Oh well

Weight: 313.2
Total Weight loss: 36.8

What a frustrating week. It started out so well, and has ended in shambles.

OK, maybe I am being a bit dramatic. In fact, I know I totally am. I'm thankful to be alive and well, for instance. But I don't understand how I could have lost so much weight and then gained it back so quickly, in the course of two weeks! Well, it's probably just that I expended so much energy and sweat every day that I was in New York, and once I got back to my regular life (and a less active one than usual, at that, because of this cold), my weight evened itself out and reverted back to reality. The reality is that I wasn't eating the best over my vacation before I went away, and that the last time I was able to weigh I was in the 313 neighborhood, therefore I have effectively maintained during that time, which I should be happy about.

There. I think that is a reasonable explanation, and putting it in that context, I feel much better. Like I had my cake and ate it, too. Literally.

I'm not feeling any better today, but not any worse, either. All I can say is thank the gods for Zicam, which keeps my nasal passages free and clear. I don't seem to be developing a cough or anything else, yet. Hopefully, I won't as I really do want to start running again, stat. I decided that tomorrow morning I am going to the running store for my sneakers no matter what. I want them on my feet and at the ready! As I may have mentioned before, C. is buying them for me for my birthday, but the funny thing is that I got a torn out catalog page from my stepmother in the mail yesterday with a note written on it: "Would you like these? They're on me, just let me know!" It's a pair of sneakers from Hammacher Schlemmer that have some sort of spring cushion in them or something. Well, I will tell her that I am all set on the sneaker front, but if she would like, I'd take her up on some other running gear if she is so inclined. Hopefully she will go for it. When I told her about my running goals, including 5Ks, 10Ks, and beyond, she said that she would love to join me on a 10K when I was ready, so that's something to look forward to.

Did you notice, I took my 40 pounds lost "bling" down for now? I don't feel like going back to the 35 pound one, so I'm going to wait it out until I get back down another few pounds before I put anything up announcing my achievements. At this point, it feels like too much pressure, too much to live up to. It's just that kind of week.

I'm looking forward to the weekend, and to a new week coming up. It's bound to be better than this one was.

Physics Diet doesn't lie

(You can click on it to get a better view)

Behold the wonder that is my Physics Diet chart. This covers from January on, but it wasn't until mid-February on, when I first started using that website and weighing daily. You can see how it really demonstrates trends in your body, like how every month I have "peaks", where my weight spikes fairly sharply, then goes back down over the following three or four days. It's why I am really trying hard not to get too down about the most recent occurrence, because, dude! Scientific data doesn't lie, right? Right.

Anyway, just wanted to share. You can see how it interpolated my data from when I wasn't able to weight myself recently.

Blergh.

Weight: 313.4
Total Weight loss: 36.6

Yikes. It turns out I actually am sick. By the time I got home from work last night, I felt like total crap. I'm very stuffed up, and fortunately Zicam does wonders for that, and and Advil substitute takes care of my aches. But ugh! How lame to get this kind of sick in the middle of summer, right? I was really looking forward to getting back into my running routine, but I'm going to hold off until next week. And I probably won't get my new sneakers until this weekend, which is fine, but this whole thing really bums me out, you know?

Well, I'm down a half pound-ish from my big gain yesterday. This is good, but man! I just knew that big loss was too good to be true, or just a result of the NYC craziness. Never mind, though. It'll come back down, just like it always does, and soon I will be totally back on track and headed down into the 200s.

I'm in a bit of a funk, sort of feeling like I just don't look any different, that I will never lose the double chin and rolls, and all of that. I'm usually very upbeat and optimistic about this stuff, all this work I'm doing, and I feel great, but... today? I'm feeling quite low about my efforts. It's probably just because life was so crazy there while on vacation, and getting back into some semblance of "normal" (whatever that means), but still. I have to admit: I am really, really upset about getting down to 307 and change, and then having it come back up to 313. I really am.

Not that I am giving up or falling off the proverbial horse, don't worry about that. I've felt this way before, way back when, and came through just fine. I will this time, too. I'm glad to have a place where I can publicly talk about this stuff, purge it from my psyche and pass it on into the ether of the internet.

Coaching self to regular self: "It's OK to feel down. You're sick, not feeling well and it's totally normal. It doesn't mean that you aren't succeeding. This is but a small bump in the road, a mere flicker in the flame. Go ahead, feel bad today, but work on getting better, feed your body with vitamins from healthy foods and lots of water, and ride it out. You're doing fine!"

*pats self on the head*

How to gain five pounds overnight

Weight: 313.8
Total Weight loss: 36.2

Wow, how about that? Birthday cake, or what?

Well. I'm honestly not too worried. When I entered my data at Physics Diet, I saw on my chart that just like clockwork, I had my monthly peak. Evey single month this happen; it's pretty amazing, really. It's not a TOM thing, as I had my period last week before I left for New York. It just is, but I am glad to know it. If it wasn't for the daily weigh, I wouldn't know this about my body and I'd probably be freaking out.

Anyway, if all goes according to history, I should be back down minus even more in just a few days.

I feel like total crap today, physically and emotionally. My stepdad is not doing too well (the cancer is now "progressing", they've been told), and I think it was a big mistake to finish off those chicken wings and blue cheese dressing last night that had been sitting out all day and the night before on the counter. I definitely have some mild food poisoning going on, for sure. Stupid. Also, last night I had the worst night's sleep I've had in a long time. Total. Crap.

I'll be drinking lots of water today, and I don't know what. No wonder my body's holding onto some weight today, poor thing.

Ouch.

Post-birthday, last day of vacation

Weight: 308.2
Total Weight loss: 41.8

Healthy You Challenge Check-in Day

I was quite happy with weigh-in this morning, showing a gain from yesterday of just about a half pound. What? Happy with a gain? Well, one, I am happy to have my scale back in working order so I can weigh daily again. Two, yesterday was my birthday and therefore a sort of free-for-all kind of day, eating-wise. (OK, so was today, kind of -- we got the cake a day late, but I did do some pretty back-breaking yard work all morning, so hopefully it will balance out.) Three, I wasn't sure if all that weight I lost over my scale break was just a result of lots of water lost in New York. (Hey! Have you seen my water?)

Therefore, this sort of gain does not register as a gain to me, per se, and it still reads as a loss on my moving average chart over at Physics Diet, so it's all good.

I am still letting my body recover from New York City. My feet and legs feel much better today, but I am still very fatigued from all the schlepping around and constant stimulus. All can say is, it's a damn good thing I had minus 40 pounds and the C25K under my belt in time for the trip, else I'd have been in really bad shape, I know. It was still difficult for me even being fairly new and improved, I can't really imagine my old self tackling the Big Apple, honestly.

I was going to try running this morning, but C. woke me up bright and early to get a head start on our Lawn and Garden day, which was threatening to be thwarted by stormy weather. I had some brush and errant trees to clear out on one side of our house, and he had some hot pepper and tomato plants to transplant into all our shiny new containers -- plus we needed to stop at Home Depot for some more soil, a shovel, and other miscellany before we got rained and thundered out from outside activity. So it looks like tomorrow will be my first day back on track with the running... I am thinking about giving myself yet one more day, though, as my knee got a lot of mileage and a tiny bit of a twist the other day walking into a convenience store. I don't want to hurt myself. We'll see how I feel.

I am excited that tomorrow after work I will be heading over to a local running store to be pro fitted for a new pair of sneaks -- my birthday present from C. this year. I can't wait.

Vacation redux

Weight: 307.6
Total Weight lost: 42.4 pounds

Wow, can it be possible that it has been over a week since my last post here? For shame it is! I guess being on vacation sort of scrambles all my regular activities, but part of the problem was that since Thursday I hadn't had sufficient internet access to allow me to update, travelling to and being in New York City for four days. (Yes, I've heard of internet cafes etc., but really? I was way too busy to even think about blogging.)

I had a fabulous time. My whole vacation has been fabulous, really, and refreshing and totally making me not want to return to my working life, as A-OK as it is. My NYC trip was no less than life-changing in many ways, but I will focus on the stuff I reserve for this blog for consistency's sake. ;)

You remember how my scale's lifetime battery bit the dust and I hadn't been able to weigh myself for almost two weeks? That was interesting. I found that I was less restrictive, less careful with the food choices I made, and that I even stopped logging my food intake at The Daily Plate like I have been doing. However, I was still mindful in a way. I certainly kept up the physical activity, and my runs are now up to 40 minutes straight, and I am able to cover just over 2.25 miles!

To give you an idea of how into running I am now, I actually brought my running sneaks with me to New York. Good thing I did, too, because my regular shoes gave me big blisters on each foot (nothing new for me, it's a New York tradition!) and my sneakers cushioned the pain a little bit. (I wore flip-flops on the 9+ hour train ride home, which allowed my poor dogs to breathe!) Really, though, I brought them with the intention to run, whether at the hotel fitness room or on the street or wherever else seemed fit.

I did in fact run/walk on the treadmill the first night I was in town, on a fairly archaic model which kind of kicked my ass. I got a good 30-minute workout in, though, and that was it for the weekend. The rest of the exercise I got was purely natural, beating the sidewalks faithfully and sweating my ass off. I had the privilege of visiting New York for the first heat wave of the year, in 90+ degree temperatures. And I'm someone who basically refuses to wear short sleeves no matter what. I sweated, and sweated, and sweated. Buckets. I also could not get enough water. It's all I drank, aside from some wine and Mojitos, all weekend. Probably gallons and gallons, no exaggeration. How the hell do all those Sex and the City type of women do it and still look their brand of good? Seriously.

I kind of watched my eating, or was at least semi-mindful. I found that whenever I did eat, I didn't eat a whole lot in one sitting. There was so much going on that eating became a footnote in a way. I did have brick oven pizza, a few salads, steak and scallops (a birthday dinner with my dear friend Sherri -- me today and she tomorrow, btw, Happy Birthday, Sherri!), and then mostly finger foods that were served as part of the seminar stuff I was there for in the first place. In short, I wasn't really concerned about it, especially not with all the running around I was doing.

So, when I got home last night (my train was almost two hours late getting in, so C. was at the station picking me up at quarter to one in the morning!), I saw that the scale company had finally sent the replacement battery and that I could weigh this morning again. I had no idea what to expect, to be honest. Part of me felt that I must have lost something, and then part of me was fearful that I'd be back up to 320. It was real pleasure to see such a low number appear on the readout, as you can see above. In the past twelve days or so, I've lost about five and half pounds, which is great. We'll see how it goes tomorrow, today having been, ahem, my birthday and therefore an opportunity for pizza and movie popcorn (we're going to the drive-in movies later), and maybe some ice cream. Amazingly enough? I didn't go crazy on anything. I think my stomach is shrinking, no lie.

I alluded to the fact that it's my birthday today. It is! I'm now 38 years old and really, really happy and proud of all the things I am doing. I don't resent getting older at all and feel bad for people who do. Life is a learning process that I embrace, and I see the vitality of so many others who are around my age, totally living it up like rock stars, totally NOT the age their driver's license claims them to be. This is the way to live, on your own terms as much as possible, with as much reverence to the lives and bodies we are so generously given to care for however long we're on this earth. I am thankful for all the opportunities I've had, both given to me and created for myself. I am thankful for all those who inspire me in one way or another, or in many ways. I am thankful for each day I have to try, try again.

Still in it, I wanna win it

Hi!

It's only been two days since my last post, so why does it feel like forever?

The no-weigh business still has me a bit discombobulated. I feel lost somehow.

I did take my measurements today. I don't see drastic differences when I measure, but my waist, my thighs, and my neck have shown the most change. I know the waist decrease is the best, since it's not good to have all that extra bulk around my innards, so I am happy about that. Also, my hips are now a full inch smaller than my measuring tape, hooray!

I did something crazy this morning. I guess I am sort of not really following the C25K plan anymore, though I did count this as my W9D2 run, which was supposed to be 30 minutes. Well, it was going so well and I felt so comfortable that I just kept going. I ended up running for 40 minutes total, plus seven minutes of warm-up and cool down. My whole outing took me just over 2.5 miles. Wow! It was AWESOME. And my knees are still with me, so far, so good.

My next run on Tuesday, I've decided, I'm going to go for the distance: 3.1 miles. I've already mapped out a route, and we'll see how it goes. Hopefully it'll take less than an hour, but I will take it on the easy side and just concentrate on getting the mileage done. I'm pretty excited.

As for my eating, well... I haven't been pristine. I've been pretty crappy and lazy about it, to tell the truth, not making the best choices overall. OK, really it was just yesterday that I ate so poorly, but it feels like forever. Especially after today's accomplishment, I'm fully into eating well until I leave for my NYC trip, and while I am there I will try to make healthy choices as much as I can, but I am not going to be overly stringent, either. I will have some free meals throughout that I want to take advantage of, so I will just do the best I can. Also? I am going to try a run or two while I am there, believe it or not! May as well. At the very least I'll take advantage of the workout room at the hotel. No, really. I am looking forward to that part!

Oh, I should also point out another facet of my achievement running today: I have my period, and I still did OK. I remember trying to do one of my earlier runs at that time of the month and how difficult it was... those were the days! Har.

I feel so powerful. Unfortunately, I am also a little stinky, so I think I will treat myself to a nice bath.

Have a great day!