156.8 -- Summer's Here

2 pounds in two weeks. Better than a gain, but not what I'm looking for. I've got to step it up a notch this week. And stay on plan over the weekend. Weekends can undo a week of good work. And what's the point of that?

I haven't been exercising. That has to change.

The good news is we have a summer membership at our old gym, the one with the great pool and exercise classes. It's the gym where I learned to love running and Body Pump. And where I built some killer arms in 60 days.

So starting June 1 I have no excuses. Plus, I'll have to wear a swimsuit soon. Is there anything more powerfully motivating to getting in shape than that?

School's out and summer' here. Time to take advantage of the next 3 months and get these 15-20 pounds off for really reals.

Vickie, on the cake leftovers-- the first one we had a tad left, and I had one more slice at home after her party. And felt like crap after. The one on her birthday we had quite a bit left over, and I left it for the restaurant staff. No way was it coming back to my house!

GG, thanks for the body bug idea. I'll have to look into that.

Thank you all for commenting. It feels good to be back.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod Touch

157.2 - All or Nothing

I've been struggling this week with the whole all or nothing thing. You know, the self talk of "I ate a piece of cake, so I might as well eat whatever else I want because I've blown it today. I'll just start over tomorrow."

Almost every day I've had something to eat that I shouldn't have. I've had to decide--am I going to let it derail me? Or am I going to soldier on like I didn't stray?

Some days have been better than others.

Saturday was nuts. It started off well--I ran week 1, day 3 of C25k. Then we had Sophie's birthday party Saturday at noon, then she had a Brownie outing from 4:30 - 8:30 pm (I actually took a nap for a couple of hours, but it was a carb-induced food coma resulting from leftover birthday cake).

Saturday night I helped my sister with my Dad for his overnight care. I got there around 10:30 p.m. We didn't lie down to try to sleep until 3 a.m. It's just the way Dad is. He doesn't operate according to anyone's clock but his own. Saturday night I ate pretty poorly. But, hell, having a quarter of a pumpkin pie at 2 a.m. at my Dad's was frankly the least amount of damage I could have done. My sister keeps his house stocked with packaged sugar bombs. At least I chose one based off a fruit.

I barely slept--my bed was a split-rocker love seat, so it was too short & had a hard line running horizontally across the middle of my body. We were back up at 7:30 taking care of Dad again. I was obviously exhausted, and when I got home around noon I was pretty much good for nothing. I don't remember what I ate Sunday--nothing horrible and I think I stayed on plan the best I could. But I was a slug.

This week has been a challenge, too. We've had something every night--Monday a visit with an out of town friend, yesterday was Sophie's birthday at her favorite restaurant (and of course she got another cake). Today I had a work lunch and only ate a small portion of the linguine that came with the chicken breast, but I did have about half the lemon pie that was sitting on the table when we arrived (next to the salad plates.... irony of ironies).

I could have thrown in the towel for the entire week, I guess. I haven't lost any more weight, but I know I'm holding onto salt (we did eat Japanese hibachi last night, & even though I didn't order the fried rice, I did eat the grilled veggies & chicken & used the dipping sauces, and, oh yeah, had a piece of my 9 year old's birthday cake). And it would be a lot worse had I said screw it & started eating oreos at night again.

So, instead, I'm eating my 2 cups of raw veggies now, and not going to freak because I can't be perfect in the face of LIFE. I'm going to celebrate birthdays with my family & have a piece of cake. I'm going to eat what's served to me at a networking business lunch with 300 other women that I paid $14 for. I'm going to eat pie when I'm helping to take care of my dying father. I loved Jill's post on this issue. It makes me feel not so alone.

My waist line is shrinking more slowly than I'd like. But at least for this week, I found the middle ground between all or nothing.

156.4 - Sharing the good stuff

Yes, I know it's a shocker. Here I am just a few days after a post, posting again.

Funny, it's easier to get on here when I'm doing well.

Also? No one but you guys cares about what I'm eating or how much I'm exercising. I've found that over the last 6 months while I've been sedentary & a slave to food, the last thing I want to read about on Facebook (which is my primary social media venue & how I stay connected to a lot of you... if you're not my friend yet but want to be, email me your name & city & I'll send you a friend request) is how great someone else's life is. If I'm in a crappy mood or my life feels like it's falling apart, I have a hard time dealing with all the "I'm so blessed! I love my husband! My kids are brilliant! My life is so great! The sky is blue in my world even when it's raining!" Blah blah blah.

I'm in no way saying that these happy things shouldn't be shared on Facebook. They should. It makes people feel good to share their joy, and it's MY PROBLEM, not theirs, when I get all bah humbug in the face of someone else's good fortune. Hell, I've posted more than my share of blue-sky updates.

But, being in the curmudgeon camp has taught me something--a lot of people on FB don't give a shit that I'm on a new diet plan & am having a great week. A lot of people, probably the majority of them actually, are struggling & unhappy & their dark sides get the best of them when they read a bunch of "Happy Happy Joy Joy" on Facebook.

All that to say--I know that I can come HERE and spread the joy and you all will be nothing but welcoming and pat-me-on-the-back supportive.

So, onto the good stuff. I lost 3.5 pounds during my first week on The Perfect Plan. I haven't felt hungry or deprived at all. I've had a few cravings & slipped a couple of times (darn golden Oreos), but my slips have been minor (3 cookies in a week and a half is nothing). I'm eating more veggies & fruits than I ever have on any diet. I'm eating nothing at all processed, which I find to be frankly amazing. I got the recipes Wednesday (the first week they only give you two--one for the best ranch dressing ever & one for muffins that you get twice a day) and there are a lot that will be fun to make & fabulously delicious. I can't wait to make my grocery list & start cooking.

And, icing on the cake, I've done 2 days of the Couch to 5K program this week. There's a great iPod app for C25K that makes it way easy to do this training program. I am totally psyched about it. To put things in perspective: the first time I did C25K was in 2007 and I weighed 195 pounds. I did the beginning weeks' running portions at 4.5 mph! Wednesday on Week 1 Day 2 I ran all 9 running legs at 6.0 mph. That's a ten minute mile! The running legs are only 60 seconds but the pace wasn't hard until the last two legs, so I think 6.0 is a sweet spot right now.

I'm already noticing a difference in climbing the stairs at work (I have about 40 pounds of crap I carry with me every morning--I kid you not.... 4 bags minimum... my purse, my "everything else" tote bag, my laptop, and my lunch with water bottle. It's a lot of crap). And I just don't feel as weak as I was feeling, even though I haven't started lifting weights yet (Vickie, I totally am going to set my weights by the couch & start lifting at night while watching TV. What a great idea).

I don't know why it's finally clicking now. I hope I can stay in this groove for a long time. Knowing I have a place to go to be accountable for my food choices & weigh ins make a big difference. I feel hopeful & motivated again. Getting the sugar & carbs out of my life also gets rid of the endless cycle of cravings and self flagellation.

That's the scoop today. The sun is shining outside my window today, but the sky in my world was already back to clear blue. At least for today.

Oh, and my weight in the title is my Shout Out to 2007--the Year of the Big Loss. Here's to 2010--the Year of the Final Loss.

The Perfect Plan

So I made it to the new diet place last Monday. It's called The Perfect Plan. I can weigh in 3 times a week if I want to. They provide recipes (which I need since I'm not a natural cook) and a food plan. It's the usual weight loss plan--but stricter in that there's no red meat and little fat, and I can have 5-7 fruits a day (only one high sugar fruit like bananas a day). Lots of veggies. Also can have eggs, light yogurt, and cottage cheese. No other cheese though. At least that's the plan for now.

I started last Wednesday and miracle of miracles, I'm doing great. I've been on plan a full week and strayed only on Saturday when we went to the movie with popcorn and chocolate. Knowing I have to be accountable to a weigh in is what I need to stay on track. I've even stopped eating at night. Getting the refined carbs out is a huge deal and gets rid of cravings.

It's only one week but it's a solid start.

Now the next thing I have to do is lift weights. Seriously, my body is getting weak and creaky and sore and I've only been 40 for a month. I'm not exagerating either.

No new news on my dad.

Sophie turns 9 next week. The years are flying by.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod Touch

Starting Over

My hard drive on my laptop died last month. I got the blue screen of death one night while booting up to watch "The Office" on Netflix, and my beloved "C:" never was to be seen again.

Of course, I've been meaning for months to back the thing up. Even put an external drive into my cart at Sam's only to remove it after saying to no one in particular (because I was by myself, but that never stops me from talking while shopping)-- "I don't want to spend $100 today."

If only some fortune teller had been walking by to warn me I was making a huge mistake. Now I'm way over $100 in costs for the computer guy to have removed the old & put in a new hard drive. He is also trying to recover the data on my old drive, but it's a monumental task because (a) the drive was encrypted because it's also my work computer, and apparently decrypting the data is not easy to do, and (b) the darn drive stopped spinning altogether.

There's a lot of precious data on that drive. Pictures and videos of the kids, mostly. But there's one thing in particular that's dear to my heart. The excel spreadsheet that chronicles my weight loss & running journey from 2007 through 2009.

It's. Just. Gone. (for now anyway....hopefully my guy can bring it back to life through some miracle)

That spreadsheet was my accountability partner for 3 years. It's got my highest weight and my lowest weight. It's got the first time I ran a full mile without stopping. It's got my four Half Marathons and the training (or lack thereof, for the one I ran last October) I did for each one. Until last fall and the crisis with my Dad hit, I was in that spreadsheet almost every day.

Yesterday, on a sunny, breezy, 80 degree Monday, I decided I was finally going to walk/run outside again. The last time I used my Garmin to run outside was in January, in the bitter cold, when I was still planning on running the April marathon.

Since then, I've done some walking/jogging on our treadmill and have walked a couple times with a friend outside, but my beloved trips around the park with just me, Garmy, and my Shuffle have been absent from my life since last fall.

And so, on my walk yesterday--walking with intermittent running thrown in, because I'm WAY too out of shape to run much yet--while I was thinking my thoughts, it dawned on me that I lost my spreadsheet in the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2010. I realized that I would have to start all over again. Which is what I'm having to do with the rest of my fitness life, so I suppose it's fitting that I start over with a new spreadsheet.

I only did 30 minutes, 2.3 miles. I felt great the first 5 minutes, and then after I'd run for one minute it was obvious just how out of shape I am. My sports bra was so tight it was uncomfortable. My skin is so loose (no muscle tone) that it itched from the bouncing and the blood coming to the surface. My knees hurt. My lungs hurt. My heart hurt.

It's frightening how fast I've lost what I worked so hard for from 2007 - 2009. No, I don't weigh 209 pounds like I did in February 2007. But I do weigh almost 160 pounds, and I have next to no muscle tone in my arms, legs, stomach, and butt. And I am having similar kinds of food struggles as I did in my past--eating for comfort, eating in secret, eating at night.

I've tried off & on all year to get myself straightened out. It's not worked, obviously. I know I have a lot going on in my life, but honestly there's no reason to continue like this. My dad's situation isn't getting any worse for me personally, and I can't keep using him as an excuse for failure.

If only I had LA Weight Loss again. That kind of guidance, support, and accountability in my day to day life really makes a difference for me. I found an Evansville center called The Perfect Plan which sounds like it might be helpful. I left a voicemail for them to call me back--the fact I had to leave a voicemail makes me doubt them, though. If they aren't it, I'll keep looking. I'm not going to let this go any farther than it already has.

For today, I'm taking it one meal at a time. I'm going to walk/run again this afternoon. I posted a blog entry today. I had protein with breakfast & lunch. I'm trying to talk myself back from the ledge with "It's OK! It's happens to everyone sometimes. You've done it before, you can do it again." But it's still really hard to face facts, which now include the nasty reality that I'm no longer in my 30s.

So that's the scoop. Lots of work to do. I've done it before. I can do it again.

****
Update on my Dad: He's slowly declining. We did get him to agree to hospice, which means we won't be doing a feeding tube at all. We already had palliative care, and the level of care hasn't changed that much since we added hospice. But knowing we have hospice in place for when he's in the final stages is comforting.

When those final stages are likely to happen is anyone's guess. One week, he won't eat and won't have a BM, and the next he's back to eating and digesting. His circulation is still very poor. His breathing is weaker. He sleeps for days, but then he's awake for days. He does have a lot of body fat to keep him alive if he doesn't eat, but he is starting to burn through it. His upper body is wasting away; his lower body is swollen from fluid retention; his middle body is distended and swollen. His urine production is way down and his knuckles and fingernails have a blue hue. His BP was down to 112/60 last week. It's quite possible he's with us all summer.

He's still being very demanding at times and can be a big jerk most days. I haven't "spoken" with him for almost a month. I visited on Sunday, but he was asleep the whole time I was there. My sister is there 4 or more days a week and she and I talk every day, so she keeps me in the loop. He can still move a pencil around a letter board to talk, but my sister says he's losing control of his right hand too, so we don't know how much longer he will be able to communicate. He has an expensive eye-gaze machine (thanks to the VA) that allows his eyes to choose letters to talk, but he won't use it (it won't work with his glasses on, and he won't use it with them off--I don't know why, b/c he can see the letters with them off).

It's heartbreaking to see him like he is. It's just as hard to think he's going to be gone soon, even though I wish for everyone's sake--especially his--he'd let go & pass on. But he can't or won't. Eventually this will be over, but it may be months and months yet. We just don't know.