Nothing New

I'm fat.

FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT.

It's time do something about it and just quit whining already.

Sigh.

(Fat)

The uphill bike ride

I read the blog from the link on your other blog, Val. I think she must have lost her mind. I bought a bike today and I am feeling exceedingly nervous about HOW AWFUL I am now going to look anytime I am on campus. Until it snows. That's right, once it snows, I'm not riding my bike up anything. Call me a quitter if you want, I am doing it in the rain and the sun and the fatness and sweatiness that is me. So I draw the line at snow.

That's the plan, anyway. I may draw the line at anything above 60 degrees so I will sweat a little bit less. And then I may say "only if it's not windy" and then I might add on that it cannot be overcast in any way because I am not riding in the rain.

No. I am going to ride until it snows. I spent too much money setting myself up with a comfy seat and a good bike to let is sit there and look nice.

I will ride. I WILL!!

anyway...

I'm changing my Y membership to a One Adult Family so I can take the fetchin' kids, I mean little darlings, and go at some other time than O-Dark-Thirty. Tentative plan is to drop Caden at school and head on over to the Y. Pray for me.

School = hills

which means I have to exercise whether I want to or not just to get to class. We've all heard the stories about "uphill both ways in the snow", right? That is reality in Pullman. I used to question the validity of how often it could happen that a trip would have uphill in it both ways. Then I moved here. There are no neighborhoods, just the designation of what hill something's on. College Hill, Pioneer Hill, Sunnyside Hill, Military Hill... And there's only 20,000 people including the students! There should not be this many significant hills. Then the university (at least the section of it I have to be on every day) is laid out on smaller hills on college hill. This doesn't just lead to lots of going up a hill to get somewhere and up the other hill to get back to where you started (even between 2 buildings. we're not talking across campus!) it also means there are a LOT of buildings where you walk in one side on the second floor, go down the stairs, and back out the other side on the first floor. In short, I go up hill to my first class, up a flight of stairs to leave it, up another flight of outdoor stairs to go up a hill to my second class, up 4 flights of stairs to the room, and then down a bunch of hills and up more stairs to get to the car. And I, in all my 300 or so pounds of fatness, have to execute these moves in under 10 minutes.

I hate this campus. They make me pay for a gym membership that I SHOULD go use but I don't need to because they built the entire campus on a giant stair climbing machine!

I miss flat land.

Goodbye jiggly butt!

Say goodbye to a juggly butt. I went for a jog yesterday morning and realized that for so long I have been sucking it up on my runs. My motto, since having Isaac, has just been "one foot in front of the other. Get through it....suck it up." So, in the process of doing this, I have done just that.....sucked....the end. I haven't had any improvement and I always come home with sore hips, knees and ankles. In my quest for "just getting through" the run I have been in the habit of using my joints to keep me going rather than my muscles. Armed with this knowledge, I spent the entire 6 miles focused on nothing but my muscles and, more specifically, using those muscles to propel me forward. I wasn't sure I could keep it up throughout the whole run but I did. It was awesome. My muscles were so fatigued in the end but a good fatigued. A deep-down-going-to-build-muscle-and-be-stronger fatigued. My joints? you ask..... not a single ache. Amazing.

So...I came up with this. Sometimes all we can do is put one foot in front of the other to keep us going (in all walks of life.....excuse the pun). We have to forget about the yesterdays (what we did or did not do, what we ate or did not eat (yeah right, like that ever happens), or how many pounds we STILL have to go to reach our goals. It's okay. The important thing is that we do keep going.

Then, there will come a day that we decide that those efforts are not enough and we push ourselves harder, stronger, faster. We may crash and burn the next day (ahem...I have not yet worked out today) but we will get ourselves up and move on. And then......we see the REAL results.

Val....do not be discouraged with the weight gain. IT ALWAYS HAPPENS. I used to have a rule that I could only weigh myself on days that I felt good (I'm not doing so good with this rule right now...a bit obsessed). But, that way, it doesn't matter what the scale says because you feel good anyway (and usually if you are REALLY feeling good, you will see good results on the scale as well). Holly, sweating to death totally counts in my book. Keep it up ladies.

P.S. I still have not been able to shake the extra weight I am carrying. Damned family reunion, strep throat and night time Olympic watching cravings. Now I am going to work really hard....okay now......okay now......no, maybe now. Soon.........

this weekend

I have managed to deal with all the stress related to the kids being with Brandon and not eaten a bunch of crap. In fact, I think the worse thing I have done this weekend is get a pretzel at the mall today. Yay!! for not stress-eating!!!

Listen, if you had an ex husband you might fully understand the feat this is. I usually am driven to, oh, I dunno... COOKIE DOUGH over my dealings with him. But not this time.

No exercise but since it's like 105 today I figure sweating while sitting still has to count for SOMETHING.

A Non-Weigh In

I KNOW that muscle weighs more than fat. I KNOW that I'm retaining water due to, well, you know. I KNOW that the numbers go up before they go down and that the only true way to tell how you're doing is by how your clothes are fitting. I KNOW all this, and yet, I hate my scale for telling me the numbers have gone up since I started working out.

I mean seriously hate it. HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE IT!

And no, HATE is not overstating how I feel.

So, I will not be weighing in again until I notice a difference in how my clothes are fitting. Hopefully for the better.

Oh, and I did work out yesterday, but not today. Tired, stiff, sore...but I noticed that I'm WAY nicer to my kids when I do work out. So back on track tomorrow.

And have the rest of you given up? Where are your posts?

Again

I did it again today......460 calories. The only reason I get out of bed is because of this blog. At least it's serving it's purpose.

Progress

At 5:45 am this morning the alarm went off. Because I set it to go off then. Holy Mother of (fill in your choice of expletive here), but that's EARLY! I turned it off and laid there for a full minute before I realized that if I didn't get up and get moving then I was going to be pissed at myself later, and that I would then have to report it to you all here.

So I got up. I got my workout stuff on (which I so conveniently laid out the night before), I got in the car, and drove to the Y.

Then, I got out of the car and went into the Y, and THEN I WORKED OUT!

Do you hear that sound......that's the sound of me burning 402 calories this morning. Wahoo!

Tomorrow I will input my weight, age, etc into the machine and see if I burn more calories being "tubby" than I do being "average".

Update

I joined the YMCA today.

The workout begins on Monday.....

Today

I think I'm actually losing it today. Not weight, just my mind. I wonder how much that weighs. At least it's almost time for bed and maybe these kids will let me get out of the Papa Murphy's Cookie Dough therapy I have invited myself to. I bought it feeling good, I never ever ever bake them though. Apparently I had my crystal ball in the "on" position this afternoon.

Will

Stop

Eating

Cookie Dough.

Weigh In

Okie-dokie, the magical scale has pronounced that I now weigh.....196. That is 6 lbs total lost since we started this blog. WAHOO!!!! I'm sure that doesn't seem like much to skinny-minny and Holly's 47 lbs lost but at least the numbers are going down!

So I'm thinking.....this is the biggest change I've seen and it's coming on the heels of my aforementioned mental discovery (uncertainty feels a lot like hunger), so.....coincidence? I think not.

Also, (sorry Holly, gotta post it) I've been mega-spiritual lately....morning and evening family prayers, morning and evening couple prayers, morning and evening personal prayers, personal scripture study with the seminary manuals that I bought, etc. And the result is that I'm so incredibly happy! I'm humming and singing around the house, I'm better with the kids, the kids seem a little less whiney, and I seem to have more energy.

Anyway, downward movement in the numbers is encouraging. Just imagine what might happen if I combine my epiphany and spirituality with some exercise....

Automaton

Okay, on the whole hunger/uncertainty thing - I'm eating way better, but sometimes get the icy fingers of fear at unexpected moments. But I'm not burying them under food, which is a huge improvement. Of course now it's almost easy to NOT eat, which is very strange for me, and not any more beneficial than overeating.

I used to have a standard lunch before I got pregnant with Aile, and I've been wanting to go back to it, but have been busy with the shovel (you know, burying), but maybe now's the time. Dr. Oz says the more automatic you can make your meals, the more consistent you become and the more weight you'll lose.

In case you're wondering (and I can tell that you are because I'm Oprah) the lunch is a small salad plate with as many veggies as I can shove on it, a string cheese for protein and fat, 1 slice of whole wheat or rye bread, and 1-2 tbsp of veggie dip (more fat because I'm nursing, and I just like fat, and if I'm going to eat that many veggies they have to taste fairly good). Oh, and a Coke. Because I'm not getting through the day without one. Very filling, and if you cut all the veggies up at once and put them in individual baggies then it's very quick too - and that's a requirement for me.

Hello fellow "I'm losing it" contributors

Okay, So I am very happy to have gotten an invite from Val to post here. I just hope it is okay with you, Holly.

So today has been a not so crappy day (hurray). I did jog 6 miles this morning and have YET to screw it up by my other habit, binging. But....sadly I know that it won't last very long. We are going to a BBQ tonight. You know what that means! Lots of food, lots of fat, and I will take way too big of portions the first time around not to mention the second, third and possibly fourth time I venture back to the table. I just can't help myself. It's like I think I will never be going to another BBQ again or that this is may just be my last meal on earth. How stupid is that. So...I eat myself silly, struggle with wanting to throw up, and (most importantly) blow up like a balloon and have a VERY hard and VERY unsuccessful time trying to suck in the ponch. Such is the life of a compulsive eater.

I don't have to weigh myself again until Monday and that would be great except that I usually do the same thing on Sundays that I do at BBQ's. Is there no hope for such a sick person as me?

Wish me luck.

Watch Out Oprah!

I mailed the Y application today. I haven't left the property since church last Sunday, and will not be leaving again until this Sunday, if I want to walk to church. None of this has anything to do with weight, but I just needed to say it.

You may notice we have a new contributor, welcome MELANIE! Whoop-whoop!

In talking with Mel today I had an epiphany....hunger feels a lot like uncertainty. I'll just let you all soak that up for a moment.

Hunger feels a lot like uncertainty.....so profound. I could replace Oprah.

So what does this mean for me? Wellllll, it means that I've been trying to bury feelings of uncertainty under pounds and pounds of food, hoping that it will make me feel better, but which inevitably makes me feel sick instead. So I try to bury THAT feeling....just a nasty, nasty downward spiral. However, since I am now armed with this knowledge, and knowledge is power I can break the cycle of abuse! (of my body).

Of course it also means I now have to deal with what the uncertainty is all about, but at least I won't be getting fat(ter) on top of it.