Lord willin' and the gym don't explode.

Over the past few days, my life, or maybe my lack of basic organizational skills, has kept me from working out.

Let's see....Saturday I planned to start the Urban Iron class at the gym, which started at 10:05.  This was the first time I had been to my new gym on a Saturday morning and I had to park not in the gym parking lot, not in the lot for the grocery store next to the gym, but in the vacant lot NEXT TO the grocery store next to the gym.

I was too late to attend the class.  I did work out.  I had a good, long workout.  But it wasn't the class I wanted to attend.

Sunday by the time we got home from The Girl's bowling tournament it was too late to work out.  I was actually kind of bummed.

Monday I forgot my gym clothes. 
Tuesday I took a half vacation day to deal with some family stuff near home.  My plan was that once I was done I would go home to change clothes and then head back to the gym, which is by work.

Well I found out at 1:20 that my 1:30 appointment had been rescheduled two weeks out.  I was not a happy camper to say the least.  I broke land speed records getting back to work so as not to waste the half vacation day, which I will need to cover the rescheduled appointment.  And, of course, I did not have my gym clothes with me.

Yes, I realize I need to start keeping gym clothes in the car at all times.  Get off my back.

Wednesday I had my clothes. I had to go to traffic court and didn't get out until 5:40.  There wasn't nearly enough time to work out and pick my son up at 7 as I usually do.  Of course after I picked him up he told me he wished he could have stayed longer because he was watching Tosh.0 with his uncle.  Thanks for the heads up on that BUD!!

So today...I hate to say I'm going no matter what, because that's a sure bet that the gym will be hit by lightning or a tornado or something...but I'm going to do my best.  This would be one of those situations where my oh-so-southern ex mother in law would say "Lord willin' and the creek don't rise"...which is a bit funny because creeks are rising all around me.  Record snows, followed by rapid thaw and thunderstorms (THUNDER in March in Ohio!!!), followed by more snow, more rain, and as I type this it is pouring rain and we are under a winter storm warning.  This has resulted in major flooding in the area.  A bit over a week ago they were rescuing people from their homes in boats about two miles from my house. 

So, I guess, lord willin' and the gym don't explode, right?

Monday's weigh-in was dissapointing.  I GAINED 0.2 lbs.  It was all water, as I was down 2 on Tuesday, but still dissapointing and embarrassing.  I'm supposed to be the team captain for crying out loud.

My inability to get to the gym four days in a row has left me feeling like a fat, lazy slug.  I did bowl Sunday, and I walked on the treadmill last night, and I've been under my calorie limit every day....but I still feel fat and lazy and sluglike.  I'm hoping an hour of sweating will rid me of that feeling.

Again, who AM I????

I never work out on Friday.  Friday is my day of rest.  Well my evening of rest anyway.  I rarely cook and I don't work out.  But Saturday I'm going to try really, really hard to get to the gym at least 15 minutes before the class starts in order to get a spot.

I did peek in the door at the class, hoping to see an opening I could slide quietly and invisibly into.  Of course there were none.  But I saw that there are steps (like the old 'step arobics' steps), barbells and freeweights.  It looks challenging.  I hope I can get a spot in the back so nobody seese me fall on my head.

The idea of taking this class scares the bejezus out of me.  Joining groups is hard for me due to just a basic assumption that I will be ridiculed first and rejected later.  Add in the fact that this is a group that is all about doing something that I have failed at over and over and over again AND everyone in there knows what they're doing except me. 

If anxiety could burn calories I'd be golden right now.

It'll be good for me....physically and, hopefully emotionally.  It could make or break my confidence I guess, depending on how I do.

No pressure, right?

BUT....I tried on some previously too-small pants and they fit....well they SORTA fit.  They stay up, which I can't say about the ones I was wearing, but I have a muffintop that the Pillsbury dough boy would be proud of.

Today's lunch:  Wolfgang Puck's Organic Old Fashioned Tomato soup.  I've been dissapointed in the past with organic soup, but this was really good!

Ovaries are MOSTLY Overrated

Obviously I wrote the previous entry when I WASN'T in the throes of a hot flash. 

Ovaries are Overrated

Many of you probably know that I had my girlparts removed a couple of months ago.  If you didn't, well now you're in the know.  You're welcome.

While I knew that this move was necessary in order to take control of my physical health, I had some serious concerns as to how it would effect my menal health.  Let's be honest, emotionally speaking I'm not the steadiest raft on the lake.  I'm prone to what The Man will tell you is probably more than my fair share of ugly mood swings, which have been mostly controlled by the wonder that is anti-anxiety medication for nigh on 13 years now.  Because my anxiety is hormonally driven, the doctors have speculated that once I get through menopause I could probably go off the medication, but realistically speaking things could have gotten a lot worse before they got better.

I consider myself extremely lucky that I managed to get myself medicated back when I did, especially considering the fact that I pretty much fell into the diagnosis.  I had no idea what was wrong with me.  I thought I had a sensitive stomach.

I was in counseling, trying to work out the kinks in my doomed marriage.  This was a good six years before we called it a marital day, but even then (and, honestly, long before that) it was clear to me that this whole wife and mom thing didn't come as easily to me as it seemed to come to everyone else.

I was discussing my marital issues with the psychologist, specifically our lack of common interests.  Funny how being from the same small town and going to the same high school doesn't guarantee anything at all in common ten years after prom.  Anyway, I told her that the only thing we both liked to do was to go to movies or out to dinner, but I had developed some sort of stomach issue that made eating out difficult, and going to a movie AFTER eating out was impossible.  So I felt that we were doomed to living separate lives, only a little boy holding us together.

We got to talking about my stomach issues, how I felt after I ate restaurant food.  I blamed the large portions, which even then I was powerless to push away, and the high fat content.  She thought for a minute and said "I really don't think you have a digestive issue, I think you're having panic attacks".

Hahahah....no, seriously.

Another thing that I didn't know was that along with what is officially called "Generalized Anxiety Disorder" I also had "Major Depressive Disorder", the symptoms of which I didn't know WERE symptoms because my mom had it too (back then I had no idea that my mom is a total loon).  I had gone through bouts of extreme sadness which left me nearly non-functional and which couldn't be blamed on any catastrophic event.  My mood would get so low you would think I had lost my best friend, but my life was nearly perfect.  Simply not having something to look forward to, no matter how small, was enough to send me sobbing to my bed and declaring that life was not worth living.

So after a little bit of trial and error I ended up with the wonderful little white pill that saved my life.  It's called Lexapro. 

Fortunately Lexapro treats both anxiety and depression, so it's been all good in my little hood for years now.  Just the fact that I was able to rebuild my life from the puddle of tears and snot that I was left with after the end of my marriage and job is a testament to how much better I am now.  But menopause was always this looming blessing and/or threat which I believed would either stabilize my chemical makeup or push me over an edge from which medication could not retrieve me.

The first two weeks after the hysterectomy were rough.  I didn't have any depression symptoms but I had constant low-grade anxiety.  If you've never had an anxiety disorder it's really hard to describe.  It's the physical and emotional feeling of dreading something, like knowing that there's a meteor hurdling toward your home, but there is no meteor or even the dilusion of one.  It's just a dread that you can't talk yourself out of.  And this old familiar black cloud followed me through my convalescence.

My doctor put me on hormone replacement therapy and my symptoms subsided, but there are health risks that go along with HRT and I wasn't willing to resign myself to these risks long-term.  So, after a month on the HRT, when the healing was done, I decided to bite the bullett, and save myself a good chunk of change, by not refilling the prescription.

It's been three months since the surgery, and six weeks since the hormone prescription ran out, and on Saturday I realized something really strange....I have nothing to look forward to.  Due recent financial setbacks we won't be taking a vacation this summer.  My tax refund came the other day and went straight to the credit card company.  I've been living with the same man for nearly five years and, God willing, I'll continue to live with him, if not for the rest of my life at least until one of us gets tired of the other's significant neuroses.  And no, there is no wedding date.  But the bizarre thing about all of this is that it's ok.  My life is good.  It's hard at times, but it's good.  I mean yes I'd love a bit more in my pay check, a carribean cruise (hell, just a massage), a nice ring on my left hand and the promise of Till Death do us Part, but I'm not crying about it and that's a HUGE change.

So I say that, for me anyway, ovaries are overrated.  I have the occasional hot flash but I'd rather have my internal thermostat be on the fritz than have my scared/sad-ometer be freaking out all the time.  I'm not really ready to give up the anti anxiety meds just yet...but I have hope.  Maybe THAT'S something I can look forward to.

Today's lunch:  Leftover homemade yam soup & roasted red pepper & asiago chicken sausage (the pic is from dinner last night).  Not so great separately, but mixed togther...YUMMY!!!

Sucker's Remorse

They installed a salad bar at the grocery store across from my office a few weeks ago.  I often stop at the store before work because coming straight to the office from dropping The Boy off at school gets me here about 45 minutes early.  It's a good opportunity to pick up this or that without making myself late for anything else.  It seems that ANYTHING I add in to my schedule at this point is at the expense of someone or something else.

I've often wished that they would open the salad bar in the morning so that I could have a nice salad for lunch without actually having to venture out of my office at lunch time.  It's cold out and if I'm not writing this I'm reading others' blogs, exploring the Cheezburger network or participating in some other culturally and educationally bankrupt internet activity.

Well yesterday morning I stopped to pick up frozen lunches and milk to keep at work, and I noticed that the salad bar was open.  Yay!  They read my mind!  Wait, can they hear me thinking this??

But there were no tongs or spoons with which to move the veggies from their recessed, refrigerated, previously covered bins into my eagerly waiting plastic container. 

I went to the prepared foods counter which is near to the salad bar and said "Excuse me.  There are no tongs or anything" and was rewarded with a gruff "fine we'll take care of it" from the grocery store equivalent of your typical hairnet-equipped lunch lady.  I said thank you as sweetly as I knew how and I waited.  She lumbered into the back and loudly announced that there was a customer at the salad bar who needed tongs and spoons.  A sweet young gentleman came out, followed by the lunch lady, and apologized for not having readied the salad bar.  He said that it's not "technically open" and that he had only uncovered it so that he could empty out the previous day's leftovers and ready it for the scheduled opening at 10 am.  I thanked him and started to move along.

Then the lunch lady said "I can give you some tongs if you want".  I said "No, it's ok, thanks".  She says "You sure?  Here you go" and she's holding tongs out to me. 

I asked the nice young gentleman if the bar had been covered all night and he assured me that it had.

What could I do? (don't answer that).

So I took the tongs and started to assemble my salad.  Upon closer inspection it was clear that these really were last night's leftovers and, while they had been refrigerated and covered, they they were looking pretty sad.  I tried to pick and choose items that looked less than disgusting (because isn't "less than disgusting" what we all hope for in a meal?) and couldn't really put together a salad that I thought would seem even remotely edible four hours later.

But they were watching me.

I considered closing up the container, smiling and saying thank you, and then stashing it elsewhere in the store...but this would leave my mess for some other innocent store employee to clean up or, worse, would come to the attention of the lunch lady who would later stick pins into a fat, redheaded voodoo doll.

It took some serious screwing up of determination for me to sheepishly walk up to the counter and say "I'm really sorry.  It just doesn't look good so I'm going to pass.  Sorry...again.  Have a good day!"

My apologies, and my handing over of my partially made salad, were met with cold stares from both the previously polite young man and the lunch lady.

I slunk away in shame.

Given my reaction to this situation, it should come to no surprise that I fell for high pressure sales at the Personal Training Department at my gym.

Yes folks, I've seen the error of my ways and I will be cancelling my training contract this evening, 48 hours into the 72 hour window during which I can cancel without penalty.

Talking to The Boss yesterday, I told him that I signed up for 12 months but that Chris told me that I could cancel after two.  He urged me to take a very close look at my contract (which I totally should have done in the first place rather than being a trusting doofus) because, while it's a decent facility in a great location with reasonable membership prices, he has had less than positive experiences with regard to the integrity of the PT sales staff.

Sho'nuf, when I got home I pulled out my contract and I can cancel.....if I have a documented medical condition that prohibits me from exercising or if I move more than 25 miles from any Urban Active facility.

Shit.

So I sat down to pay bills and work on my budget and allocate to which debtors I want to divvy up my impending tax refund in the hopes that I'd discover a few thousand extra dollars stashed between the electric bill and gas bill, and I came to the conclusion that I had no business even committing to two months of this expense, much less twelve.  I have to cancel.  End of story.

So tonight I'll go over there with my contract in hand, try not to make eye contact, and tell them that I need to cancel. 

I'm sure I will involuntarily apologize profusely.  It's a form of tourettes I tellya.

I'm going to have to revamp my schedule but my plan is to attend two "Urban Iron" classes per week.  There's one at 10 am on Saturdays (admittedly FAR preferable to my 8:30 PT appointment) which will be no problem at all, but the other two are at 5:30 Monday and Wednesday.  Currently I work out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so some shuffling will be required, which involves the schedules of The Man and The Ex, in order to get there either Monday or Wednesday.  

Have I mentioned....shit?

Tonight after I weasel out of my contract I'm going to try to do the full circuit (I at least learned that strength training is as important as cardio) and then spend as much time as possible on the elliptical with my e-book.

Right now I'm reading "The Pleasure of My Company" by Steve Martin.  I've seen Steve Martin books at the bookstore and thought, isn't that funny, an author with the same name as the commedian.  Did you know it's the same guy??  This book is VERY strange...it's about a guy with...I guess he has OCD.  It's very strange on the heels of Portia de Rossi's book.  A bit too mujch mental illness in my reading lately I guess.  But I'm a couple hundred pages in so I may as well continue and just make sure the next book I read is a nice, healthy murder mystery.

One thing that happens when we reach 40 or so years of age is that post-exercise pain takes longer to set in.  Where I used to be sore the day after a workout, now it takes 48 hours.  Today my legs are SCREAMING.  And I wonder if it's the workout or the voodoo doll.

Today's Lunch:  Amy's Macaroni and Soy Cheese.  The best part is the over-cooked burned on crunchy cheese around the edges.  I wonder what would happen if I cooked it like five times as long as it calls for?  Would it become one chunk of the yummy crunchy cheese? 

Update

Disregard everything I wrote yesterday.

As you were.

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. 

Soon......

I promise.