Update: Still at 225ish

The good news: My weight has not increased.  The bad news: My weight has not decreased.

I am holding steady around 224/225.  Over the last few months, I tried to get started on a C25K plan, could not run the entire first day, and after two weeks of trying to run that first day, started experiencing knee pain that lasted three or four days.  I decided running may not be the thing for me.

I picked up Body Clutter, a book written by the creator of the FlyLady  cleaning system.  I started reading last night, and I'm not sure, but I don't think my weight is because of a deep-seated neuroses.  The book talks about how people eat for comfort.  The first stories talk about a woman whose dad was emotionally available so she eats chocolate and a woman whose husband constantly told her she was fat and ugly, so she made herself more unappealing to him by eating out her unhappiness.

I don't have problems like that, as far as I know.  My family is always awesome and so is Matthew. I think my problem is that I like food, and I don't like exercise.  I have yet to find a form of exercise that I enjoy enough to even pursue.  I like swimming laps: it's not sweaty or hot or uncomfortable. Also, it's a great workout.  That and yoga are the only forms of exercise I even remotely like, and I like neither of them enough to spend money on a gym membership where I could do them consistently.  :\

Another development over the last few months is a growing comfort with the way I look now.  I think FlyLady might have something to do with this, since part of the system is to wake up every morning, and get fully dressed, including hair and face. This is not because I need makeup to look pretty, or because it's important to pretty myself up for my family; it's because wearing my pretty clothes and feeling good about how I look builds confidence. Looking in the mirror all day and seeing something besides a rat's nest of hair and yesterday's makeup makes me smile.

So have I lost 100 pounds in six months?  Nope.  Have I met my goal weight?  Nope.  Have I met my goal of satisfaction with the way I look? Almost.  Naked me is still a little uncomfortable, but I'm getting to like myself more and more.

Goals:

1.  Be happy with where I am.  I don't look like I'm about to keel over from a heart attack or anything, and I regularly look very nice.

2. Make healthy choices like fruit over a candy bar, veggies over chips, and watch sodium and sugar intake.

3. Find a form of exercise that is not entirely unpleasant or painful and do it regularly.

Waiting for Vacation

Ever feel like you just don't have any give-a-shit left?  Yeah, me too. It's been one of those weeks.  Work is boring, yet frustrating, Matthew and I have barely seen each other, and my family is stressing me out.  I've been trying to chase down an affordable apartment (suddenly no easy feat, since people are selling their homes and moving to complexes in droves).  Basically, I've been stressed and overwhelmed all week, which has made eating right and exercising less than an afterthought.  Really, it's more of a no-thought.

Last night, I stayed home from knitting to spend time with Matthew, and the two of us sat next to each other totally zoned out all evening.  He was playing Skyrim and I was looking at Better After.  We sat that way for almost five hours.  There were dirty dishes in the sink, wet clothes in the washer, and dirty laundry from the day strewn across the house.  I hadn't exercised, I had grading to do, and there were about a million better ways to use my time.  This morning, I woke up to all those dirty dishes, all that dirty laundry, all the undone grading, all the emotional stress, and felt like I needed a vacation.

I'm proud to say the house is back in order, and I'm about to head into the office to catch up on some grading and attend a three-hour editing meeting (so fun).   I feel like I'm drudging through, but I just might make it.

Two months ago, I asked for vacation for spring break.  Now that vacation starts in 28 days.  I made a countdown calendar this morning, and crossed off the first day. In 28 days, I will be sitting at home, not worrying about work, possibly sanding my dresser to finish staining it, maybe painting an end table, and enjoying time away from daily stress.

Overdid it.

Why do I not listen to my body?  On Wednesday, I was already feeling worn out from working out that morning.  Oh, did I mention that?  You know that total body rush super-exercisers talk about?  The one that makes them feel crappy if they miss a run?  I don't have that.  Nope. If I work out, I'm exhausted.  All day.  And most of the next day.

Well, instead of taking a break and alternating days, as a normal person would, I decided I was going to work again yesterday.  I did.  Even though I'd had a long work week, was already exhausted, and felt like poo.  I thought, Surely I'll feel better after I work out.  Nope.  I felt like crap.  Super crap.

So yesterday I took the day off and recuperated.  I slept and read and took lots of warm baths.  I am not working out today, since I already feel creaky and my back hurts, but I'll get some exercise tomorrow.  Gabe is down in Ardmore this weekend, and I was thinking if the weather cooperates, it might be a fun time to go run around and eat a picnic lunch at Regional Park.  Plenty of walking and scrambling on playground equipment to be had there!

Getting back on track

It's been a while, blogoshpere!  I'm finally getting into the swing of a new year and back to blogging about the weight loss journey.   Over the holidays I, predictably, gained weight.  In fact, I gained more than I had lost. The new year started and I had to fight the urge to quit.  I thought about saying, "screw it," deleting the blog, and pretending I had never made this commitment. But...people kept asking, "Hey, when are you going to update? I miss your posts."  For some reason, this was the impetus I needed to get my shit together and keep going.   I also started doing the FlyLady system of housekeeping. All of a sudden my house was no longer an excuse for sitting in the apartment pretending that I was going to clean it up. So today, the house is clean, breakfast is ready, and I have forty minutes scheduled into my day for sweating my ass off in the gym.   Here we go!!

Thanksgiving

Current weight: 222.4
Total weight change: -2.6


Not a lot of weight loss over the past month, but I had a couple of rough weeks were I wasn't working very hard.  Last week I made it to the gym three times and did some pretty intense (for me) jogging, biking, and weight lifting.  


I'm noticing more changes in the way my clothes fit; namely more room around my waist.  I have been working veggies into lunch and dinner portions regularly and need to up those, likely.  


My Fitness Pal is still working out well, as long as I use it consistently.  


The holidays are a tough time for me, since I happen to LOVE holiday food.  I literally dreamed about fudge the other day.  Dreamed about making it and eating it.  I also have regular dreams set in restaurants and at the dinner table.  Typically I'm eating roast chicken.  So there you go, now you know how deep my food pathology goes. 


So, here's the plan.  For the rest of this week, I'm going to work out, eat well, and be sensible.  Then, on Thursday, I'm going crazy.  Be warned. 

Weekly Check In: Week Seven

Current weight: 222.6
Weight change since last week: -5
Total weight change: -2.4

Woo hoo!  Weight changes! In the right direction!  Yay!

So what did I do this week?  I started using My Fitness Pal.  The website is a little clunky and awkward looking, but the app is a lifesaver.

So what do I like about it?

• It's easy to use (and free).  Unlike the Weight Watchers app (which I paid 17 dollars a month to use), the food selections are huge, since it's information compiled from the users.  Pretty much any food you could ever want to eat has been input by someone, sometime.  If it hasn't, you can enter it yourself.
• The progress page shows me drops in my weight in a pretty little graph.  I like being able to see that line go down, and hate to see it go up.  I weighed myself every day this week, and it was awesome to see a pound drop here, two pounds there.  Additionally, if you have a ken to measure yourself in a specific area, you can do that.  The app has tracking of weight, neck, waist, and hips. 
• I can enter recipes.  I cook at home.  A lot.  It's cheap.  And with this app, you can choose the ingredients you added, tell how much of it you used, how many the recipe feeds, and save it for future use.  This is a great feature for me, because I circulate some of my favorite recipes into my meal plan over and over. 
• I love the friends function. My brother uses this app too.  I can see how much exercise he's doing, how much he's lost, and we can comment on each other's progress.  It's good to have him showing me up and challenging me to do well. 
• The Home page shows me how well I'm meeting my Recommended Daily Values.  This is one place where Weight Watchers was seriously lacking.  It ignores things like vitamin and mineral intake, figuring that if you meet the healthy checks, then you're good.  That may be true, but looking at the fact that I only got 20% of my Vitamin A for the day makes me wonder what foods have it and how to improve that area.  This curiosity leads me to learn more about nutrition and knowledge is power, if you weren't apprised of that already.
• Last but not least, the weight predictor.  The app has a button at the bottom of the page that says "Complete this Entry."  When you click it at night, it tells you "If every day were like today...  You'd weigh ______ lbs. in 5 weeks."  Man is this great motivation to use it the next day!  When my weight jumps up two or three pounds in water weight and I think I overate or I suck at life, clicking "Complete this Entry" keeps me going and reminds me that I'm still on the right track.  

And thus concludes my fangirl love of this app.  What weight loss tools and tricks have you guys found so far?  Julie's comment on "What week is this again?"  had some great motivational tips, so give them a look-see. 

JK Rowling's thoughts on thinness

I stumbled across this quote today: "Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me"  and did some research (read: googled it) to find out where it came from.

And all I have to say is, "Three cheers.  Let's remember how many good things we are before we label ourselves as 'fat.'"