Sweaty and Excited

I've been trying to keep up my physical activity since I finished my aqua running class and the H20 Bootcamp with Synergistic Effects in June. I've been attending the occasional Deep Water class at the Y. I've been on my bike and a stationery bike. I've been lifting weights (when I don't get bored of it -- I totally need to go to a class to get this stuff in. I don't push myself hard enough with the weights on my own) and I've been walking.

Mostly, I walk the same 5.5-mile path from my house down to the corner of Windsor and Prospect on the bike path and back. My goal by the end of the summer was to walk fast enough to theoretically be able to walk less than 16 minute miles. I've come close and then had some issue with my back or foot and had to slow down. But I have to admit that once the weather dropped to a normal temperature, I've been like a speed demon. And today, I averaged a 15'07"/mile time. That's good enough (if I can maintain it for twice as long) to walk a Disney Half Marathon.

Now that I know I can do it on significantly torn tendons (and probably shot ligaments) I have something to shoot for once all that damage is repaired in a few weeks.

The other happy I had was that I went to my weigh in yesterday at Weight Watchers. I had been up 1.5 lbs from my vacation to Montreal last week, but this week I lost that 1.5 and an additional 1.5, so I'm down 9.2 lbs overall in 3 weeks. Fifteen more pounds to go and I'll be where I was when I ran the half marathon in 2011, which is exactly where I want to be.

I've been putting together a food plan for when I'm laid up, so hopefully I'll be able to keep up the loss even with the giant cast on. :-) I think I'll have to change days/times I weigh in though to make it easier on MacTroll to drive me up there. I guess getting up at 6:30 a.m. to get me to a weigh in at 7:30 a.m. isn't his idea of a great way to spend a Saturday. :-)

And guess who starts first grade on Wednesday!

Losing more than my mind

Well, crap! It's kind of hard to argue with progress. I weighed in at Weight Watchers today and lost 7.2 lbs in a week. Yes, it's mostly random water because I was bloated like mad last week following a night with two beers and some peanuts at the Esquire where we watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

But it was nice to see the scale go down for a while. I think, kind of like changing one's exercise regimen, it's nice to just approach the diet in a different way.

Tomorrow, I leave for Montreal. I've got my passport ready to fly.

A Change Up -- Sort of

Carle Weight Management closed last week, and I had been looking around for a program that would help hold me accountable, but not be quite so hospital driven. I've been doing a lot of cooking on my own, which is good (when it's dinners) and which is not so good (when it's cookies). It's not that everything doesn't taste fine, it's that I consume a lot more when desserts are in my house.

So, I needed to implement some environmental controls. I needed to take a look at what was in my cupboards and recognize that if there is a container of honey, I will devour it a tablespoon at a time on a LOAF of bakery bread in 14.2 seconds. If the honey isn't in the house. I don't touch MacTroll's bread. (Hence the reason I could never be vegan.) Anyway, you know you've hit rock bottom and that you have a trigger food when you're putting tablespoon after tablespoon on top of some lame 35 calorie Healthy Life wheat bread... and you've eaten 5 pieces because it's not feeding you want you want. But you also know that you can't dish out what you want, because you'd totally slam that entire loaf, which is a lot more than 175 calories total.

It's like if you use a lot of substitutes, you forget what the real thing tastes like. And the next time you reintroduce it, it's like having an orgasm. Food hits some very passionate parts of me, and it's been hard over the last few years recognizing that those emotional wants don't die out, just because you deny them for 9 short months. They stick around for when life hits you with mega change. And then you realize that in the most ideal situation, you were able to conquer the food cravings. But in a harder life situation, you caved -- some times. And it was enough not to gain it all back but to gain enough of it back that you're within 10 lbs of losing your Onederland status.

I didn't realize it had gotten that bad until today, when I showed up for the 7:30 a.m. Weight Watchers meeting. It's odd, really, being a person who has lost a ton of weight and showing up in a class where almost no one outside the leader has gone past the 10 percent mark. I kept that information to myself. I didn't learn anything new, but I did have someone weigh me, and I did recognize that feeling of wanting to do well versus beating myself up for messing up and then promising to start all over again the next day.

It helps when your leader was a WW drop out around 10 times before it finally clicked and she was successful. She's been keeping her weight off as long as I've been keeping the majority of my weight off. I have questions I want to ask her when I'm more comfortable. 

I'm going to probably switch to the Sunday 8:30 a.m. class down the road, just simply because I like not having to wake up at 6:30 a.m. to get there at 7:30 a.m. It's a bummer that the meeting place moved to the opposite end of town, but I'll live. I just can't walk or bike over the interstate overpass. I'm not comfortable with that.

I checked out their oatmeal because it was on sale, but when I saw that it had 39 percent fiber based on the added chicory root (inulin), I put it back. Holy cow, I would be passing gas all day long. I loved the HMR oatmeal, mostly because it had 60 percent of my day's worth of iron, and as a girl who can't ever have enough iron...I think I may order some packages online.

So, here I am with 25 lbs to get back off. It'll be interesting since I'm scheduled to have my surgery on both of the peroneal tendons in my right foot on Sept. 13, am force feeding a cat 4 times a day, have X-man underfoot for another month and am traveling twice, including a 3-day journey to Montreal. But I went with the plan that is the least restrictive about what goes into my mouth... so the choices regarding nutrition are entirely left up to me.

Okay, I'm wandering downstairs to cook some peas, carrots and tempeh with miso-almond sauce, which according to the recipe builder at Weight Watchers is 8 points per serving. It feels weird after dividing everything up into calories based on carbs, protein and fats on Loseit to suddenly just use these program numbers which are based on the same information (and fiber), but not really know what it means. I guess in a while it will be like visiting Canada. I can't remember how to convert the weather from F to C, but I know what the temperatures feel like when I'm there, so I don't leave unprepared for the weather.

The other odd part about this, is that I feel like I'm doing it by myself this time. Last time, I had a whole group of folks going about the same quest, except we all had much bigger numbers to lose. I don't feel quite as desperate this time. It's not all or nothing. It's just a kind of continual goal. It'll get there when it's ready to get there, and not a moment sooner. But I guess that's how life is working these days... Maya... California...Food... It'll turn out the way it'll turn out and all you can do is prepare, plan, execute and hope for the best.

The Big Loser: Week 1

At 9:45 a.m. I weighed in after week 1 on Weight Watchers. I weighed 236 lbs with clothes and shoes. That's a 5 lb loss. I got a little star sticker with a five on it for my efforts.

I also determined that the weight on my scale at home is 2 lbs less than the WW scale, which is good to know, so I'm not nearly as bewildered after my meeting as when I got on the scale this morning naked and it said 233 lb. (1 lb. extra is clothes and shoes).

I am saving a majority of my points for dinner tonight. The CARE moms have a night out at Kamakura. And sushi is 2 points a piece (for my Alaska roll). I have to figure out the edamame value too. 

One of my favorite things about summer is the amount of good fruit at the store. I'm a nectarine fiend. But yesterday I noticed Schnucks has fresh cherries on sale this week at $2.98 a pound. X-man loves cherries. I have to cut the pits out of them, which is a pain and turns my fingers red. But I think he's getting bored of bananas.

However, he and Lightning McColin did a STELLAR job of eating some giant strawberries yesterday and putting the stems back in the container

Oh, and I wanted to point out that I planned it out and had small banana split Blizzards at DQ twice this week. :-) And that's unusual, since I'm a Jarling's kind of girl, and I've had DQ maybe 12 times since we moved here in 2003. But as I get smaller the points I'm allowed to eat lessen. So I might as well take advantage of a 28-point day with a 10-point ice cream on two pretty hot and muggy days. 

Can I admit something?

I hate having to count 16 animal crackers out of the bag to determine my 3-point snack serving.

What's wrong about this is that with some other addictions, you stop cold turkey in detox. Not that that's at all fun and games. Seriously. That's really crappy hard. 

But in a really, really selfish way, I feel like there's some emotional validation to me comparing what I'm going through with Weight Watchers to someone handing an alcoholic a big bottle of vodka and telling her she can only have one shot. 

I know this will get better. In two weeks, I will still be annoyed that I have the problem, but I'll have learned to live with it. I did it before, and it was all good until I fell off the wagon. 

But right now, it's really frustrating.

June 1: Summer Arrives

X-man and I spent two hours playing in the backyard today. We planted some tomatoes, which involved a lot of digging in the dirt. Then he dug in the sandbox while I blew up the inflatable swimming pool. The goal was to get it up, so the sun would warm the water. X-man saw me finish it and wasted no time in climbing in and lying down (sans water) while I blew up the slide portion. 

I'm one of those parents who doesn't purchase high-end swimming equipment. I spent $30 on this sucker, and it's not the best designed thing, but I didn't expect it to be. I have to figure out how to put some grip down on the steps of the plastic blow up ladder so it's easier for little toddlers to climb without slipping. 

Anyway, X-man went and dragged over the hose and started demanding water, so I changed him into a swim diaper ("Nemo, Mama! Nemo!) I let him fill it up by himself. He got to decide when he had enough water (which I determined was FREEZING), but he didn't care at all. 

After swimming for a while and going up and down the slide, we stopped and had some crackers and juice. I filmed our conversation over food, which I'll try to post up on X-man's web site soon. Aunt Terry and Uncle Lester came over and he got to show them the pool. 

During all of this MacTroll was sneezing his way through mowing the front yard. Since I suffered through the backyard earlier in the week, we determined this was a fair course of action. 

Today also marked the first day we took all the "ba-bas" away from X-man. (Ba-ba = pacifier) We had to do a few extra hugs at naptime to get him settled and ready to go down. He was in his room talking to himself for a while, but I think that's expected. 

It was also my third day of Weight Watchers. First two days went great, I even avoided badness at Lightning McColin's fest of kid foods (I was the watermelon queen and the burger I had was great!) But today I made a mistake at lunch. I ate a small avocado. Not a uber large one.  A tiny one. But still 1/4 of it is 2 points. So I wasted 8 points on that thing on top of my cup of spinach, which was zero points. Oh well, this is what I get for not calculating before I put things on my plate.

I'll get through. I am drinking all kinds of water, which I find awesome. Because I am the world's worst water drinker. 

Someone out there with appropriate BMI drink a martini for me, okay?

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

1. Today began implementation of "If you're violent, you'll sit and be silent" (Thank you, Freak for the rhyme.)

2. Tomorrow I will begin 10 weeks of Weight Watchers. I have an emotional attachment to food. I'm like an alcoholic or a diabetic. I don't get to drink/eat like everyone else does. My body has no real forward moving metabolism, and I have water retention issues. So since I can't not eat... I'm going to have to get real focused on being healthy. I've always known this, but I've spent the last two years in denial. 

3. Today I started writing fiction again. It's the first time in months, and it was just writing down a dream I had last night, but it still counts.

4. I will stain the fence before July 4 weekend pretty much by myself.

5. I had to cut some items off my CARE calendar due to Xander's swim lessons at school. I had to pick, and I picked swimming because he LOVES it, and it's free...