, in a nutshell, this class kicked my ass in a very serious and cardio-based way.

After keiko was zen practice. In the zendo, I saw that Sensei's H2 digital recorder had come in, and I casually wandered over to see it. Apparently, my interest in and knowledge of the existence of the device projected my ability to fake my way through operating audio electronics. I'm cool with that; I actually kind of wanted to play with it, anyway. I ended up being the designated recording engineer for the evening, which was fun. I'm curious to see how our first attempt worked, since I didn't want to sully the earbuds with my personal funk, and I didn't let Sensei know that I'd figured out how to work the playback feature.

We ended up recording Teisho and our Dharma Discussion afterward. I hope they came out OK. I'm anxious to help them get a podcast going, and to help edit if necessary. I'm all about the new media revolution. I'm also all about feeling important, to be honest, which is kind of contrary to the zen-ness (a.k.a. "Buddha Nature") I'm trying to discover in myself.

I also discovered something else about myself tonight: when the other party in a conversation is very calm and accepting and doesn't offer much feedback about what I'm saying, I don't know how to continue. I'm used to people giving me cues as to what they think about the topic, even if it's just boredom or disinterest. But this attentive calmness is disconcerting to me. I'm not sure how to react to it, since I do not yet possess this calmness. I've never been good at conversation, honestly, but I've gotten good at faking it over the years. This reaction of calmness and acceptance is something I haven't learned how to react to, and it makes me feel all bumbly and teenaged again.

Next week, Sensei will not be at the dojo on Wednesday, so I think I'm going to attend Monday's keiko instead. Sure, an hour and a half of aikido will well and truly kick my ass, but I think I'd rather attend a class run by Sensei than one of the senior students. No offense, guys.

Toledo City Paper: Now and Zen

The City Paper has published an article about Sensei in this week's issue. I knew it was coming, of course, because Ms. Spencer sat in at one of our Zen sessions a couple of weeks ago.

This completely removes any of the anonymity I was trying to maintain about my dojo (for the dojo's sake, so I don't reflect poorly on the entire community), but I wanted to share this article with everyone. Not only is it well-written and fairly accurate, but it revealed to me things that I didn't know about my Sensei.

I wonder if the dojo or the Zen Center will get an influx of students now?

Aikido for Wednesday 10/17

Two weeks in a row! I'm on a roll.

Since Saturday is kyu testing, the whole class (and a large one it was) broke off into ranks to work on specific techniques. Since I'm not testing, I was put with a group of three others: one guest to the dojo (brother of one of our aikidoka, visiting from out-of-state), one gentleman older than myself, and one teenager. We started out with suwariwaza shomenuchi ikkyo omote, then did the same technique standing up (tachiwaza). Then we worked on shomenuchi ikkyo ura, where you do the technique by stepping around behind uke and therefore spiraling them down toward the floor even more.

We then joined up with the other mukyu who were going to be testing, plus some of the rokyu (6th kyu, the lowest actual rank in our dojo) and a few gokyu (5th kyu) to work the old favorite irimi tenkan kokyu nage — always a fun technique to try when your arms and legs are fatigued. I did learn even more details I'd missed before, like exactly where and how to place the strike to the face at the end, and how to keep uke under control with a firm hand to the base of the neck.

Finally, the entire dojo worked on... well, you'll recall that I said I'm not great with remembering names of techniques. It was very similar to this technique, but I believe it began with yokomenuchi (a diagonal strike to the head). Most of the dojo did a forward roll or breakfall as ukemi; the teenagers and I just kind of flopped down where we were thrown.

(BTW, the student I worked with on this technique seemed very young — it occurred to me that he could literally be half my age — and had this great Edgar Winter sort of hair. Just imagine it curly. AWESOME.)

Overall? This one-hour (a.k.a. "short") class kicked my butt in a bad way. Just imagine standing up, then throwing yourself full-length onto the floor, then standing up and doing it again, every ten seconds or so for an hour. Just *that* would make you tired and sore, no? Bottom line is that, yes, I'm picking up on techniques for the most part, but I really need to work on a.) endurance and b.) rolling. Which I will only accomplish by kicking my own ass cardio-wise... and actually *doing* ukemi practice. Rolling at home. Rolling before class. Getting my sempai to give me pointers, even though I feel weird about it.

Aftermath? I. am. sore. Everything on me that has anything to do with the act of standing up, leveraging myself up, or sitting down. Glutes, hams, quads, triceps, biceps, lats, lower back, just pretty much everywhere. Which, I suppose, is to be expected after such a prolonged aikido hiatus.

I also realized during class that, as I suspected, I usually stand up using my left leg, which explains why my left quad is always so much more sore than my right, after the fact. I tried standing up using my right leg a few times, and I was surprised to find that my left thigh is stronger than my right, which is why I use it more. (Or maybe it's stronger *because* I use it more? Hard to tell now.)

At any rate, I'm not sure if I'm going to attend Saturday's Basic Seminar, mainly because it will seriously kick my ass. Three hours in the morning, plus another hour in the afternoon before watching the testing. Last time, I ended up fairly sore, but mainly I just had giant bruises on my hipbones from the hanmi stance stability exercises we did.

I don't know. We'll see. I'm still glad to be back into the swing of aikido, though, even if it's kicking my ass.

A Great Way To Start The Day

Got up this morning, ate a banana, and headed off to a 10am keiko. I'd never been to aikido for a weekday morning session, so I was curious to see who all would be there. Out of the five other aikidoka, I hadn't met two, one of whom was Danny-sempai, who taught the class. (I guess that would make him Danny-sensei?) Today's class included myself, Hank, Jim, Matt(?), and Taisho. Small group.

I'm not good at remembering the names of the techniques we work on, unless we're specifically training for tests. Then, we *have* to know the names of the techniques, so more of a focus is placed on knowing those. Normally, though, it's just "Monkey See, Monkey Do" for me. We did some yokomen-uchi ikkyo omote, which was just a variation on a technique I already knew, so that worked out. We also worked on irimi kokyu nage, which I was familiar with, and I learned some new nuances of the technique. We also did some variations on both of those moves, plus one or two others.

That's what's really interesting to me about learning this way, by repetition and gleaning as much as you can with each pass: every keiko, you can learn something different, even if you already know the techniques that are being taught. You pick up on varying styles by the different aikidoka you train with, you learn from other people's mistakes, and sometimes (like I did today) you have an "ah-ha!" moment, when things start to click.

I still have a bit of a major mental block against rolling, or even attempting to roll, especially since I pulled a muscle last time I attempted an all-out forward roll in class. I'm also scared to practice at home, since I could be learning it wrong and think I'm doing fine. (Plus, carpeted basement does not equal padded dojo mat.) Hopefully, with testing coming up in two weeks, I'll get to practice rolling in class with the other mukyu, and get some pointers without having to ask someone to critique me as a favor.

No injuries this time, a few eureka moments, and a boost to my aikido confidence. Good keiko.

By the way... I've been trying to be careful not to reveal the name of my dojo, just so my ineptness doesn't reflect poorly on the rest of the dojo. I'll let the cat out of the bag here, though, because Sensei posted clips to YouTube that I want you all to see, so you can get a feel for what aikido is like. Aaron's quotable: "No wonder you come home sore." :-D

Should I Stay Or Should I Go

I haven't been to aikido in a month. First, it was because of my pulled groin muscle. Then I thought it was healed, but it wasn't really, so I stayed home a little while longer. Then I got a nasty cold, and that kept me away for another couple of weeks. Now I'm to the point where any conditioning I'd already achieved has long since gone, and I'm kind of afraid to just jump back into class. Every single solitary class has kicked my ass so far, save maybe one or two, and I know I'll get my ass handed to me whenever I go back.

Still... as I've mentioned, I *am* paying for this. If I go more than twice a week, I'm getting a deal. If I go twice a week, I'm getting my money's worth. If I don't go at all, I'm wiping my ass with it.

I don't want to be a quitter. I could go tomorrow morning... but let's shoot for Saturday morning, shall we? I took a 45-minute walk this morning, after a couple weeks of being completely sedentary, so if I can keep that up and add to my activity level for the next few days...

Oh, who am I kidding? I'm just stalling. As per usual.

Don't worry, dear readers: I'll soon have another tale of aikido kicking my ass. I know you like those, you sadists, you. ;-)

Diet Do-Over

I was listening to the Reasonable Diet's Six Minutes of Sanity podcast recently, when Sandra Ahten talked about her I-Week diet. The idea is to eat for one week in a way that reduces cravings. I listened to her talk about the brown rice and lean protein and fruits and veggies that are allowed on this one-week retraining of sorts, and the sugar and flour and processed foods that aren't, and I thought, "I can do that!" After all, it's not *that* much different from how I eat anyway, and I really don't have that many cravings. Right?

Wrong.

The I-Week diet is turning into the "I weak" diet for me so far. Monday's diet log was marred only by imitation crab, a processed food that really should not have been my midnight snack. Tuesday saw some sugar-free preserves, another processed food, but the major departure came when I started craving sweets after dinner. I tried Sandra's Sweet Spiced Rice recipe, which wasn't bad... but what was really calling my name was the Rocky Road light ice cream bars in the freezer. Yes, I caved. And then I ate more imitation crab before bed.

Today was on its way to being my comeback, until a surprise pizza party was announced — and who can resist a pizza party? Not me, not anymore. Three or four years ago, in the throes of Atkins, when I thought that any inflated amount of carbs would take me back to 250 lbs (do not pass Go, do not collect $200), I would have eaten what I brought for lunch and the pizza would not have even been a temptation. Now that my attitude has changed, though — one day of being bad won't kill me — I find it harder and harder to resist yummy evilness. So, I pitched in my two bucks and am eagerly awaiting some BBQ chicken pizza.

Tomorrow is a building-wide informal banquet, and I'm not sure what the Fun Team™ is planning for that. I'm guessing that whole wheat products and lean protein are not on the menu, though. But I'm still going to partake. Friday evening, I'll be heading down to BG to meet some friends from work. Friday is most people's last day, plus there are several birthdays being celebrated, so I've been planning to join the normal weekly celebration for once.

So, basically, this week is practice. I'm following the Scott Smith rule of "be more gooder than you are badder," and that's keeping me from feeling like a total flop.

(Incidentally? I unsubscribed from the Motivation to Move podcast when I started feeling like there were more commercials for the Premium Membership than there was real content. Even the listener e-mails were thinly-veiled commercials for the other products he offers. Once I stopped being motivated and started being annoyed, I unsubscribed. I'm sure he's doing well enough that one less subscriber to his free feed certainly won't be noticed.)

While I am proud of myself for maintaining my weight for some time now (within five pounds of 200 for about the past year, after re-losing ten pounds that crept up on me), I'm ready to get down below being on the verge of obesity.

Or am I? Apparently, I'm not ready enough.

What Goes Around

Early this week, I got whatever bug Aaron got last week. Throat is sore, stomach is unsettled, eyes are dry, sinuses are draining. Backwards. I'm tired and lethargic, but my brain knows there are SO many things I should be doing. Mainly revolving around my job hunt. Personal marketing plan, portfolio tweaks, posting to more job sites, that sort of thing.

There's also other stuff cropping up that I should be dealing with, non-job-related... but I'm really seriously drained. Anything that's not super urgent is just going to have to wait while I sit out my cold.

The Universe is Conspiring in my Favor

...At least as far as aikido is concerned.

I know you're all probably tired of hearing me go on about my chosen martial art, so I'll just mention a couple things:

1. Sensei chose to teach a class entirely on ukemi today.
2. Sensei never read my e-mail, because it got lumped in with the spam.

This means that a.) Sensei doesn't know how much of a goober I sounded, and b.) his somewhat random choice of topic was entirely fortuitous and had nothing to do with me. It may, however, have had a little to do with the two mighty new mukyu in attendance.

I feel much somewhat more confident about my ability to fall and not hurt myself now. I at least recognize what elements I may be missing. Now I have some more simple ukemi exercises I can do at home, too.

The leg is feeling a little weak after class, but not painful. I'm feeling pretty fine overall. Being all nervous about going back to class after two weeks was a little silly in retrospect.

Permission to Quit

I talked to my Mom on the phone today. She's been reading my blog, including my aikido injury reports, and suggested that maybe I should find some other discipline to try. As she pointed out, I'm not getting any younger, and I haven't been doing sports or other activities during my life so far to build up to this. Most of my aikido writings *have* been focusing on how I hurt myself, or how sore I am, or how bad I got my ass handed to me.

The thing is, though, that I want to be better. I want to test for rank in October. I'm not sure I'll be able to do it, since I have to have thirty hours logged at the dojo to qualify... but I'd like to try. I want to be limber. I want to be strong. I want to be able to do crazy ukemi acrobatics without fucking pulling my groin.

A month ago, I would have taken this suggestion as a godsend — you're absolutely right. It's too hard. I'll tell Sensei I'm done. Now, though... I guess I do need to talk to Sensei, but I need to ask him what I should be doing to practice ukemi at home without hurting myself.

It feels like dancing, like art, except that I don't know all the steps. It still feels like it should make sense, if only I had the muscle memory and the strength and the knowledge. I know that's what practice is for, but it's frustrating that I keep trying to learn, but I feel like I'm limited physically rather than mentally. It's not a limitation I'm used to dealing with; I'm used to learning something, and it being learned. The end. I'm not used to imagining my position in space and time (and midair) and maneuvering myself in a certain way and not knowing whether I can even physically *do* what I'm supposed to do, let alone coordinate my mind and my muscles to do it.

This is why I joined the dojo, though, isn't it? To open up my comfort zone? To become more disciplined?

I want to practice here at home, but I don't want to hurt myself again and delay my return to class. Maybe I'll e-mail Sensei before Wednesday and see if he has any words of wisdom for me.

Update, 7:30pm: I sent an e-mail to Sensei, letting him know what had happened and why I haven't been at the dojo. I also asked him if I should lay off until I heal, or just come in and do what I can, but then I deemed my question silly (yes, all in the e-mail) and told him I'd be at the dojo on Wednesday. We'll see if he responds, or if he just greets me on Wednesday like nothing ever happened.

Damn It.

Two weeks ago, I pulled my groin at aikido by doing a poorly-executed roll. It was finally feeling better, though, so I decided to do a little ukemi practice in my basement tonight before going back to aikido tomorrow morning. Even set up the point-and-shoot to take some video of myself rolling, to help pinpoint what I'm doing wrong, or where I can improve. Ended up doing upwards of ten to a dozen rolls total. That's a lot for me at this point.

Guess what I did.

My groin doesn't hurt nearly as bad as it did when I first injured it — I probably just aggravated the injury. But now I have a conflict: do I go to aikido anyway, and risk exacerbating my leg further, or do I sleep in and skip aikido again and basically wipe my ass with over fifty bucks total for these two wasted weeks?

If I do decide to rest my leg instead of going to class, is my injury just a mental crutch, an excuse not to stretch my comfort zone anymore? I don't think so, since I had been looking forward to getting back to class. Still... maybe. I don't know. It's a tough call, because I *am* paying for this, even if I'm not attending.

*checks credit card statement*

Apparently, I pay for this in arrears; I just got charged for my two-month initial lump sum. Still, though, I'm paying for this. A goodly amount, though not an unreasonable amount. It's unreasonable for me not to go and get my money's worth. But it's also unreasonable to go do the most intense physical activity I've ever done in my life on an injured leg.

Can you tell I'm of two minds with this?

This is ridiculous. If I wait until tomorrow morning to decide whether to go, I'll end up staying in bed. I know me. I know how my half-asleep mind works. I'd really hate to make things worse, though...

We'll see.

(I can't believe I'm actually posting this asinine stream-of-consciousness argument with myself. I sound ridiculous. However, I will go through with the post to amuse and entertain you, my readers. All fifteen of you.)

A Quickie

I pulled my groin in aikido on Saturday, while trying to roll. I'm getting annoyed with myself for not "getting" it yet. At least my leg seems to be on the fast track, and feels like it should be healed by Wednesday's class. It really put a damper on the weekend's other extra-curriculars, though.

This week, Monday through Thursday afternoons, I'm attending an outplacement workshop paid for by Sky/Huntington. I was dubious about its actual value, but it actually seems like it's going to be helpful. Among some of the highlights will be resume-crafting, networking and job-searching, and negotiating a job offer. I'm actually looking forward to some of this... plus, it gets me out of the office for half a day.

Rob has requested another manly candle, to be picked up this week. In looking at my records, I realize I haven't made any candles since February (which was the last time Rob requested a manly candle). Candle-making is definitely a seasonal thing for me, being that I don't like to have the oven on in the summer, and my timing mojo gets thrown off if I melt candle wax in the microwave instead. Maybe I'll have to ramp up the seasonal candle-making a little earlier this year, and be sure to give everyone at work a going-away candle with my name and URL on it. :-)

Update, 11:45pm: Rob's candle came out well. I used a blow dryer to even out the surface — I should have tried that long ago.

In other news, bumping up the difficulty in Civilization IV really makes a difference: from me beating all the computer players in Chieftain mode to me getting my ass kicked and barely making it to the end of the game with one city intact in Warlord mode. If it weren't almost midnight (and if I weren't gainfully employed and due at work at 8am), I'd start another game.

Learning Experience

I'm finding it really fascinating, meeting my various sempai on the aikido mat and seeing how their minds work. I find that I gravitate toward certain people (and try to keep away from others), not so much because of their technique, but because of their attitude.

I find that I take ukemi better (i.e. I fall better) when a powerful and confident technique is performed on me. Hell, being thrown by Sensei is downright fun; I come up smiling almost every time. One of my sempai even commented that I'm falling much better now — I thanked him, but I really wanted to thank him for performing the technique with such finesse. It makes falling easier when my energy is honestly being shifted around, instead of just going through the motions.

Some of my sempai seem to handle me with kid gloves, and don't put enough actual energy into the movement. It's difficult for me to turn up the energy when faced with someone who won't reciprocate. Just throw me. Just do the joint-lock. Don't worry about my lack of hakama and rank; you won't hurt me. I learn more from someone who's doing the technique all-out, no holds barred. —Strike that. I learn more from nage doing the technique at a moderate pace, step-by-step but with a discernible flow, methodically, so I can follow.

My favorite is when I get with someone — there are a few people like this — who takes joy in aikido and puts it into the technique. Several of my lower-ranked sempai are like this. Their technique isn't flawless, but the energy is there, and the joy is in their face, and they make me feel it, too. The higher-ranked sempai who have this spark in them are wonderful teachers; they won't let me continue a technique wrong. They'll just stop and let me start over, or stop and let me figure out on my own how to shift my energy properly. The lower ranks will simply start doing commentary on their own technique aloud as they throw me, so I can think the same commentary step-by-step as I throw them.

I'm not comfortable being the more experienced partner yet, though. I do have a couple of kohai — actually, I don't know if I can really be said to have kohai, as I'm still unranked, and I'm not sure if the newer mukyu would count as my kohai. I think they would, though. At any rate, the some of the newer mukyu and even a couple of the rokyu (lowest rank) are more hesitant than I about certain techniques. I'm not comfortable trying to say anything to help; in fact, I'm pretty sure that's inappropriate for someone of my ranklessness. Still, I could lead by example, but the temerity of my partner almost always makes me more timid.

This is all golden. I'm learning so much about myself and my interactions with other people in general.

Bottom line? I need to trust myself more, have more confidence in myself.

This is why I joined the dojo.

On Aikido And Zen

I wouldn't say aikido is getting easier, per se. I think maybe Sensei is starting with more basic techniques and building on them more slowly throughout the class. Plus, I've only been attending the Wednesday one-hour classes, so there's only so much one can fit into that teaching block. At any rate, I feel like I'm picking up on things quicker, physically recovering quicker after class, and not being as terrified that I'm going to screw up.

We've been doing some techniques that require rolling, too. I haven't gotten much better at it, but I have started to do it instead of wussing out entirely. At the suggestion of Taisho-sempai, I did about a dozen rolls by myself after class, and finally started to comprehend how it's supposed to feel. I think. It stopped feeling so awkward and clumsy, anyway, and I came up on my feet at the end, so that's an improvement.

After class, at Zen practice, I made a very, very important discovery: I can't sit for extended periods of time in seiza (kneeling, sitting on my feet). I'm not sure how long our session of za-zen lasted, but my legs went past asleep to downright numb. When the bell rang for the end of za-zen, I physically could not get up. My legs had NO FEELING. I flopped around to face in the general direction of the altar, to which everyone was bowing from a standing position, and massaged my feet. They felt rubbery and detached.

You can probably guess that I didn't exactly attain enlightenment during today's za-zen session.

Immediately after za-zen, we were all to head out to the aikido mat in the other room to do walking meditation, so I forced my legs under me and balanced on lower legs and feet that I literally could not feel. I swear, this must be how people with prosthetics feel when they walk. There was no small amount of luck involved in my keeping upright during the short walk to the mat. After a little bit of walking meditation (which started out embarrassingly wobbly for me), the pins and needles came in, followed by normalcy. Finally. After several minutes of walking.

Never. Ever. Again. From now on, I sit on my ass when I meditate. None of this kneeling in seiza shit.

After an evening of aikido and zen practice, I feel much like I remember feeling after church. Calm. At peace with myself and the world. In tune with those around me. Except, adding the aikido into the mix, I also feel physically different. It's like Sensei was talking about at the end of class today: training mind, body, and spirit takes more than just sitting and lighting some smelly-good candles. It takes effort.

I feel like Wednesday evenings are becoming my devotional to myself. Mind, body, and spirit.

Quick Weekend Recap

Friday night: watched webcast of J. K. Rowling reading the first chapter of Deathly Hallows at midnight British Summer Time (which was 7pm Eastern). Waited a few minutes after that, and couldn't take the suspense anymore. Downloaded HP7 from a favorite bittorrent website, and read the first 20 chapters before the book was officially released in the U.S.

Saturday: Aikido Basics Seminar from 9am to noon. Lunch at the Garden Cafe with Aaron, then back to the dojo at 3pm for a brief class and kyu testing. I wasn't testing this time, but it was valuable to watch the testing process, as I should be testing this fall. Hung out at the dojo after class, but didn't partake in the "pot luck." (There was some food, but the pot luck was mainly comprised of different kinds of alcohol. Sake, microbrews, champagne...) Got home just after 6pm and spent the evening at home with Aaron. (Deathly Hallows arrived from Amazon with Saturday's mail, BTW.)

Today: Aaron's off doing grocery shopping right now. Later this afternoon, we'll be meeting a co-worker/friend of Aaron's, and we'll all be driving up to Detroit for a free festival featuring They Might Be Giants. The one chance I had to see TMBG live, at BGSU, the show was cancelled due to lack of interest (supposedly), so I'm especially looking forward to tonight.

For now, though, I'm going to be reading some more Harry Potter until Aaron gets back from the store.

Today's Class

I thoroughly enjoyed today's class, excessively short though it seemed. We did an extended version of the warmups we normally do, and certain aspects of it were explained a little more in-depth. Then we broke out into ranks, and us rankless mukyu helped the one mukyu who's planning to test this Saturday by playing uke (a.k.a. "the throwee") and letting her toss us around. It was also really helpful to me, so that I could start recognizing and naming some of the techniques I've been learning. We also broke things down and I got to play nage (the thrower instead of the throwee) with Roy-sempai. Yes, the same Roy-sempai whom I inadvertently allowed to twist my arm last week. I got to learn that very technique more thoroughly today, so that hopefully won't happen again.

After that, we broke into mixed pairs to do a few basic techniques. Grabs, throws, nothing extravagant. One of these, though, separated those who could roll (not me) from those who couldn't (me). I tried being uke once; Sensei saw my sorry excuse for a roll, and took me aside and showed me *again* how it's done. Not the cool-looking flying around sort of roll that everyone else can do, but a roll beginning on hands and knees. Granted, that's where I need to start — but it doesn't make it any less frustrating to feel like everyone's watching me crawl around on my little corner of the mat, doing somersaults.

Of course, that's what I need, on several levels. I came to a level of acceptance that I needed with that.

After class, I spontaneously asked Sensei if I could join the Zen Meditation group that meets after class on Wednesdays. He had no problem with that, and took a goodly amount of one-on-one time with me to explain the basics of zazen. He also asked why I was interested in zen meditation, and I may have made my spiritual "search" seem a little more recent than it really was. I "came out" as a non-Christian pretty early on in our conversation, and I inadvertently exaggerated the void that my denial of organized religion had left. After that, I tried to play up the other life changes (job, potential family) to downplay the religious/spiritual. I also managed to throw in the comment from Ms. Beall that I mentioned earlier, and Sensei was aghast that I had such a teacher. "She was a gift," I believe he said. I had to agree.

The practice itself involved chanting, seated meditation, and walking meditation. The chanting was slightly odd for me — I'll bet it sounds a lot better in an Eastern language rather than a Germanic language like English — but I think I picked up on it well enough.

I left the dojo feeling relaxed, physically energized/tired, mentally relaxed and alert, and in a particularly good mood.

And smelly. Did I mention smelly? Yes, sweaty and smelly.

Consensus? Wednesday nights at the dojo are a go. I hardly ever want to eat dinner after aikido, anyway, so it works out. Brief class, chill at the dojo, a couple hours of group meditation... sounds like a proper weekly devotional to me.

Sick of Being Sore

Woke up this morning. Tried to get out of bed. Hobbled to the bathroom. Grabbed some ibuprofen. Gimped downstairs. Took my ibuprofen and my vitamins and whatnot. Limped to the phone and called in to work. Gimped back upstairs and fell into bed, where I slept for another four hours. Sure, now I only have two days of PTO left to last through the beginning of September, but I'm OK with that.

I'm enjoying aikido. I just wish I didn't get so damned sore afterward. Maybe then I could do multiple classes in a week, and improve faster. I must've been doing *something* right on Monday, though, because now *everything* is sore. I swear. Even my toes. Quads, hamstrings, ass, back, shoulders, triceps, biceps... my abs aren't sore, and my calves aren't sore. Every other major muscle group I can think of *is* sore. Which is amazing to me. And frustrating, because I wanted to go to class today, but I can barely get around. If I can't even kneel comfortably in seiza, and I can barely get up out of a chair, how the hell am I supposed to let myself be flung around and fling other people around? And do somersaults rolls for God knows how long (until I get it right)?

The Basics Seminar on the 21st is SO going to kick my ass. All day at the dojo? Lordy. But I'm still looking forward to it.

Ow, My Shoulder!

After struggling with whether I should continue with aikido or not, I decided that quitting would be kind of silly. Especially after only two classes. So I went to a third class today, and plan to go to a fourth on Wednesday.

Apparently, the Monday one-hour classes are notorious for going over one hour. Had the class only lasted the requisite one hour, I would have been fine. As it was, the class was probably 90 minutes, and I ended up sitting out the last ten minutes or so — "grounding" myself, Sensei called it.

I still have some sort of mental block with rolling — I just haven't done it right yet, haven't found the sweet spot so I can replicate that "correct" feeling. Like I told Andy-sempai and Sensei, it's frustrating to have that feeling that I'm *almost* understanding it, and that it should be easy to understand, but that it's just not clicking yet. I admitted to Sensei, during my "grounding" time, that one of the reasons I joined the dojo was that I want to get over my problem with feeling stupid. He assured me that I'd get over that, as that's a big part of the learning process. Everyone gets that feeling, and everyone comes to accept the feeling of not-knowing. I told him that I look forward to getting to that point.

Today's standard minor aikido injuries / afflictions include a mat burn on the top of my left foot ("the oozy kind," as Amy-sempai called it); generally weak quads; and an uncomfortably twisted left shoulder, gotten from Roy-sempai from a slightly more complex move when my ukemi (i.e. my submittal to or receiving of his technique) was just a little off. I think it's mainly true that the only major injuries in aikido are when one or the other partner has improper form, and the technique is done incorrectly. I'm hoping to keep my injuries to a minimum. :-)

I'm glad I decided not to quit. I feel physically good after aikido — at this point in my training, it's a cardio workout like I've rarely gotten before, even in drum corps. I've made it a point to eat well and healthily before aikido classes, and I don't seem to have any interest in dinner afterward. (Which is too bad, since it sounds like the dojo informally goes to the Brew House for beers after Monday classes.)

Speaking of food, I'm going to make some homemade ice cream. I'd try custard, but I'd like to actually *have* some before I go to bed, and custard requires cooking and cooling time, while ice cream requires no such thing. Next time, though...

Body For Life, Week #4: I'm Out.

Body recomposition is a noble goal.

However, it is no longer a goal of mine. Not a primary goal, anyway.

Matter of fact, I think I'm going to take a breather from attempting active weight loss for a while. I'll still "eat right," which is to say that I'll be eating four or five meals a day, each with an element of protein and healthy carbohydrate, and I'll avoid sugars and other undesirable carbs, and I'll drink between 8 to 10 glasses of water per day. I just won't be following a specific regimen for the time being.

As far as exercise goes, I'm going to wait until I figure out my aikido schedule before I start working out at home again. Aikido seems to be a great lower body workout, and a decent cardio workout, as well (for now). First, I need to determine how sore I'll be for how long after each class, and whether I can manage both Mondays and Wednesdays or whether I'll have to choose one or the other, then I'll plan out some upper body and NordicTrack training schedules at home.

I think my weight is fluctuating due to my swollen muscles, possibly. I think that's how it works, anyway. At any rate, the morning after the first day I went to aikido, my weight had been down almost to the pre-Japan-trip mark. Granted, I lost my lunch during class, and didn't eat dinner after, so that could have something to do with it. The following day, I jumped up by a staggering five pounds in one day, back up about the 200-mark. Then, the next day, I gained another two pounds. I've been steadily losing again since, but it's mighty frustrating to be eating right and exercising and not seeing the results I'd like, as fast as I'd like.

So, I need some time to regroup. I have some other things to focus on, and BFL is just going to have to wait. For now, my exercise regimen is aikido, my other main focus is job-hunting, and I deal with other issues as they arise.

(Like tonight's issue of the Googlebot using up all of the LSM site's remaining bandwidth for the month in one fell swoop. Thanks, Google. *sigh*)

Time to turn off the computer and start winding down for the night. I'm going to crash good tonight.

Aikido: Quick Follow-Up

My shoulder and hip soreness passed quickly. The muscular soreness manifested itself later, and with a vengeance. My quads are still stiff and painful, and my glutes and hamstrings are noticeably sore.

If I still feel like this tomorrow, I'm not going to Aikido class. Instead, I'll hold off until Wednesday's one-hour session. Aaron pointed out earlier today that, if I don't go, I'm losing money. Considering that I paid the normal amount for two months, plus got my dogi and free enrollment in any workshops during the two-month period, I'm figuring that I'm still getting a deal, even if I don't go at least twice a week.

I have trouble sticking with physical things that require a learning curve, it seems. I don't like to look like a big dork, and I don't like to be ignorant, even though I know that this is how everyone starts — even Sensei probably felt at one point like I do now.

I'm going to continue to attend at least one class a week (preferably two) until next month's Basics Seminar. If I don't feel like I'm "in the groove" by then... well, that's quite a ways off yet. We'll see.

Aikido Recap

Fun, yes. Easy, no. But definitely a good learning experience — in many ways.

Thankfully, Sensei started out the two-hour class with a rolling drill. Basically, he taught the basic technique for a forward roll, then a backward roll. Although I only worked on the forward roll myself, I was infinitely grateful to learn the proper technique so soon... and suspicious that the drill was for my benefit, and possibly for Brittney, the other new aikidoka. (I'd watched her in yesterday's class — turns out she's only in her second week of classes, so I feel a little better about being new.)

We moved into some throws after that, and my rolling technique went out the window for a while. I managed to get it back, though, to a degree, after Sensei pointed out that I was using my shoulder and elbow to break my fall, instead of rolling into it.

After the first set of throws, almost an hour into class, we went back to falls — sideways and backwards. I knew then that I was in trouble: the mat started to waver beneath my feet, and the room seemed vaguely unsteady. I ignored the discomfort and pressed on, although I knew exactly what my problem was.

I hadn't eaten before class. And my dogi was getting very, very warm.

Truth be told, I hadn't eaten well all day. I had a meal replacement bar for breakfast; Diet Mountain Dew as a morning "snack"; an Ostrim and three strawberries for lunch; and another Diet Mountain Dew, another meal replacement bar, and some cookies (an unexpected gift from my supervisor) for my afternoon snack. My original plan had been to order lunch out, since I hadn't made the time this morning or the night before to make a proper lunch. Due to some snafus at work, though, I ended up scrapping the idea and just eating the snacks I'd brought. Also, I skipped dinner completely, since I had just about long enough to gather my things and head out to the dojo after Aaron left for work. This made for a poorly nourished Diana, especially one attending her first Aikido class — and a two-hour one at that, which was described by more than one person as being a bold move for my first class.

As I said, though, I pressed on, into the next set of throws. About ten minutes later, I excused myself from my partner and from the mat entirely.

Never before have I exerted myself to the point of vomiting. Not even in drum corps. It's not something I'd care to repeat. I was glad that the gentleman yesterday had shown me where the restrooms were; I knew right where to beeline when I felt the unwelcome urgency overcome me as I left the mat.

I explained to Sensei upon my return that I hadn't eaten, and that I was feeling unwell. He said I was welcome to take a seat at the back of the mat, and rejoin whenever I could; he said I could "make watching practice." That was fine with me; I'd reached my breaking point for the evening. I did watch intently, but every time I gave thought to rejoining the foray, my stomach would start doing cartwheels again, and I'd quickly change my mind.

Sensei finally gestured me to rejoin for the cool-down exercises and the post-class announcements session, wherein I introduced myself to the group. Everyone was very understanding and welcoming, and seemed genuinely glad to have me in the class (even though I was a total neophyte, often needing to be reminded how the throws were done).

As we finished sweeping the mat (a tradition after each class, apparently), one of the other women in the class, Amy, suggested that we go get some Gatorade at the gas station down the street. (Can't have me being all dehydrated and unwell and trying to drive home, after all.) After we changed back into our street clothes, that's exactly what we did; she drove us both down to the Shell station and graciously bought Gatorades for both of us. That was an unexpected and very kind gesture, and one that I appreciated.

I did make it home OK, although I only barely sipped on my Gatorade. When I got home, I promptly beelined for the new recliner and crashed out for an entire hour. I was nauseous; I was sore; I was tired; and any movement at all reminded me of all three. Woke up to watch my favorite show on HGTV at 9pm, and continued sipping on my Gatorade. Flipped to a program on the History Channel after that, and continued sipping on my Gatorade. Never did eat dinner; I didn't think I could keep it down. And my 32oz Gatorade is still half full as I write this.

Right now, I know that most of my soreness does indeed come from my incorrect technique. I'm not rolling properly, not rounded enough, so my shoulders and hips are sore from hitting the mat. I also discovered that I was dragging the knuckles of my left hand along the mat during some of the rolling drills, so those are rubbed raw. I also have a good deal of straight-up muscle soreness, though: arms, shoulders, back, thighs, glutes, basically any muscles involved in laying down or kneeling down or standing up.

Besides learning how to roll and fall, and how to tie my belt, I learned a few other things about myself today. I learned that I should stick with the one-hour classes for now, even if it means driving to the dojo straight from work, instead of stopping at home to see Aaron. I learned that proper nutrition is vital to getting the most out of my practice, so I need to eat a substantial afternoon snack before aikido. I learned that I do indeed have a physical breaking point, and I learned how it manifests itself.

If this had been a trial class prior to signing up, I might have been turned off and decided against it. As it is, though, I'm going to attend the one-hour classes next week and see if those treat me any better. The other two ladies seemed to think that coming to a two-hour class on my first day was definitely a bold move, so maybe that should be a hint for the immediate future.

Three hours after class, and I'm still not feeling normal yet. I'm going to crash hard in a matter of minutes.

Body For Life, Week #3

Official weight: 199 pounds. Up half a pound from last week. (Today's unofficial weight was 200.)

I took my body fat reading this morning, too, just because I was curious and didn't want to wait another week. It started at 31.8%, and kept dropping each successive reading, until by the fourth reading it said 31.2%. I figure I'm below 32%, at least, maybe closer to 31.5%. I seem to be losing body fat, at any rate, which is good.

I've been slacking on the diet still, not as diligent about sticking to the Approved Foods List as I was, and that's obvious from my results. I've been slacking a little on the workouts, too, but that's mainly been since Monday. With my new workout possibility of Aikido, I'll probably end up making myself a new schedule of exercise that doesn't conform exactly to the BFL guidelines. (I'm probably not going to be too keen on doing a two hour Aikido practice, then coming straight home and doing 45 minutes of strength training, then promptly going to bed.)

My attitude this week has been pretty overwhelmingly defeatist. I had a super depressed stretch there, and I've been really irritable lately, and I'm not sure where this is all stemming from. Maybe it's The Pill; maybe it's stress that I'm ignoring; maybe it's a combination of things. All I know is that I'm tired of being irritable and defensive toward Aaron all the time. Maybe getting back on the wagon will help level out my moods.

I was almost ready to quit the BFL program this weekend until I got my official entry kit in the mail, complete with postcard to send in to confirm my participation in the program. I filled it out and sent it in, kind of half-heartedly. I don't want to be a quitter, but I do want to see some results. Here's hoping that next week's progress photos will provide the results I'm seeking...

Slightly Spontaneous

I just joined an Aikido dojo. Paid the two-month introductory fee, got my size-five gi, and now I'm primed and ready to be thrown around like a ragdoll.

I happened upon the dojo's website this week; there was an adult class scheduled for 5:45pm today, so I decided I should go check it out. Before that, though, I did a little research online, read up, watched some videos, and was duly impressed by the art in general. I filled out the dojo's online form last night, then showed up this evening at about the time that class was supposed to start.

I knew where the dojo was, no problem; Aaron and I drive past it just about every weekend. I showed up, removed my shoes where everyone else obviously had (before the quasi-tatami carpeted floor began), and was beckoned in by the sensei. I was shown where the restrooms and changing rooms were, told a little about the art, and invited to sit down and watch class.

The one-hour class focused on one particular throw, and various aspects of how to do it properly. Had I just known the proper way to fall and roll, I felt that I could have done both parts of the throw, thrower and throwee, by the end of the class. Tai Chi and Aikido have distinct similarities in movement and intention, and I could relate to that, having learned two separate forms of Tai Chi in college. My physical fear, the fear of having the living shit beaten out of me, was assuaged when I realized that all the loud noises were purposeful *slaps* on the mat by the person being thrown. I got the impression that it was a signal of sorts: the move is over, we've both completed our parts properly, now let me up. The higher-ranked people tended to be more "fun" and flamboyant with their rolls and smacking of the mat; the lower-ranked (or unranked) tended to fall with more temerity, and gently tap the mat when they'd rolled through and had enough.

The entire time I watched, I was enraptured. All I could think was, "I want to play, too!" In retrospect, I probably should have waited to fill out the paperwork until I'd actually participated in a class... but Sensei does have a policy on his website that guarantees your money back if you aren't satisfied in the first month, or if you think that this dojo just isn't for you. My last real fear, of sparring, was quelled by Sensei after the class, when he told me that they *never* spar. It's all exercises like the one I'd seen: planned out, agreed-upon by both parties. So, I think I'm safe to try this thing out.

What's bizarre to me is that, now, I just show up to a class and jump in. The next Basics seminar (which is included in my first two-month fee) isn't until July 28th. By then, I sure hope I've been taught how to roll properly and all that jazz. Otherwise, I'll be in a world of hurt.

This will be good for me, for many reasons:

1. I need a social outlet besides work.
2. I need a reason to exercise, and a way to make it fun.
3. I need to get outside of my comfort zone more often.
4. I need the mental balance and focus that a martial art can provide.
5. I need to balance my ego/self-centeredness with my humility/self-deprecation.

I didn't realize until I spoke with Sensei after class how egocentric I can be. All I wanted to do was tell him my background, what I know already, why I want to be in his dojo, how much I love Japanese culture, etc. All he wanted to do was get me signed up, give me my dogi, and thank me for joining the dojo. When I gave him my credit card to run, I told him that was the credit card that funded my trip to Japan last month. When he lit up and said, "Really," was my response about how awesome the culture is, or how great of a time I had? No — it was an admission that I'm a bit of a Japan geek. He responded that Aikido was definitely in that same vein; but it was obvious to me that, by turning the topic toward myself and away from our shared love of things Japanese, I had failed to engage his interest.

Now, after having signed my name to the dojo list and paid by credit card, I'm feeling that "oh shit what have I done" feeling... but I know that's just the feeling of my comfort zone being stretched a little. I'm a little boggled that I can just show up and start learning — no primer, no Aikido 101? I'm trying to decide whether I want to start with tomorrow's class and just jump right in, or whether I want to wait until next Monday (or Saturday morning, if I get up early enough). I'll probably just go tomorrow, to jump right in and start learning. Maybe I can show up early and get a quickie on how to roll properly, so I don't kill myself.

By the way... the first thing I did when I got home? Tried on my dogi. I felt like the friggin' Karate Kid, trying to figure out how the damn thing went on. It feels a little big on me, but it's possible that the next size down would be too small; I don't know how the sizes run, and Sensei obviously has more experience in these things than I do.

We'll see how this works out. I'm excited, and nervous, and stoked.

Body For Life, Week #2

This evening, I did something I should have done two weeks ago: a full-body measurement. Mainly for my own record-keeping purposes, here are the results:

Weight: 198.5 lbs
Neck: 14"
Bust (around the fullest part): 43" or 44"
Chest (below the boobs, not the armpits): 37" or 38"
(I measured twice, and I came up with different measurements for my bust and chest.)
Upper Waist (the narrowest part): 37"
Lower Waist (where my pants live): 42"
Hips: 48"
Upper Arm: 13"
Lower Arm: 10.5"
Thigh: 25"
Calf: 15.75"

(Just look at those measurements. Hi, I'm the spokesmodel for the Pear Shape. *sigh* BTW, for anyone who doesn't know me personally, I'm 5'10" tall, so at least I've got that on my side.)

For those who might be keeping score, my last official set of full-body measurements was posted in May 2006, almost exactly 13 months ago. Overall, I've lost thirteen pounds in thirteen months, plus about an inch off all major measurements. Man, it feels like my hip measurement should have changed more than it did, because I have quite a bit of loose skin around my belly button. Weird.

I've been freeforming the diet just a little, not planning everything every day, mainly due to me being a dork and spending too long at the computer at night. I mean to give myself time to write out the next day's meals and exercise, plus pack my lunch and snacks, but it doesn't always happen. I haven't been too evil, though; the worst thing I could accuse myself of is not eating enough protein. My "default diet" seems to be fruit and Ostrims, if I don't have time to make something proper for lunch.

Cardio is and always has been my downfall. Even back when I was in my best shape ever, I absolutely hated running. I've always preferred resistance training to aerobics. Maybe that explains some things. Anyway, I've been enjoying the weight training part of the program, and neglecting the cardio. I just can't make myself go run around the block or drive to the park, and the trampoline is so God-awful boring sometimes. I know. I need to get over it.

This past weekend, while we were visiting the bookstore at the mall (where I bought both Men's Health and Women's Health magazines), we swung past the Dick's Sporting Goods that's next door. I bought not only the equipment I'd said I needed before — namely, two more 10# plates, new dumbbell bars, and a heavy resistance band — but I also got myself a 75cm stability ball. That thing rules in so many ways. Between that and my new bands (complete with door anchor!), I can do almost all of the exercises I'd poo-poohed before as being impossible without gym equipment. Cable pulls, back extensions, leg presses... yeah. I'm good to go.

I'm not overly upset about the scale only moving one pound since last week's weigh-in. I *feel* firmer. My stomach feels more solid (to me, anyway). My legs definitely feel more solid. It won't be long before something kicks in (probably my cardio workouts) and the fat starts to melt off and leave behind the muscle I'm building.

It's still early in the game, but I feel positive about things. Not just weight loss, but Things In General.

Yeah... it's all good.

Body For Life, Week #1

I've been completely exhausted for the last two days now, and it's not casting a positive light on my feelings for my one-week mark on the Body for Life diet. I've even resorted to caffeine — Diet Mountain Dew. Add to that a less-than-stellar weight-loss for the week, and little to no change in my body fat reading, and I'm a little disenchanted. That doesn't mean I'm quitting, though.

This week's official weight: 199.5 lbs. That's a one and a half pound loss from my official starting weight of 201 last Tuesday, even though last Wednesday charted me at 200 even. My body fat percentage hasn't changed much yet: last Tuesday's reading was just over 31%, last Wednesday's reading was just over 32%, and yesterday's one-week reading was 32.8%. Granted, my Omron Body Fat Analyzer is really only good for a guesstimate, so I should probably go easy on the body fat readings and only do them with my monthly photos.

I've read online that a lot of BFL participants don't experience any actual weight loss; the major change is in body composition. Fat takes up five times the volume of muscle, after all, so losing a given amount of fat and gaining the equivalent weight in muscle would make a huge difference.

I do have a couple of visible, non-number-related goals for this 12-week program:

1. To have my thighs not touch at the top when I stand with my feet shoulder-width apart


2. For my upper arms to be the same shape (or close to it) when my arms are raised and when they're down at my sides (i.e. no more embarrassing arm-fat expansion when my arms are pressed against my sides)

Body for Life, Day 1

I don't recall exactly when I decided that I was going to start the Body for Life program today. It was before the Japan Trip, at any rate, because I packed the Body for Life book in our carry-on (even if I didn't end up reading it on the plane). I knew I would take a "diet vacation" while we were in Japan — when we came back, after the Memorial Day holiday and the Super Crazy Japan Party™, I would attack my own fitness with vigor. Being that I have just a little longer than three months to find a new job, it seemed that taking 12 weeks to do the BFL Challenge made sense, too.

I hadn't started out with the intention of doing The Challenge. I just so happened to remember that it existed after I decided to get with the BFL program. Not that I think I'll win any big prizes, mind you... but officially entering the challenge is a form of accountability, and I'm all about that.

Another major form of accountability? The "before" picture. I realized last week that I didn't have any appropriate workout clothes in which to take a midriff-baring before picture. So, while we were out running errands yesterday, I drug Aaron into Target and I bought something I never EVER thought I would buy.

A bikini. A two-piece, completely midriff-baring swimsuit. In size extra-large.

Dear God.

...but, actually, I'm looking forward to wearing it in public someday. Not today, probably not anytime this summer, but someday.

I took my before photos today, after work — which was a challenge, since the tripod that I was using broke a while back, and I had to resort to setting the camera on furniture of appropriate heights that faced blank walls that were big enough to serve as a backdrop. (Note to self: a light stand, an umbrella, and a cheap backdrop will really come in handy in about 12 weeks.)

OK, friends: if you want to see the before picture, here it is. I'm not posting it in the body of the entry because, well, I'm not THAT much of a masochist. I will be posting the after picture on or around... *checking calendar* ...August 21st.

As for my first day... I think it went well. I planned out my meals and exercise yesterday, and followed them fairly well, for the most part. I did some decent interval training on the mini-trampoline this evening, and broke a decent sweat. I always forget how GOOD it feels to sweat during and after a workout. Tomorrow is a lower-body workout, I think, and I'll have to plan that one out this evening, while I'm planning tomorrow's meals.

My starting point? 201 lbs (yes, I gained five back in Japan) and 31% body fat.
My goal? 180 lbs (not necessarily in 12 weeks) and/or 20% body fat.

I think this is a completely reasonable goal. It involves me losing 25 pounds of fat and gaining only five pounds of muscle, by my calculations. Would I like to see 170? Sure. But we'll see how I'm feeling once I get to my first goal. It's entirely possible that I'll be happy enough with my new body composition that I'll have reached a good stopping point. For the time being.

Day one was a success. Only 83 more days to go...

Part of the Elite Few

I guess I never realized that I'm one of only 5% of dieters who have kept off the weight long-term. (Does three to four years count as long-term?) Sure, I gained back 10 of my 50; but I lost it again, plus more.

Check out the article 5 Secrets of the 5% at SparkPeople to find out how I did it. Apparently.

Actually, they're not far off the mark. I just hadn't thought about it.

P.S. - If anyone's interested, I'm down to 197 lbs.

Stuffed

Didn't pack a proper lunch today. Had only eaten 400-some-odd calories by the time dinner rolled around.

Made turkey burritos with lettuce, salsa, sour cream, and cheese. Ate two. Then ate a taco-salad-ish affair, swapping out the tortilla for some seasoned brown rice.

I am now too full to even think. Bleh.

Note to self: packing lunch the night before remains a major priority if you want to be properly fueled all day long.

Plateau? Smashie, Smashie!

Heck, yeah! Eat that, you damn one-month plateau! Ungh! *bitchslap*

*ahem* Sorry.

This week, as I mentioned earlier, I've been watching my carbohydrate intake more diligently. I've been shooting for 125g of carbs and at least 25g of fiber, for a total of 100g of net carbs (since fiber isn't digestible, y'know). I've been going a little over, but it's apparently the intent that counts. I've continued to track my food on SparkPeople, but I've been manually tabulating my sugar, as SparkPeople has issue with letting people see how much sugar they've eaten. Can't have people avoiding fruit, after all, since fruit has sugar in it.

At any rate, I've kept my protein above 140g daily, my total carbohydrates below 160g, and my fiber above 23g (except yesterday, which only made it to 18g). My sugar intake has been pretty decent, too, staying in the 20g-30g range. Now, most hard-core low-carbers would scoff at these numbers, since Atkins Induction limits you to 20g of carbohydrate per day total, and NO sugar, period. All my sugars have been... let's see... OK, one day I had some low-cal ice cream that had 16g of sugar, but the rest is mostly my organic breakfast cereal, South Beach Diet snack bars, Splenda Brown Sugar Blend, stuff like that. I feel pretty positive about my food intake, considering this week's results.

Remember how I said I'd try this for a couple weeks, and see if I lost three pounds in two weeks?

I just lost four and a half pounds in one week.

I weigh 197.5 lbs this morning, in contrast to the 202 I weighed this past Sunday.

Tomorrow's Easter in Westlake, with Aaron's family, so I expect I won't be monitoring my carbs quite as well as I have been. I'll still make a concerted effort to be good, stock up on the meat, go easy on the starchy goodness, and only eat one small dessert. (Believe me, at Uncle Pete's, dessert is a course unto itself. We're responsible for bringing a cake, and I know Pete's wife Dee will likely be making something scrumptious, too.) I may gain back a little weight, stabilize at a slightly higher number — and I'm OK with that.

I have no intention of getting back up to 200, though.

We Are The Champions

Looks like James owes me ten bucks.

Unfortunately, I didn't have much success following the SparkDiet this month. Well, I had success in *following* it, but not in losing weight because of it. My weight on March 1st was 202.5 lbs; my weight today, on April 1st, is 202 lbs. After the losses and the gains over the past month, I'm only half a pound below where I started.

Time for a new strategy.

Starting this week, I'm going to be monitoring my carbohydrate intake more closely, and to hell with calories. Well, calories are a good judge of portion size in general, so not entirely to hell with them. They just won't be my be-all end-all, man-I-fucked-up gauge.

If this doesn't do something for me, maybe I ought to go back on a "real" diet. One that's published in a book, and that I follow properly, instead of this grow-your-own bullshit I've been trying to do lately. It's obviously not as successful, and I'm obviously not a medical professional or nutritionist or personal trainer. I don't know.

I'm not going to beat myself up over it, though. I'm going to give my grow-your-own SparkDiet another, oh, two weeks or so. If I haven't lost at least three pounds by the end of two weeks — I think that's a reasonable expectation — I'm going to go back on a structured low-carb diet. Probably not Atkins, but maybe Sugar Busters or another related diet. I certainly have enough books that I've never read and reviewed for my now abandoned podcast. We'll see.

In The Home Stretch

In less than seven days, either myself or my co-worker James will be the winner of a $10 wager.

About three weeks ago, we agreed that we would compete for SparkPoints at SparkPeople.com, and whoever had the most points accumulated in the month of March would win $10. Right now, it's still anybody's game. I'm sure we're both going to pull out all the stops this week, though.

The one major point-gaining strategy I've been slacking on is cardio. I can claim 1 SparkPoint for every five minutes of cardio, up to a max of 24 points (that's two hours) per day. Usually, I only end up doing my 30-minute walk over lunch, and maybe some yoga in the evenings. (I'm not sure yoga should count as cardio, but that's how they have it categorized, so OK...) This week, head cold permitting, I'm going to ramp up my cardio. I'll do 45 minutes to an hour walk at lunch (which means I'll have to get there and clock in on time in the morning), and I'll do yoga and rebounding (trampolining) nightly. Hell, if I feel up to it, I'll probably go jogging at Wildwood tomorrow or Tuesday, since the weather's supposed to be so warm. That much activity in one week should not only kick up my SparkPoints, but also break me out of this goddamned plateau.

I thought before that maybe if I increased my fiber and protein, that would help. It doesn't seem to be. So, this week, I'm also — no, wait. This week I'm already increasing my activity. I shouldn't decrease my carb intake at the same time. I'll hold off on that, and see if doing more cardio does the trick. If it doesn't, *then* I'll look at my carbs.

All righty. Wish me luck, both in my competition against James and in my battle against the neverending scale reading of 201.5 pounds.

Out of Nowhere

Can someone please tell me where I might find the shut-off valve for my left nostril?

kthx.

Numbers

I never thought I was much of a numbers person — not after snoring through a stats class my Freshman year of college, then struggling through other collegiate-level maths. I've discovered, though, that I enjoy finding and tracking trends, be they at work or in my weight loss.

I've been seriously bummed this week, and losing faith in the SparkDiet, because I've remained at 201.5 pounds for the past nine days straight (not counting one day when I lost half a pound, then gained it back the next). The only thing that kept me from totally giving it the big heave-ho was my $10 wager with James. For total SparkPoints earned, not for total weight lost, thank goodness.

At any rate, I have my own Excel spreadsheet and graph that I've been updating over the past, oh, more than four years, and I've incorporated weekly averages into it. I average my weight for the week, Sunday through Saturday, and subtract that average from the previous week's average to help gauge my weight loss. I'd forgotten that last week's average was 202.2, and it turns out that this week's average is 201.4 (thanks to that one lower day), so I actually lost 0.8 pounds since last week. That makes me feel better.

SparkPeople, though not exactly the diet I would have chosen for myself without the online tracking, at least has some nifty graphs relating to food and exercise and goal-setting. It tells me that my recommended daily fiber intake is 25-35g, and informs me that I'm consistently below that level. I can also see that my protein isn't as high as a former low-carber's should be. So, my goal for this week is to meet my recommended fiber and exceed my recommended protein levels. Those things alone should push a lot of the evilness out of my diet.

Today will be fun. Today, Aaron and I are meeting Jason at the Happy Rose Buffet, where I will be selecting only the healthiest items possible, having only one plate of food, and sticking mainly to sushi. I will set a good example, and I will be proud of myself.

Diagnosis: Funk

Damn these moods. I really, REALLY need to come up with the wherewithal to jumpstart myself out of a funk, once I recognize said funk.

Turns out that pulling a double-shift of sorts to complete a contracting project is A Bad Idea™, as the project will then have major issues and need to be fixed by someone else before going off to proof. Submitting B-minus work in Real Life has much different connotations than in college. In college, it's just your grade. In Real Life, it's your reputation.

Adding to my funk is the fact that my weight loss has plateaued before it ever really began. Starting March 1st, James and I have been having a friendly wager as to who can amass the most SparkPoints in the month of March. It's less of a weight-loss contest and more of a contest of wills. Who is more involved in reaching their fitness goals? Right now, it's James, totally. We were neck and neck for the first week of March, then I started lagging behind because of the same reasons I always stall out: I have other things to do, or I'm in a funk and can't make myself exercise, or lack of planning convinced me to make a fast and evil dinner (like tuna mac).

My next dietary step is to increase my fiber and my protein. My next exercise step is to get back to doing it every day, like I'd been so enjoying for a week there. My next webstuff step is to do some minor updates on the LSM site, then complete a working demo of my freelance client's website (the stylesheets, not all the content yet) by Sunday night.

Tonight was a night for myself to chill. And for cooking. Tomorrow's potluck will have at least two reasonably healthy dishes: mine and James's.

*le sigh*

The Root Of The Problem Has Been Isolated

I think I'm discovering that diet and exercise both play an important role in my mood. To some people, I'm sure my discovery seems like a big *DUH* moment. Really, though, I never thought about it much beyond the whole concept of blood sugar levels. Now that I'm in kind of a fitness groove, though, I'm finding that throwing a monkeywrench into my routine can really screw up my mojo.

Today's example begins with an early day: doctor's visit before work. Getting up early actually made my morning better, and I think I'll try to keep up with the early rising. (Those of you who know me well may scoff at that. It's cool. I don't mind.) My breakfast-at-my-desk was a little too light: a breakfast bar. I had my morning snack a little earlier than usual, and still I was intensely and painfully hungry by lunchtime. My afternoon snack was pretty lame: a sugar-free pudding. So, when I got home, I was completely unprepared for my normal workout while dinner was cooking. I ended up eating a large snack, then foregoing the workout (I told myself I'd do it later, but I was lying) and making a dinner with waaaay too many calories from fat.

So, how do I feel? Unmotivated. Kinda lethargic. Only three or four hours ago, I was geeked to the gills to start a new phase of my freelance project. Now, I'd much rather shovel down a bag of cinnamon pork rinds and sit in front of the TV. I'm convinced this is directly related to my small breakfast and impotent afternoon (pre-workout) snack. Those two small links in my day caused a chain reaction that played on my not having planned an appropriate dinner ahead of time, and allowed me to say, "Fuck it. I'm having alfredo for dinner."

The trick now is figuring out what I'm willing to do to shake this funk and get back to work. I've already lost a good part of the evening hours. I think I'm going to bust off a couple basic exercises — maybe some girlie pushups, maybe some stiff-legged deadlifts, and a few sets of crunches — then drink a glass of water (bringing me to eight today!) and get to work on this project.

*deep breath*

Let's do it.

Diet & Fitness Update: Weekends Are A Bitch

As I mentioned earlier, I'm going to start being more diligent about my weekends. It's really not that hard: take a scrap of paper and a pen along and write down everything I eat.

Saturday wasn't all that bad. Lunch was Panera, and dinner was Applebee's. Panera has their nutritional info online; Applebee's was more of a guesstimate. I ended up at the low end of my recommended calorie range (by SparkPeople standards, between 1510 and 1860). Didn't exercise, only drank six glasses of water. Still not horrible for a weekend.

Sunday was another story, and it was screwed by one poor decision: lunch at Red Lobster. See, Aaron had this idea that I could pay for lunch, since I had cash in my wallet leftover from an ATM run before a con back in January.* (I rarely use cash anymore.) So, since I was paying, I decided we were going all out.

I honestly didn't make a very concerted effort to be good; I was kind of curious what kind of calories and carbs I'd end up eating if I just ate a nice lunch at Red Lobster. So, I did. And I ended up eating as many calories as I should have eaten in one whole day, from what I can tell. I tracked what I could; the piña colada dipping sauce was nearly impossible to track for nutritional info, as Red Lobster doesn't publish theirs, either.

Dinner, while low-carb, was NOT low-cal. My half-pound Schnuth-made burger had more calories than the fried shrimp I had for lunch, and helped me rack up about 2700 calories today. Again, no exercise, but I did at least drink my eight glasses of water.

The lesson here, for me, is: 1.) always track my food on the weekends, because it makes me more aware of what I'm shoveling in; 2.) eat simple: just say no to the heavy sauces and appetizers; and 3.) look at the big picture. One day does not a failure make. I'll get back to my normal, healthy groove tomorrow, and soon I'll learn how to avoid losing my groove on the weekends.

Learning experience. Identifying issues. Planning solutions. I'll see 165 lbs eventually, and it'll be effin' sweet. Hell, seeing 190 before our Japan vacation will be pretty effin' sweet, for that matter.

*Turns out that I did not, in fact, have the fifty dollars cash on hand like I thought I did. I ended up paying with my debit card and leaving a hefty cash tip, instead. Still have a little cash in the wallet, which is good for emergencies, I suppose.

Quick Observations

Being creative on behalf of someone else is challenging. I'm designing for the opposite of my normal style: bold colors, fun, and purple. I have four detailed thumbnails complete, and I only think two of them are "fun". I've started making the funnest one into a composite in Photoshop, and it's started to take on a mind of its own. It's very yellow... to go with the purple, of course.

Also: I am reminded once again that my beginning kickboxing workout is teh awesome. Even at 8pm.

If you're interested in checking up on me, SparkPeople has made the diet and exercise logging public (per member's discretion). If you really, REALLY want to know if I took my walk today, or how much I ate, or if I gave in and made macaroni for dinner, you're welcome to look.

(And if you DO look, I know that today's calories are scant. Don't fret; I'm not making a habit of eating under 800 calories a day. I just didn't pack a proper lunch today.)

I got James at work to join up on SparkPeople, and we're planning to have some friendly diet/fitness competition. I'm not sure what kind of competition we'll come up with, but I'm sure we'll figure out something fun.

Diet & Fitness Reboot

I allowed myself one week to keep eating as I had been, instead of jumping back into weight-loss mode right away. Figured it might be better on me both physically and mentally, being that my body was still pumped full of pregnancy hormones. This past week, though, I started purposefully increasing my activity level and tracking my food intake.

Monday: 30 min walk + PUSH DVD #2, Session #1
Tuesday: 30 min walk + 15 minutes of jogging on a trampoline (rebounding)
Wednesday: 30 min walk + PUSH DVD #2, Session #1
Thursday: 30 min walk + 10 minutes of DDR Supernova, workout mode (60 calories burned)
Friday: 30 min walk

I signed up for an account on SparkPeople, mainly because a.) I'd been tracking my food intake on their BabyFit website, and b.) I had previously been tracking my food using Diet Organizer on my PDA, but my PDA battery had died. I only recently replaced said battery, after I already got in the SparkPeople habit.

I'm planning to give my impressions of SparkPeople on an upcoming podcast, but I'll mention here that I like it overall. It touts the "Spark Diet," which is mainly just Eat Right And Exercise, but it's really the tracking that does it. Plus, there are "trophies" members can achieve by earning SparkPoints online. SparkPoints can be had by entering food eaten, entering exercises done, tracking goals, reading articles, reading e-mails, logging in, and basically just surfing around the site. It's an ingenious idea to generate return traffic, and to keep people entering their info daily.

My weight hasn't changed this week; I'm still at 201.5 lbs. I'm OK with that, though — at least I've lost and kept off the few pounds I put on in those two months of pregnancy. Now I have the chance to lose at least ten more pounds before we try again. The healthier I am, the better... although going through the medical game of 20 Questions at the hospital last month made me realize that my only major health issue IS my weight. Apart from that, I'm good to go. No heart disease, allergies, high blood pressure, any of that. So, count me lucky, I suppose.

Next week, I plan to measure myself and compare to my last measurements from September (if I can find them... I think I inadvertently threw away the sheet I'd recorded them on, thinking they were also in my PDA).

Here we go, on another fun weight-loss adventure. The way I figure, I should be able to jump in where I left off in the Fall, and keep on losing half a pound a week, if not more. If I can do that, I can lose ten pounds by the time we leave for our trip to Japan (during which I may end up gaining it all back). :-)

An Open Letter To Aetna

Dear Aetna:

I have been covered under my husband's insurance, provided by your company, since we were married in 2003. However, as my family did not always have insurance coverage, I did not get in the habit of visiting medical professionals for regular checkups. Therefore, up until recently, I only had rare occasion to use my husband's insurance, and had little to no problems with the coverage.

When my husband and I decided to try to conceive, I decided that I should visit a gynecologist, to get a pap test and ensure that all my parts were functioning properly. My doctor prescribed pre-natal vitamins, which were covered by my husband's prescription program (not through your company). My pap test, however, was not covered by Aetna, and I had to pay $148 for an exam which is generally accepted to be a necessary preventative measure for all adult women. Since this expense was not for the treatment of an existing condition, and was considered preventive medicine rather than treatment, your company did not foot the bill.

One is forced to wonder whether Aetna would prefer millions of women to develop cervical cancer, instead of paying for the preventative measure of an annual pap test.

Yours truly,
Diana Schnuth

Con Crud

I feel pretty asstastic. Queasy, sore throat, drainage, dry eyes. I think I must've caught the Con Crud at Youmacon this weekend or something. I haven't felt like eating all day, and I nearly went to bed at 9pm tonight, just because I felt like it.

Con Crud. AKA Convention Flu. Notorious for striking convention-goers after they have returned from said convention. Con Crud does not discriminate; it can strike con-goers of anime conventions, sci-fi conventions, basically any convention with a massive amount of people in an enclosed space for a weekend's time.

I assume that's what I've got, anyway.

I'm fading fast, but I need to go clean up my candlemaking mess before I go to bed. Ugh.

Patting Myself on the Back

I've kept track of my weight in Excel ever since December of 2002. Yep, I'm in it for the long haul.

It does me good sometimes to remember how far I've come, and how good I've managed to stay, for the most part. I lost fifty, gained ten, and lost ten again.

Also: look where the big post-loss gains are. Christmas 2004 and Thanksgiving/Christmas 2005. Tell ya something? Tells me that I don't work off that holiday hogging, and I let it get the best of me instead. I'm all for enjoying Christmas dinner with Aaron's family, and even eating "evil" foods like stuffing and sweet potatoes and dessert (OMG sausage cake!). This year, though, I need to be all for ramping up the workouts the week afterward, too.

Just a quick pick-me-up pep talk, and a reminder that I don't suck. Now I need to walk my talk.

Doctor's Appointment

Visited the OB-GYN's office today, for the first time since college. Don't worry, I won't give gory details — not that there are many gory details to give. Most of my time was spent waiting, either in the waiting room or in the examination room.

Let me say that I started out the day pretty stoked. I stepped on the scale, and it told me I weigh 201.5 lbs, which is continuing my downward trend, and is my lowest weight point since December 2004. When I got to the doctor's office (over my lunch break) and the nurse was doing her pre-exam thing, the scale in the examination room also read 201. Rock! My scale's not fubar!

Then, after a long several minutes of me chilling out on the examination table, the doctor came in.

One of the things I asked Dr. Okin was whether I should try to lose more weight before trying to conceive, or if I should just wait until after pregnancy to continue my weight loss. Predictably, she told me that a woman should be in her best physical shape before becoming pregnant. Sure, that makes sense. Then she continued to tell me things I already know: My BMI is 29, I should be around 21 to 23, and that means my ideal weight is around 160 lbs.

Right. So, considering the steady weight loss trend of .5667 pounds a week I've had since July (yes, I *do* have a weight-tracking Excel spreadsheet), and not discounting any lengthy plateaus, I should be in prime condition to conceive in... *does calculations* ...April of 2008.

*sigh*

She must realize I'm not inclined to wait, though, because she prescribed me some prenatal vitamins.

(The entry continues in a rambling self-pitying fashion, should you care to read on...)

read more...

Head Cold Update

Got a sore throat last week. Started taking medication to head it off at the proverbial pass. Nasal spray, Theraflu, Mucinex, generic Meijer severe cold tablets, and plain old tea with honey.

Had a couple days of runny nose, some hoarseness, but nothing too serious. Thought I'd successfully fought it off.

Yesterday and today, I was SO exhausted. I can breathe, sure, and I can speak and hear fine, but I'm dead tired. Hence the lack of substantial blogging. And the fact that I posted my podcast a day late, since I couldn't make myself focus on editing yesterday.

I was so tired this morning, I declared a do-over. I called in late to work, went back to bed for 15 minutes, then got up and started my morning over. Sure, I had to take a short lunch today, and will again tomorrow, but I think it was worth it. I actually felt pretty good until the evening, when I really started to crash.

Speaking of... it's totally time for bed.

I Grow Weary of Weekly Diet Updates

Maybe I just had a bad week. Maybe it's because it's almost "that" time of month. Either way, I gained steadily over the course of the week, and lost a lot of ground. I'm hoping it's only cyclical, but it still gets me down.

I'm not saying "screw the diet," but I'm saying screw the updates. It's disheartening to post every damn week and see fucking nothing happening. Whatever.

I'm not journaling my food intake this week, but I'm addicted to daily weigh-ins now. I'll keep up with my weight chart in Excel, but... meh. I get so excited when I'm doing well (like, the two weeks before this past week), but I take huge steps backward when I'm not doing so well.

Whatever. My 2006 New Years Resolution has gone to shit.

Reference earlier post about my piss-tastic mood today. I'm gonna see if I can make myself go to bed early.

Eureka Moment

Last night, I was standing naked in the bathroom, having just brushed my teeth before bed. The door was partially closed (probably thanks to the cat), so I saw my reflection in the full-length mirror mounted to the back of said door as I turned to head back into the bedroom.

I'm used to looking at myself either in profile or straight-on — or just looking down my front from my normal, real-life, non-mirror perspective — so seeing myself reflected back at an oblique angle kind of threw me for a second. I saw how much closer my stomach is to being almost-flat, and how much my gut has really deflated. It didn't look like me.

It was cool.

I still wouldn't win any pageants or anything, but I can at least tell that I'm closer to my goal. Sometimes you just have to look at things from a different perspective, I guess.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week Ending 9/16/06

Official week-ending weigh-in: 202.5

Notable changes in measurements in the past two months:
Bust: down 1.25"
Chest (below bust): down 1.5"
Upper Arm: down 1.25"

I also took in-progress photos today, and was pleasantly surprized at the belly shrinkage since July. My calves also seem to be more defined, and my collarbones might be even a little more pronounced than before. Or maybe that was just the light. I also think my upper back is looking less fatty, although that could be a function of not having a ponytail to hide the definition, too. At any rate, I'm experiencing visible progress, even if the numbers don't show much.

This week was a slackeriffic exercise week, to a point. On Thursday, I think it was, I did a few sets of deep squats while I was waiting for my dinner to cook in the microwave. Just those two or three sets of ten deep squats worked my leg muscles like nobody's business. Good stuff. Then, today, I went on a jog in the park with Aaron, and I got a lot farther than usual before I had to slow to a walk. Maybe it was just female machismo on my part, or maybe I actually am getting in better shape, but I'm satisfied with the progress either way.

Because I'm so behind on my PUSH DVDs, I've suspended my account for two months to give me a chance to catch up. I have quite the backlog. So, my goal this week is to do my PUSH workout three times, so that I can feel comfortable graduating up to the next disc for next week. I tried Disc 4 once, after a recent hiatus from working out, and it kicked my ass *bad*. I'm thinking that, if I get myself up to speed with the previous workout, the next disc shouldn't be so daunting.

I'm also going to make a concerted effort to increase my protein intake. I've been good with keeping the carbs down to below 40% of my daily caloric intake. Unfortunately, my fat intake has probably been a little higher than it really should. I'm going to focus on increasing protein, though, rather than decreasing fat, in hopes of taking a more positive approach. If I add the right protein-rich foods, then, in theory, those should bump out the fat I'd normally be eating. I just need to make a conscious effort to go easy on the Vegenaise and the less lean meats, and this should work.

In other health news... I should really get myself to various medical professionals. Doctor. Gynecologist. Dentist. It's been over five years since I've seen any of those, and I should probably do that before... well, soon, anyway.

Averages

Isn't that the nicest little chart you ever did see? It's my average weekly weight, as calculated by my DietOrganizer program. I only just discovered that particular chart today, and boy, does it make me feel good about myself. :-)

I've also been using the "Google 15" widget for my personalized Google homepage, which does a very similar thing by charting both your daily weight and your running average.

(I really only use the personalized Google homepage so I can see the headers of my Gmail at work, since accessing webmail is not only near-impossible with the web-browsing countermeasures they've installed, but is also an offense punishable by termination.)

At any rate, it does my heart good to see those numbers going in the right direction. It makes for less drama when I get on the scale every morning (o noes! i gained a pound overnight!).

In other news, my gut seems to be deflating. My upper abs not so much, but my lower ab fat is definitely shrinking like an old balloon. Maybe this Saturday's bimonthly weight-loss photos will make me a happy camper.

P.S. - It's interesting to me how difficult it is to share someone else's weight-loss joy when you're kind of in a rut yourself. For me, anyway. When James at work is all excited about losing weight, but I'm holding steady, it's hard for me to give an enthusiastic attaboy. Likewise, when I showed him this chart today, he seemed happy for me, but seemed to remain bummed that he'd gained over the Black Swamp Arts Festival weekend, what with the fair food and friends in town and all. I can also tell it's kind of awkward for Aaron to be excited for me when he's not losing as fast as he'd like.

It's kind of the negative side of having diet buddies, I guess. When neither side is very competitive about weight-loss, all bets are off.

P.P.S. - I took my bodyfat percentage and did some calculations yesterday, and figured that my current lean body weight is probably around 135 lbs. Interesting factoid. Assuming my muscle mass remains a constant, that means I need to lose about 6% bodyfat to reach my initial I'll-be-content-here-for-a-while first goal of 190 lbs.

Getting down to my ultimate-ever goal of 160 would require me to be... *does calculations* ...15.6% bodyfat. Hmm. Unlikely, but not impossible. Honestly, I can't even imagine what I'd look like in that body.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week Ending 9/9/06

Good news! I finally broke through my two-week plateau at 206.5 and 206lbs respectively, and have managed to stay below 205 for the last five days or so. My official week-end weight is 203.5, although I weighed in this morning back at 204. I'm fairly confident that I'll stay below 205 now. w00t!

My major dip in weight happened the day after my resistance-training PUSH workout, and stayed there despite pizza and cheesecake on Friday, and two Pollyeyes stuffed breadsticks on Saturday. You would think that a weight dip after exercise would incite me to exercise more often... but no. I ended up not following up with my kickboxing cardio.

Even so, I still plan to order some clothes for myself this week. Maybe I'll even treat myself to a trip to Levis Commons and take a turn around Lane Bryant.

This week, I plan to *really* do two days of exercise. One day of strength training, one day of cardio. I know, it's way less than the nice PUSH people want me to do, but I'm easing myself back into it. Making habits. Losing the weight slowly, so I'll keep it off.

As much as I'd like to hit my goal weight by Thanksgiving, the statistics are against me. Overall, I'm averaging a loss of just under one pound a week, although my consistency has improved over time. If I were to stick with this program, with these results, I'd hit my goal of 190 just before Christmas. I'm not giving up, though. We'll see how it turns out.

Au Naturale

When I was in middle school, I had the hardest time finding a deodorant that would keep me smelling fresh. Mom's deodorant didn't cut it for me, and it wasn't until I saw an advertisement for a deodorant that was "So effective you could even skip a day™" that I finally found my brand. Over the years, my Lady Mitchum has served me well, though the products have changed from normal solid antiperspirant to a roll-on to a "hydrosolid" to a gel.

Recently, I got razorburn on my left armpit. Around the same time, I switched from my normal gel back to the "hydrosolid" that was on clearance. The hydrosolid ended up giving me a nasty rash where the razorburn was, so I had to forego the use of deodorant on my left pit for a few days, so it could heal. Eww.

Actually, it could have been worse. I put baby powder on my freshly-washed pit every morning, and it was fine until well after I got home in the evening. And, strangely enough, I enjoyed the feeling of letting my armpit breathe. That, plus a well-timed article in a health magazine, made me wonder if maybe I shouldn't switch to a more natural deodorant.

Early this week, I received a shipment from Kiss My Face: natural deodorant, with no aluminum salts to clog the pores and possibly cause a host of medical problems. I've been using it all week, and it seems to work OK. Honestly, I'm not positive how much more effective this stuff is than the baby powder method, but it does smell nice. Like lavender. (I haven't tried the patchouli yet, but it smells pretty strong. I'm gonna smell like a hippie.)

Right now, at almost midnight, my deodorant has long since worn off. That's OK, though. I don't mind the smell of me as much as I once did, especially since I'm all by my lonesome. I might reapply in the evenings if Aaron were here to smell my naturalness. :-)

Again, as I said once before, mentioning that one has BO is probably not the best thing to do on one's blog. But I'm feeling liberated from the evils of aluminum, and wanted to share. And the point of the natural deodorant is not to have BO in social situations, which I don't.

It really does make you think about what our deodorant-deprived ancestors smelled like on a daily basis, or about people in other cultures or other countries — like the Mennonite I shared a Greyhound bus seat with, once upon a time. I don't smell *that* strong, but it does make you wonder. Doesn't it?

Diet & Fitness Update, Week Ending 9/2/06

I didn't write a diet update last week, mainly because I gained a pound and a half from that damn Chinese buffet right before I wrote my last update, and didn't manage to lose it right away. In fact, I was solidly stuck at 206.5 for... *checking Excel chart* ...exactly a week. Then I dropped half a pound and stayed at 206 even until this morning, when I dropped another half pound. My official week-ending weight is 206, though.

Someday I'll reach my five-pound mini-goal, and I'll get to buy myself some new autumn clothes. *sigh* It bothers me that I still fit into last year's new autumn clothes, though. I'd planned on being so much less fat by now. At least I'm not more fat, I guess.

I've been better at doing cardio for these past two weeks, although I'm still doing much less than I should. The Kickboxing I workout from PUSH is excellent, focusing on proper form and working up through the 30-minute workout to a final sequence of moves. I also enjoy the trainer's positive attitude, which is pleasant and upbeat without making me want to strangle myself.

I've also been doing much better on weekends. Usually, I gain anywhere between half a pound and a pound and a half over a weekend. For the past two weekends, I've stayed completely steady after the weekend, and I attribute that to being more reasonable at restaurants. We've stayed away from my mortal weight-loss enemy, the Happy Rose Buffet, and I've employed lots of standard diet tactics, like putting half of an entree into a to-go container right off the bat or ordering from the appetizer section of the menu.

For this week, I'm planning to add another day of exercise to the fray. For the last two weeks, I've been doing kickboxing one day of the week, and that's it. Not including my daily walk, of course. I'm planning to add a day of PUSH strength training back into the mix, and hopefully build up to where I should be. I also need to suspend my PUSH account temporarily, because I'm nearly three months behind on my DVDs.

It's frustrating to be losing so slowly, but I *am* losing. I've learned my lesson about bingeing on weekends, and I know that continued exercise will help me keep losing weight. I may not reach the weight goal I wanted to reach by Thanksgiving, but I'll keep going, anyway.

Note To Self: Cardio Good.

Next time I whine about doing cardio, could someone *please* smack me upside the head and remind me how awesome I feel after a good 30-minute workout?

I had promised myself earlier that I could do some genealogy research as a reward, if only I would go do the 30-minute kickboxing workout on my latest PUSH DVD. Now I see that the afterglow IS the reward.

So tired... but feeling so good.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week Ending 8/19/06

To all of you who scoffed at my intention to go jogging: you were right.

However... despite that, I still managed to lose 2½ pounds. That brought me down to 205 even. w00t!

Last week saw the return of the DietOrganizer program for Palm OS. Monday was kind of a shocker for me, as I just ate how I would normally eat, evening binge and all, and the calories just kept piling on. My little carb meter was in the red, and my overview said I'd eaten 600 calories more than I should have. Damn. After that reawakening, I was much more careful about my portion sizes and my foods in general. Let's hear it for an electronic conscience.

Now, I *had* said that I would allow myself to buy some cool new clothes when I hit 205, buuuut... I think I'm going to wait until I've proven to myself that I can *stay* there. If I'm still 205 or lower by this coming Saturday, then maybe I'll go on a little mini-shopping-spree. (See, I weighed myself on Sunday morning, after a day of Indian and Chinese food, and I'd gained a pound and a half just from that. I'm counting on losing that buffet weight pretty quickly, though, but I forgot to weigh myself this morning to check my progress.)

For this week, I'm continuing to track my food intake, and adding one more element: exercise. I haven't done my PUSH workouts in much too long. This evening, I tried to step up to the next DVD, just for something different, and it was way too much for me. I'm going to have to go back to the last workout I was on before I slacked off, and continue with that one this week. No shame in that. I'm still exercising.

As I mentioned earlier, I've also restarted my podcast. I'm hoping that this will force me to focus on my eating and fitness habits (which is the reason why I originally started the podcast in the first place). Can't go being a hypocrite, after all.

It's slow going. I keep falling off the horse... but as long as I get back on, I'm OK. As long as the number on the scale is creeping downward instead of upward, I'm winning.

I'm gonna be all right.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week Ending 8/12/06

It's true, what Erin told me: anime conventions are not conducive to dieting. Even so, in the past two weeks (I didn't weigh last weekend, due to Otakon), I managed to keep my weight gain to only one pound. I weigh 207.5 lbs as of yesterday morning.

I didn't walk every day during my vacation. I didn't use the fitness center at the Marriott. I haven't done my PUSH workout for the past two weeks. I did, however, walk a shitload at Otakon. I wish my pedometer hadn't busted its beltclip the day before, and that the battery on Aaron's pedometer hadn't been dead, so I could have counted my steps while I was there.

So, considering that I've been eating out much more than usual and exercising much less than usual over the past two weeks, I'm... well, I'm never *pleased* about gaining weight, but I'm glad it wasn't any more than a pound.

I got out of the habit of making myself a weekly menu, after only two weeks of menu-ing. I'm not making myself one for this week, either, but I'm planning the return of the Palm IIIc and DietOrganizer. I need to do a reality check and make sure my "normal" diet isn't going crazy with too many calories. I haven't been tracking anything, carbs or calories, and have instead just been watching portion sizes and eating frequently and yadda yadda yadda.

This week is also going to see the return of cardio. I know, you're scoffing at me. Or shaking your head. Or rolling your eyes. But give me a chance here. I'm planning to go out and jog for just ONE day this week. Just to remind myself that it won't kill me. And because it's fucking nice outside.

This week is just basically the get-back-on-the-wagon week. I'm pretty pleased with the way I looked in Erin's Otakon photos, surprisingly enough, but I've been *feeling* jiggly and unfit. Nasty upper arm jiggle, nasty thigh fat, nasty spare tire, just nasty in general. I know it has a lot to do with my level of activity, and I'm going to fix that this week. That's the goal, anyway.

*deep breath*

I'm tired of being all talk and no action. WTF. This is seriously annoying. I am GOING to do this, and I am NOT going to lose heart halfway through the week and get distracted and opt not to exercise in favor of websurfing or designing or podcasting or whatever. My health comes FIRST, goddammit. I owe it to myself.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week Ending 7/29/06

Considering my god-awful diet weekend with Aaron and Amy, and my lack of exercise this past week, only going up half a pound isn't unreasonable. I'm now officially at 206.5 lbs. I'm still ahead of the game: I've lost 3½ pounds in two weeks. I'm OK with that. Gotta keep things rolling.

To review: for this week, I had been planning to do 60 minutes of cardio, drink a crapload of water, and get to bed by 11pm.

Cardio: Total bust. I only exercised once this week (besides my daily lunch walk, which I don't even really count anymore), and that was to do a PUSH workout on Monday. I totally dropped the ball for the rest of the week. WTF.

Water: Good to go. I kept track for the first few weekdays, then realized that I was doing fine and stopped counting the tally-marks by my water glass. I easily drink at least 64 oz of water a day without even trying. To get up over 100 oz would be more of a challenge for me.

Bedtime: Improved. I didn't get to bed by 11pm every night, but I did most nights. On the nights I didn't, I at least made an effort to chill out by 11pm, and get to bed as soon as possible after that.

This week is going to be interesting. I'm on vacation, and Aaron's on vacation. Otakon starts on Friday, and we're driving out to Baltimore on Thursday. I know I need to set myself up for success and all that, but I really don't know what kinds of goals to set for myself. I didn't make myself a menu for the week, mainly because I don't know what we'll be doing, and it's a lot easier for me to plan my meals when I'm on a rigid schedule, being at work. Helps to break up the day.

So, my goals for this week are to continue to eat five smaller meals a day, instead of the two large ones I'll be tempted to eat instead; to exercise at least three days, one of those days being in the hotel at Otakon; and to continue to walk for an hour every day (at least Monday through Wednesday — I don't know how conducive downtown Baltimore would be to a walk, especially at the weird times I won't be in the con). I might switch up my times, like exercising in the afternoon and walking with Aaron after the sun goes down in the evening. Might make things easier for a vacation-week lifestyle. :-) Maybe the Marriott Inner Harbor has a weight room or something.

*checks website*

Looks like they do have a Fitness Center. Now I have to figure out how in the hell I'm going to get up early enough to actually use it. Oh, and they have an indoor pool, whirlpool, and sauna, too. There's no way I'm going to manage to get Aaron in that sauna, though. :-)

OK, so let's amend #2 on my list: I'm going to use the Fitness Center at least once during my stay in Baltimore. I can do this.

*psyches self up*

Note to self: bring workout clothes and swanky new black swimsuit.

Learning My Lesson

I made a very poor decision this morning.

As I was nuking my Kashi Honey Cinnamon hot cereal, I spied with my little eye... Zebra Cakes. In the vending machine. OMGsnackies. So, I took my hot cereal and my glass of water back to my desk, and returned with dollar bill in hand to get an extra goodie for my breakfast. And I ate both the Kashi and the Zebra Cake.

And I felt SO sick for the rest of the day. The only time I felt better was when my cubemate gave me a stick of mint gum to settle my stomach. Not even Lipton tea helped.

Let that be a lesson to me. Don't eat 30+ grams of sugar for breakfast. Your body will rebel against you and let you know you done a baaaad thing.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week Ending 7/22/06

First order of business: my goals for this week. I'd said I was going to stick to the menu I'd laid out, exercise every everning, and arrive on time to work (which may not seem to fit in with the diet thing, but it really does. Trust me on this).

Menu: I did fairly well with sticking to it, considering that this was the first time since... well, ever, really, that I'd laid out such a menu an entire week in advance. I made a couple substitutions here and there, but it was usually simple stuff like swapping out ham for turkey, or making chicken wraps for dinner instead of grilled chicken with grilled peaches. On that task, I give myself an A-.

Exercise: Big steaming pile of poop. I did my PUSH workout on Monday, walked for an hour Tuesday evening, and slacked for the rest of the week. D+.

Arriving on time to work: Beat the timeclock every day. Clocked in at 8:05 one day, which is still technically on time per payroll, but I'd like to do better. Really, though, I'm pretty proud of myself. I can't think of the last time I clocked in on time every day in a week. I give myself an A on this one.

Results: good. I weighed in at 210 when I declared my do-over, and I weighed in at 206 on both Friday and Saturday mornings. This surprised me, given that I failed to exercise as much as I'd planned.

(I weighed myself on Sunday morning, after a fun Saturday with Aaron and Amy, and I'm not going to disclose that number. I'll just wait for my body to finish metabolizing that ice cream brownie sundae — split amongst three of us — and my chocolatini.)

Time to set myself some success measures for the coming week. Time to rework the goals I didn't meet and tweak the ones I did. So, here they are, in no particular order:

1. Complete 60 minutes of cardio total this week
2. Drink a minimum of 64oz of water daily
3. Lights out by 11pm, no matter what

Since my plan to exercise every weekday didn't work out so well, let's try a different tack. I know my problem is cardio, so let's ramp that up a little. ...OK, I guess anything would be "ramping it up," considering that I'm not really doing any cardio at all right now, even though I know I should. Aaron was kind enough to hook up the Playstation (PSX) for me, so I can play Dance Dance Revolution, so I'll do that at least one night. I plan to go out jogging one night, as well. Maybe catch up on some of my podcasts. Maybe if I don't listen to music, I won't have any time reference, and I can stop worrying about how long I've been jogging, and whether I should try to keep going or give in and walk a little.

I have the feeling I might not have drunk enough water last week, so I'm going to actually track my water intake this coming week. According to some calculations, I should be drinking even more water per day, but I'll stick with the standard 8 glasses for now.

I've been doing well with getting to work on time, so let's tackle the other end of the routine: getting to sleep. I've heard so many different ways of dealing with sleep habits, I don't know what to believe. I'll only know when I find out what works for me. So, the first part of my attempt to establish a nightly routine is to make sure I'm in bed WITH THE LIGHTS OUT by 11pm. Not reading, not playing solitaire or Dope Wars on my Palm, but relaxing and trying to get to sleep. The next steps after this will be turning off all electronics by 10pm and establishing a nightly ritual of relaxation before bed. For now, though, we'll just work on the actual bed time.

Four pounds down. Go me. :-D

Every Little Freaking Detail?

Are you tired of it yet?

I blew one of my weekly goals tonight: I didn't do my PUSH workout. Note to self: six almonds is not a sufficient evening snack if I intend to snack at 4:30pm and eat dinner at 7:30pm. So I ended up coming home and making dinner before my workout... which meant I never got around to the workout. No biggie. It's a learning process. I'm still going to exercise tomorrow and Friday; I'm not going to blow off the rest of the week just because of one off day.

Made it to work on time again today. Almost didn't — clocked in at 8:05am — because I had a minor emergency with my new seedlings. Had to flip them around close to the window because their grow light went out, and had to water them because I removed their cover, so they lost their little greenhouse effect. But I digress.

I've been doing pretty well with not adding extra snackies into my day, and sticking to my prescribed menu. Today I substituted spinach for the salad I'd scheduled for myself — mainly because I didn't want leftover spinach sitting in the fridge, and I know Aaron won't eat it. He hates spinach.

A lot of my evenings lately have been spent reading Mom's journal (ostensibly my "baby diary", but also Mom's "I'm lonely and want a man" diary, too). At age 22, she had all the guys looking, even with a baby at home. I don't want to air Mom's 30-year-old dirty laundry to the entire world, but suffice to say that it seems she was always lonely, but rarely really alone.

As a parallel: when I was 19, there was one semester when I went out with five different guys. That's the closest I can come to understanding what my mom went through in the late 70s. I really feel for her, as she was back then.

If I write any more on this, I may as well just write Mom's memoirs myself and post them to the internet. So I'll shut up now. :-)

Truth be told, I'm going to be disappointed when I get to the end of this diary. I'll be jonesing for Volume II. Guess I'll have to get Mom to sit down and actually write me some memoirs... although I promise not to post them to the internet.

Standing My Ground

Doing well on the punctuality thing. Clocked in at 8:01 yesterday and 8am today. Even confused myself by getting to the front doors before 8am and having to swipe my card to get in. o_O

Doing well on the menu thing. Had to substitute turkey for ham in this morning's muffin, but that was probably for the best.

Almost not doing well on the evening exercise. I need to do cardio today, not just a pleasant walk around the 'hood, but I'm uncomfortably hot and sticky. I'm tossing around the idea of playing DDR in nonstop mode, or doing my Yoga For Dummies DVD (I know, that's not cardio), or maybe even checking out the cardio track on my current PUSH DVD. I just can't get excited about driving to Wildwood and taking a jog. I'll do *something*, though.

I won't even be hungry for another hour and a half, probably. My afternoon protein shake ended up being the shake that eats like a meal. In the future, I need to actually stick to the recipe.

Something's Not Right Here

I just spent 45 minutes preparing breakfast, lunch, and two snackies for tomorrow. All that food totally fills up my lunch koozie.

It just doesn't seem right that:
a.) I spend more time thinking about food when I'm trying to lose weight; and
b.) I eat *more* food when I eat healthier than when I just eat.

Holy crap, that's a lotta food. I think I'm gonna go do a calorie tally on what I ate today, to make sure I'm not off-base.

Diet & Fitness Update: I Declare A Do-Over

My back is officially healed from its traumatic bedroom-painting experience, and today is officially six months since I decided to really lose weight.

WTF. *shakes head*

I'm somehow reminded of that Tubthumper song from back in the late 90s: "I get knocked down, and I get up again..." ad infinitum. Sometimes I feel like that's my diet story this year, except I don't really get knocked down. I just lose momentum, and stop giving a shit, but then I realize what my apathy has done and I resolve to work even harder. It's luckily not resulted in a massive yo-yo of weight, but the yo-yo of mental fortitude is damaging enough.

My stats haven't changed much in the past two months, apart from going back up to 210 and 35.1% bodyfat. Lost a quarter inch in my bust and neck; gained a quarter inch in my chest; gained a half inch in my lower arm; and my waist, hips, thigh and calf stayed the same. I screwed up on measuring my upper arm, because it says I gained an entire inch in the past two months, and there's no way that can be right. My arm can't be as big around as my neck. Can it?

I'm embarking once more on the John & Sheryl diet method, shared with me by Sheryl back in... when was it? January. Yes. Back in January. This time, though, I'm setting myself up for success by planning out my entire week of meals in advance. I have my meal plan posted to the fridge, and I intend to spend some quality time each evening preparing my meals for the following day. Protein shakes, fish, chicken, whatever needs preparing and assembling. I think that should help considerably. And when I'm done eating, I'm done eating. No more snacking after my last meal of the day, even if it seems like a healthy snack. Water will have to do.

And since my back is all healed, I'm going to continue with my PUSH workouts again. I was hesitant to do strength training or even cardio when my lower back was all fubar. Now, though, I'm ready to go for it again. Monday, Wednesday and Friday will be my PUSH workout days, and Tuesday and Thursday I'll go jogging at Wildwood.

*checks weather.com for this week's outlook*

OK, I might have to come up with some alternate indoor cardio for Thursday. Maybe rebounding (trampolining). But, still, that's my plan. As always, I'll be walking at least 30 minutes a day over my lunch. Likely 45 minutes, assuming I get to work on time and don't have to short my lunch hour.

That's something else. I'm going to wake up earlier (i.e. not hit the snooze) and get to work on time this week. See, I have up until eight minutes after 8am to technically be "on time" by the timeclock's rules. I've been just missing that by a minute or two, usually clocking in at about 8:10am. So, I have to short my lunch by ten minutes or so in order to get my full eight hours in. This week, I'm not going to let myself be late like that. The idea is to eventually be awake early enough to at least do some morning stretches, and preferably take a walk or jog around the block. That's not for a while, though. For now... let's just be on time to work, shall we?

So, this week's success will be measured by:

1. Sticking to my prescribed menu
2. Exercising every evening
3. Arriving to work on time every day

I'm also giving myself a non-food reward to look forward to: when I lose five pounds — when I reach 205 — I'm buying myself some clothes. But not until. (I've been addicted to mail-order catalogs this spring and summer.)

That's the plan. And I'll tell you what, if I don't lose any weight (or bodyfat) this week, after setting myself up for success as best I can, I will be highly disappointed. But I think I'll do fine.

I'll keep you updated.

Chiropractor, Conclusion

This morning at ten o'clock was my last visit (hopefully) with Dr. Sue. I'm feeling much better now, and very close to normal again.

Last time, she had mentioned that her younger son — Drew, was it? — plays piano and trumpet and xylophone / marimba / bells. She also has a picture of the local chapter of the Sweet Adelines up on her wall. So, I decided to wear my Dick Does Drum Corps shirt to my visit, as a conversation-starter. And did it ever work!

We got talking about music, and how her son has braces, so he had a real problem with the trumpet for a while. (I was thinking that he needs to work on his mouthpiece pressure, then, and use that weird wax that Amber used to use when she played mello with braces. I kept that to myself, though.) Then I talked about being a music ed major for a while, and how I only started playing clarinet in high school, and how I was a choir person before that.

Cue segue into Sweet Adelines discussion.

Turns out that my chiropractor is a baritone in the Pride of Toledo, and that they rehearse not very far from my house on Tuesday evenings. I may go check out a rehearsal, but even with their completely reasonable dues of $30 a month (and their super-close rehearsal location), there's no way I'm devoting that much time to a musical group again. Not yet. Maybe I'll see if I can still sight-read for the hell of it, though. ;-)

Back to the actual chiropractor visit.

After she was done with my adjustments, and after I was decent, she asked me again about my insurance. I told her that they pay 80%, I pay 20%, and reminded her that I hadn't paid her for the last visit. So she opted to have me pay $30 for both visits, and she'd see what my insurance would cover. I wonder if I'll get a refund if the insurance actually pays for what it's supposed to, or if she'll just keep the change.

Either way, I'm still curious about Dr. Smith. I mean, Dr. Sue is very cool and gentle and easy to talk to, but Dr. Smith has The Thumper™. With any luck, though, I won't have to schedule another series of chiropractic visits for some time.

Chiropractor, Part II

Today's follow-up was at 6pm, which gave me time to see Aaron, change clothes and feed the cat before heading back out to see Dr. Sue.

Dr. Sue was a few minutes late, due to her son's senior pictures running longer (or being more difficult) than expected. She rolled up in her minivan just as I was starting to get a little worried about my appointment. When I realized that she'd driven to the office just for me, I thought that was pretty damn cool. She could have said she couldn't see me today, and scheduled me for some other time. That was mighty considerate of her, I thought.

The session didn't take quite as long this time, and she noticed right away that my back must be feeling a lot better than it was. She was right; all weekend, all I had were twinges here and there when I bent the wrong way or tried to take too big of a step. The routine was the same as before: moist heat, cracking the neck and upper back, stretching the lower back, ultrasound therapy, and one last neck crack. That got me to feeling almost normal.

I did ask her about her normal price for a visit, and she said it's $25. She also said that my insurance probably wouldn't pay for most of it. I told her that Aaron's visits with Dr. Smith are mostly paid for by insurance, so hopefully these will be, too. I'm going to take care of my co-pay at my next (and hopefully final) visit on Saturday morning at 10:00, so I'm hoping she actually runs my insurance through, instead of assuming the worst.

My back feels like I worked out a little hard. That's all. It doesn't hurt like it did — there's just some muscular soreness. I'm sure that will go away over the course of this week.

Now I need to get back into my exercise routine. I've become adept at finding things to watch on TV for the past week, while I was beached on the couch, nursing my back. I'm itching to get active again — which I would never have expected. I mean, I've continued to take my lunchtime walks, but I've been missing how I feel after a real workout. I did a few upper body exercises with my resistance bands, and did a few ab exercises. None of those seemed to bother my back, which is good. Maybe tomorrow I can try doing a full-on PUSH workout, and just skip past anything that feels like it might hurt (in a bad way — either my knee or my lower back).

Oh, yeah, did I mention that my right knee felt like shit over the weekend? I have no idea what I did, besides walking funny to favor my back, but my knee hurt like a bitch. When I got up to go to work today, it was perfectly fine. WTF?

I'm taking photos and measurements on July 14, in preparation for a renewed phase of my goddamn weight loss plan. I'm going to do this thing, goddammit. I'm sick of kicking ass, then ceasing to kick ass for whatever bullshit reason, then having to kick ass twice as hard to get back to where I was. This is bullshit, and being forced into being sedentary last week really made me see it. I'm going to lose 20 pounds in 15 weeks. By Halloween (preferably sooner), I intend to weight 190. Or be under 30% bodyfat.

(How many pounds of fat would be 4% of my total weight, assuming I were to gain muscle in the process? I don't even know how to begin calculating that. How much does 20 pounds of fat weigh? —Never mind. Forget I asked that. *smacks forehead*)

I wonder if I could go jogging again yet?

Dr. Sue Rocks My World

Had my very first chiropractor visit this evening after work. I declare it a success... if a bit more expensive than Dr. Smith would have been.

I located the building with no problem (apart from irking the guy in the car behind me, who wanted to drive just a little faster). It was, in fact, right across from the Mango Tree restaurant, as promised. Parked the car in the lot behind the building, walked in, and found Dr. Hendricks' door just inside. I wasn't prepared for the small receptionist-less waiting room. There was one other man waiting there, and I asked him if I needed to let anyone know I was there. He was friendly, thankfully, and told me that Dr. Hendricks would come out and get me when she was ready. Which she did.

She came out in a polo shirt and shorts. No name tag, no white lab coat, none of that. I told her I was there to see Dr. Hendricks, and she said she was Dr. Hendricks. Casual, low-key, friendly. OK. She gave me paperwork to fill out, then disappeared back behind one of two doors to finish up with her previous patient.

When the patient before me was done, Dr. Sue (as I heard that patient call her) gestured me in. I took off my shirt and put on a back-fastening gown, then laid face-down on the table. She felt along my spine, starting at my neck, all the way down and back up. She identified tense areas I didn't even know were there — but, once I thought about it, I realized that my neck *does* tend to be a little tense. She mentioned later during the session that it seemed as if this was a long time coming, and the weekend of painting just set my lower back over the edge.

Hopefully I'm not revealing any trade secrets here... She put moist, hot cloths on my neck and lower back, and left them there for a few minutes. Then she took them off my neck and adjusted my neck (that is, gave it a good twist so it popped better than I can ever do). After that, she cracked my upper back — and oooohhhhh, that felt soooo good. I haven't had a good back-cracking in years. (I figured it might be a good idea not to mention my family's penchant for back-cracking to the chiropractor, though.)

Then she removed the heat from my lower back and made the back half of the table move around. It was like she was circling my legs around from the hips, stretching out my lower back. That felt pretty good, too. After that, she did ultrasound therapy on my lower back, which felt oddly tingly and was supposed to be loosening and relaxing those muscles. Then she had me flip onto my back so she could properly crack my neck (ohhhh, yeah).

Then I was done. The visit took about a half hour, and I feel much better having done it.

As I was getting ready to leave, I asked her how much I owed her. She said she wasn't sure, because she didn't know how my insurance worked. I told her I thought it was an 80-20 thing, so she had me pay her $25, which is much more than Dr. Smith would have cost for a visit. I'm still betting that she just didn't know how my insurance worked, and that I got overcharged for this visit. No way can she really be three times as expensive as Dr. Smith.

Now, two hours later, my back feels better than it has all week, but still considerably tighter than when I left Dr. Sue's office.

I have a follow-up appointment on Monday evening at 6pm. I'm looking forward to it.

So Much To Say

Back still hurts like a mofo. I made an appointment with a local chiropractor for tomorrow right after work, so hopefully that'll set me on the road to recovery. Every time I try to stand up, I swear vehemently at no one and declare that this is fucking bullshit. I'm looking forward to living without lower back pain again.

Man, WTF. I've never fucked myself up this bad before.

Anyway. Not that we'll be doing it this weekend, being that my back's still fuckered up, but the next room to paint is the dining room. Home improvement veterans, I could use some design opinion assistance.

Aaron still isn't sure what to think of Sheryl's idea to build the color palette around the awesome bachelor pad lamp. I'm having a time of it myself. I have to decide a.) what color to paint the living room and upstairs hallway (preferably the same color, as they share a wall), and b.) what color to paint the adjoining dining room. I'm unsure what would make the space seem bigger: painting the dining room a darker color, so it seems to extend farther back than it really does; or painting the dining room the same color as (or even lighter than?) the living room.

My general idea for the color of the living room is for it to contrast the lamp. Light enough to contrast against the base, and dark enough to contrast the shade. My original thought was the Bagel color (these are swatches from Behr paints), as I was trying to match one particular color on the palette I pulled from the lamp (above — and yes, all those colors were sampled directly from the lamp photo). Now that I see the potential wall shades all together, though, I'm thinking I prefer a tan to an orange. I mean, I spent over ten years of my life hating being stuck with an orange and brown and school, and now what do I start planning for my living room? Yeah.

Anywhozit, I'm trying to create an understated wall and general color palette, so that the lamp is actually an accent against other more muted earth tones. I'm thinking of going back to behr.com and starting with the Chai Latte color as a jumping-off point for other earth tones. I can't reconcile the idea of having a living room, hallway, and dining room the color of dried pumpkin. Might look nice, but it's not really my thing.

And for one last Martha Stewart moment: I just started a few more seeds tonight. Three lemon basil, three lavender, and three sweet basil. I'm planning to put them in a planter indoors. Maybe I'll transplant the lavender outside after it's grown big enough — like, next year. Until then, it'll get harvested and eaten like the other herbs.

OMG. The entire weedy area by the house is going to be overtaken by catnip! ...And I'm OK with that. ^_^

Ouch.

I really fucked up my back this weekend. Now I know how Aaron felt the few times he messed up his lower back.

I'm still going to work tomorrow, but I'm calling the chiropractor shortly after 9am. Hopefully Dr. Smith can get me in sometime tomorrow. I'd even be willing to take half a day off of work to go get fixed up sooner.

Man. I'm OK as long as I don't fucking move. As soon as I go to switch position or stand up or whatever, though, my way-lower back hurts like a bitch. I'm not usually one for going to doctors, but I'm definitely going to the chiropractor tomorrow. This is ridiculous.

Update, 7/5/06 12:40pm: Ended up taking the day off of work. Woke up this morning with an improved back, but tired as hell. Called in at 7:30am and told my boss's voicemail that I screwed up my back painting over the weekend, and that today would be devoted to having quality time with my chiropractor and generally getting better. Promptly went back to bed.

Called the chiropractor's office at 10:15am. The earliest I'd be able to get in as a new patient would be next week, and that would be with someone other than Dr. Smith, as she's out of the office. I told the nice receptionist that I'd give it some thought and get back with her. I promptly went upstairs and went back to bed.

My back does feel a little better today. I have plans for maxing and relaxing for a good part of the day, using either the massager or the heating pad on my back to keep it loose. I'm not terribly keen on going to a different chiropractor, as Dr. Smith has been heartily approved by both Aaron and Kris. We'll see how I feel after today.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #22

Just a quick update this time...

I realized during my inadvertent hour-long nap this evening that I forgot to measure myself last Friday. So, although I know that I'm back down to 208 lbs and 34.2% bodyfat as of Saturday morning, I don't have measurements to share.

Last week's exercise was kind of slack: I did my PUSH workout on Monday, jogged on Tuesday, then did nothing for the rest of the week. I focused mainly on getting my carb-protein-fat ratio looking better, and keeping my calories under control, which I did fairly well.

The beginning of this week so far hasn't been spectacular, and my Mom's coming to visit starting on Thursday night, so I don't have any preconceptions of losing a crapload of weight this week. We'll see, though.

More Exercise Observations

Today, I opted against going to dinner in BG with some old co-workers, because I was looking forward to my jog and a healthy dinner instead.

Have I been abducted by aliens? Replaced with a Beta, a la The Last Starfighter?

I think I crave the dopamine or something. I feel soooo much better when I work out, even if I'm no more productive during the rest of the evening. :-) What would normally make me all depressed ('I'm so unproductive; woe is me') instead makes me look for something to do (like blogging).

I'm also better able to stave off hunger pangs late in the evening (like now). Or, rather, just flat-out ignore them.

I write this as kind of an historical record (yes, Diana finally exercised on a regular basis), but also as a future motivator. I know I'm going to want to slack sometime soon, and hopefully getting these words down on... well, not on paper, I suppose, but in writing of some form — hopefully that will help re-motivate me when I need it.

Whose arm is that?

Just now, I had an itch on my right arm. When I went to scratch it, I could feel my bicep. There was different resistance underneath my scratching fingernails.

That was weird.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #21

After a month-long hiatus of slackitude, I'm back with a vengeance. After gaining back most of my recent weight loss, I managed to lose two pounds this week, bringing me back to 210lbs and 34.5% bodyfat (or thereabouts).

The big deal this week was exercise. I returned to doing my PUSH workouts, and I added jogging into my repertoire. Granted, it was a walk-jog, but it did the job of getting my heart rate up and getting the blood flowing. Even better, Aaron and I went on a walk-jog together on Saturday! If we can make this a weekend habit, it'll be much easier for us to keep it rolling, I think.

So, the week's exercise was: Monday, PUSH. Tuesday, jogging. Wednesday, PUSH. Thursday and Friday, rest; and Saturday, jogging. I hadn't intended to put those rest days in there, but my legs were killing me, and Aaron convinced me that I should let my legs heal instead of going for a jog on Thursday. :-) And, as usual, the slackitude rolled over into Friday, when I'd had every intention of doing my PUSH workout. Ah, well. I'll shoot for more consistency next week.

Food was pretty much the same as usual this week, although I continued to get caught up in my work and ended up foregoing the morning snack, for the most part. Dinner was more protein than usual, though, as I've been cooking up chicken breasts for most of the week. I haven't been tracking my actual calories or carbs or protein lately, which is something I should be doing again. I think I'll charge up the Palm and start using my Diet Organizer program again.

So, overall, this week was the long-awaited introduction of cardio to my lifestyle. I know I didn't do nearly as much as I should, but I at least learned that a little cardio won't kill me. In fact, it feels pretty good.

Interval Training?

I'm feeling pretty good right about now.

Eariler today, I told Sheryl over e-mail: "Now, yesterday I did my Push workout again, for the first time in a couple of weeks. And y'know what I'm going to do tonight when I get home? I'm going to change clothes, feed the cat, and drive to Wildwood armed with some water and my iPod. Then I'm going to walk-jog the shortest trail. Cardio is my biggest obstacle, and I'm going to just DO IT already. Maybe I'll find jogging fun. (Never did before, but there's a first time for everything.)"

And that's exactly what I did. Saw Aaron off to work, changed clothes, fed the cat, set some brown rice to cooking and some chicken to thawing, gathered up my wallet and keys and iPod and a camera with five exposures left and $1 in change (for water), and drove off to Wildwood Metropark.

I found an excellent parking spot, close to the trailhead; however, I failed to note what time it was when I arrived. D'oh! Anyway, I loaded up with my wallet, keys (obviously, since I couldn't leave them in the car, could I?) and iPod, and went to decide on a trail.

Wildwood has about six trails, ranging in distance from 0.6 miles to 3.1, I think. I decided to take the yellow Meadow Trail, which was 1.2 miles. I thought that was fair to start a walk-jog routine. And away I went.

I'd decided that, instead of looking at my watch constantly, I would start jogging when whatever song that was playing got to the first chorus. I'd jog/run/whatever for one minute, then walk until the first chorus of the next song. That seemed like a good compromise.

Until I got to a.) The Pixies, who have two-minute songs, and b.) another band with a six-minute instrumental. That threw off my jogging cycle mojo hardcore.

About that time, I took a wrong turn down what wasn't the yellow trail, so I ended up on a paved path. S'ok — I still knew where I was going, but I didn't know exactly what distance I'd be travelling anymore. Since my mojo was thrown off and my distance gauge was no longer valid (since I forgot to bring my pedometer), I just jogged when I felt like it. 'Let's jog the length of this fence' or 'Let's jog to the tree' or something like that.

"That's nice and all," you're saying, "but how did it GO?"

Surprisingly well, actually.

My first jogging stint was right out of the gate. Walked down from the trailhead, got on the yellow trail, started jogging. I really enjoyed it, and didn't want to stop after my minute was over — but I did, anyway. Then I realized that I was winded. Bad. I hadn't noticed while I was jogging, and I wonder how long I could have jogged before my body spoke up.

My next stretch was a little harder, and slightly embarrassing. A guy probably five years younger than me was on the trail in front of me when it came time for me to break into a jog again, so I psyched myself up to pass him. My keys were jangling in my back pocket, but there was nothing to be done about that. I was sure I looked like a total dork with my keys on one ass-cheek and my wallet on the other. Oh. well.

Approached, no problem. Passed on the left, no problem.

Pants started to fall down. Problem.

I didn't even consider stopping to pull them up and cinch in the drawstring. Nope. Not an option; this is my jog-time. Instead, I yanked up my workout pants as I ran, trying to run faster to get around the bend and out of sight. They just fell right back down. I was sure this guy could see my underwear at this point, and I tried to be funny by making a frustrated gesture to the world in general as I hiked them up again and successfully disappeared around the corner. Once my minute was up, I had run waaaay too fast and winded myself even worse than before. But I did pull up my drawers and tie the drawstring tight. Guess that's why it's there — to keep your pants up while you're running with keys and wallet and iPod on your person.

All in all, I think I had about four or five jogging stints and spent somewhere just over 30 minutes with my walk-jog. Next time, I'll be more careful with checking the time and staying on the right trail. And bringing my pedometer.

After the walk-jog, I went back to the car, fetched my change and my camera, bought a water from the vending machine, used up the last few exposures on the camera I was testing, then got back in the car and headed home.

When I got home, the rice was done, which tells me I was gone at least an hour. That's good. Finished making dinner (Szechuan chicken) and divided it into thirds: one for dinner, one for tomorrow's lunch, and one for Aaron when he gets home tonight. Yummy.

So, how do I feel? Well, my quads were already sore from yesterday's workout, and they're even more sore now. My ass is sore. Actually, come to think of it, just about everywhere is sore, between yesterday's PUSH workout and today's interval training (if you want to call it that).

But I feel GOOD.

I've still got the memory of that I've-been-breathing-hard feeling in the back of my throat and my upper lungs, and I feel like my heart rate is still a little elevated (not much, but enough that I notice).

If I can do this every Tuesday and Thursday, and do it with Aaron on Saturday or Sunday, and keep up with my M-W-F PUSH workouts, I think I'll see results. At the very least, I'll feel better, which is part of what this thing's all about.

P.S. - Thank you to everyone who commented on my last post or sent me e-mail. I really appreciate having friends and acquaintances who step up to help and know how to motivate me. You guys are teh awesome! ^_^

Fit versus Fat

My regular readers may have noticed that I haven't posted a Diet & Fitness Update in a while. That's mainly because I didn't feel like admitting to the entire internets that I've been slacking.

According to Saturday's weigh-in, I've gained back everything I lost in the past... *checks chart* ...three months. Of course, I'm not going to take one day's weight as gospel, although the Omron Body Fat Analyzer seemed to think I'd gained some fat, too. Granted, Aaron was on vacation a couple weeks ago, so we ate dinner out a lot, but that's no excuse for me to stop exercising and start eating like I was never on a low-carb diet in my life.

So. Where to restart?

I've mentioned this before: if I want to BE a fit person, I need to first ACT like a fit person. Thing is... I've never actually lived with a fit person before. I don't relate. It doesn't compute. I don't even know how to be a fit-person poseur.

I think fit people wake up early — like, 6am early. Yikes.
So, what time do fit people go to bed? Before 10:00?
Fit people are active during the day, and I can do that. I walk during my lunch break.
Do fit people eat seconds at dinner? Dessert? If so, what kind of dessert? How often?
Do fit people watch any TV in the evenings? I mean, beyond the news?
Do fit people play on their computers? For how long?
If they don't do the computer thing, what do fit people do in the evenings after work?
Fit people work out after work, for one thing. How long is normal? Every weekday? EVERY day?
What kinds of activities do fit couples do on the weekends? Walking at the metropark? Or more?
Fit people drink boatloads of water. I need to drink more, but I do drink more than some people.
Fit people have energy, and seem to be generally happy. I can fake that. Eventually, I won't have to.

What else do fit people do, as opposed to fat people? And, by "fit people," I don't mean the people you see on bodybuilding.com, who look waaaay more buff than I can ever imagine myself. I mean people who are of normal weight. Maybe slightly over, but not much. And I don't mean super-skinny people, either (there are a couple of those in my office at work, and I'm convinced that's just hereditary).

So, speak up, normals. What makes you different from me?

Official Weigh-and-Measure, Month #4

I didn't do an official measurement for last month, so this represents two months of work. Well, two months of coasting, truth be told, but two months of continuing to eat healthy and stay more active. So, drumroll, please...

Weight: 209 » down half a pound in two months
(The scale said 207 on Saturday morning! I think it needs a new battery.)
Body Fat Percentage: 34.2%
Bust: 45" » down half an inch in two months
Chest: 38¾" » about the same
Waist: 40½" » down FOUR INCHES in two months?! Huh?!
Hips: 49" » down half an inch in two months
Neck: 14½" » about the same
Upper Arm: 13¼" » down just a fraction
Lower Arm: 10" » down half an inch in two months
Thigh: 25½" » down nearly an inch in two months
Calf: 16" » about the same

I took the waist measurement again just now, for good measure (so to speak), and I didn't misread the tape. Not sure how that's possible, but I'll go with it. Just for clarification, I'm measuring where my pants live, about an inch or two above my navel, not way up under my ribcage where it looks like my waist is smallest.

Well, then. Despite a miniscule change on the scale and in most of my measurements, I'm happy to declare these two months a success. Who knew? Now I'm off to go download my weight-in-progress pics from my memory card and scrutinize them in Photoshop...

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #17

This week was definitely an improvement, although I'm still not doing everything I need to do. Despite my continued slackitude, I'm back down to 207, which is only half a pound more than my sick-week weight. My Omron Body Fat Analyzer arrives today from Amazon, so I'll do an official stats-gathering tomorrow: new weight, measurements, photos, and body fat analysis. *gulp*

According to some online guesstimators, I may be somewhere between 35% and 40% body fat. I'd like to get that down to 30% for a start. Granted, that's not ideal, but it's better than I was even in high school. (Yes, I did have my body fat measured with calipers when I was 17, and it came out to 33%, as I recall. Sarge and I did a week or two of morning jogging to get my body fat down to 30%, so I could join up with the Army Band. Thankfully, that didn't work out, though, for other reasons. Mainly because I came to my senses.)

I did my PUSH workout on Monday, then did some gardening on Thursday. You might scoff at my using gardening as exercise, and it surely wasn't aerobic, but I did do some shoveling and worked my arms and legs and glutes. I sure felt it for the next couple of days. As always, I also kept with my daily 30-45 minute lunchtime walks, and kicked up the intensity there.

Food was pretty consistent: Breakfast was either a whole-grain English muffin with natural crunchy peanut butter or ¾ cup oatmeal with Splenda Brown Sugar Blend. Morning snackie was either low-sugar yogurt or an apple or strawberries. Lunch was brown rice or reduced-carb pasta or lettuce salad. Afternoon snackie was selected from the same foods as the morning snackie, mainly for convenience's sake, and dinner was usually a meat and a carb — chicken breast and frozen broccoli, or chicken salad on a wheat tortilla, or unbreaded chicken fingers with reduced-carb pasta.

I would also like to mention that I didn't go hog-wild this weekend after my weigh-in. Saturday I had some ground sirloin with salad and vegetable beef soup and veggies for lunch, then had the Orange Chicken Bowl at Applebee's for dinner. Not entirely good, but not nearly as bad as I could have been. Sunday, though, we did go to the Dragon Buffet, just because it was Mother’s Day and they had LOBSTER on the buffet. I didn't stuff myself too bad, though, really. Dinner on Sunday was curry chicken (with a curry cream sauce, evil me) and frozen broccoli, with a homemade chocolate cream cheese souffle for dessert.

The discovery of the week was this: Although I feel like I crave carbs in the evening (and OMG have I been craving carbs), if I make sure to include a good portion of protein in my evening meal, I tend to stave off the hunger and cravings better. So, if I can just chill out and make myself some chicken, or even turkey burgers, instead of whipping up something fast and meatless, I'm less likely to make myself cinnamon tortilla snackies at 8pm.

My goal this week is to eat more protein, and to do my PUSH workout three times. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Yes, I need to get my podcast done, because it's horribly overdue (as usual), but taking care of me is more important.

Update, 6:30pm: My Omron Body Fat Analyzer arrived this evening, and a preliminary pre-dinner reading shows me at just over 35% body fat. This is no surprise, and is actually better than some online guesstimators had been telling me. We'll get a "real" reading tomorrow morning.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #16

Gotta get back into the swing of things.

I took my little break from exercise while I was sick, and never got back into it. Also, Aaron and I have been gorging ourselves on the weekends, and I know that our 2½ mile Saturday walks at Wildwood Metropark haven't been offsetting our binges nearly as much as we wish they would. I haven't gone back to eating completely shitty during the week, but I also haven't been eating enough protein, especially in the evenings.

That said, I have purposely not weighed myself this week. No point.

Don't take this to mean I'm giving up. Far from it. In fact, I'm approaching my fitness plan with renewed gusto this week, despite having a bunch of stuff I need to do. Finish up my podcast, update the Lakeshoremen site... but I'm setting priorities. First, I have to work out. That always makes me feel better and more energized. Then I can do the other things I "need" to do.

I am fucking sick and tired of being all frumpy and shit. I am doing something about it. I've gained back the weight I lost while I was sick, and I'm not going back up where I was, dammit. I need to change something about *me* if I'm going to make this thing happen. Cardio has to happen. Protein has to happen. Early rising has to happen. I need to act like I'm already fit, and then it will happen.

(Oh, and I apologize to anyone who recently found my blog who wasn't expecting me to drop an f-bomb. I do that every now and then.)

Natty Jo, in response to your questions: I've actually only been on the PUSH program for two months — and thanks to my being sick and then slacking, I'm only on Workout #1 of DVD #2. So, I guess you could call this my fifth week on PUSH. I'm sticking with Bob Harper myself, although I am curious about the new trainer they have on the list. This particular workout is finally getting to where I need to be, fitness-wise, although I'm having my next DVD focus more on my legs. Yay for arms and abs, though! w00t!

Stay tuned to see how I'm coming along. Next weekend will be the monthly weigh-and-measure (for real this time)!

Functionally Fit

When deciding how "in shape" you need to be, be it only slightly overweight or totally buff, there's a term called "functionally fit." That means that you're in shape enough to do the things you need to do, and do the recreational activities you want to do. Say, for instance, you decided you wanted to go hiking and camping. Could you do it? How about skiing or snowboarding (besides not knowing how)? Or would it leave you in total pain the next day, or would you even be able to enjoy yourself while you were doing it?

Yesterday, Aaron and Mark and I helped Kris and Jamie move Kris's stuff from his parents' basement (where it had been in storage) to their new house in Maumee. Moving it out was mainly a matter of logistics, since he'd moved most everything up into the garage prior to yesterday's move. We just had to pack the truck so that everything would fit. (Everything did, for the most part; he just needs to go back for his guitars.)

Moving it in, though, involved a steep 1960's stairwell with no carpet and no banister, in addition to the front stairs up to the house. And I discovered something about myself that I'd been ignoring before: I go to great lengths to avoid cardio. Like going up and down stairs. Moving heavy stuff, sure, I'm all about it. I'll unload the truck and move the heavy crap to the edge where someone can grab it and take it up to the upstairs bedroom. But actually carrying the stuff up there? Rather not. Because it makes me all out of breath, and my legs get all heavy and tired.

Lazy ass.

This morning when I awoke, my biceps were sore, my delts were sore, my lower back was sore (I lifted one Rubbermaid tote incorrectly, thinking it was a light one when it wasn't), my ass was sore... I'm sure I'm forgetting something. So what did I do about it?

I grabbed the pruning shears and went outside to give the hedges a haircut.

Now my arms are sore *and* weak, but I'm OK with that. I'd rather keep moving. Today, Aaron and I are going to take a nice, long walk at Wildwood Metropark and test out Fries's late grandfather's camera before I offer to buy it.

So... functionally fit? Close, but not quite. At least I learned something about myself, though.

Forty Pounds Ago

[Posted on Flickr by dianaschnuth].

As a reference, this is what I looked like when I was 40 pounds heavier. Amy, Aaron and I were going to the Dayton Air Show back in 2003.

I hunted down this photo because I'm thinking that I want to cut my hair and donate it again, and was wondering if I wanted to go with the standard bob again. I think it was cute, but man, I can't get over my hugely round face.

Boobs.

My boobs used to be size D. That was when I was technically obese, though. Now that I'm on the cusp of being merely "overweight," my boobs have reduced to somewhere between C and D.

I tell you this because today I rediscovered the joy of the shelf bra.

Now, last year, I bought a few tank tops through mail-order that had shelf bras in them. And I decided that said shelf bras were overrated, because they did absolutely nothing to hold anything in. For some reason, though, today I decided to put on my blue racerback tank with shelf bra, and to go with only the shelf bra for support. (I was just hanging around at home after work.)

And, lo and behold, the damn thing works.

Mind you, I can't go jogging or anything in this, and my boobs still tend to migrate together into the uniboob, like with a sports bra. But, still... once I lose the remaining pudge around the middle, I could so wear this in public.

Just thought I'd share.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #15

Not much to report. I forgot to weigh myself before the weekend hit again, so today's weigh-in was after a cheat day of Chinese for lunch and Mexican for dinner. I'm up to 209, but I'm going to weigh myself in another couple of days, after the extra calories have averaged themselves out.

I didn't do my PUSH workouts this week. It was a challenge to try to get back into the groove after skipping my workouts from being sick, unfortunately. This week, I'm going to get back on that. I'm paying money for this program, after all. I have been continuing my daily walks, though. I'd feel like I missed out on a big part of my day if I didn't walk during my lunch.

Not eating enough protein. I need to work on that, too. Been continuing to eat too many carbs too late in the day, just because it's easier than cooking meat. I also have been skipping snackies during the day, because I'm finally doing work I enjoy and get caught up in. By the time I realize I didn't eat my morning snack, it's almost time for lunch.

So, I guess the overall gist of this week is that I've been coasting. I need to start getting back on this weight-loss thing hardcore. I'm tired of feeling unsexy and frumpy... although I *am* feeling much better than I was even a few months ago.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #14

Well, I forgot to weight myself before going ballistic on Chinese buffet and Outback for my birthday. When I weighed myself this morning, though, it showed that I'd gained two one and a half pounds since my last weigh-in. I'm OK with that; I'm guessing that everything will average itself back out in a couple of days.

I only managed to do one day of my PUSH workout this week, although I did enjoy the one time I did it. DVD #2 has me working with the resistance bands, finally, and I was definitely feeling it two days later. I feel like this is where I should have started to begin with, fitness-level-wise, but doing a month of more basic exercises to get me used to exercising was a good idea.

I've been continuing to eat whole wheat English muffins with natural PB (or sugar-free honey) for breakfast, although my snackies have been more sporadic. I get all into what I'm doing at work, and before I know it, it's almost time for lunch. Oops. Oh, well. Lunch has been salad greens with canned chicken or turkey, sugar-free sweet relish, and salad dressing. OMG, I'd forgotten how much zing relish can add to stuff. Mmm. I've been being bad for dinner lately, though, and been making pasta salads — again, with the yummy relish and canned meats. I'll turn my shit around for this coming week, though.

I've also been continuing my daily lunchtime walks, of course. Today I bought some special-for-work sneakers for walking, so I won't wear out my nice work shoes (and so I can wear some of my cuter but more fragile shoes to work).

Oh, and I'm officially a "real" size 18 now, I think. I bought some new clothes at Lane Bryant today (thanks, Aaron, for the gift card!), and the size 20 dress pants I tried on were way bigger than I needed. I swapped them out for 18's and didn't try them on until I got home. They're actually a little smaller than I'd like, but maybe I'm used to having some breathing room in my pants these days. At any rate, yay for smaller cute clothes.

(BTW, Sheryl? I feel SO LOST in Lane Bryant without you there to guide me to teh cuteness. Aaron's a good sport, and wanders around behind me like I usually wander around behind you. Except I don't know where I'm going, either.)

Still haven't measured myself. I really need to do that. Blah.

No Gnus is Good Gnus

Still sick. Headachy today. Every time I blow my nose (which isn't as often as it was), my ears stop up, and it takes an hour for my hearing to approach normal again.

Tired. Undecided as to whether I should work out. I didn't work out all last week, and I think I miss it. Still, though, I'm inclined to think that my body needs to use its energy to get well right now.

Appetite returning. I tried bringing a last-week-portion of lunch and snackies to work today, and that didn't work out so well. Now that I'm home, around the food, I'm eating and eating and eating with no sign of stopping. Tomorrow, I bring a normal amount of food to work with me.

Haven't done my measurements yet, but I did take pictures. If anyone wants to see a picture of me in a black one-piece swimsuit (I believe Sheryl would probably be the only taker on that), just shoot me an e-mail. Incidentally, I compared my earliest Before picture to yesterday's In Progress picture, and I can definitely see a marked decrease in my abdominal fat. Good news.

No word on a monthly birthday potluck at work. I think I've been called out for failing to participate in recent potlucks. I'm the only April birthday in my department, so the woman who organizes them probably thinks I don't want one.

I'm also concerned about what will or will not befall me at work on Friday, as my 30th birthday is on Saturday. I could either be totally forgotten (except by a few), or I could arrive to find black Over The Hill streamers and balloons festooning my cubicle. I'm going on the assumption that I'll get a personal card or two, and no one else at work will care.

As far as birthdayness goes, I'm also trying to downplay the possibility of anything OMG-supar-kewl happening on my birthday proper. I mean, I threw Aaron a surprise birthday party, but I know for a fact that isn't going to happen for me. He told me as much. See, all my friends (that would be most of you reading this) live so far out of town that you probably wouldn't come to Toledo for an evening of drunken debauchery. So, once again, I'm trying to increase my appreciation of whatever does happen by assuming that very little will, in fact, happen.

Amy visited this past weekend, and we all traded birthday and Christmas presents. (Aaron = November, Amy = January, me = this Saturday.) That was definitely fun. Amy and I spent a few hours on Saturday evening/night in BG, drinking coffee and talking and walking around campus. For once, I felt kind of bad because my job/career situation appears to be more pleasant than hers. Usually we can commiserate about how we don't know what direction to take, and are we going down the wrong path, and shouldn't we be someplace better by now. I'm pretty content with working on my geeky database at work for now, though, while Amy's feeling the pinch of being juggled by departments and not getting enough hours.

I could go on, probably, but I'm feeling like I want to go forage for some sort of tasty snackie. Already had chicken salad. Already had cereal. Already had ham. Feel like a hog... but am hungry nonetheless. Also have a headache that won't go away, that's making me nauseated. Or maybe that's my drainage that's doing that. Either way, it's not good.

Food. Big Mouth hungry.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #13

Well, I guess being sick has its advantages. I stepped on the scale before this morning's shower, and discovered that I lost three pounds this week! Holy crow. So, for those of you keeping score, I'm down to 206.5.

I can really only attribute this to eating light and not being hungry, thanks to being sick. I didn't work out, apart from my standard daily 30-40 minute walk. I did eat a whole wheat English muffin with natural PB for breakfast every day this week. Good stuff. For the last couple of days, I've been eating a piece of fruit for my morning snack (banana or apple), either a salad or a low-sugar yogurt for lunch, and either another piece of fruit or a sugar-free pecan nummie from the vending machine for afternoon snackie. Dinner has been chock-full o' carbs. Reduced-carb spaghetti with cheese sauce and salsa. Oatmeal with *real* maple syrup (purchased in Massachusetts). I did have turkey burgers one evening, and those were good. Overall, though, too little food during the day, and too carb-heavy in the evenings. I guess breakfast must have gotten my metabolism moving or something, though, because I did lose weight despite all that.

Oh, and did I mention that this cold has made food, well, go right through me? This might be TMI, but I'm sure my loose BMs haven't just been from the sugar alcohols in the sugar-free pecan whatsits, or the one or two sugar-free Halls I'll pop in a day. Nope, this is that special "being-sick" kind of experience. I'm guessing that might have something to do with the weight loss, too.

Don't worry; I've been taking my vitamins as usual. I know that you can lose nutrients and crap (no pun intended), so I've been diligent as ever.

Not that I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth here. I'm tickled that I lost three pounds this week. I just don't think it's anything I did specifically. Besides getting sick. :-)

I take three-month pics and measurements tomorrow. If the swimsuit picture doesn't make me gag, maybe I'll post it here. I make no promises, though.

[By the way... being sick makes it a lot easier not to sleep in on Saturdays. When you wake up at 9:00, and would *like* to go back to sleep, but sleeping is just too damn uncomfortable, it makes the decision to get up a lot easier. And, yes, 9am on a Saturday is early for me. I usually sleep in until 10:30 or 11:00.]

Smacked Down By Mother Nature

Was preparing for the triumphant return of my podcast to the, er, podwaves. Was looking forward to getting my second PUSH DVD in the mail. Was geeked to weigh in for the three-month mark.

Then I got The Cold. You know, the one that everyone and their brother has been getting? Yeah, I got it.

Started with a sore throat, then some drainage. Now, three days later, it's a full-blown monstrosity: stuffy head, stopped-up ears, sinus headache, plugged-up runny nose (isn't that the worst?), dry eyes, sore and scratchy throat, random aches and pains, and general fatigue. I even took a short nap this evening, and I rarely do that anymore.

Podcast? Postponed until next week. PUSH? Again, I'm not working out this week. I tried to work out on Monday, before the symptoms had really set in at all, and ended up stopping the DVD before I got to my reverse ab curls because I was falling asleep from just laying on the floor. My new DVD didn't arrive until yesterday, anyway, so I would have been doing a third week of Workout #2.

So, how about the weigh-in? Yeah, I'm still going to weigh myself tomorrow morning. I have *no* idea what the scales will say, since I've been eating *very* light during the day, then eating something heavier and more filling (and more carboriffic) later in the evening. If I gain a little, I won't let myself be upset.

I'll take some in-progress pics on Sunday evening. Amy's coming over this weekend, so I'll wait until she's gone before I parade around the basement in my underwear. ;-)

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #12

Holding steady at 209.5 pounds. This is good, really, considering that we went all ballistic on sushi and BW3 and yummy Irish food and beer during Anime Punch over the weekend of March 31st - April 2nd. I had mentioned that I would be pleasantly surprised if my weight held steady — and so I am.

Continuing to do my PUSH workouts. Still not doing cardio like I should. Walking briskly for half an hour a day.

Continuing to eat five small meals a day. Breakfast has been cold cereal or a protein shake or one of our few remaining Slim-Fast low-carb shakes. Morning snackie has usually been an apple. Lunch has usually been lettuce salad with dressing. Afternoon snackie has been almonds. Dinner has been a little evil: Dreamfields macaroni and cheese, or wraps, or something quicker than baking chicken and steaming veggies.

So, not much to report this week. No big weight losses, but no gains, either. I'm counting that as a positive thing.

Next week: Weigh and Measure for the end of Month #3. Maybe I'll share a swimsuit photo with the internets. Who knows?

Insecurity

Am I so insecure?

I was deleting my trackback spam today when I came upon a real trackback to my blog. At first I thought it might actually be spam, but it looked legit, so I clicked on it anyway. In the last paragraph of the linked post, I read:

Breakfast Burritos are not something you use to lose weight. And neither are "low-carb snacks from Big Lots". The whole "eat less and exercise more" thing has worked for me. This lady seems rather nice, but her energy into the planning of weight loss might be better used in doing things to actually losing weight. The fact that she is nice and this post is hating on her weight-loss plan, well, this makes me feel bad.

I immediately got that "I hate conflict" feeling in my chest, which goes hand-in-hand with my "I hate being wrong" and "I hate being hated" feelings. Not that this person hates me; they're just dogging my diet plan. Which, considering my lack of measurable progress lately, I guess I can understand.

And, I mean, I can't be too upset. After all, they did say that they feel bad that their post is all hating on my diet plan. That's cool. I left them what I hope sounded like a nice (if slightly miffed) comment, inviting them to come leave a comment and join the discussion. I'm not averse to hearing other people's opinions on weight loss.

Even so, this person's post made me sit back and take a look at what I'm doing. I'm eating five small meals a day. I'm cutting back on fat and eating low-glycemic carbohydrates. I'm walking for a half hour every day, and I'm doing mild strength-training with my PUSH DVD three days a week. I'm sure the PUSH workouts will increase in difficulty as I progress onward, though.

I'm slowly losing inches, and very slowly losing weight. I guess that's the positive way to look at it; the scale is moving in the right direction. But now I wonder if I should be doing *more*. Forcing my ass out of bed in the morning to do cardio, for instance, is something I've known I need to do, but I haven't yet done.

Is it wrong that a complete stranger can make me feel so ill-at-ease with my fitness lifestyle? I was feeling positive and satisfied with my moderate successes. Now, I don't know. I thought I'd been trying hard for nearly three months now. Suddenly, I feel insecure and pissed off and indignant and vulnerable and exposed and dumb and fat and wrong.

I'm not sure what to think of my reaction to this.

Update, 4/7/06: Now that I know that the "breakfast burrito" thing is a running gag on Manhattan Offender, I can see how I misunderstood the tone of the post. I can totally dig the burrito thing now. Last night, though, I really didn't know how to take it. Like I told Rod over e-mail, I'm just going to chalk this one up to one of those strange internet things, and let it go.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #11

This one's a little overdue, so I'd better get it posted before I have to write two updates at once.

I did gain one pound last week, bringing me back up to 209.5 pounds. That wasn't unexpected, though, since Aaron was on vacation last week and we ended up going out for dinner a few times. After my Friday weigh-in, we went off to the Anime Punch anime convention, where we proceeded to eat like crap, so I'll be pleasantly surprised if I hold steady at 209.5 for Week #12.

Exciting things for last week:

• Moved to Workout #2 on my PUSH DVD. Yay for side planks, floor dips, and other manner of bodily strain. I've been sticking with it, though, and can feel a bit of a difference already. Less shaking and quivering in the abs, slightly more endurance in the arms.
• Did not eat any oatmeal for breakfast all week! Huzzah! Had yummy organic Apple Cinnamon cereal or a Slim-Fast Low-Carb Meal Replacement shake or... well, I think those were my two different breakfasts all week. Still no breakfast burrito.
  [Edit: I did make myself a peanut butter protein shake for breakfast one day. I didn't use enough PB, though, so it was a little bland.]
• Discovered almonds. OMG, Sheryl, you were so right. I can't freakin' stay away from the damn almonds now. I bring a baggie of them in my purse for my afternoon snack, and damned if I can't keep my hands out of them. Good stuff.

This week, I'm focusing on lowering my calories again. I think I've been eating too many, perhaps. I haven't been keeping track. I need to start doing that again.

This coming weekend, I'm hoping to get some whole wheat English muffins for breakfast. OMG, English muffins with natural peanut butter... Mmm, that sounds SO good.

Apart from that? Less than two weeks until I take new measurements and photos. (I should probably also take some measurements this week, actually.) Oh, and this time, I may just share one of my in-progress photos with the internets, as I just got myself a new swimsuit via mail-order. w00t! Size 18 Tall, black, underwire cups, pretty basic. But it's made of this great, thick, stretchy Spandexy material that really holds my stuff in. Swear to god, I spent ten minutes just primping in front of the bathroom mirror, and that is so unlike me. And, holy crap, I didn't have to order from the "Women's" sizes! Sure, I still got an 18, but it was technically a Misses Long Torso, not Women's. (The Women's didn't come in Long Torso.)

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for Tall / Long Torso sizes. I'm 5'10", and I hate getting a melvin from my bathing suit.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #10

Good news! I'm continuing my weight-loss trend. I'm down one more pound this week, to 208.5! This is my lowest weight since... *checks Excel chart* ...well, since Thanksgiving. Holy crap.

Did two of my three PUSH workouts so far this week. I've still got today, though. Starting next week, I move on to Workout #2. Yay! I still haven't managed to get my 100 minutes of cardio in, and I know that's a major part of why I haven't had quicker results. I do still walk every day for 30-40 minutes during my lunch break, although that doesn't really count as cardio.

Last weekend, Aaron and I found the motherlode of low-carb goodies at Big Lots, so I've been incorporating shakes and bars into my diet. I still haven't been getting up early enough to make that breakfast burrito that's been calling my name (although I have managed to get to work on time two out of five days this week). So, breakfast continues to be oatmeal, because I can toss the ingredients into a Rubbermaid container, then add water and nuke at work. Morning snackie is one Slim-Fast low-carb shake. Lunch is pasta (yes, reduced-carb, but not always "low-carb," and never that soy crap) and chicken or tuna. Afternoon snackie is a Slim-Fast low-carb meal replacement bar (and sometimes a CarboRite peanut butter cup right after my walk). Dinner is baked chicken and a salad, usually, or a couple of wraps with ham and lettuce and reduced-fat Hellmann's (we ran out of Vegenaise).

This weekend, I'm hoping to make a pilgrimage to Claudia's Whole Foods store to get some yummy health food. Almonds (OMG, those are hard to find with no oil in them!), whole-wheat English muffins (those would be yummy with some natural PB in the morning), crunchy natural PB (because the cheap brand of smooth PB I got last time isn't all that), vanilla whey protein (for making my *own* shakes), Vegenaise, Annie's Naturals salad dressings, maybe some more cold cereal, stuff like that.

Adam from Burning Twenty had a recipe early on in his podcast for an apple-flavored protein shake, so I'm hoping to get the ingredients for that this weekend. Sounds yummy.

What's the next step? I WANT MY BREAKFAST BURRITO, GODDAMMIT! I *will* wake up early enough at least *once* this week to make myself a damn breakfast burrito. Scrambled eggs (one whole, one white), a little Colby-Jack cheese, maybe some ham, maybe a little lettuce, definitely some salsa, and a wheat tortilla. Gonna be so good. Mmm.

Apart from that, I'm looking forward to moving on to the next workout on my PUSH DVD, and I'll try the cardio workout again. Maybe I was just in a mood the one day I tried it last week.

Next weekend is the Anime Punch convention in Columbus. I need to plan ahead for potential evil eating. Maybe I'll bring a resistance band and do some working out in the hotel room, or maybe I'll make a concerted effort to step up the cardio this week. No matter how I deal with it, I will NOT let this weekend screw up my progress thus far.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #9: Two Months

It occurred to me today that I never posted my weigh-and-measure from last week. So, let me throw that up here before I go do my PUSH workout for today.

I decided to count Thursday's weight and measurements as my Week #9, instead of Saturday, because Thursday the 16th marked exactly two months on my fitness regimen. And here are the results:

Weight: 209.5 »» down three lbs from starting weight
Bust: 45.5" »» down ½" from starting measurement
Chest (under the b00bs): 38.5" »» down 1"
Waist: 44.5" »» down ½"
Hips: 49.5" »» down ½"
Neck: 14.25" »» down 3/4"
Upper Arm: 13.5" »» unchanged
Lower Arm: 10.5" »» unchanged
Thigh: 26.25" »» down ¼"
Calf: 15.75" »» down ¼"

I still think I need to get myself a body fat monitor, though. (Maybe I'll get one for my birthday...) These numbers still don't really reflect the changes I'm seeing. These changes are slight, but noticeable to me. For instance, the fat on my abdomen — my gut, as it were — seems to be shrinking. I have a small pouch of empty skin beginning to form. And I'm happy about this. I'm not seeing the results I'd like... but in order to get results, I need to push myself more, and buckle down, and not coast along or do things half-assed.

I received my first PUSH DVD last Monday, and discovered that I may have underestimated myself on my fitness level. I marked myself as a beginner, and thus ended up with a first (and second) workout that involves no resistance at all, not even the resistance bands I received with the disc. The workout is relatively easy, compared to the ways I'd been challenging myself previously, although the upper body workout is challenging for me. I can see where the workout is going, though, and I'm willing to stick with it.

I'm also supposed to do 100 minutes of cardio per week, and I definitely didn't reach that goal last week. For that matter, I only did the workout itself two of the three times I was supposed to. I'm going to work on improving both of those numbers this week.

I've been eating healthy, trying to stay from evening carbs, going a little heavier on the carbs for lunch. It seems to be working to keep me from afternoon hunger, especially if I eat a little smidge of my afternoon snack right when I get back from my after-lunch walk. Fools my mouth into thinking it's had a snackie, I guess. I've also been keeping myself well-watered — in fact, I'm feeling a little odd without a water glass by my side right this moment. I could use a drink.

*goes upstairs and swigs out of the cold-water jug in the fridge*

As for my mood... I oscillate between being excited to lose the weight and get fit, and being depressed that I haven't seen better results. Holding steady is certainly better than a slow gain, that's for sure, but still. When it comes down to the moment in the morning when I know I should get out of bed and make some eggie-weggies, and maybe someday jog my ass around the block, I make the wrong decision and turn the alarm off and go back to sleep. Or, when I come home from work, I sit at the computer just a little too long and let myself get hungry before I start my evening workout, and then it's all over. No workout, and possibly a less-than-stellar super-quick dinner.

I feel sometimes like my health and fitness is in a precarious balance. If I let myself slip, either physically or mentally, it'll throw everything out of whack. I mean, I know I can always jump right back on, but it's still frustrating to always need to be on guard. I feel like I'm thinking more about food now that I'm just eating to live than I did when I was living to eat.

But enough of this. My chicken is going to be done baking before my workout is done, at this rate.

I'm really not overly depressed or anything... I'm just... disappointed in myself, I guess. I expected more.

(PS - I read my diary from when I was ten years old last night. For my birthday, I got a purple jumpsuit from my best friend. It was a size 14. It didn't fit. ...Did I mention I was ten years old? And couldn't fit into a size 14? Yeesh.)

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #8

Well, I'd lost half a pound by mid-week, but managed to gain that back in the second half of the week. I know it was from eating too many carbs too late in the day, mainly — I've been lazy and opted to microwave some "reduced-carb" pasta in the evenings, instead of cooking meat and veggies. For those of you keeping score, that means I'm still at 210, after having flirted briefly with 209.5 on Wednesday.

I haven't mentioned what I've been eating lately, so I guess I'll throw that in, since it's been fairly consistent. Breakfast = 3/4 cup oats with Splenda Brown Sugar Blend. Morning Snack = cottage cheese with blueberries. Lunch = lettuce salad with 2 Tbsp dressing (low-fat, low-carb). Afternoon snack = one large Golden Delicious apple. Dinner varies. Should be meat and veggies or salad. Ends up being low-carb pasta, which is what put my half-pound back on.

I also still haven't really been exercising regularly. I take a few minutes here and there to do a wall-sit, or ten girly pushups, or some glute kickbacks, and I'm still taking my regular lunchtime walks, of course.

Now, this may or may not have been a poor late-night decision, but I did sign up with PUSH. With PUSH, you select a personal trainer, and PUSH sends you one DVD a month with two workouts by said trainer. The workouts are tailored to your fitness level and the equipment you have on hand, and each workout builds off the previous. The DVD also includes a cardio workout of your choice, of which you're supposed to do 100 minutes a week.

PUSH costs $25 a month (plus shipping of one two resistance bands). I signed up for the shortest stint possible: three months. Hopefully, having my very own tailored workout by a supposedly light-hearted trainer will get me back into working out in the evenings after work. I've finally got the meals spaced out properly, so I'm not starving when I come home — in fact, I'm not even hungry until around 7pm. So, I should have plenty of non-hungry alone time to do these workouts during the week.

It does seem a little pricey... but Adam from Burning Twenty totally talked them up on his podcast, so I'm willing to give it a shot. We'll see.

Incidentally, the Early To Bed and Early To Rise thing did not happen at ALL this week, for various reasons. I'm going to give that another go this week. I know I felt so much better during the first week of my diet, when I was actually getting up when my alarm went off, eating breakfast at home, actually applying some makeup (because I had the time), and generally waking up before I had to head out the door. If I could make myself get up even earlier, I could do some morning cardio, like going for a walk (or a walk/jog) when it gets warmer out. I remember that I used to secretly enjoy our pre-breakfast calisthenics in the Bluecoats. :-)

So, that's the latest, for anyone who's interested.

Quick Diet Update

For anyone who's been eagerly anticipating an update on my measurements (Sheryl), here's a quick update:

I'm down to 209.5, which is a steady loss of a pound a week for the last two weeks. Before that, it was a little erratic, what with the weekends setting me back and all.

As for measurements: since starting this thing on January 16, I've lost a grand total of half an inch in my bust (hey! my boobs came back! wtf?), an inch and a half in my waist, one inch in my hips (finally!), half an inch in my upper arms, about half an inch in my thighs, half an inch in my neck, and maybe a quarter inch in my calves.

Since the last measurement, back on February 20: my boobs got half an inch bigger (musta measured 'em wrong or something); and my waist, upper arms, and hips have continued to shrink. Everything else has remained about the same or only changed by small fractions of an inch.

Next Thursday is the big two-month Weigh and Measure, complete with photos that my clamoring public will (hopefully) never see. But I'll be zooming waaaay in using Photoshop, and trying to find new muscle definition in places where it may or may not be hiding. Then I'll look at these people and wonder what their two-month pictures looked like...

Update, 11:15pm:
In a moment of late-night weakness, I decided to sign up for PUSH for a three-month stint. I've heard good things about PUSH. They send you one DVD a month (for $25 a month), which includes two workouts plus a cardio set. You do workout #1 for two weeks, then workout #2 builds on the first, then you get your next DVD. They also send you one of those resistance bands, which is cool. The workouts are also personalized to your fitness level and your preferences — if I'd said I enjoy, say, martial arts, the personal trainer I chose would include martial-arts-type moves in the workout.

We'll see if this works out, or if I have chosen poorly.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #7

Lost a pound! I weighed in at 211 before last weekend, was at 210.5 by Wednesday, and hit 210 by yesterday morning. I've been weighing twice a week instead of daily, and that makes me feel a little less depressed about my weekend gains. By Wednesday, everything has evened itself back out, generally.

I'm still doing the two-steps-forward-one-step-back thing, but at least I'm losing overall. As much as I'd like to meet my short-term goals, I think it's more important that I'm embarking back on a healthier lifestyle. No, this isn't me trying to make up excuses for why I cheat on weekends. This is me rationalizing that I'm being more good than bad, and that's a good start.

I've really been slacking on the evening exercise, although I've been diligently walking for at least a half hour during my lunch. And it's been pretty freaking cold out. Damn winter. Anyway, yeah. I worked my legs one evening, and I worked my chest and upper arms one evening, but I really wasn't into it, and didn't maximize my workout as well as I could have. I just kind of went through the motions.

I also haven't been very good at getting to bed early and getting up early. I've been consistently late to work this week — don't worry, I won't get in trouble or anything. I just take a 45-minute lunch to compensate. The big issue for me is that I eat breakfast at my desk instead of at home, and it throws my food schedule off by a half hour or so. Then, when I get home, I'm ready to eat my late-afternoon snack, and it ends up being an all-out dinner instead. Then I don't do my exercise, and, well, yeah.

So, the goal for this week is Early To Bed And Early To Rise. If I can re-establish that habit, then maybe other things will fall into place. If they don't, I'll just work on them next.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #6

I officially need to rethink my weekends. They are slowing me up considerably. I regularly gain at least one pound over the weekend, usually more, and I need to take steps to avoid this in the future.

This morning, I weighed in at 211. I had been at 210.5 before last weekend hit. Gained one over the weekend, lost one-half during the week. This is unacceptable.

I also need to bump up my exercise. I did Dance Dance Revolution two days this week, for 20 minutes each day. This was a good start, but I need to make myself lift weights after the 20 minutes of DDR cardio.

There's a very narrow time period in the evening in which I feel "motivated" to exercise. I come home from work, talk to Aaron before he leaves, say goodbye to him, change out of my work clothes and into comfy clothes, feed the cat, and contemplate my dinner. If dinner will require 40 minutes in the oven, like chicken, I'll get that started and then start my exercise routine. If it won't take very long to make, like fish, I'll get right into my exercise and cook it afterward. If, however, I mistime my meals and end up being hungry when I get home, and find something quick to eat instead (like last night's yummy tortilla pizza with a wheat tortilla and low-carb pizza sauce and mushrooms and just a little cheese), then it's equal odds whether I'll manage to do any exercise afterward.

As for food, I've rediscovered lowfat cottage cheese. Mmm. I've also been laying off the low-carb pasta, for the most part, although I have my occasional moments of weakness when I get home from work. Apart from that, things are pretty much the same. Oatmeal or Cranapple Crunch for breakfast, an apple or cottage cheese with fruit for a morning snackie, salad with tuna or chicken for lunch, some kind of random low-carb snack for afternoon snackie (when I eat one), and meat and salad for dinner — if I'm being good, that is. If I'm not being good, I might have low-carb spaghetti with low-carb cheese sauce and a spoonful of salsa. Or tortilla pizza.

The good news, though, is that my skin fits a little differently these days. Sounds weird, but it's true. My boobs in particular have that pinchable flap of empty skin. It isn't obvious at first, even in the nude — but if I pinch at the skin of my boob, or of my gut, there's a good three-quarters of an inch of totally empty skin that I can pinch and roll around between my fingers. I have to believe that's a good sign.

My fat also feels different to me. Less dense, and more... watery? Jiggly? I'm not sure how to describe it. It feels less substantial, at any rate. That could be my imagination, or the contrast of being able to feel muscle resolidifying under the layer of fat. In any case, it's also a weird change.

I'm not giving up. I can stick to this thing. Eventually, my mind and body will get in a mutual groove, and the weight will come pouring off. Until then, I can't go all wonky with a giant splurge-ariffic cheat weekend again. Salads and carryout containers for me. No Happy Rose Buffet. (Duh.) I can do this.

Go me. Rrrah.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #5: MINI-GOAL #1

Bottom line: I didn't quite make my goal of 209 by Valentine's Day. If not for my ultra-depressed weekend of yummy binging, I might have made it. I ended up being only a pound and a half short of my goal, weighing in at 210.5 lbs.

Measurements as of 2/16/06:

Height: 5'10"
Weight: 210.5 --> down two pounds since 1/16/06
Bust (at maximum fullness): 45" --> down one inch
Chest (just below bust): forgot to measure this one
Waist (one inch above navel, where my pants live): 43.75" --> down 1.25"
Hips: 49.5" --> down ½"
Neck: 14.5" --> down ½"
Upper Arms: 13.25" --> down ¼"
Lower Arms: 10.25" --> down ¼"
Thighs: 25.5" left / 25.75" right --> down ½" left, ¾" right
Calves: 16.125" --> increased one-eighth inch

Still not exercising as much as I should. Did Tae Bo Cardio on Monday (didn't make it through the whole workout), worked my abs and chest on Tuesday, and slacked for the rest of the week. I've taken a 30 to 40-minute walk every day at lunchtime, though. My day feels totally incomplete without that.

My fat intake is a little elevated, and my carb intake is a little lowered. I've still been eating fish and chicken, staying away from burger, and eating vegenaise and other low-fat condiments and dressings. However, I've been eating major carbs just for breakfast, like oatmeal or my new Cranapple Crunch cereal. The rest of the day, I've been sticking with salad and veggies and meat.

So, that's the long and short of it. Still eating well, still making an effort to be more active. Still coming to terms with the fact that this is taking a lot longer than I'd hoped... but still sticking with it.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #4

This week's report isn't particularly good news. I started out the week on Saturday the 4th at 210. By yesterday, I was back up to 211.5 (and I gained back yet another pound during this weekend). I'm not going to make my goal of 209 by midweek, unless I do something drastic and unhealthy in the next two days.

I was still pretty gung-ho early in the week, and I did the Tae Bo Cardio workout on Monday. Tuesday, I did the Tae Bo Basic workout. The rest of the week I did absolutely bupkis. I made the mistake (apparently) of weighing myself daily this week, to track my progress toward my goal — and when I saw a complete lack thereof, I basically threw in the towel for this upcoming goal. Not what I should have done, I know, but man. I was just so freaking bummed.

Food this week was still good things, but my carb:protein:fat ratio went a little wonky a few times. As Sheryl predicted, I started getting tired of oatmeal — or maybe I'm just getting tired of the mushy-ass Quick Oats we got at a discount at Big Lots. This weekend, I ended up getting some sort of cranapple-granola cereal, so I'll probably switch up breakfasts with that a little. We also got a new supply of real oats, so that'll be a welcome change of pace, as well.

While we were at Claudia's yesterday, replenishing my supply of Vegenaise and getting some breakfast cereal, we also bought some more peanut butter (because the MaraNatha brand we bought last time kind of sucks) and some more salad dressing. We got a refill of the Annie's Naturals Artichoke Parmesan, and we got some other kind of citrusy-mangoey something-or-other. We'll see what that's all about later this week.

So, basically, this upcoming weight goal is a wash. I'll still photograph myself and weigh myself and all that, but I'm really kind of bummed that I... well, I guess the root of my bumming nature is really that I do halfway OK during the week, but my weekends invariably end up being the one step back to my two steps forward.

I'm also apparently pretty easily defeated. Not that I'm totally giving up — not at all. I'm just, well... I thought that losing five pounds in five weeks would be no big thing. It's kind of disheartening to see that it wasn't as easy as I'd thought it would be, and that I'm so easily thrown off by a lack of instant results.

I'll get back on it this week. Exercise and lots more water. I'm just kind of depressed about it right this moment.

Not Feeling It

The beauty of being an independent podcaster is that, if I decide I'm really not excited about producing a show on a given day, I can just say "fuck it" and opt to wait a few more days.

I have a topic I'm excited about — debunking the myth that the Atkins Diet will cause kidney failure — but I'm really not into recording tonight. Maybe I'll do some more research and script some stuff out, but I really can't get into recording and editing today.

I'm feeling frumpy and headachy and tired and I'm just not down with it. I'm also feeling a little bummed that I may not make my first weight-loss mini-goal. I keep wavering between 211.5 and 210 — my goal is 209 by Tuesday.

It would be so easy to, again, say "fuck it" and go eat Chinese this weekend.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #3

I started out my week at 210.5 lbs, my weight as of Saturday the 28th. Over the course of the week, I managed to lose half a pound, but the journey there was kind of up and down.

I added some new food items to my diet this week, including Annie's Naturals salad dressings on my salads and frozen blueberries in my oatmeal. I continued eating four meals a day, and branched out on Friday to start eating five: three full meals, two snacks.

Monday's exercise was focusing on legs. Tuesday was Tae Bo Basic. On Wednesday, I tried something new and worked out my back. There wasn't a very wide range of exercises I could do at home with only dumbbells, so I did ten reps each of supermans, tricep kickbacks, bent-over rows, side raises, and shoulder flys, all with my five-pound weights (except the supermans). As with my other weight workouts, I did the exercises all together with no breaks, then took a two-minute break before set #2, then a one-minute break before set #3. I really felt it the next day, so I opted to take a day off. I'm not used to my back being sore on purpose. Then, since I took a day off on Thursday, I lost my momentum and didn't work out again on Friday.

Midweek, I weighed myself and was quite depressed to see that I'd actually gained a pound and a half. Sheryl suggested that I should measure myself, too — and I'm glad she did. Sixteen days into my new diet and exercise program, I'd lost an inch and a half from my waist, an inch and a half from my neck (?!), half an inch from my upper arms, and three-quarters of an inch from my bust. My lower body remained unchanged. But holy crap! I can definitely deal with minimal weight loss if I still lose inches.

My goal for the coming week is to ramp up the cardio. I want to shoot for two days of cardio, preferably three. I downloaded the Tae Bo Cardio workout on VCD, and from what I've previewed of it, I think it's going to kick my ass. In a good way. I've also decreased my caloric goals for the week by about 200 calories. I'd been making my oatmeal with a little cream, and I'm going to lay off of that this week; that change alone should knock off that 200 calories a day. I'm also switching up what I've been eating for lunch and for dinner: more carbs for lunch (say, meat and rice), and fewer for dinner (meat and veggies or salad).

Hopefully, between the cardio and the more frequent feedings and the lower caloric intake, I should drop off some more poundage this week. Even if I keep only losing at the rate I have been, though, I should still make my goal of five pounds by Valentine's Day.

February 16th = 2 days after Valentines Day = new pictures and new measurements. I have nine days to kick that ass.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #2

I started out this week at 213, after my ill-fated Cheat Day on the 20th. Midweek, I was still at 213, which depressed me. Yesterday, though, I weighed myself and discovered I was back down to 210.5, which is definitely good.

I've continued to be good about eating my breakfast, and said breakfast has continued to be oatmeal. We found an extra-large box of Quick Oats at Big Lots last week, and while I prefer the regular Old Fashioned Oats better, these aren't bad. They are, in fact, quick to make. Not that those extra two minutes really mattered in my day. Anyway, I've cut down on the raisins, though I haven't eliminated them yet. I have started adding slivered almonds on occasion, and those are pretty good. They add a new flavor and texture. I've also rediscovered the Atkins Sugar-Free Maple Syrup that we had in our cupboard; it goes quite well on oatmeal, as does the sugar-free imitation honey (though not at the same time).

I've come to be so dependent on my breakfast that skipping it isn't even an option; I'd rather be late to work than miss my oatmeal.

I've also been switching up my afternoon snacks. Instead of tuna salad, I've been eating an apple and some cottage cheese. I might need to switch back, though, as I seem to recall that my afternoon snack really shouldn't have any carbs, and an apple most definitely has carbs.

In looking at my calorie ratios from last week, I pretty much stayed within 4% of my 40:30:30 ratio of carbs to protein to fat all week. Tuesday was a little off, though — too much fat (can't have cottage cheese with my snack and vegenaise with my dinner, too).

As for exercise, I did fairly well this week. Monday was Legs Day: I compiled my own workout based on the premise of this Beginner Dumbbell Workout. Lunges, sumo squats, stiff-legged deadlifts, and calf raises all in sequence, followed by a rest, then repeat, rest and repeat. That was just about right, although my quads were sore for a few days and my hamstrings were stiff and sore for a few more.

Tuesday was Shoulders Day: Rear shoulder flys, front raises, shrugs, side raises, and presses all in sequence, as above. This needs tweaked for future workouts, though, as doing side raises and presses seem to work the same shoulder muscle. Having those exercises right next to each other does NOT work. I also need to throw some tricep kickbacks in there, as my triceps were feeling quite neglected. My shoulders didn't start to feel sore until two days later, and the soreness didn't last too long. Which was odd, because my last set of presses was damn near impossible. I expected to hurt a lot more than I did.

Wednesday was my slacker day; I didn't do any exercise. Thursday I did the YOGAmazing Yoga For Abs practice, which was more strenuous for my fatigued upper arms than for my abs.

Friday, I finally pushed back the couch and did some more Tae Bo. This time, I got through the whole tape, only sitting out of one set of side kicks. And damn, did I feel GOOD after that workout. Breathing kind of hard, sweating just a little, but not like I was going to die or anything. Strangely enough, that workout seemed to work the soreness out of my shoulders and legs. The only thing that got sore was my lats — those muscles on either side of my back? Yeah. Every now and then yesterday, I'd just randomly say, "Damn you, Billy Blanks," and Aaron would know what I was talking about. :-)

I'm hoping to have lost more weight by next week's midweek weigh-in, as I'm currently having my happy womanly time right now. I'm thinking that may have been one reason I didn't seem to lose any weight during the first part of the week. We'll see.

At any rate, I'm well on my way to reaching 209 by Valentine's Day.

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #1

First off: since I'm not technically doing Atkins anymore, I've changed the name of my Atkins category to Diet & Fitness. It seems to be a little more inclusive.

Now: on to the update.

When I weighed myself on Monday morning, I registered at 212.5 pounds. That was actually a pound and a half lower than the previous week, although I'm not sure what I did to lose weight during that time. *shrug*

Starting on Tuesday, I tried to follow the food plan Sheryl had e-mailed me. (Well, I did make an effort on Monday, but that Atkins-style lunch with Aaron really threw off my fat intake.) Breakfast was ¾ cup Quaker Oats, with Splenda Brown Sugar Blend and raisins. Lunches were mainly the dinner meat from the night before, with an apple or a salad. Afternoon snack was always tuna with Reduced Fat Hellmann's (and sometimes onion and/or celery), and dinner was chicken breast or fish with a side of low-carb pasta.

Before you lambaste me, Sheryl, for my deviations from the diet last week (not that you would, but it's fun to pretend):

• Believe it or not, the only green vegetable we had on hand last week was salad greens. We'll be attempting to remedy that during this week's grocery shopping.
• Hopefully, today we will be heading out to the whole foods store to locate some Vegenaise to replace the Hellmann's. Even Aaron has admitted to curiosity.
• The raisins in my oatmeal will soon be replaced with slivered almonds — again, with today's grocery shopping.

In addition to changing my eating schedule and habits, I also began/continued exercising every evening. On Monday, I did the YOGAmazing "Yoga For Weight Loss" practice, which was surprisingly vigorous. On Tuesday, I did 50 jumping jacks before my Beginner's Dumbbell Workout. On Wednesday, I really wasn't feeling it, but I did 50 jumping jacks and 75 crunches, just so I could say I did something. I dropped the ball on Thursday and Friday, though, and didn't exercise at all — although I did take a brisk 40-minute walk on Friday during my lunch break.

I weighed myself Thursday morning, and I had lost two pounds since Monday! Awesome.

What was not so awesome, though, was my horrific cheat meal — no, cheat DAY — on Friday. I had thought I could resist my department's monthly potluck by planning ahead and bringing enough food to keep me sated throughout the day.

I was wrong.

At 1:30pm or so, after pretty much the entire department had ransacked the potluck, I ate the last sloppy joe, some Chinese salad (ramen noodles, vinegar, sugar, veggies), and a small piece of cookie bar. Then, that evening, a coworker took me to the dreaded Happy Rose Buffet as payment for helping him learn how to burn DVDs on his computer.

I weighed myself this morning. I'm back up to 213.

What a precarious balance I seem to have discovered. No cheat meals for me, apparently, and no skipping days of exercise. Not if I want to be successful.

Also: Later in the week, I began feeling particularly run-down when I got home from work. Not hungry yet, but tired. That's why I slacked on my exercise. On top of that, after I ate my dinner, I found that I was craving carbs... so I ate a bowl of oatmeal for dessert. ::smacks hands::

So, I'm not sure if that was a result of me needing to follow the diet more closely, or tweak it, or just suck it up. In any case, this week will be better. More hardcore.

The more I focus on my health, the more I realize how fat I am. I'm looking forward to realizing how much more fit I am, instead.

On Starting Points

After a conversation I had today, I decided that I needed to take some, shall we say, more revealing "before" pictures.

So, after my workout, and after dinner, I changed into my highly stylish beige bra and bikinis, and traipsed downstairs for a new set of "before" pics.

Looking at these pictures? Makes me want to go work out again. Today. Right now. Until I can't move.

You know how, in Sociology or in Ethnic Studies or the multicultural class of your choice, they talked about push factors and pull factors? Generally this refers to reasons why people immigrated to America, but it applies to nearly any decision in life. Either you move from A to B because B has so many good things going for it (pull factors), or you move from A to B because A just sucks donkey balls, and anything would be better than A (push factors).

These "before" pictures have become a mighty push factor. Mightier than the pull factor of any post-drumcorps, size 14, tan and svelte Diana photo.

The good news is that I had a good first full day of the new plan. Barring one leftover burger with provolone cheese for lunch, I followed the plan fairly closely, although I do have some room for improvement.

Got up when my alarm went off (for once), ate breakfast at 7:30am (OMG WTF BBQ Me? Eat breakfast?!), and was quite sated until lunch, which was at 11:30am. Snackie-time was my 3:30pm break, and dinner was 6:30pm — ABC Evening News time. Did tonight's workout while dinner was cooking (lunges were with my body weight only, BTW, and I did 50 jumping jacks before beginning the dumbbell routine). I plan to do some yoga with Chaz later on tonight, before a nice relaxing bath and a reasonably early bedtime (well, 11:00 is reasonably early for me).

According to my handy-dandy Diet Organizer, my calorie ratio for today was 31% from carbs, 34% from protein, and 35% from fat. We're shooting for 40:30:30, so I have some tweaking to do. (The burger was the likely culprit, methinks.)

Now, don't worry: this isn't going to become a daily diet journal. I just wanted to share this first relatively successful day with all of you. Expect some weekly diet updates if I do well, or utter and abject silence on the subject otherwise. ^_^

My Ongoing Resolution

I haven't made a New Year's Resolution to lose weight in years. That's mainly because the fact that I want to lose weight is a given. Has been since I was in Junior High. These days, I resolve to focus on something in another part of my life — say, this year's resolution of finishing what I start — and just assume that, yes, I want to continue to lose weight.

This is my "before" entry (no pictures — I'll leave that to your imagination), in which I discuss my stats and my plans. If you're still interested, read on.

read more...

Shake That Healthy Butt

It's a slow morning at work, so I figured now would be a good time to catch up on some blogging.

So, Aaron decided to go on Induction this week, and to step up his daily exercise. While I haven't exactly been on Induction myself (thanks to the McDonald's and Barry Bagels breakfast runs my co-workers have been making this week), I have been working on stepping up my own exercise. I've continued walking during my lunch breaks, despite the freezing temps, and I did some leg exercises with dumbbells on Tuesday night. I'm still sore from those.

Wednesday when I came home from work, I was FULL of energy. It was bizarre. I had offset my meal schedule by having a late breakfast and a later lunch, so I wasn't hungry at all; I'm sure that was also a major factor in my energy spike. Usually I come home and forage for food as soon as Aaron goes to work. Instead, I got Mom's birthday present wrapped and did some other randomness before sitting down to work on some genealogy for a few hours. I ended up not jogging on the trampoline like I'd planned, but that's no big deal, since I'd walked for 45 minutes in the freezing cold over my lunch break. I think that was probably sufficient.

Tonight, though, I'm planning to do either some jogging on the trampoline (assuming my sore legs and butt can take it), or maybe my Pilates For Dummies DVD. That's good stuff, too.

I'm just sick of that extra 20 pounds — well, 30 pounds now. I want it gone.

Update, 9pm: Is it wrong that the Tae Bo Instructional Workout (i.e. the one that shows you how to do the moves, but doesn't take you through an entire session of tae bo) still makes me tired and almost sweaty? Next on the agenda: Locate the Tae Bo Basic Workout for cheap or free. Maybe Goodwill or Savers will turn up something.

Obligatory Update

I don't particularly feel like writing right now, but I figured I'd give everyone a rundown of Thanksgiving and the long weekend.

OK, first off: Aaron and I were maybe 15 minutes down the turnpike, heading toward Cleveland, when I started swearing vehemently. Aaron didn't miss a beat: "Pie," he said.

I'd left it in the fridge.

We didn't go back to get it, although we ended up making good enough time (and dinner ended up being late enough) that we totally could have doubled back and gotten the pie. Ah, well — more for us.

Thanksgiving wasn't as weird as it could have been. We spent a lot of time chatting with Pete's kids, who range from 12 (I think?) to 21. Joe, the youngest, finally hit the beginning of his growth spurt and voice change, so that was unexpected and kind of weird to witness. Grammie's getting a little forgetful in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's, and Aunt Elaine is going into a nursing home this week due to her own Alzheimer's-related issues. Things had the potential to be awkward, but really weren't.

As far as Atkins cheating goes, oh yeah. I cheated, and I didn't regret it. (Very much.) In the category of not-Atkins-friendly foods, I ate stuffing and sweet potatoes and a little pie, among other things. Oh, and the acorn squash with brown sugar and honey and whatever else couldn't have been too good for me, either. But there was also ham and turkey and green bean casserole and fruit salad and mashed potatoes and gravy (although I opted to pass on the potatoes).

This week, Aaron's starting back up on Induction again. He's changed jobs at work, from a labor-intensive job to a fairly sedentary one, and he's not happy with the weight he's gained. So, I'm doing Induction with him. I, too, have gained back most of what I lost in our early October two-week Induction, unfortunately. I'm hoping that some of that is just pre-PMS water weight, but I can't count on that.

I'm going to make a concerted effort to exercise daily, also. Since it's getting colder (and rainy / snowy), I'm not going to be able to have my lunchtime walk in the park, so I'll have to plan some evening indoor activity. Yoga, pilates, tae bo (maybe... Billy Blanks kicks my ass, as a general rule), trampolining / rebounding, or just working out with my free weights. Today was a gorgeous day for November (60°F in Ohio!), so I went ahead and walked. Tomorrow may be 40° and not rainy, so I may walk tomorrow, too. After that, though... *thumbs down*

In other unrelated news, I've loaded up my Brownie Bullet camera and am planning to shoot a test roll this week. It looks like it'll cost me around fifteen bucks to get it developed, though, which kind of sucks.

In even more unrelated news, my old RCC cohort Jeff Hawley included me in his mass e-mail update today! I haven't talked to him for maybe three or four years. Turns out he's finished writing a film script, is engaged to a Japanese girl, and did graduate work in England (although I'd already heard that last bit through the grapevine). I e-mailed him back and shared my much less interesting life events with him.

I'm not unhappy with my life, though. I turned out a lot more normal than I could have — and, when I say "normal," I mean it as a completely good thing.

Massive Update on Stuff In General

I took my final half-day off of work today so I could go to lunch with two women I used to work with. We caught up on each other's lives (mainly work-related), reminisced about the Bad Old Days...

24 September 2002: Just Another Day...

Hey, for once I worked an 8-hour day! Yeah, we were doing so well that we actually took a one-hour lunch and everything. Just for reference, yesterday I worked a 14-hour day. Seriously. My co-worker and almost-supervisor, Loni, worked an hour and a half more than me, since she came in at 6am. Damn, that sucked. Makes the normal 8-hour day seem like a luxury instead of a burden.

...and ate some yummy Mexican food. And despite my lack of a lunchtime walk, I still got my podcast-listening time in, since a.) our lunch meeting was a half hour south of where I work, and b.) I bought a Kensington FM transmitter for the iPod(s).

When I got home, I had intended to work on the LSM site, as it needs some stuff added and updated (like audition info). Instead, I ended up finishing off the cosplay skirt. Yes, indeed, the skirt is complete! Well, except for possibly adding some velcro for good measure, and the final ironing before we leave for Youmacon in two weeks.

Don't worry, I'll definitely post pictures of me and Aaron in costume. :-)

What else...? Oh, yeah, tonight's dinner. I know, blogging about what I made for dinner is certifiably lame, but this was really good. Ten-Minute Szechuan Chicken. It's really easy (even I can do it), and really good... but, now that I think about it, I think I'm going to put the recipe on my next Low Carb Lifestyle podcast, so I'm not going to publish it here yet. If you download this old-school DOS recipe filing program, though, I could be convinced to e-mail you the database file that this fantastic recipe came from. (Thanks, Uncle Pete!)

Yesterday, I told the Acting Executive Director of LSM that I've decided not to march next year. He was understandably disappointed, but he completely understood, which is cool.

I'm sure there's other stuff I should write about, but that's the overall rundown of everything I wanted to mention. Now I'm going to go work on the LSM page. Yay for contact info and audition info and pictures? w00t.

Atkins, Take Two

I forgot to mention: Aaron and I went back on Induction last week.

We had both been gaining a little weight back (partially due to our repeated visits to the Happy Rose Buffet). I had gained back 12 pounds total from my lowest weight, but had gained it back slowly between January and May of this year, and stayed pretty steady after that. Aaron, however, finally hit a point last month where he decided he had to go back on Induction, and I gladly joined in. (I'm not good at doing Induction by myself. I'm too easily lured to the dark side.)

The first week, I lost 4.5 pounds. I was stoked. Then we went to visit Amy in Dayton, and I somehow managed to gain back two pounds over the weekend. I'm back to losing about a half a pound a day, though, so I'm going to lay off the daily weight check and go back to weighing weekly again.

I've been rediscovering old recipes this week, like the Mock Cream Cheese Danish, and finding new ones, like Hamburger Pie. OMG, so yummy. burger baked in the oven with a filling of cream cheese, mustard, and horseradish. It may sound weird, but it's really, REALLY good. (Props to the Atkins All The Way podcast for that one.)

You know, Induction isn't so bad. :-)

For My Own Future Reference

Even if I forget to put my breakfast bar and other healthy snacky food in my purse, I must *not* purchase ANYTHING from the vending machine during the day when I get hungry. Otherwise, I'll get home after work, eat dinner, and proceed to crash like a mofo, rendering the remainder of my evening completely useless.

Better to suffer through being hungry at work than to eat friggin' 40 grams of sugar during the workday, and end up fighting boredom and sleep and depression by 8pm.

My Virtual Model

I remember making one of these back when I was checking out wedding dresses: My Virtual Model. I saw this on someone's diet blog, debunking the "Marilyn Monroe was a plus size" myth, and decided to make one for myself again.

Just for shits and giggles, I made three versions of me: Before, Now, and My Goal. For those of you who are squeamish at seeing even a virtual model of me in only a black bikini, I've put the screenshots in a popup window.

Anyway, the Now model is kind of forgiving. Imagine bigger cottage-cheese thighs and flabbier arms, and a little more of a belly poonch. Hmm. Better yet, don't imagine that. Might be better for your mental health. And, believe it or not, the Before model is actually fairly accurate. My waist was less-defined (read: I had mighty love-handle rolls) and I was... well, let's just leave it at that.

That said... I'm kind of liking that Goal model. Even if she's not quite what I'll look like in 25 pounds. Oh, and I made a super-uber goal model, but I couldn't even see me as her, so I opted not to post her. At 5'10" and 165 pounds, My Skinny Virtual Model looked like a skinny ho, and I couldn't relate to her. o.O

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I?ve been finding it just impossible to concentrate on my work for the past two days. At any given point, I?m either running out of work to do and I?m dragging it out so I look busy, or I actually have work to do and I can?t seem to give a crap about getting it done. Instead, I have a tendency to chat with my cube-mate or stare out the window or mentally play through LSM music I?ve memorized.

I?m also having a hell of a time resisting the seductive lure of the snack machine. I thought I had that thing licked long ago... but I?ve bought some sort of evil sweetness from it every day this week. I think that I?m going to give Induction a try next week: eat some breakfast and make myself some decently large, fancy lunches (e.g. salads with meat and goodies, or some sort of simple but yummy meat dish). I know that when I used to bring salads for lunch, I couldn?t even imagine being less than satisfied for a good long while after that.

I?ve been working out almost every day ? maybe not doing anything as intense as Sheryl?s doing, but at least I?m increasing my activity (of course, anything?s greater than zero). But that?s not going to do squat if I cheat and eat like crap all the time. Which sucks, because I can feel the workouts working. It feels good. I?m sore in different places all the time, which is a new and fascinating experience. :-)

But, yeah. I?m trying not to get down on myself about the cheating, but still... I argue with myself all the way to the vending machine, knowing that it won?t do any good, and finally I just give up any pretense of willpower and just buy the damn Hostess Fruit Pie. And eat it at my desk. (OMG 67 carbs!!!)

Next week is a new week, though, and tomorrow?s a new day, and all that crap. I can start over, and discover my willpower again.

Fitness Update

First, the word on weight. I've gained nine pounds back of the fifty I lost. Ungood. Aaron's gained back 14 of his 60. We're falling off the wagon, but at least we recognize the fact and want to do something about it before it gets out of hand.

Today, while I was at work, Aaron modded our Dance Dance Revolution dance mat and rearranged our basement to create a DDR Station. Now we can have our indoor cardio without me killing my knees on a sliding mat, and without jiggling knick-knacks throughout the entire house. Pretty sweet.

As soon as I'm done here, I'm going to go upstairs and unearth Aaron's 20-minute ab workout VHS tape (courtesy of Goodwill or some other such thrift store) and go make my abs hurt. Yay, pain...?

Yesterday, I worked my legs (again), stopping only when my knees told me it was time. Truth be told, my legs were a little jiggly, anyway, but the knees were the deciding factor. I remember back in high school (before I had bad knees), working out in gym class on the Universal machine, on the section with the leg press whoziewhatsit. I loved that thing, and I could kick its ass, because my legs have always been relatively strong. (After all, I have to haul *me* around, and I've never been light.)

So, yeah. I'm off to go do an ab workout before I lose my nerve/will/desire to exercise tonight.

Edit: OK, I lied. It wasn't a 20-minute workout; it was a five-minute workout. Various kinds of crunches, 100 reps total. I can tell it worked something quite a bit, though, so I'm not going to do any more abs tonight. We'll see how I feel tomorrow.

On A Roll

This morning when I woke up, my thighs were sore. It wasn't one of those ?OMG this sucks? kinds of sore, though—more like a feeling of strength, a good kind of sore. I still don?t think I overdid it. It felt good. It still does.

I was pretty much chained to my desk today, since today was my day to help answer the phones, so I couldn't get up and wander aboot and stretch my legs as much as I wanted. I think my hamstrings would be less sore right now if I could have taken a few extra bathroom breaks today and walked around. Ah, well. I can stretch now, anyway.

This evening, before dinner but after Aaron had left for work, I worked my upper body with 5lb weights. Afterward, I wrote down what exercises I'd done today and yesterday—not for public consumption, just for my own personal edification, so I can remember what kicked my ass and what works what muscles more and what I need to do more of.

Oh, but first things first. Before I even started my workout this evening, I got out the digital camera and took a front and side Before Picture. Again, these are not for public consumption. Not yet, anyway; not until there's a sufficient After Picture to go with them. :-) I wish I'd taken a Way Before Picture, back in 2003 when Aaron and I first started Atkins. I mean, I can look at my face in pictures and go 'eek!' but I can't really see the rest of me in all its OMFG glory. Heh... maybe that's a good thing.

Three days o' working out in a row. How many days does it take to make a habit, do they say? Ten? Thirty? Either way, I've got a good start.

Thank Jebus For Sheryl

Sheryl rocks. She shows me exercises that make my legs happy. ...Well, actually, they're not very happy right at this moment, but they will be!

So, I had decided that I needed to exercise more often, especially those muscles that ended up being so sore after the drumcorps camp a couple weeks ago. Yesterday, I worked out with my 10lb dumbbells, to get the upper-body thing going. Upper back, shoulders, biceps, and triceps. Today, I thought I should work on my lower body—butt and hamstrings, mainly—but my knees always give me shit when I do squats or stairs or things that require bending my knees while having extra weight put on them. (I guess they just had to deal with that extra fifty pounds for way too long.)

As Sheryl is the only Fitness Guru™ I know, I e-mailed her from work today to ask about ways to work my legs without fucking with my knees. We traded e-mails all afternoon, which were all particularly helpful, and ended up agreeing that I would meet her at her gym@work after I got home and after Aaron left for work, so she could show me proper technique. And that's what I did. Got home, spent my daily half-hour with my husband, waved him goodbye, fed the cat, changed clothes, grabbed a hot dog so I wouldn't kill anyone from hunger, collected the various travel accoutrements (cell phone, directions, wallet, keys, lomo), and I was off.

I gave Sheryl's cell a buzz once I got into the parking lot, and she let me into her workplace and took me back to their workout room. Then, after some really, really pitiful attempts on my part to stretch my poor hamstrings, we got to work. Sheryl showed me several exercises to work my hamstrings and butt and calves and, well, pretty much all the major muscles I would think to work. Or close to it. I'm pretty well set now, as far as specific exercises go.

I also learned helpful things like:

• When lifting weights to work your back or legs, keep your thumb on the same side of the bar as your fingers. Otherwise, you tend to use your arm strength to lift the weight.
  
• Start your workout with the largest muscle group you plan to work, and adjust the weight accordingly as you go. If you work the smallest muscles first—say, your triceps—then move on to your chest, it'll already be tired by the time you get there, since all the related muscle groups are interconnected.
  
• When bending forward, lift your head up to keep your back straight.

After Sheryl was done showing me stuff, she still had a few sets to do herself. So, I took that opportunity to go ahead and do some of the exercises she'd shown me. (I was in a gym, after all, so why just sit around?) I ended up doing stiff-legged deadlifts, three sets of ten. My legs felt pretty good after that.

Well, by then it was nearly 7:00, so Sheryl gave me a Zone Perfect bar out of the kindness of her heart (for me to eat tomorrow afternoon at work), and we parted ways.

When I got home, I was psyched to keep working out while I made dinner. So, I put a frozen chicken breast in the microwave, put water on to boil, and did one set of lunges. Without any extra weights. And after that one set, my legs were *done*. I am such a lightweight. :-) I don't think I overdid it, though, which is one thing I'm highly prone to do whenever I get all psyched for fitness.

In case you're interested, dinner was one microwaved chicken breast, one serving of Dreamfields linguine, and a cayenne red pepper cream sauce (with a dash of paprika, curry, salt and pepper). Yes, it was spicy, and yes, it was good. It was also highly amusing to give the cat a hefty taste of the sauce on my fingertip and watch her lick her chops... and lick... and smack... and wonder why her mouth is on fire... and then want some more.

Blogging at Work?!

Here's a revolution in technology: Not-Really-Realtime Blogging. This bleeding-edge technique allows for employees in a network-monitored work environment to write blog entries during the day, and post them with a backdated timestamp as soon as they return home to a blog-safe network.

It's called e-mail. :-P

So, here I sit, at the reception desk, taking my required turn manning the desk. Sure, I still have my normal work to do (loan changes this week), but it gets awful boring out here with no music to listen to and no conversations to eavesdrop on. So, while no one is walking past the desk, I'm taking a few moments to blog to myself, for posting when I get home.

I decided to go on Induction this week, to jump-start myself back into losing weight. I haven't gained any weight recently—in fact, I lost half a pound after Thanksgiving weekend. How I managed that, I'm not entirely sure, as I ate like... well, like normal, like everybody else. Sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes and stuffing and pie and ice cream and cupcakes... I was so full. Ugh. I couldn't eat like that all the time. Not anymore.

Anyway, I'm currently at an even 200 lbs, in case you've been jonesing for a weight-loss update. I think my lowest point was 199.5, and that was about three months ago. I've been steady at 200.5 ever since. I've been fairly content up until recently, since my new weight felt so much more normal than fifty pounds ago. Now, though, I'm feeling frumpy again, and realizing that I still have another 20 or 25 pounds to go before I'll feel REALLY normal.

Well, people are starting to trickle out of the building, and I should really get some more work done before I go in another hour. This wasn't too bad of an afternoon out at the reception desk, though... chatting with myself (and with James, who covered my break) really helped to pass the time.

Wouldn't want to do it every day, though.

A Word to the Wise

Just because Dreamfields pasta is yummy and much less grainy than normal low-carb pasta, this does not give the watcher of carbohydrate intake the license to eat a plate and a half of Hamburger Stroganoff made with said pasta.

[cookiemonster] Ohhhhh... Diana eat too many noodles... [/cookiemonster]

One Year and Fifty Pounds Ago

...I looked like this:

A year before that, even, I was saying things like this:

26 September 2002:

I really have gained a lot of weight. I realized this as I looked down at my shadow before me. Then I realized that my arms touch my sides when I walk. Not just at my hips, not just my armpits, and not just my boobs. My entire side. This was somehow more disturbing to me than my recent discovery of a "gut flap." It only strengthened my resolve to somehow lose 45 pounds...

Today, I'm feeling so much better than I did back then. I know I still have a little ways to go to reach my weight and fitness goals, but being back to the weight I was in high school and early college makes me feel so much better about myself. I haven't lost any major weight in a while, as I'm stabilizing at my new, healthier weight, so I'm not quite as giddy about my weight-loss as I was, say, in October or November.

I took this self-portrait in July, when I weighed only two pounds more than I do today.

I have collarbones! Holy shit! When did that happen? I also have ample space between my waist and my elbows, and the hideous "gut flap" mentioned above has thankfully shrunk down to a mere crease. I can't imagine what I'll look and feel like in another 25 pounds or so.

Food Glorious Food

This morning, I decided to be all spiffy and make Spicy Chicken Papaya Curry for lunch. Aside from some minor papaya issues (hey, the recipe didn't say to peel the damn papaya!), it was quite tasty. I'd include a link to the recipe, but the people at the Cooking Club of America don't have it listed on their site yet. Bah. Anyway, if you like fruity and spicy Thai-esque foods, lemme know and I'll type out the recipe and post it. It was really delicious... after we sliced off the papaya skins. :-)

Then, this afternoon, we stopped in at the Low-Carb Solutions store on Reynolds, hoping to pick up some Cinnamon & Butter Flavored Pork Rinds. Unfortunately, they were out of the pork rinds, but we found a new snacky food: Parmesan, Garlic & Olive Oil "Soy~Teins." Yummy, yummy stuff... as was the Asher's Sugar-Free Dark Liquid Raspberry chocolate bar we shared. And Heather, the owner, was nice enough to take down our name and number so she can call us when the pork rinds come in.

I also picked up a bottle of Da Vinci Gourmet Irish Cream Sugar Free Syrup. I'd heard those Da Vinci syrups were supposed to be absolutely scrumptious—and I'd heard right. When we got home, I looked up a recipe for Italian soda (since we have a whole two-liter of club soda leftover from making our low-carb pizza crust). OMG. So, so good. I'm going to be buying more of these Da Vinci syrups. *yum*

Almost-normal-sized clothes again...

You know, self-portaiture isn't quite as easy as it might seem, especially without a professional portraiture setup. In other words, finding an appropriate spot to set the digital-camera-on-a-timer in my house is a challenge. But I wanted to share my small joy with you, so... ph34r my new tank top. Rah.

To celebrate my return to this-is-how-fat- I-used-to-be- before-I-got-sloppy, I scrounged up a few pics of myself over the past 10 months or so and made a weight-loss montage. I didn't seek out too many pictures, and I didn't scan anything; it was just what I had already on the computer for whatever reason. But I think it gets the point across. And not only do you get to watch my double-chin melt away through the photos, you also get to watch my hair grow. :-)

Aaaaaand I'm done.

Atkins Progress

Just happened to notice, hidden in amongst My Documents, the Weight.xls chart I created once upon a time when I was more obsessive over my weight-loss regimen than I am now. So, I opened it up and added the latest plot point of date vs. weight, and made a discovery.

Even though it seems like my weight loss is slowing, it isn't. I've been losing at the same rate, a little over half a pound a week, ever since October or November. If I keep up at this pace, I'll be at my ultimate goal (for now, anyway) by late Winter of 2005. While that might seem like a long time... I don't mind. And, when you think about it, it took me a few years to put it on; it seems fitting that it should take at least a year and a half to take it off.

(Just stay away from the candy machine... Hershey's with Almonds bad...)

Yummy Crock Pot BBQ Wings

The wings were successful. All three pounds were gone by 3pm. I even got to eat some.

I was a bad Diana and cheated horribly on my diet today. Ate a couple sugar-free muffins, a couple small not-sugar-free cupcakes, one not-very-good chocolate chip cookie, and a chocolate-dipped strawberry, all in addition to the "real" food I ate. I was half-high for part of the day, half-asleep for the rest of it, and half had a headache while I came down from my sugar high. That'll teach me, I guess.

In other news, I'm kind of bored. I'm going to go play Civ III for an hour.

My Butt

There were some of my friends in drumcorps who thought it would be great if a corps named themselves "Your Butt." Not a name like the Cadets or the Vanguard or the Scouts or anything like that, but Your Butt. The one-liners would be great:

Ladies and Gentlemen, from Flint, Michigan: Your Butt! Drum Major Dan Clouse, is Your Butt ready? Your Butt may take the field in competition!

And so on. I'm only reminded of such things because I was thinking about my butt.

If you were too squeamish to read the LJ-cut from my last entry, you may not know that my butt is not exactly in shape yet. (Have you been looking?) Anyway, I located the post I was thinking of:

15 December 2003: Ladies—have you ever been walking behind someone, maybe someone at work, and finally taken a good look at their ass? And then you say to yourself, 'My God... I hope my ass doesn't look like that!'

While searching for this quotable, though, I did discover that I've been feeling uncomfortable about my ass for some time now. Almost exactly one year ago, in May of 2003, I said, "BTW, I never realized how dimply my big ass was until I cranked around and looked at it in the mirror at home, framed by the wondrous thong. I know, you didn't want to think about that. Well, neither did I. Deal."

Heh. Yeah. Except I wasn't on Atkins then, and I was 41 pounds heavier than I am now. (!!!) Now I know I can do something about my butt if I give it a good try.

One other thing: You know when you're sitting in the back seat of a car, and all you can see of yourself in the rearview mirror is your nose, chin, and neck? I used to hate that; I'd crane my neck to get my double-chin to finally almost disappear, and then just get depressed. Well, today I went to lunch with some folks from Lockbox, and sat in the back seat—and saw no double-chin! Holy crap, it's gone! It's really, totally gone.

And I don't miss it.

Phone Fun

Not on time to work today. Ah, well. Took a 45-minute lunch to compensate.

A couple days ago, my boss came in while I was on the phone with a particularly pissy bank manager. She just kept bitching about how much there was to do, and how understaffed she was, and how long it took just to open one account... and all I could do was sit there and take it. I mean, what else can you say than "I understand completely" and similar platitudes? Suck it up, lady; you're not the only one with too much to do and no time to do it!

Anyway, my boss caught me giving a couple inaccurate facts, and stuck around until I was done on the phone to straighten me out. While he was doing that, he made a point of telling me to stick up to these people. "You're not here to be a whipping post," he told me. I'm not sure why, but that really kind of made an impression on me. People have told me before that I need to be more assertive, aggressive, stand up for myself, et cetera... but for some reason, hearing it from my all-too-passive boss just really hit me a certain way. I do need to be more assertive. And I'm here to help, not take their shit.

I did crack someone up on the phone today, though. I've decided that explaining things in my normal Diana way will be the easiest and most beneficial, instead of trying to sound all poofy and professional. So, as I was explaining to an Area Operations Manager how to tell her employees to clear items off of a report, I heard myself saying, "Now, here's the funky part..." She had to stop completely and repeat my phrase to her subordinate. :-) I'm not sure if I gained or lost credibility through being myself, but I think I brightened their moment, anyway.

I worked out with my weights yesterday, and I can tell which places I worked more than others. My pecs feel stiff, like I just got back from a drumcorps camp. Everything else ranges from not sore at all to only mildly feeling worked. I think tonight I'm going to work the stuff that's not sore: shoulders, triceps, back. And crunches, too.

I'm confused about how I feel about my body right now. In a given day, I can go from feeling frumpy to feeling fit. Sometimes I can feel the fat settling about my neck and hips, and other times I can feel like my abs are getting tighter and my waist is getting smaller. I did get another compliment at work today, though, from my old boss's boss — she was proud that I'd kept my weight off during the holidays. I didn't have time to tell her about my two spoons' worth of sweet potatoes, which is just as well.

Off to watch HGTV for a while...

My world

Aaron and I just had a major thrift purging, and took a carload of stuff to Goodwill. Seriously. A carload. The backseat and trunk were both full of computerage and old clothes. Mac Classic from Sheryl (rescued from an untimely demise in a landfill), scanner, Mac 7100, older Mac whose number I forget, 13" Apple Monitor (which had to go to Salvation Army instead, since Goodwill doesn't accept monitors), Genesis consoles and controllers, two bags of clothes, some books, an external Mac modem, etc, etc. We freed up a good amount of room in our bedroom and our computer room. And, hopefully, we racked up a good amount of thrift karma, to counteract our bad luck at finding deals at Goodwill and the flea market lately.

I weighed myself again yesterday, and found that my weight loss has temporarily stagnated at eleven pounds. Which, don't get me wrong, I'm still grateful for, but I'm hoping to continue to lose weight at a decent clip, so I'm not tempted to drift from the Atkins Way. I do know I'm still burning fat, though, cause the pee-strip tells me so. Just to show how much weight this week and a half of Atkins has helped me lose, let me show you the lovely chart from my Excel weight-tracking worksheet (yes, I know, I'm a dork):

That's from mid-November of last year to right now. Note the stretch after the wedding where I didn't give a shit about how much I weighed, and didn't even weigh myself at all for a couple months. Also note the dip at the beginning of the chart, and the righteous rebound right after two Christmas dinners in a row. :-)

In case anyone cares about my crazy work soap-opera... Andrew decided that one of the temps who was prepping should move to being a processor, and that Rama (who, you will recall, complained about being a temp and having waaay too many hours) should return to prepping. This took effect on Tuesday, and we're all happy about it. All except Dawn, the other prepping temp, who pretty much hates all of us now, since we were instrumental in getting our old temp canned. But, really, Lorna just didn't get it, for the most part. I won't go into it, since you won't really follow, but suffice to say she was inconsistent and just didn't get it. So, yeah. All of us are in a great mood except for Dawn, who scowls and gives us all a silent treatment like we haven't had since Junior High.

Still on the agenda: Loni's carpal tunnel worker's comp claim. Oh, yeah, and let's see what Ruth says when she gets back from vacation and all the shit's gone down. :-)

P.S. - I'm on vacation today and tomorrow. Aaron and I are going to Ann Arbor tomorrow. Whee! Four-day weekend! Outside of my honeymoon, I haven't had one of those for a long, long time.

Purple Pee and Workplace Bitchfests

Atkins diet is still going well, though I find myself occasionally desiring some ice cream or a serving of lemon shrimp from The China. I just keep telling myself that in another week or so, if we decide to stop the induction phase of our diet after two weeks, I'll be able to buy the carb-controlled ice cream and the Atkins chocolate bars.

Aaron bought the pee strips that turn purple if you're in ketosis (that is, burning your stored fat). His turned from light beige to dark beige on Tuesday or Wednesday, so I checked mine. It promptly turned a lovely mulberry. :-) So, I'm in all-out ketosis. I'm ketosing like a motherfucker. And I've lost five pounds since Monday, though I'm not officially updating the weight record until Sunday morning.

OK, here's the latest on the work saga. Andrew's boss, Ruth, is gone for vacation for another week and a half yet. So, someone in our department (I'm not sure who) talked to Justin, who is basically Andrew's equal in the hierarchy, but over the Item Processing department, and also under Ruth. We ended up having a meeting with Justin (who's probably my age or a year or so younger, and is a really nice guy). Actually, we had a bitch session with Justin, and he let us run it. He went through three sheets of paper, jotting down all the shit we unloaded about how much we can't stand the shit Andrew pulls. Loni went a little over the top and called him a flat-out liar, but I tried to help keep things in perspective by offering specific examples. Everybody pitched in, except Lorna, who was out at the doctor's office today, and maybe even the hospital. We're not sure. Anyway, a lot of complaints were aired, and I think Justin is going to see what he can do to get some of them addressed. Technically, we're part of Item Processing, so I guess he's kind of like our supervisor, in some benevolent uncle kind of way.

That probably made no sense to anyone who isn't familiar with my workplace. Ah, well.

Atkins and Aaron and work. (oh my)

Even though my site seems to be down, I'm still going to post an update.

Aaron and I are finishing up Day #3 of the Atkins Diet, and doing surprizingly well. People have told me they felt like crap during the initial induction phase of the diet — I feel great. I feel less lethargic than I did, though I'd stop short of saying I actually feel energetic. I at least feel more alert... though that could have something to do with my attempts to get to bed before midnight this week and last.

I'm enjoying having him home when I get home. It's like every night is a weekend-night. All except for Monday, when I worked 12 1/2 hours.

At work, we swapped off what clients' accounts we each process, and our temp, Rama, has apparently hit her breaking point with the stuff I used to run. She's now complaining to our boss that she should only be working 30-35 hours a week as a temp, and she's working 40+, and she wants to swap off with one of the other temps, so they can process for awhile and let her prep the work like they do. No dice, as per our meeting last week, but our supervisor, Andrew, said he'll step in whenever she's ready to go home. She was not satisfied with that answer, since it seems like he's just trying to placate her, and not deal with the problem at its source — the problem being that the processors work 45-hour weeks (soon to be longer still), and the preppers are scrambling to barely make their 35 to 40.

We're all at a snapping point. We're sincerely hoping that we can all quit at once, having found other jobs, and leave Andrew floundering. We'll see...

Gravity Games

Hey, remember this from the front page?

Week #1
9/7 - 9-13
No Dew Week

Week #2
9/14 - 9/20
No Pasta Week

Week #3
9/21 - 9/27
No Candy Week

Well, nix that. I'm joining Aaron on his full-on foray into Atkins, starting Monday. (That's tomorrow.) I've got my Atkins profile up on their website, and checked out some recipes. Aaron's gone full-force and bought the carb-counter book and the Atkins cookbook, and borrowed another low-carb cookbook from the library. He likes to eat more meat than I usually do, anyway, so I think the hardest thing for him is going to be cataloguing the carb content of everything that goes into his mouth.

Me, I've already broken myself of my Mountain Dew addiction, and I've pretty much cut out pasta. Those were the hard parts. Now I just have to get up early enough to eat breakfast, and remember to make myself a lunch before I go to bed the previous day (since I won't just be grabbing a frozen meal from the freezer on my way out).

So, we'll see how that goes. I'm looking forward to it myself.

Yesterday, Aaron and I headed out to Cleveland for the Gravity Games. For those of you who aren't big "Extreme Sports" freaks, the Gravity Games includes skateboard vert (ramp) and street (men's and women's), freestyle motocross, wakeboarding, inline skating street and vert, and bike dirt, street, and vert. We watch it on NBC every year, and it's been in Cleveland for the past couple of years, but we haven't gotten out to watch it live. This year, though, since we got the heads-up at the Taste of Cleveland, we went out and got tickets for this bad boy.

We left around noon, and got there around two-ish. Found parking for five bucks, walked the couple blocks to the Games, brandished our tickets, received loose-fitting wristbands, opened my camera case (for no one to actually search it), and we were in. We walked around the Festival Village, which was basically the marketing and merch fairway, and got some stickers and a sampler CD of some kind. Could have gotten more stuff, had we actually been able to approach some of the booths, but the stuff we got was pretty much shoved at us by booth attendants out in the middle of the fairway.

We wandered over and found a bike dirt venue, where kids were allowed to go down a ramp and do their best trick on a five-foot dirt hill. I finished up the roll of film that was in my camera by snapping photos of the kids, and of the one guy who was running the show, who would go down the ramp occasionally, to keep it interesting. He turned a backflip almost as soon as we got there to watch, so I didn't get that on film. :-(

One of the great things about the Gravity Games being in Cleveland (besides the fact that it's close enough to drive) is that your ticket gets you into the Rock Hall for half-price. So, we spent about an hour and a half, I think, wandering around the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. And we didn't even get upstairs! We decided that our little taste of the Rock Hall was just enough to make us want to go make a day of it sometime in the future.

Around 4:00, we headed out and tried to find a spot in the bleachers by the vert ramp. It took some patience, and several seat relocations, but we ended up on the top row of bleachers, right by the WKYC Channel 3 sign. (So, if you happen to watch the Gravity Games on some Sunday afternoon in the next two months, and watch the Men's Skateboard Vert Finals, look for us.) We ended up watching the Women's Skateboard Vert Practice and Demo, so we could have our good seats for the Men's Finals later that evening. I spent one roll of film on the Vert ramp, so we'll see how that comes out.

It was great being able to see some of the skaters live: Bob Burnquist, Andy MacDonald, Bucky Lasek, Pierre-Luc Gagnon, Rune Glifberg... Too bad there was no Tony Hawk, but I guess you'll have that when you retire. *shrug*
We headed out around 9:15pm — after the Finals were over, but before the scores were announced. Made it to the car, found I-90 West, and stopped for dinner at a TGIFridays in Westlake on our way home. Got home around 12:30am or so, which is early for coming in from an out-of-town excursion. Usually it's 3am. :-)

So, good weekend. Yeah. And Aaron's got the next four weeks off of work, so he'll be home when I get home from work every day. w00t! That makes things a little better, too.

My Blog Is Too Mac-a-licious For Ya Babe

Nope, the PC is still not fully functional. I'm about this close *thumb and forefinger one centimeter apart* from taking the stupid thing down to Virtual PCs and making them fix it. OK, guys, don't hose the second hard drive—this is not an option...

I guess the good news is that I haven't gotten any of the new viruses going around. Very few hackers bother to make Mac viruses. :-)

Now, let's see if I can properly segue here without telling you anything my employer doesn't want you to know...

Hey, guess what? Our e-mail was down at work yesterday. And our fax server. And, well, hell, the whole goddamn network was down. Never you mind why. It's a bunch of fun to manually fax clients who either are usually faxed straight from our computers or receive their deposit reports via e-mail. It's also a barrel of monkeys to work harder than usual to get less done than usual, all while the rest of the building is cleaning their workstations and going home early because they have nothing to do without their computers. Ahh... there's nothing quite like having your primary workstation on a network separate from the corporate domain.

My 90-grams-of protein-and-30-minutes-of-exercise-a-day diet died a quick death. Like, two weeks. I'm trying to convince myself that just because I've been off the diet for as long as I was initially on it doesn't mean I'm necessarily a failure. *smirk*

Aaron told me today he's been contemplating the Atkins Diet himself. Yes, I slammed it earlier, I know, but if he's willing to give it a shot, I'll do it with him. He hasn't totally committed to it yet—he wants to double-check what's legal for the first couple of weeks to a month and figure out some potential meals first. Chicken, burgers, and tuna would get kind of tedious after about a week, we'd imagine. Anyway, both of us need to lose the same amount of weight (and, oddly enough, have the same starting point), so if we managed to coordinate our weight-loss efforts, I think we could succeed. All I know is I'm tired of being frumpy.

When Mom visited last weekend, she told me she thinks I don't eat enough. Gee, thanks, Mom. That's just what I need. —Anyway, she's probably more correct than I want to give her credit for. I think eating, for me, is a social thing. When I'm by myself at home, I couldn't give a rat's ass if I eat dinner or not. I say to myself, "Hey, I'm hungry." I look in the kitchen, and if nothing strikes my fancy, I don't eat. I pay my stomach about as much attention as I would a headache (and Aaron always bugs me about not taking anything for my headaches when I have them). I just don't give a shit. If it's the weekend, though, and I'm out with Aaron or other people, I tend to order up something huge and full of pasta. Lately, I've ended up taking half of it home, but still. Maybe I have more of a laziness problem (like, not wanting to actually make anything for dinner). I'd believe that, too. Actually, that's probably right on the mark.

Part of me is sad that all my pretty code will probably get reorganized once I put this back into DreamBeaver. The rest of me smacks the first part and says, "Dreamweaver lives on your GIGAHERTZ machine, and you're currently coding this on your 275 MHz PowerPC. Get a life..."

I *heart* my Macintosh

Finally couldn't stand having an un-updated blog. Since I've been downloading fix-it stuff on my Mac, zipping it to floppies, transferring it to the broken PC, reconstituting it, and attempting to fix it, I've been feeling the love for my trusty Mac. I ended up using Fetch to grab the code for my blog, and (since my blog is too large to be opened by SimpleText, and I don't seem to have BBEdit on my computer) using MS Word 98 to edit code.

Also, I have to give it up for me. By using stylesheets, I have made my little blog so much easier to update manually. It's so much easier to type <p class="entry"> than trying to set all the font sizes and colors, indents, and all that crap. I'm also editing the HTML straight just to try to trick Word out of reformatting everything for me, as it is oft wont to do.

So, here's the skinny on the PC. I was a little too eager to get my kick-ass system going, and failed to note that I had no driver disk.

This is bad, mmm-kay? So, between my existing Win 98 SE cab files (thoughtfully stored on my computer by Sheryl), Aaron's Win 98 Update CD, and downloading/transferring files from the internet, I have seriously fucked up my OS. It refuses to recognize that I have an onboard nVidia video card, and sound card, and it keeps giving me errors when I try to install the drivers for the onboard LAN. I finally did download the drivers I needed, and get them on the PC (which required nine, count 'em, nine floppies), but Setup.exe doesn't launch. I had to attempt to load the drivers manually... but I think the damage had already been done.

I asked Loni at work if she had a Windows 98 Second Edition disc I could borrow, and it turns out that she does. I'm planning to bring it home tomorrow (assuming she remembers to bring it to work), install the fucker, and hope I don't have to wipe my entire C: drive. ...Though it wouldn't be the end of the world. Most of my important stuff is on the other, newer secondary drive.

On the weight loss/fitness front: I have been attempting to raise my protein intake to 91 grams a day. That's harder than it looks—yesterday, I felt like all I was eating was meat. Today I made myself a yummy dinner: two chicken breasts baked with a glaze consisting of honey mustard, organic honey, the juice of one lemon, one teaspoon of soy sauce, and two slices of sushi ginger. (Hey, we didn't have any ground ginger, OK?) Because I was feeling the need for some noodleage, I also made some ramen noodles, topped with a little butter, parsley, and lemon pepper. And, just to be silly, I garnished my plate with two lemon wedges. (I always find it silly to think about food presentation when I'm the only one going to be eating it. But I need to realize that the look of the food is half of the experience. —OK, maybe not half. But some.)

I have also eaten a banana for breakfast every weekday this month, and have exercised at least half an hour (with the exception of Tuesday, when I thought I was making progress with the computer-beast, and didn't want to quit).

Wow... I haven't spent this long coding straight HTML in... years? And to think I used to take pride in this ability. Maybe I should do this more often.

Oh, yeah. On the job front. (Did you even know there was a job front?) I sent an e-mail to one of the managers in Sky's Marketing Department today, detailing my desire to work in said department. I told her where I currently worked, how long I'd worked for Sky (almost a year, fyi), and gave her my qualifications, including my bachelor's degree and my experience in graphic design, web design, multimedia authoring, and video editing. I requested that she (or the appropriate person) let me know if there would be any positions opening up in the department anytime soon. She sent me a prompt reply, and copied the two VP's of Marketing, and told me she was forwarding my message on to the people who did the hiring for the department. So... the ball is rolling. We'll see what happens...

Unk. Now to upload and make sure I did this dang thing right.

Yup. Another Entry.

Not much to report. I am proud to report, though, that I ate breakfast *and* lunch today, and I jumped for a half hour on my trampoline. I opted against a walk/jog due to the severe thunderstorms and the tornado warning that was issued as I was driving home from work. Yipes. Anyway, the trampoline was fun but challenging, as I actually jumped for 30 minutes straight, instead of giving up after I got tired. (Probably should have stopped after 20 minutes, though, since that's when my knees and ankles started actually hurting on every impact.) I did it while watching the 10:00 Fox News—while the news was on, I'd do the jog-bounce in place thing, where the balls of your feet don't really leave the mat. During the commercials, though, I'd do full-on six-inch-high jumps (much to the dismay of my bouncing boobies). Forty-five minutes later, I can tell that my heart rate is still a little elevated. My breathing has long since returned to normal, though — I'm not that bad off.

Ended up staying at work a little longer than I needed today in order to get my 40 hours, so I got 45 minutes OT. Sweet. Andrew and I stayed after all the work was done in order to compress some little-used files on the server to reclaim some hard drive space. He was in rare form today, though, so we ended up having some particularly pleasant time together. Who'da thunk it? I found out that he turned 30 on Wednesday (we all thought he was in his early- to mid-30's already), and had kept it ultra-low profile, to avoid any embarrassing "you're old" parties. I'm considering writing him a "Gotcha Card" (remember, those are like RCC Pizza Points at Sky) just to say Happy Belated Birthday. Ah, what the hell.

I also narrowly missed having to work two weekends in a row—Loni's husband has been in the hospital this week with major heart blockage. She was on vacation out-of-state on Monday and Tuesday, then Wednesday morning she came in to work, but left at 10:30 to take her husband to the doctor. Seems he was having difficulty breathing while mowing the lawn or climbing the stairs in their house. Turns out he had one 90% blockage and one 60% blockage, but they didn't find this out until they admitted him to the hospital and ran some tests. Anyway, Loni has only been to work for about three hours this week, so we were assuming she would want to be at the hospital or with her husband this weekend. Well, we were wrong. Her husband is being released on Saturday, so she's coming in to work. At first I wasn't sure whether she was stir-crazy from being at the hospital, or if she was antsy just to get back to work. Turns out that she wouldn't have been able to take my next weekend to work, so she opted to just work the schedule as is. Hmm.

Hey, I just managed three decent paragraphs out of "not much to report." I think I'm getting better at this blogging thing. ^_^

My Weight-Loss Plan... For Real This Time

All right, guys. I'm going to proclaim my goals out loud (so to speak) and unashamedly, so that I cannot renounce my plans.

I am fat. More than fat, I am obese. I can't seem to locate the entry where I discussed how I'm not-quite-morbidly obese and linked to the scary Flash BMI calculator (Beth? Do you remember?), but we've gone over the fact several times in the months before the wedding. I am still the same weight I was in November... which could be good or bad. I choose to be grateful that I haven't gained any more weight. I maintain that there is some validity to the concept of a weight setpoint, since I seem to have stabilized around a given weight.

Oh, hell. I'm not going to dance around it anymore. I weigh 250lbs. *collective gasp*

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am 70 pounds overweight by the most conservative estimate. Being my ideal weight (my personal ideal weight, not what "they" say) would put me back in middle school — though I'm now about three inches taller than I was then. (Yeah, I hit my growth spurt in sixth grade. Oh, the horror...)

So, you say, whatcha gonna do about it? Well, I'm glad you asked.

First, I'm going to create a little spot for current weight info in my sidebar on the main page. That way, everyone can cheer me on (*nudge, nudge*). I'll include my current weight (embarrassing though it may be), BMI (body mass index), and body fat percentage, and indicators as to whether each is rising or falling.

Next, I'm going to set goals. Actually, let's do that right now. *scribbles math problems on scrap paper* OK, let's assume I can lose one pound a week. That's fair and relatively simple, right? Right. So, that would put me at my ideal weight on New Year's Eve 2005. Not this coming New Year's, but the following. (Good God, that's a long time.)

But I need short-term goals, too, so let's figure I'll aim for ten pounds in ten weeks? That means I'm shooting for 240 by... oh, let's say October 1st. Certainly I can do that... right?

— There. I just wrote it on my calendar. Hang on, do I need a five-pound mark? Oh, OK... *writing on calendar again* There. The end of September.

...Oh, yeah. Don't I need a diet and exercise plan now? D'oh!

Actually, I have several books on the subject (yes, yes, Aaron and I have the Atkins Diet book...), but my favorite is The 200 Calorie Solution. No, it's not a super-starvation diet. :-) It tells all about thermogenesis, which is the body's burning of calories after a meal, and explains how to get the most out of your exercise by walking or doing other exercise within an hour after a meal. The idea is that if you can boost your metabolism just a little, that will be enough to raise your basal metabolic rate so you continue to burn calories at a higher rate. The process expounds upon itself, and eventually your body actually becomes an efficient fat-burner. Theoretically. I like this program because it strokes my food-ego; I don't think I eat more than your average person, nor do I eat worse food. I do eat too many starches, though, and I'll admit to being a pastaholic. I'll give you that. Overall, though, I think I'm just too sedentary. (Case in point: I'm sitting here blogging while I should be out practicing what I'm preaching.)

Another favorite book of mine is The Setpoint Diet. It's more dietary than exercise-based, but it's portion control rather than calorie-counting. It also includes an exercise factor, though, as should any good weight-loss program. The hook to this diet is the groupings of foods into the stardard food groups, plus an "A list," a "B list," and "freebies." The concept is that complete elimination of any food group (ahem, Atkins Diet) is unhealthy for the body itself and a dieter is less likely to remain on a diet which completely removes a given food or group of foods. Eventually you'll go off the diet, or just cheat, and the weight will come back. (Yes, I know there is a throng of Atkins supporters out there... I side with the anti-Atkins bunch, even though I haven't tried the diet myself. Call me a skeptic, call me hypocritical, call me stupid, but I still say it's just not sound.) Anyway, on this diet, you're allowed to have, say, a couple beers or a piece of cake or some real mayo. Just not a whole lot of it, and not all the time.

The reason it's called the Setpoint Diet is because the author is one of the believers of setpoint theory, which says that your body tries to stabilize itself at a given weight, just like it does with temperature (with shivering and sweating). If you kick-start your metabolism with exercise, and reach the lower setpoint without your body thinking it's starving, your body will attempt to stabilize at the new, lower setpoint. Setpoint theory has also been supported with underweight people who try to gain weight, fyi. (I'll look up some references later, for the skeptical.)

So, yeah. My first obstacles are a.) walking for 30 continuous minutes a day, and b.) eating breakfast. Speaking of, I should go for a walk now.

Anybody need a diet buddy? Come on, I know you're out there...

Can I Borrow Your Muse?

My friend Kris burned me a CD of Vegas Video 3.0 this weekend. I didn't want it so much for its DV-editing capabilities as for its audio multitracking. I've felt like composing again, for the first time in about four years — I'm planning to hook up my keyboard, and to make some drum tracks on my computer, and to sing into my built-in monitor mic, and make some generally low-fi stuff. When my first song is done, I'll give a cookie to the first person who can name the artist whose style I'm imitating.

Assuming I ever get it done and feel OK enough about it to post it...

Today at work, Mary (the upper-middle-aged, slightly flaky one) insisted that I must still be losing weight. "How do you do it?" she asked. I felt like telling her that she only notices that I'm losing weight when I wear two particular flattering shirts to work, but I knew she wouldn't listen. So, I told her what I've been doing: walking at least once a day and cutting back on sweets. That's all I've successfully done, anyway. I must admit, though, that it made me feel good to know that someone thinks I look better than I did. Maybe my weight is redistributing itself as I'm losing a little at a time.

Now comes the bitchy part of today's variegated blog entry. I know Amanda doesn't read my blog, so I'm going to be blunt and blatant. [Note: I did edit this after the initial post, to back off on the animosity factor. Just in case.]

Amanda blogs at work. A lot.

Yesterday, I decided to write down a play-by-play of all the ways she stalls from doing work vs. all the ways I stall from doing work. Loni, the third cog in our wheel-o-processing, never stalls from doing work. To give you an idea of how our office is set up: I sit at a computer and run checks through a little machine that reads the MICR numbers at the bottom. (This is what I mean by "processing" work.) If I spin in my chair to face my left, there's another computer there where I fax and e-mail reports to clients, and log what accounts I've processed so far. On the other side of this computer, in the next desk/cubicle over, is Loni. Loni and I face the same wall while we're processing. Behind Loni sits Amanda. Loni and Amanda sit back-to-back while they're processing, but face the same way — away from me — when they send reports on their other computers. The end result of this setup is that I can see over Amanda's shoulder when she's blogging on the computer she should be sending reports from.

Anyway, yesterday's tally: nine blog-checks. Minimum. Because, see, while I'm processing, I can't see her unless I do an over-the-shoulder glance just because I hear her keyboard going clickety-clack. And she's not always posting; sometimes she's checking to see if anyone's responded to her post, or she's checking other people's blogs, or she's taking surveys, et cetera. Me: yesterday, I e-mailed Aaron twice and looked at weather.com three times (mainly to discover I wouldn't be taking my lunchtime walk due to snow).

Today's tally: twelve blog-checks. Minimum. These were shorter but more frequent than yesterday's. I only checked weather.com twice, and didn't e-mail Aaron at all.

I guess my main rant about this is, if you're going to blog during the workday, you forfeit your right to comment or complain about how long work is lasting. Because we work until all the work is done. Only in rare circumstances can we lock up work and just get back to it tomorrow.

On the flip side of this, though... rarely, if ever, do any of us take our allowed breaks. We take half-hour lunches when we're alloted a full hour, and we work through our two ten-minute breaks. So, if you look at it like that, stalling at the computer ten times a day for two minutes each time is equal to taking a ten-minute break twice a day. But then you get into the "using Sky Bank resources (i.e. bandwidth) for personal reasons" argument, which I don't feel like delving into...

Oh, and one more thing. Yesterday, Amanda's name was chosen out of a hat and she was named Employee of the Month. She (therefore, we, since I'm her ride) would have gotten a parking spot close to the employee door... had she not been a temp. Yep, she got it taken away from her because she isn't a full-fledged Sky employee. Which kind of sucks in a way, but also made me snicker in a way. The major bad point to this is that her motivation is now at an all-time low. I guess mine would be, too.

OK, Amanda... I guess I'll know now if you read my blog.

T-minus Two Months...

Yep... I'll be Mrs. Schnuth in about 60 days. Kinda scary in a cool kind of way.

I guess I should keep all the girls who read this updated on the wedding planning thing. Oh, yeah, and maybe Dan and Eric will be moderately interested, too. :-)

Well, Sheryl has been kind enough to act as a surrogate bridesmaid while I've been getting my dress altered, traipsing 20 minutes north to Rossford on Tuesday, then on Saturday, then again a couple weeks from now. She's also helped me find some appropriate undergarments, since the neat thingy I bought online totally peeks out of the back and armpits of my dress. Gah. Anyway, I'm sure she's seen more of my pale flesh than she ever bargained for.

I was totally lucky to get as nice of a dress as I did for only $99 on eBay. (The auction's expired now, but once the wedding's done and Aaron's seen the dress, I'll post up the auction page that I saved.) I'm not used to wearing form-fitting apparel, so the dress actually makes me feel thinner, I think.

Speaking of... Now that I've been on a weight-loss kick (sort of) for four or five months, making a graph of my weight as I go, I can really tell when I gain my monthly few pounds. My graph makes a pretty picture like waves now. :-) I've pretty much accepted the fact that I'll look like I do now at the wedding. I won't look like I did during drumcorps, and I won't look like I did even five years ago. (Would you believe I put on 50 pounds between 1997 and the year 2000? Seriously. That's amazing to me. What's even more amazing is how much longer than that it'll take to get that weight back off...)

This week's goal is to take two walks daily, preferably after meals. Should be a good week for it, except for Sunday, when snow flurries may rear their ugly heads.

Man, my writing is all over the place today. I can't seem to concentrate on one topic long enough to get a good thing going. Bah. Maybe I should go watch the news... although I know what'll be on.

Random Thoughts

Today at work I jotted down several blogworthy thoughts I had over the course of the mind-numbing workday:

When the temperature in the office reaches a certain point — say, 75°F or so — the vents open to allow outside air to filter in and cool things down. Over the past couple of days, this outside air has smelled of a slight tinge of spring. So cruel... so cruel. Barely above freezing, and my nostrils are dreaming of the spring thaw.

Some people at my work have accused others of being resistant to change. One person in particular, by the name of Loni, has done this accusing. Since our boss has begun a transition in our record-keeping from Microsoft Excel (which Loni set up herself about three years ago) to an Access database, it's amazing how resistant this accuser is to change...

I read an article about premarital counseling in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. It had mundane but important questions like, "will you love your spouse if she gains 50 pounds?" Then I realized how much Aaron must really love me... because I have gained 50 pounds since he met me. Literally. I'm surprized he hasn't staged an intervention in the meantime. :-)

I'm not eating enough. (Nice segue.) I wake up too late to eat breakfast (I have to be awake awhile before I can stomach it), then when I eat lunch, I just have one of those little Weight Watchers-type frozen meals. When I'm done eating, I'm still hungry. I wait the prescribed 20 minutes after eating, for the food to "hit bottom," and I'm still hungry. It's easier to ignore the hunger while I'm at work, but I'm sure that it's not healthy, anyway. Then I come home and am either too hungry to eat, or I go on an evening-long food binge. Ramen... canned veggies... hot dogs... ham... plum... all the stuff I probably should have eaten (or not) during the course of the day, crammed into a few hours of down-time at home. I need to fix this if I want to lose weight and be healthier.

Loni was telling about the wedding she went to in Chicago over the weekend — apparently the bride wore a scarf over her shoulder, bearing her family's Irish colors. Neat idea. Then it occured to me... if I were to claim so-called citizenship of only one family in my genealogy, which would it be? There are certain lines I've been inclined to research more than others — some because they're easier to find, some because they're more interesting to learn about, and some because I'm closest to their descendants. I think I'd probably claim citizenship in the White family if I had to choose one. That's my Granny's mama, Maudie (which would be my mom's mother's mother's mother, my great-great-grandmother). Interesting that I choose the matriarchal line; we've got some strong females in my family. ...So what happened to me?

As far as my last blog entry, where I wondered if I'd become less of a person because I've ceased to struggle against my less-than-relevant job, I've come to a conclusion of sorts. I'd rather be sated, unruffled and relatively content in a job I didn't intend to work than be miserable and unsatisfied in the same job. If I can ride things out, waiting in the wings and watching for opportunities, and make rent money in the process, why not?

Mary at work thinks I've lost weight. I was wearing my new black pants with the elastic waistband that doesn't make my fat ooze out where it shouldn't, and on top of that I wore a thigh-length blouse. I think it was all an optical illusion, since I've really only lost six pounds.

Oh, and in case you were wondering: no, I didn't write all of this at work. I took notes so I'd know what to write later. I don't have that kind of free time at my job...

Heroes

No, no, not David Bowie.

I have weird trains of thought. I hadn't done my daily blog checks for a few days, so I headed first to Sheryl's site, then to Beth's, where I got impersonally schooled for not updating more often. (::ouch::) Anyway, I read about her weight-loss frustrations, which turned my thoughts to my own weight-loss kick. (After, of course, wondering why Beth would think she needs to lose weight.)

To help bolster my weight-loss motivation, I put a big scowling picture of Henry Rollins on my desktop. He's looking directly at me, silently chanting his seven-word solution to losing weight: "Eat less. Eat better. Move your body." This has become my mantra since seeing Henry's spoken word gig in Columbus on Saturday.

This thought led me to the conclusion: Henry Rollins is my fitness hero.

I've ruminated on the hero/role-model concept ever since my pre-teen years in Sunday School, when they told us to find a role model and emulate him or her. It occured to me even then that I couldn't find anyone who was quite where I wanted to be, who was quite who I wanted to be. Since that point, I've denounced the idea of an overall personal role-model as absurd. If I try to be Person X... then who am I? And how does my attempt to be Person X belittle him or her — especially if I'm successful? Her uniqueness factor is kicked down a notch. As is my own.

On the other hand... if I could find someone who personifies each aspect of myself, and emulate that aspect of them, our uniqueness as individuals remains intact. Plus, I'm not forced to cheapen myself on other aspects of my being that Person X might not have, or have as strongly as I do.

Some of my other heroes are a little personal, so I won't blab them here. Some of my personal heroes change from year to year. Some are famous (like Hank). Some of them are people you know.

I challenge you to identify your own personal heroes. Be truthful. It might be strange on some levels, but you might be surprized at who you actually emulate.