Clearly Dimentia is Setting In

Within the past couple of months I've taken several steps toward creating a healthier me.  While I haven't really consciously tried to make this into fitness blog (which would be about like Charlie Sheen starting a sanity blog), it has sort of turned into a fitness blog on it's own just because I lack the imagination required to write about anything other than my daily life, and right now my daily life is very fitness-centric.

I'm done fighting it.  I guess this is just me for right now.

So I've been using the BodyBugg for a bit over a week now and I LOVE it.  It beats the heck out of logging individual exercises in FatSecret.  BodyBugg's food database sucks so I'm just using The Bugg to calculate exercise calories, which I key into FatSecret in a lump sum adjustment to see my net deficit.  

If BodyBugg is to be believed, and I don't know that it has any motivation to lie to me, FatSecret has been drastically over-estimating my metabolism.  This was initially a bit disheartening, but knowledge is power and all that rot.

I broke up with The Y and joined Urban Active Fitness.  The Big Girl Gym suits me SO much better than the family atmosphere of the Y.  I have no patience for little kids, which is why I no longer have one, and I have enough trouble dealing with my own teenager, I don't want to deal with everyone elses.  Granted I've only been there twice, but I don't dread going and that's a big plus.

In fact, and trust me what I'm about to say is so unbelievable to me that I haven't ruled out early onset dimentia, but I actually WANT to go work out.  If I could do it right this very second I would.  If I could go after work today, I would.  If I could go any time before tomorrow evening, when I actually CAN go, I would.  This whole business of being a parent and a productive member of society is getting in the way of what, admittedly, might become an unhealthy obsession if left unchecked.  I guess that's good, right?

I first visited my new gym on Sunday.  I did the upper body portion of one of the many sets of circuit training machines, followed by 45 minutes on the elliptical.  I honestly wanted to go longer on the ET.  I could have happily gone a full hour or more, reading and sweating facing out over the parking lot.  But The Man and The Girl were wandering the adjacent shopping area while I worked out and I didn't want to leave them waiting an inconsiderate amount of time.  So I stopped, showered, and met them at Barnes & Noble where I was greeeted with "That was fast".  Sigh.

Monday I couldn't go, but I met with two separate personal trainers yesterday after work.  The first, who I'll call Chris (because that's his name) had me fill out some paperwork, asked me about a million questions, then handed me over to the most adorable little (but fit) gay man I've ever met.  My fitness level was assessed (I'm pretty sure they had to create a new category for me on their assessment paperwork), I was put through a workout that included lunges, lifting and throwing a 20 lb bag of sand, squats while lifting free weights and a sad attempt at crunches while perched atop a spongy flat-bottomed ball type dealio.  During the beginning of the workout I wanted the trainer to be my new BFF.  I imagined we could do lunch, go shoe shopping, maybe take in a musical.  By the end I just wanted to throw him out a window but lacked the strength.

After my assessment and workout I was sat back down with Chris, who explained to me why I need to do this type of workout rather than the machines and cardio to which I've become accustomed.  The first problem is that I've become accustomed to them, and apparently my body is smart enough to get used to stuff and stop being impressed with my efforts, therefore not rewarding me with the desired results. 

Second, and I suppose this makes sense, if I concentrate primarily on cardio, I burn lots of calories for that 45 minutes or so and then my metabolism quickly goes back to normal.  If I concentrate on building muscle, I burn calories while I'm doing it (BodyBugg said I burned FAR more calories per minute doing lunges and throwing that stupid sandbag than I do on the ET) but also there's the whole muscle is metabolically more active thing to deal with.

Chris says I can realistically expect to gain a pound of lean muscle per month, which will burn an additional 50 calories per day when at rest.  This doesn't sound like much but if I do this for 10 months, that means I'll be burning 500 extra calories per day when at rest...and that translates to a pound of fat loss per week.

Am I ready to give up my ET?  No.  And that came as a HUGE shock to me.  I actually ENJOY my time on the elliptical.  I LIKE to sweat and zone out and read. 

What the hell is happening to me??  I smell toast.

Chris assures me that I'll still be able to cardio train, but (here we go), if I sign up for one of their training packages they will customize my workout with exactly the right amount of strength training combined with the right amount of cardio to attain the results I want.

I was actually relieved that he didn't tell me I couldn't use the ET any more.  I'm not kidding.  Stop laughing I'm serious!

Well the bottom line is that the switch from the Y to Urban Active, just membership-wise, cut my bill by 60%.  I bought the absolute least expensive bare minimum training package they offer, which is one session per week, and now I'm paying QUADRUPLE what I was paying at the Y.

QUAD-EFFING-DRUPLE.   This shit better work.

I'm not committed for more than two months.  I guess at that point I'll decide if it's worth it.

But here's the thing.  And I know this is going to sound like the sales pitch brainwashing me but this is math that I did on my own.  Even if I stick with it for a full year, if there were a surgery that could get me into shape I would GLADLY plunk down what this will cost me for a full year to attain that goal.  It's a miniscule fraction of what one would pay for bariatric surgery or even a tummy tuck (not that I've considered that, just saying).  So, other than the fact that I may not be able to pay for heat or food, why am I freaking the crap out about spending this money on myself? 

Sigh.

So Saturday morning I have an 8:30 am appointment with a woman who will teach me how to become the new, strong, confident me. 

All I know is that I'm more excited about getting healthy than I've been in a long time and I'm trying really hard to imagine myself staying this excited rather than repeatedly telling myself that I'll muck this up like I always do so why get my hopes up? 

This is something I've never tried before, maybe that's why I have renewed hope. 

I remember when I was probably three or four years old my dad dug a ditch across our back yard to run a gas line to the grill.   I clearly remember standing on one side of this gap, which couldn't have been more than 2 feet wide, crying because I couldn't get back to the house.  Neighborhood kids jumped over it without hesitation.  Adults stepped over.  I just couldn't bring myself to do it no matter how much encouragement was thrown my way.

Fast forward about 20 years and I was going fishing with The Ex.  There was a pond near our house that had a creek running along side of it, and the way to get to the best fishihng spot was to walk between the creek and pond, along a strip of solid yet somewhat uneven ground that was probably 3 feet wide.  I couldn't do it.  He said I could, I just lacked the confidence.  I said "Ok, I'll meet you in the car".

Last summer The Man, The Girl and I drove to Mohican state park with some of The Inlaws.  This was presented to me as "Let's go to Mohican".  Half way there I found out that a more accurate presentation would have been "Let's go HIKING at Mohican", which would have caused me to laugh and stay home.
The couple we went with consisted of a pregnant woman and a man carrying a toddler in a carrier on his back, so even though they are both young and fit I knew it couldn't been too dangerous, steep or physically challening.  What I didn't count on was a trail that runs along a river, trees and rocks on one side, water on the other, uneven path between.  I had a full blown panic attack, unable to go forward or back, sobbing and humiliated as children and even people much older than me went around me.  The Man walked me back to the car and we waited in strained silence, punctuated by my repeated apologies, for the rest of the group to return, at which point I had to endure a couple hour drive back home in my humiliation.

All of this fear comes from the certainty that I will fall if I don't have something to hold on to, becasue my balance is horrible.  I felt like such an idiot yesterday trying to do lunges.  "Hands on hips, head up, focus on the exit sign".  He may as well have asked me to levatate.  I kept having to stop and put my hands out to keep from falling over on my side like a fainting goat.  They assure me that my balance issues are caused by a lack of core strength, and they're going to help me fix this.

This boggles my mind.....the idea that my uncoordination, something that I've always seen as being as much a part of me as my love of animals and my hatred of eggplant can somehow be changed my, of all things, physical exericise.  Apparently exercise isn't just for trying to make my fants fit.  Who knew?

Or maybe I'm just a big ol'chicken and all the crunches in the world won't change it.  But I'll look better during my sniveling, humiliating panic attack, and that's something, isn't it?

Today's lunch:  Kashi Pesto Pasta Primavera.   I'm not a big Kashi fan.  It's all generally too 'twigs and bark' for me, but this is actually pretty good.  Too bad I can never bring it to work again.  WAY too much garlic smell. 

If the Pants Fit

I envy men.  Not only because they STILL make more money for the same work as women, not only because the world is their bathroom, not even because men get distinguished as women get OLD, but mostly because no matter how much weight they gain or lose, their pants still fit. 

I'm fairly tall, so a pound gained or lost is distributed over more of me than if I was petite.  This is a double-edged sword, because I never notice one or two pounds of water (or double fudge cookie dough blizzard) weight.  But at the same time, I have to lose a good 20 lbs before anyone notices.  Ahem....13 pounds so far...HELLOOO!!!

But here's the thing:  There are 86 lbs between my low and my high weight.  And those 86 pounds involved SIX different pants sizes. There has not been one single minute since puberty when I haven't either been trying to get in to a smaller size or trying to get comfortable in the size I was wearing (and had no business in).

My dad wore square pants befores Spongebob made them cool.  Every year I could go to Sears and buy my dad jeans for Christmas.  Size 34 x 34.  Over the years my dad gained a lot of weight (from beer) and lost a lot (from cancer) but his pants size stayed the same.  The question was only how low they rode.  If they could sit at his waist or if they had to be tucked below his belly, it didn't matter to me or, apparently, to him. And the crack shone regardless.

As if the size and style wasn't enough to confuse us, womens pants come in three lengths.  Petite, average and tall.  As I said, I'm pretty tall, but I'm not near as tall as I used to be.  Pregnancy took an inch off me, but evoluation seems to have taken more.  I used to order tall pants from the Tall Girl catalog.  Now, anything marked tall would trail a foot behind me, but average is still, more often than not, too short.  Factor in the whole 'plus size' thing and the prospect of trying to find pants that fit is about as appealing as the idea of frying bacon nekkid.

Life would be so much easier if I could walk in to the gap and pick up size Y x Z size pants, then just wear them until they fall apart.

Men have all the luck.  Bastards.

The Man complains frequently about the "crap" in our house.  Through process of elimination I've learned that there are two defining qualities which differentiate "stuff" from "crap"....1) it is for my use only or 2) it existed before he came into my life five years ago.

Most of the clothes in my closet fall into BOTH of those categories.  But can you blame me?  Those jordache high-rise jeans fit me once!!!  Sequinz will be back in style someday.  The holes give it a sort of trendy, bohemian vibe.  Right?  I only need to lose 50 pounds before I can rock them.

So at this point I've lost 13 pounds, and I'm in the same pants I was in when I started.  The difference is that now I don't have to thread a rubber band around the button, through the button hole and back around the button to keep them closed.  I had NO business in them before, and some would point to my muffintop as evidence that I don't belong in them now...but I AM NOT buying bigger ones.  When these become a little more comfortable I will fight the urge to try to squeeze into the largest of the five smaller sizes that hang in my closet.  I will try really hard to wait until I BELONG in them to wear them, and hope they don't disintigrate from age before that time comes.

Unless, of course, there's a sale at Kohl's.

Today's Lunch:  6" Subway Tuna Sub with Sun Chips & diet coke.  I'm feeding a cold, or am I supposed to starve it until it turns into a fever?

Dumpster Diving for Nutritional Information

Late lunch today.  That whole having to make a living thing gets inconvenient at times, I'll tellya.

I was going to skip posting as I already spent most of my delayed lunch reading other people's blogs, but then I went over to the office fridge to get a Diet Coke (cue angelic singing) and I saw something I didn't understand.  Someone apparently purchased "chicken tenders" from the prepared food case at the grocery store across the street.  This is a fried strip of chicken, and yes I totally understand the allure of the food itself, but here's the thing.....there is NO nutritional information on the package.  My immediate thought when I saw this in passing was "How do you count that???"

Now let me point out that this food was obviously purchased by one of the thin or clinically underweight people who work in my office.  I say this is obvious because it's in the fridge.  Any normal (read: food-obsessed) person would not put ONE chicken tender back in the fridge for later.  This seriously does not compute.

But my point is that I spent, I kid you not, almost an hour logging last night's dinner.  The Man made this amazing taco casserole which, after we ate, reduced me to digging through the recycling and the trash, cellphone in hand, scanning ingredient barcodes into my FatSecret account so that I could calculate my caloric intake.

I may be getting a tinch obsessive, yathink?

Anyway...the BodyBugg comes tomorrow!  Oh yeah, that'll do WONDERS for the old OCD.

Today's lunch:  Amy's Rice Macaroni & Cheese.  Kinda bluh.

Excuse the lack of photos & links.  On the run.

One. Stinking. Pound.

This weekend I ran my ass off.  Sadly I do not mean this literally.

Saturday I got up at the crack of 8:30 (if you know me, you know this is a hurcurlean feat) and went to the gym, where I swam laps for 20 minutes.  I picked up The Boy at his grandmothers (where he opted to spend "MY WEEKEND") and we went to the West Side Market, where we walked for roughly two hours.  I came home and made a nice dinner for my family, then I took The Girl bowling. 

Sunday involved some grocery shopping and another three games of bowling.

I consdiered this to be an active weekend.  No, I didn't run a marathon or hike to the top of a mountain but I do not feel that I was anything close to sedentary. And I was pretty gosh darn proud of myself.

Combine this with the rest of the activity for the week, which consisted of my two normal trips to the gym (40 to 60 minutes of exercise each) and a half hour on the dreadmill in my basement, you would think I'd see a happy number on the scale this morning.

Shit no...I lost a pound. ONE sad little pound.

Gee...do you think it could have had something to do with the ice cream and donuts?  Really?

Big, fat SIGH.

I am a slave to sugar. 

We have developed a habit of stopping at Dairy Queen almost every Friday night, where I get a medium Double Fudge Cookie Dough Blizzard (I hear angels singing just from typing it). 

And The Man likes to bring home a dozen donuts with the newspaper on Sunday.

Yes, I suppose could ignore the donuts.  Sure, I should abstain from the ice cream.  Theoretically I could also fly if I flapped my arms hard enough, but honey it's not happening.  I rarely smoke or drink, I don't do drugs.  I LIKE SUGAR!!!

So what to do?  WHAT TO DO????  Do I accept dismal weight-loss numbers as the cost of my sugar habit?   Do I swear off the stuff, for the eight bazillionth time, knowing full well that within a week I'll be thinking that I'd rather be fat and be able to eat what my family eats?  Do I up the exercise with pretty much the same result of eventual disgust in what feels like endless self-punishment.

I'm starting to think I just have to accept the numbers, dissapointing as they are.  Be happy, even THANKFUL, for any shift in the right direction and get on with my life.  I mean I participated in one sort of exercise or another five out of seven days last week so increasing that does not seem reasonable.  I heard some diet guru last week saying that he recommends SIX HOURS of cardio training PLUS weights every week.  Who does that?  Who has an hour plus, every single day, to devote to exercise?  Not this fat chick, I'll tell you that.

I talked to my Chiropractor last week about my acid reflux and he gave me a "reduced sugar diet".  This plan advocates, among other thingss, MAKING YOUR OWN SALAD DRESSING.  I wrote about the old weight watcher plan where we had to make our own ketchup a couple of weeks ago (can I go blind for linking to my own blog?).  Remember the old "I get two meats and one bread and one vegetable" plan?  This paper that my doctor handed me in two- thousand-freaking-eleven was exactly that.   I'm sorry, I can't go back there. 

Is this what we've come to as a society?  What happened to eating like a normal person?  To me having to weigh and record every bite I put in my mouth is not normal.  Schleeping to the gym every single day and pushing my body until it hurts is not normal.  Enduring pain and emotional misery to be healthy should not be necessary.  But it seems that it is, and this is something I'm having a very, VERY hard time accepting. 

Today's lunch:  Braunschweiger (from the West Side Market) sandwich with yummy sweet potato chips (from Aldi's! go figure!)

Screws Fall Out All The Time

"Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place" - John Bender, The Breakfast Club

Should I start putting movie/tv/music quotes on my blog entries?  Anybody?  Anybody?  Bueller??

Yesterday I sat down in my desk chair here at work and it gave up.  I swear I heard it sigh and say "fuck this"...and then a screw fell out.  Don't worry, I was in no mortal danger, but I was leaning noticably to the right, looking silly and inspiring absolutely NO confidence in my professional abilities as I tried not to fall over.

My boss, bless his heart (I have seriously won the boss lottery) flipped my chair over and tried to put the screw back in for me.  It went in sort of sideways and begrudgingly.  And dang if it didn't fall back out again!  So this morning, as Bossman fixed it yet again, he mentioned that if the screw continued to pop out he has a product at home that would pretty much permanently glue the screw in place.  No smartypants, the product is not called glue.  But the name does escape me.  Let's just call it screw fixer stuff.

So when the screw popped out for the third time I carried it in to Bossman's office.  At this point the filter between my brain and my mouth, clogged up by stress and cold medicine, went entirely on the fritz and I said to this churchgoing father of five who holds my career and earning potential in his hands, "Want a screw?".  Go ahead, say it out loud.  See the problem?  Yeah.

I proceeded to make things worse by babbling (shocking, I know) "Wait...I mean 'DO YOU want A screw?'  This thing here.  DO YOU??  Um...wait...." (I leave the room, and come back in) "Hey this screw fell out can you bring that stuff in?  Um ....  please?" 

I'm still here, I'm not fired yet, proof that my boss lottery theory totally holds water.

So as I sit here in the receptionist's discarded office chair I am thoroughly embarrassed.  Downright humiliated.  In spite of the fact that I'm pretty sure it's unlikely if not impossible that my heft could cause a screw to run for dear life, its escape plan foiled only when it hit the floor and failed to sprout legs, I am convinced that every single one of my coworkers is quietly snickering because the fat chick broke her chair. 

First, you have to understand that I work in an office of thin people.  Of the nine of us, three are rail thin, possibly medically underweight and struggling to gain.  Four are at a perfect, healthy weight.  My boss and I are both perpetually dieting.  I feel judged here, more than anywhere else, which is saying a lot. 

I lost 86 pounds and was at a healthy weight for about 15 minutes in the late 90's and I remember one of the best things about that was being able to eat in public without feeling like people were watching me and thinking "Well THAT'S why she's fat".  I actually had a friend tell me, when I was at my highest weight, "You eat like a bird".  Yeah, right....in FRONT of you I eat like a bird, then I go home and curl up inside a bag of chips.

But really, and here is where I need you to pay attention because I'm going to introduce a fairly far-out concept here....I am NOT the center of the universe.  Soak that in.  Go ahead.  I know it's rough.  It took me a while to process too.  The theory is that while we are all in a snit worrying about what people think about us, those same people are equally snittified worrying about what WE think of THEM.  Can you imagine?  All this WORRY???  If only we could harness all that wasted energy and do something practical with it.  Like exercising and cooking healthy meals so I wouldn't have to be embarrassed about my weight!!

Yeah....do as I say, not as I do, mmkay??

Today's lunch: Amy's Vegetable Lasagna and grapes.