Okay, so I spent all of January curled up in a fetal position on the floor, remote control at the ready, angled so that I could keep up with The Biggest Loser, Project Runway and other important world developments on the TV. The area around my body was littered with chocolate wrappers, empty Coca-Cola bottles, bitter remorse and huge, hulking piles of self pity.
What got me over it? Well, two things. A comment from one of my favorite readers, Gucci Muse, who told me to stop focusing on the negative (Thank you, Muse!) and ugh, yes, another health crisis. The health crisis shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. For three months, I walked six days a week on my treadmill, didn't drink a drop of soda, and really watched my diet.
Then came January. I realized that my Christmas holiday was bad and sad and that made me mad, and then I realized that my beloved (and only) son hates my guts and isn't likely to change his opinion anytime soon, and then I realized that even though I had faithfully stuck to a reasonable, rational fitness and weight loss program, I hadn't lost any weight. All reasons to just go straight off the end of the pier and try to kill myself with bad food and slothfulness, right? Chocolate and Coca-Cola Nirvana, here I come.
Well, I almost managed to do it. My body reacted to the absence of regular exercise and addition of much bad food to my diet as if it had been hit with an atom bomb. It basically shut down and I came very close to having to go to the hospital for the exact same thing that sent me there last March.
If life really is a circle, then I'm back at the beginning, and yes, I know that circles don't actually have a beginning, but work with me here. I am back to weighing more than I did when I first started in October (those four pounds I lost over the 90 days of walking flew back on and then some once I started drinking soda again.) But the worst thing is that my blood pressure spiked, went sailing through the roof even with my daily medications, and that made me sick. But what makes me feel even sicker is that this is something I did to myself, knowingly, willingly, consciously. With my lower lip poked out further than the Grand Canyon, Ms. Pity Party (that would be me...) decided that I DESERVE copious amounts of chocolate and soda...advice to the contrary from that stuffy old doctor who's just trying to keep me alive and healthy be damned.
Today I have to report that I am still sick. My blood pressure is still elevated, my kidneys are still barely working and I am walking around puffed up with excess water like one of those animated balloons in those dumb incontinence ads on TV. But I am back on the treadmill. The same woman who just six short weeks ago could rip off an hour on the treadmill at three miles an hour on a 2 percent incline without breaking a sweat can barely make 5 minutes at two miles per hour. It is absolutely stunning how quickly the human body loses its conditioning. For 90 days, I slowly built myself up to a modicum of fitness. My blood pressure normalized and my resting heart rate fell to the highs 50s. A mere six weeks of slothfulness and my blood pressure is back through the roof and my resting heart rate is in the high 70s.
I wish I could say that I will never slip again, but I know myself and I know that eventually, something will come along that will knock me off my pins. What I can say and promise myself is that the in-between times, the times when I am rolling around in my sorrows like it was actually fun (which it's not), will grow shorter and shorter. I know now that it's unwise for me to focus on trying to lose weight (a negative focus); from now on, I am focusing on something positive...staying healthy. Exercise and healthy eating are a vital part of that focus...so today...Round Two starts.
Oh, and I did get that exercise thingie I ordered...the Urban Rebounder. I have only used it a couple of times but can report that it's a lot of fun and reminds me of when I was a kid bouncing on the trampoline in my neighbor's back yard. I just need to get an industrial strength sports bra before I use it again or I might have to report that I have become the first woman in history to break her nose with her own boob.
Finally back in orbit,
Planet Fat Cat
Showing posts with label fitness walking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fitness walking. Show all posts
Friday, February 15, 2008
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Figuring it Out
Any regular reader knows I have a habit of complaining about my nefarious, back-stabbing body that always contrives to lose weight during the week, only to gain it back and then some just in time for Monday weigh-in. This week was no exception; I made it through Thanksgiving weighing in at 201.8 pounds, only varying up or down by a few ounces every day last week.
Knowing my history of weight gain just prior to weigh-in, I doubled my walking time on Saturday and Sunday to one hour instead of 30 minutes...and was especially careful about what I ate. I was so happy to have made it through Thanksgiving without a weight gain that I felt pretty good about the upcoming weigh-in. No such luck. Despite eating very lightly on Sunday and walking almost 5 miles over the previous two days, when I weighed in yesterday morning, I had gained two full pounds. I wasn't bloated or swollen so it wasn't water weight; it was just pure stubbornness on the part of my body; it's undying refusal to cooperate at all with my weight loss and fitness program.
Then I started thinking about it scientifically. I looked over my weight loss and exercise logs and realized that every single week, I weigh the least on Tuesday. For the 70 days I've been on this program, Tuesday is consistently the day of my lowest weight.
So I did what any right-thinking dieter would so...I changed my weigh-in day.
Now, as for why I always seem to gain weight over the weekend...I think it's because my Saturday and Sunday schedule is so radically different from my weekday norm. Monday through Friday, I wake up, walk on my treadmill, eat breakfast and get to work, which means I walk to my computer and start writing. I also do phone interviews and run a bit of laundry, wash a few dishes, go outside and pull a few weeds, rake some leaves, anything to keep the creative juices flowing. Writing is not a linear process. I don't get writer's block, (thank goodness), but over the years I have figured out ways not to get bored as I write. Sometimes that means a quick phone call to a family member or friend; sometimes that means a walk to the mailbox to see if the check really is in the mail (freelance writers live for mail delivery); sometimes it means a run to the grocery or the post office, or another 20 minutes of walking or exercise to get the old brain jump-started again.
Now, contrast that interesting, self-directed schedule to what happens on the weekend with my part time job. First I pack a dinner, then get in my car around 12:30 pm, and proceed to battle traffic over 42 miles of hideous major city Interstates. I'm surrounded by insane , enraged or chemically impaired drivers, drivers on the road with no citizenship papers, no knowledge of or respect for the English language or the laws and customs of this country, no legal drivers' license (they buy theirs at flea markets for $50.00), no drivers' training, no concept what a blind spot is, drivers who have 8 unrestrained children and 4 dogs bouncing around the bed of their pick-ups.
I can feel my blood pressure racheting up over the hour to hour and a half of the drive. I am sitting totally immobile, strapped into a seat as I fight to get to my job alive and in one piece. Sometimes I see horrible things. On Sunday, the Interstate was totally shut down. I called to work and they told me there was a major accident...a pickup driving wildly and at high speed on rain slick roads, weaving in and out of lanes, hit a puddle, lost control and flipped over.
I jumped off onto the service road. It was like swimming through molasses in January, but at least I was moving. The Interstate had been turned into a parking lot, full of police cars, two fire engines, wreckers...a real mess.
What I didn't know and the people at work didn't know since the police were being tight-lipped, was that when the pickup flipped over, the two unrestrained children in the back were ejected over the wall of the overpass down to the pavement 25 feet below. First of all, who makes their children ride in the back of a truck during a rainstorm? Secondly, as we learned later, who puts their children in their truck and then gets behind the wheel dead drunk in the middle of the day? The answer is, the guy who was driving this truck.
As I saw later on the tape at work, he was sitting hand-cuffed in the back of a police cruiser. But his children? Let's just say it was the most awful thing I have ever seen. As I crept up to the intersection, I began to see pieces of truck scattered all over the service road, and then I saw the blood. There was blood everywhere, dripping down the walls of the overpass, down the curbs, puddled in sickening circles on the pavement. It was a scene from a nightmare, one that is forever burned into my brain, one I would never have chosen to see in my lifetime.
By the time I got to work, I am sure my blood pressure was through the roof. But unlike at home where I can check it instantly and take some medication, do some breathing exercises or hop on the treadmill to bring it down, I was locked into an eight hour shift at a highly stressful job, producing the same amount of deadline work that just two years ago, they had three employees to do. Now there's just one...me, because after all, the multi-billion dollar international conglomerate I work for needs to make even more money.
Mark my words: unbridled corporate and personal greed will be the downfall of this country.
While at work, I don't sit there knoshing all day or guzzling Coca-Cola. I drink water and eat the healthy dinner I packed and snack on an apple or pear or grapes.
When I get to work, I sit at my desk, close my eyes, do some deep breathing, try to recenter, refocus and calm myself, and plunge in. I sit unmoving for the next eight hours while news breaks all around me, the producer reorders the show and stories change. I write about murders, rapes, robberies, beatings, attacks on the homeless, and this past weekend, about a heartless 19-year-old mother and her Internet boyfriend who beat her 2-year-old daughter to death over a period of a few days, then stuffed her body into a tackle box in their storage shed just feet from their door, and then tossed the box into the Gulf of Mexico a few months later where a fisherman discovered her. Baby Grace. I couldn't sleep last night because of Baby Grace, and the terrifying, disheartening knowledge there are people like her mother and stepfather in this world.
There's hardly any time to eat at work, much less go to the bathroom. You're bombarded for eight hours with the worst of humanity, the violent, seamy bottom of the barrel dregs of awfulness. When it's all over at 10 pm, I am totally collapsed emotionally...a bleeding psychological wreck of a human being, my normal happy-go-lucky self completely turned inside out.
I still face the hour or more drive home, frequently in blinding rain (got to love these coastal climates) with a highway full of Saturday night drunks, thugs, gang members out to show how macho they are, rapists, robbers, and the odd, frightened older woman like me, just trying to get home.
Then on Sunday, a traditional day of rest, I get to do it all over again. It's no wonder I weigh so much on Monday morning. I've just been through two incredibly stressful days, driving through horrible traffic, (which I hate) and driving myself mercilessly to get my job done accurately and well before that red light goes on and we hit the air.
I need the entire week just to recover.
So, now that I have all that figured out, I have set some new goals. Within one year, I want to be well enough established as a free lance writer that I can give up my stressful weekend job. I am changing my weigh-in day to Tuesday, which may seem like a cheat to some, but to me, it seems a cheat to myself to weigh on Monday when my weight always spikes on that day.
Finally, despite my less than stellar results, despite the fact that my legs hurt all the time from the walking, despite not losing any more weight or inches even though I am faithfully sticking to my walking program and nutritional plan, I am going to keep walking and keep exercising and keep trying to lose weight. I am on Day 70 of my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program, and I am not about to give up now. I sometimes struggle to finish things but I will finish this program. I will get all 90 check marks in my journal.
And I will probably still weigh 206.4 pounds.
Bleh.
Planet Fat Cat
Knowing my history of weight gain just prior to weigh-in, I doubled my walking time on Saturday and Sunday to one hour instead of 30 minutes...and was especially careful about what I ate. I was so happy to have made it through Thanksgiving without a weight gain that I felt pretty good about the upcoming weigh-in. No such luck. Despite eating very lightly on Sunday and walking almost 5 miles over the previous two days, when I weighed in yesterday morning, I had gained two full pounds. I wasn't bloated or swollen so it wasn't water weight; it was just pure stubbornness on the part of my body; it's undying refusal to cooperate at all with my weight loss and fitness program.
Then I started thinking about it scientifically. I looked over my weight loss and exercise logs and realized that every single week, I weigh the least on Tuesday. For the 70 days I've been on this program, Tuesday is consistently the day of my lowest weight.
So I did what any right-thinking dieter would so...I changed my weigh-in day.
Now, as for why I always seem to gain weight over the weekend...I think it's because my Saturday and Sunday schedule is so radically different from my weekday norm. Monday through Friday, I wake up, walk on my treadmill, eat breakfast and get to work, which means I walk to my computer and start writing. I also do phone interviews and run a bit of laundry, wash a few dishes, go outside and pull a few weeds, rake some leaves, anything to keep the creative juices flowing. Writing is not a linear process. I don't get writer's block, (thank goodness), but over the years I have figured out ways not to get bored as I write. Sometimes that means a quick phone call to a family member or friend; sometimes that means a walk to the mailbox to see if the check really is in the mail (freelance writers live for mail delivery); sometimes it means a run to the grocery or the post office, or another 20 minutes of walking or exercise to get the old brain jump-started again.
Now, contrast that interesting, self-directed schedule to what happens on the weekend with my part time job. First I pack a dinner, then get in my car around 12:30 pm, and proceed to battle traffic over 42 miles of hideous major city Interstates. I'm surrounded by insane , enraged or chemically impaired drivers, drivers on the road with no citizenship papers, no knowledge of or respect for the English language or the laws and customs of this country, no legal drivers' license (they buy theirs at flea markets for $50.00), no drivers' training, no concept what a blind spot is, drivers who have 8 unrestrained children and 4 dogs bouncing around the bed of their pick-ups.
I can feel my blood pressure racheting up over the hour to hour and a half of the drive. I am sitting totally immobile, strapped into a seat as I fight to get to my job alive and in one piece. Sometimes I see horrible things. On Sunday, the Interstate was totally shut down. I called to work and they told me there was a major accident...a pickup driving wildly and at high speed on rain slick roads, weaving in and out of lanes, hit a puddle, lost control and flipped over.
I jumped off onto the service road. It was like swimming through molasses in January, but at least I was moving. The Interstate had been turned into a parking lot, full of police cars, two fire engines, wreckers...a real mess.
What I didn't know and the people at work didn't know since the police were being tight-lipped, was that when the pickup flipped over, the two unrestrained children in the back were ejected over the wall of the overpass down to the pavement 25 feet below. First of all, who makes their children ride in the back of a truck during a rainstorm? Secondly, as we learned later, who puts their children in their truck and then gets behind the wheel dead drunk in the middle of the day? The answer is, the guy who was driving this truck.
As I saw later on the tape at work, he was sitting hand-cuffed in the back of a police cruiser. But his children? Let's just say it was the most awful thing I have ever seen. As I crept up to the intersection, I began to see pieces of truck scattered all over the service road, and then I saw the blood. There was blood everywhere, dripping down the walls of the overpass, down the curbs, puddled in sickening circles on the pavement. It was a scene from a nightmare, one that is forever burned into my brain, one I would never have chosen to see in my lifetime.
By the time I got to work, I am sure my blood pressure was through the roof. But unlike at home where I can check it instantly and take some medication, do some breathing exercises or hop on the treadmill to bring it down, I was locked into an eight hour shift at a highly stressful job, producing the same amount of deadline work that just two years ago, they had three employees to do. Now there's just one...me, because after all, the multi-billion dollar international conglomerate I work for needs to make even more money.
Mark my words: unbridled corporate and personal greed will be the downfall of this country.
While at work, I don't sit there knoshing all day or guzzling Coca-Cola. I drink water and eat the healthy dinner I packed and snack on an apple or pear or grapes.
When I get to work, I sit at my desk, close my eyes, do some deep breathing, try to recenter, refocus and calm myself, and plunge in. I sit unmoving for the next eight hours while news breaks all around me, the producer reorders the show and stories change. I write about murders, rapes, robberies, beatings, attacks on the homeless, and this past weekend, about a heartless 19-year-old mother and her Internet boyfriend who beat her 2-year-old daughter to death over a period of a few days, then stuffed her body into a tackle box in their storage shed just feet from their door, and then tossed the box into the Gulf of Mexico a few months later where a fisherman discovered her. Baby Grace. I couldn't sleep last night because of Baby Grace, and the terrifying, disheartening knowledge there are people like her mother and stepfather in this world.
There's hardly any time to eat at work, much less go to the bathroom. You're bombarded for eight hours with the worst of humanity, the violent, seamy bottom of the barrel dregs of awfulness. When it's all over at 10 pm, I am totally collapsed emotionally...a bleeding psychological wreck of a human being, my normal happy-go-lucky self completely turned inside out.
I still face the hour or more drive home, frequently in blinding rain (got to love these coastal climates) with a highway full of Saturday night drunks, thugs, gang members out to show how macho they are, rapists, robbers, and the odd, frightened older woman like me, just trying to get home.
Then on Sunday, a traditional day of rest, I get to do it all over again. It's no wonder I weigh so much on Monday morning. I've just been through two incredibly stressful days, driving through horrible traffic, (which I hate) and driving myself mercilessly to get my job done accurately and well before that red light goes on and we hit the air.
I need the entire week just to recover.
So, now that I have all that figured out, I have set some new goals. Within one year, I want to be well enough established as a free lance writer that I can give up my stressful weekend job. I am changing my weigh-in day to Tuesday, which may seem like a cheat to some, but to me, it seems a cheat to myself to weigh on Monday when my weight always spikes on that day.
Finally, despite my less than stellar results, despite the fact that my legs hurt all the time from the walking, despite not losing any more weight or inches even though I am faithfully sticking to my walking program and nutritional plan, I am going to keep walking and keep exercising and keep trying to lose weight. I am on Day 70 of my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program, and I am not about to give up now. I sometimes struggle to finish things but I will finish this program. I will get all 90 check marks in my journal.
And I will probably still weigh 206.4 pounds.
Bleh.
Planet Fat Cat
Thursday, November 8, 2007
A Moment for Posterity...and for Posteriors
Okay, I know it's not my regular weigh-in day but I just had to record this moment for posterity. This is Day 54 of my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program. I was discouraged yesterday because I had to climb a long flight of stairs and seven or eight steps in, I was blowing air through my nose like a whale. Is this what fitness feels like? I asked myself, because it didn't feel fit to me to get winded just by climbing stairs. And seeing as how I am more than halfway through the program and have not only been faithful but done more than asked each day, including doing my walks on a 2% incline, I think I should be more able to handle stairs by now.
Then I remembered. I may have been walking for almost two months now, but I've only lost 3 pounds and my body fat percentage and muscle mass have not budged on my fancy-dancy scale. Hauling more than 200 pounds up a long staircase would be hard work for anyone, but especially for an overweight someone born in the Jurassic Age. Still, I was ticked when I got to the top of the stairs and was huffing and puffing and sweating like a pig, even though my dainty little, erm, not-so-dainty big self usually does not sweat no matter what the provocation.
So imagine my surprise and delight to get on the scale this morning and see that not only am I down to 200.8 pounds, a loss of almost 6 pounds since I started this program, but my body fat has actually dropped by point-two percent and my muscle mass increased by point-one percent. Yay! Those are the first positive changes in my body composition I have seen and that is very encouraging to me.
So, you may be asking yourself, why is she being coy about her total percentage of body fat when she's not coy about anything else? It's because, if my readers knew how much fat I was toting around on my carcass, some sensitive or paranoid soul among you might report me to the Department of Defense as a weapon of mass destruction.
Oh, heck. I just remembered. I published my percentage of body fat on this blog already. Okay, so I'm down to 40.2% from 40.4% and up to 28.9% muscle mass (it was 28.8%). I consider these HUGE changes because it is the first time since I started this journey that my schizophrenic scale has noted any changes whatsoever in my body composition. I can weigh six times in a minute and get weights varying by as much as two pounds, but the body composition and muscle mass NEVER CHANGED. And now they have.
In physiological terms, it means simply that I am a bit stronger, even if not long staircase worthy, and that my body is now slightly more efficient at burning calories than it was before.
And as far as I'm concerned, this is the biggest triumph yet! Next stop, 199 pounds. At the rate I'm going, that should only take another three or four months.
Wait. No more negative thoughts. I will weigh 199 by next weigh-in. My foolhardy little self is predicting I will achieve that milestone in just four more days. Never mind that it took me two whole months to lose six measly pounds. I will prevail.
Now I really have to exercise.
Planet Fat Cat
Then I remembered. I may have been walking for almost two months now, but I've only lost 3 pounds and my body fat percentage and muscle mass have not budged on my fancy-dancy scale. Hauling more than 200 pounds up a long staircase would be hard work for anyone, but especially for an overweight someone born in the Jurassic Age. Still, I was ticked when I got to the top of the stairs and was huffing and puffing and sweating like a pig, even though my dainty little, erm, not-so-dainty big self usually does not sweat no matter what the provocation.
So imagine my surprise and delight to get on the scale this morning and see that not only am I down to 200.8 pounds, a loss of almost 6 pounds since I started this program, but my body fat has actually dropped by point-two percent and my muscle mass increased by point-one percent. Yay! Those are the first positive changes in my body composition I have seen and that is very encouraging to me.
So, you may be asking yourself, why is she being coy about her total percentage of body fat when she's not coy about anything else? It's because, if my readers knew how much fat I was toting around on my carcass, some sensitive or paranoid soul among you might report me to the Department of Defense as a weapon of mass destruction.
Oh, heck. I just remembered. I published my percentage of body fat on this blog already. Okay, so I'm down to 40.2% from 40.4% and up to 28.9% muscle mass (it was 28.8%). I consider these HUGE changes because it is the first time since I started this journey that my schizophrenic scale has noted any changes whatsoever in my body composition. I can weigh six times in a minute and get weights varying by as much as two pounds, but the body composition and muscle mass NEVER CHANGED. And now they have.
In physiological terms, it means simply that I am a bit stronger, even if not long staircase worthy, and that my body is now slightly more efficient at burning calories than it was before.
And as far as I'm concerned, this is the biggest triumph yet! Next stop, 199 pounds. At the rate I'm going, that should only take another three or four months.
Wait. No more negative thoughts. I will weigh 199 by next weigh-in. My foolhardy little self is predicting I will achieve that milestone in just four more days. Never mind that it took me two whole months to lose six measly pounds. I will prevail.
Now I really have to exercise.
Planet Fat Cat
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Attitude of Fatitude
The weigh-in this week wasn't as tragic as I expected it to be. I think the time change fooled my body, which I have by now figured out is my mortal enemy. Because we "fell back" one hour, my body forget to gain the usual 12 pounds in time for the weigh-in, so I actually lost a full pound this week, down to 202.8 pounds. I'm still a long way from my goal; I still terrify grown men on the street, but I lost a pound. I will gain it back again 20 or maybe even 40 times over the next month but for now, I can truthfully record in my journal that the pound is down.
My body is a wonder of weird science. It will not comply with the laws of nature, nor succumb to threats of extreme surgery, physical violence or bribery. It just keeps blubbering along, all proud of its fatness, while I hang my head in shame and shop in the "Big Woman" section. I hate it.
I haven't missed a day on the treadmill for 50 days now, but still no results. Maybe I'm living in a state of delusion, a fat-altered reality. Maybe when my fevered brain thinks my body is up on the treadmill pounding out the miles, in reality I have my head stuffed in the refrigerator licking butter. How else do you explain my body's stubborn refusal to shed fat?
So I have decided to develop an "attitude of fatitude" (sorry, Oprah) to match my body's behavior. Maybe that way I can trick it into doing what it's supposed to do...shrink...dammit...when confronted with far fewer calories and many more hours of intense physical exercise.
Today I went shopping for the tools required to pull off this hoax. Since walking isn't working, I'm adding a new exercise routine. I know, I said I was going to do this last week, but it takes about a week for an idea to get from my head out into the realm of reality, and then another week or two of chewing my cud before I actually get up off my double-wide and do something. Anyway, I decided I wanted to get one of those big balance balls you see on The Biggest Loser. I thought that my help me flatten my stomach so I would no longer look like "The World's Oldest Pregnant Woman."
And for those of you who are worried, no, I won't stop walking. I'm determined to finish the 90 Day Fitness Walking Program and get all 90 little checks in my journal. I just want to do the balance ball thing, too.
I went to the store and was immediately confronted with about 15 different configurations of balance balls in various colors and sizes and even more confusing, with different accoutrements. This was going to take hours, because I had to read every line of text on every box, I had to pick them up, look at them, touch them, feel them, smell them, chew on the edge of the boxes, ruminate, cogitate, correlate and relegate. That's a lot of work, and it all had to be one without raising the angst level of the store clerks who were scurrying up and down the aisles looking for places to stick up more Christmas merchandise. After all, it is November 6th already.
Some kits had resistance bands in the box, others had weights, others had resistance rings. Some had accompanying workouts on DVD, which I considered essential since I basically don't know what I'm doing when it comes to balance balls. In fact, if I followed my usual routine, I would blow up the ball, sit down on it, lose my balance, fall over, break my neck, and that would be the end of my exercise routine, if not the end of me.
So the DVD was a must-have, but equally important to me was there had to be some kind of device included to blow up the ball. Oh, shut up! I can hear you all now; "Surely she has enough hot air to blow up anything," but in fact, I don't. I am so old and decrepit I can barely breathe, must less blow up a giant ball with air from my own lungs. So naturally, the kit I liked best, that had the DVD and a pretty blue ball with color-coordinated resistance bands...did NOT have a blow up thingie included. Okay, says me. I'll just buy one, only the store clerk tells me they don't carry them since all the balance ball kits come with them.
I beg to differ and show her the soothingly designed kit with the ocean blue ball and accessories. She insists there is a blow up thingie in there and proceeds to rip open the box and scatter its contents all over the exercise aisle. Hmm, guess what? The little picture on the side of the box that shows everything included in the kit, only it didn't have a blow up thingie, well it was right.
The clerk refused to believe it and stared meanly at me as she struggled to get all the parts back in the box, which brings to mind another of Sir Isaac Newton's Laws of Physics: "Any item once removed from its box will never again go back into the same box without first performing extreme acts of legerdemain and uttering copious curse words. Even then, the box will be distorted according to the precepts inherent in the following equation: cm–1/(kA/cm–2)."
Actually, that's a lie. I just made it all up because I am fascinated by things I cannot understand. I stole that equation from a paper entitled:
Self-consistent solutions to the intersubband rate equations in quantum cascade lasers: Analysis of a GaAs/Al x Ga 1–x As device
just because I wanted to. But equation or not, things still won't ever go back into their boxes without a struggle and lots of broken nails. Trust me on this one.
Anyway, I suddenly spied a kit that had the balance ball, the resistance bands, the resistance rings, hand weights, a DVD and a blow up thingie, all for less than $30.00!
Only, it was one of the thousands of items designed specifically for October Breast Cancer Awareness month, and it was all titty pink.
I walked away. I could not bear the thought of bringing this hideous pink thing into my carefully crafted Zen bedroom. The color was so alarming that sleep would have been impossible with the damn thing in the room. But as I did a little math inside my head (always a dangerous thing to do...) I realized that to get all the stuff in that box individually, I would have to spend at least $100.00.
So now I'm home with the damned titty pink ball and still staring at it. I haven't yet had the nerve to take it out of its box and blow it up. I think I'll wait until it's dark, but this thing is so bright it might possibly glow in the dark.
It doesn't match a thing I have except for a bra I bought when I was feeling all girly one day. I can feel my entire house sending feelings of disapproval and puzzlement in my direction.
The Mrs. doesn't usually bring home such ugly things. Do you think she is sick?
No, that wasn't my husband saying that; it was my house. I don't have a husband, remember, because I am the size of a small out-building. I am an entire planet. When I stop losing weight it isn't because I have hit a plateau; it's because I AM the plateau. Men don't like women who are bigger than them. It scares the foo out of them, okay?
Anyway, my house, which is used to a calm, Zen vibe, which has soothing, tasteful colors, reacted viscerally to the introduction of the titty pink balance ball. I could swear I heard little groans and shrieks of disapproval emanating from the walls as I brought it through the door. But that's just too bad. I want to learn how to do a balance ball routine. I want to do resistance bands and I want to lift weights. I have no confidence that any of this strenuous physical activity will have any impact on my body composition whatsoever, but so what? I know I am destined to go to my grave composed primarily of fat cells, most of which have apparently migrated to my brain, but I don't care. I still want to do this.
Now, how's that for an attitude of fatitude?
Planet Fat Cat
My body is a wonder of weird science. It will not comply with the laws of nature, nor succumb to threats of extreme surgery, physical violence or bribery. It just keeps blubbering along, all proud of its fatness, while I hang my head in shame and shop in the "Big Woman" section. I hate it.
I haven't missed a day on the treadmill for 50 days now, but still no results. Maybe I'm living in a state of delusion, a fat-altered reality. Maybe when my fevered brain thinks my body is up on the treadmill pounding out the miles, in reality I have my head stuffed in the refrigerator licking butter. How else do you explain my body's stubborn refusal to shed fat?
So I have decided to develop an "attitude of fatitude" (sorry, Oprah) to match my body's behavior. Maybe that way I can trick it into doing what it's supposed to do...shrink...dammit...when confronted with far fewer calories and many more hours of intense physical exercise.
Today I went shopping for the tools required to pull off this hoax. Since walking isn't working, I'm adding a new exercise routine. I know, I said I was going to do this last week, but it takes about a week for an idea to get from my head out into the realm of reality, and then another week or two of chewing my cud before I actually get up off my double-wide and do something. Anyway, I decided I wanted to get one of those big balance balls you see on The Biggest Loser. I thought that my help me flatten my stomach so I would no longer look like "The World's Oldest Pregnant Woman."
And for those of you who are worried, no, I won't stop walking. I'm determined to finish the 90 Day Fitness Walking Program and get all 90 little checks in my journal. I just want to do the balance ball thing, too.
I went to the store and was immediately confronted with about 15 different configurations of balance balls in various colors and sizes and even more confusing, with different accoutrements. This was going to take hours, because I had to read every line of text on every box, I had to pick them up, look at them, touch them, feel them, smell them, chew on the edge of the boxes, ruminate, cogitate, correlate and relegate. That's a lot of work, and it all had to be one without raising the angst level of the store clerks who were scurrying up and down the aisles looking for places to stick up more Christmas merchandise. After all, it is November 6th already.
Some kits had resistance bands in the box, others had weights, others had resistance rings. Some had accompanying workouts on DVD, which I considered essential since I basically don't know what I'm doing when it comes to balance balls. In fact, if I followed my usual routine, I would blow up the ball, sit down on it, lose my balance, fall over, break my neck, and that would be the end of my exercise routine, if not the end of me.
So the DVD was a must-have, but equally important to me was there had to be some kind of device included to blow up the ball. Oh, shut up! I can hear you all now; "Surely she has enough hot air to blow up anything," but in fact, I don't. I am so old and decrepit I can barely breathe, must less blow up a giant ball with air from my own lungs. So naturally, the kit I liked best, that had the DVD and a pretty blue ball with color-coordinated resistance bands...did NOT have a blow up thingie included. Okay, says me. I'll just buy one, only the store clerk tells me they don't carry them since all the balance ball kits come with them.
I beg to differ and show her the soothingly designed kit with the ocean blue ball and accessories. She insists there is a blow up thingie in there and proceeds to rip open the box and scatter its contents all over the exercise aisle. Hmm, guess what? The little picture on the side of the box that shows everything included in the kit, only it didn't have a blow up thingie, well it was right.
The clerk refused to believe it and stared meanly at me as she struggled to get all the parts back in the box, which brings to mind another of Sir Isaac Newton's Laws of Physics: "Any item once removed from its box will never again go back into the same box without first performing extreme acts of legerdemain and uttering copious curse words. Even then, the box will be distorted according to the precepts inherent in the following equation: cm–1/(kA/cm–2)."
Actually, that's a lie. I just made it all up because I am fascinated by things I cannot understand. I stole that equation from a paper entitled:
Self-consistent solutions to the intersubband rate equations in quantum cascade lasers: Analysis of a GaAs/Al x Ga 1–x As device
just because I wanted to. But equation or not, things still won't ever go back into their boxes without a struggle and lots of broken nails. Trust me on this one.
Anyway, I suddenly spied a kit that had the balance ball, the resistance bands, the resistance rings, hand weights, a DVD and a blow up thingie, all for less than $30.00!
Only, it was one of the thousands of items designed specifically for October Breast Cancer Awareness month, and it was all titty pink.
I walked away. I could not bear the thought of bringing this hideous pink thing into my carefully crafted Zen bedroom. The color was so alarming that sleep would have been impossible with the damn thing in the room. But as I did a little math inside my head (always a dangerous thing to do...) I realized that to get all the stuff in that box individually, I would have to spend at least $100.00.
So now I'm home with the damned titty pink ball and still staring at it. I haven't yet had the nerve to take it out of its box and blow it up. I think I'll wait until it's dark, but this thing is so bright it might possibly glow in the dark.
It doesn't match a thing I have except for a bra I bought when I was feeling all girly one day. I can feel my entire house sending feelings of disapproval and puzzlement in my direction.
The Mrs. doesn't usually bring home such ugly things. Do you think she is sick?
No, that wasn't my husband saying that; it was my house. I don't have a husband, remember, because I am the size of a small out-building. I am an entire planet. When I stop losing weight it isn't because I have hit a plateau; it's because I AM the plateau. Men don't like women who are bigger than them. It scares the foo out of them, okay?
Anyway, my house, which is used to a calm, Zen vibe, which has soothing, tasteful colors, reacted viscerally to the introduction of the titty pink balance ball. I could swear I heard little groans and shrieks of disapproval emanating from the walls as I brought it through the door. But that's just too bad. I want to learn how to do a balance ball routine. I want to do resistance bands and I want to lift weights. I have no confidence that any of this strenuous physical activity will have any impact on my body composition whatsoever, but so what? I know I am destined to go to my grave composed primarily of fat cells, most of which have apparently migrated to my brain, but I don't care. I still want to do this.
Now, how's that for an attitude of fatitude?
Planet Fat Cat
Monday, October 29, 2007
Weighty Matters
The Weekly Weigh-In was neither good nor bad. I weigh exactly the same today, 203.8 pounds, as I did a week ago, and the only place I lost any inches was in my chest...naturally. By the time this is over, I will look like a Hersey kiss, big and broad on the bottom and a mere slip of a girl up top.
But...and this is far more concerning, for some reason my blood pressure and resting heart rate were up this week...not good.
So I have come to a few conclusions about my walking program. You know the definition of insanity, don't you? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Well, now that I have been doing the same thing over and over again for the past six weeks...walking, restricting my diet, not drinking any soda, and I'm still getting the same result, which is to say, almost no measurable result at all, then I have to conclude I am insane if I still keep doing only the same things.
Another thought that keeps recurring...as a society we like to make fun of fat people; the fatter they are, the more cruel the jokes. When fat people say they have been trying to lose weight, exercising and restricting calories, we all howl. Oh sure!!! we think. What'd you do? Eat only 499 French Fries instead of 500? Is that your idea of a restriction?
Since I have but 53 pounds to lose, which makes me relatively "skinny" in the world of fat people, I have been as guilty as any of you about turning my nose up at the morbidly obese. I didn't believe it when my super fat friends told me they had been exercising and dieting and couldn't lose weight. But I believe it now, because that is what is happening to me.
For the past six weeks, I have been faithfully following my walking program. I went from being totally sedentary to walking at a brisk pace for 20 to 30 minutes a day. By the time I finish the program six weeks from now, I will be walking 30 minutes a day, six days a week. And yet, adding that regular aerobic exercise to my daily regimen has accomplished very little. Yes, my blood pressure came down some, but it didn't stay down. My resting pulse came down, but also went back up. Those were the only two victories I could cling to to keep myself motivated to keep walking, and now even those are suspect.
I've lost about one inch from my hips and a half inch from my waist, but three inches from my chest. Why is that? It's not like my boobs are walking on the treadmill. My legs are, but they stubbornly remain the same hefty size, while my delicate chest is melting away like butter on a hot skillet. That's not exactly encouraging.
I have lost less than three pounds in six weeks of hard work, and if I so much as walk by a bakery I gain a pound. Not much to applaud there either.
I have totally given up my beloved Coca-Cola, ice cream, cookies, cake and a few dozen other little snacks I enjoyed on occasion. I am eating a healthy, balanced diet of organic fruits, vegetables and meats. I am eating measured portions; one of the biggest surprises to me when I started was the discovery that what I thought was a normal portion was actually twice the size of what I should have been eating. So now I measure or weigh everything that goes into my mouth. I have thought and thought about what I what more I can do, what I might be doing wrong...but the bottom line is, my bottom line has not changed. I am still fat. I am still out of shape. I cannot see much progress. And I am very discouraged.
In my bad moments, I say, "What the hell?" If any normal person had their choice of eating whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, guzzling Coca-Cola, never exercising and weighing 206 pounds, or denying themselves most of their favorite foods, measuring and weighing every bite they took, keeping careful records, and exercising 30 minutes 6 days a week to weigh in at 204 pounds after six weeks, which one would they chose?
It is very hard not to give in to these dark thoughts and go back to my old 206 pound ways. I mean really, what's the measurable difference? Apparently little to none.
Simple science says the changes I have made and the new exercise and diet regimen I am sticking to so faithfully should have made some significant difference by now, but they haven't. Friends try to comfort me by saying I am exchanging fat mass for muscle mass and muscle weighs more, blah, blah, blah. But my fancy scale says the only way my body mass has changed since I started exercising is for the worse. When I started the scale says I was 40.4 percent fat, a figure that boggles the mind. Now, after six weeks of hard work, the scale says I am 40.6 percent body fat. So much for the changing fat for muscle theory.
I can only conclude that walking is not enough. So I have decided to add something new to my exercise regimen. Instead of just walking for a half hour, I will walk and then do something else, maybe weight training, maybe stretching, maybe some yoga or pilates, but something to extend my exercise regimen to one hour a day.
If that doesn't work, I just don' t know what I'll do next.
Bleh.
A very discouraged
Planet Fat Cat
But...and this is far more concerning, for some reason my blood pressure and resting heart rate were up this week...not good.
So I have come to a few conclusions about my walking program. You know the definition of insanity, don't you? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Well, now that I have been doing the same thing over and over again for the past six weeks...walking, restricting my diet, not drinking any soda, and I'm still getting the same result, which is to say, almost no measurable result at all, then I have to conclude I am insane if I still keep doing only the same things.
Another thought that keeps recurring...as a society we like to make fun of fat people; the fatter they are, the more cruel the jokes. When fat people say they have been trying to lose weight, exercising and restricting calories, we all howl. Oh sure!!! we think. What'd you do? Eat only 499 French Fries instead of 500? Is that your idea of a restriction?
Since I have but 53 pounds to lose, which makes me relatively "skinny" in the world of fat people, I have been as guilty as any of you about turning my nose up at the morbidly obese. I didn't believe it when my super fat friends told me they had been exercising and dieting and couldn't lose weight. But I believe it now, because that is what is happening to me.
For the past six weeks, I have been faithfully following my walking program. I went from being totally sedentary to walking at a brisk pace for 20 to 30 minutes a day. By the time I finish the program six weeks from now, I will be walking 30 minutes a day, six days a week. And yet, adding that regular aerobic exercise to my daily regimen has accomplished very little. Yes, my blood pressure came down some, but it didn't stay down. My resting pulse came down, but also went back up. Those were the only two victories I could cling to to keep myself motivated to keep walking, and now even those are suspect.
I've lost about one inch from my hips and a half inch from my waist, but three inches from my chest. Why is that? It's not like my boobs are walking on the treadmill. My legs are, but they stubbornly remain the same hefty size, while my delicate chest is melting away like butter on a hot skillet. That's not exactly encouraging.
I have lost less than three pounds in six weeks of hard work, and if I so much as walk by a bakery I gain a pound. Not much to applaud there either.
I have totally given up my beloved Coca-Cola, ice cream, cookies, cake and a few dozen other little snacks I enjoyed on occasion. I am eating a healthy, balanced diet of organic fruits, vegetables and meats. I am eating measured portions; one of the biggest surprises to me when I started was the discovery that what I thought was a normal portion was actually twice the size of what I should have been eating. So now I measure or weigh everything that goes into my mouth. I have thought and thought about what I what more I can do, what I might be doing wrong...but the bottom line is, my bottom line has not changed. I am still fat. I am still out of shape. I cannot see much progress. And I am very discouraged.
In my bad moments, I say, "What the hell?" If any normal person had their choice of eating whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, guzzling Coca-Cola, never exercising and weighing 206 pounds, or denying themselves most of their favorite foods, measuring and weighing every bite they took, keeping careful records, and exercising 30 minutes 6 days a week to weigh in at 204 pounds after six weeks, which one would they chose?
It is very hard not to give in to these dark thoughts and go back to my old 206 pound ways. I mean really, what's the measurable difference? Apparently little to none.
Simple science says the changes I have made and the new exercise and diet regimen I am sticking to so faithfully should have made some significant difference by now, but they haven't. Friends try to comfort me by saying I am exchanging fat mass for muscle mass and muscle weighs more, blah, blah, blah. But my fancy scale says the only way my body mass has changed since I started exercising is for the worse. When I started the scale says I was 40.4 percent fat, a figure that boggles the mind. Now, after six weeks of hard work, the scale says I am 40.6 percent body fat. So much for the changing fat for muscle theory.
I can only conclude that walking is not enough. So I have decided to add something new to my exercise regimen. Instead of just walking for a half hour, I will walk and then do something else, maybe weight training, maybe stretching, maybe some yoga or pilates, but something to extend my exercise regimen to one hour a day.
If that doesn't work, I just don' t know what I'll do next.
Bleh.
A very discouraged
Planet Fat Cat
Monday, October 15, 2007
The Dreaded Weigh-In
This morning was my fourth weekly weigh-in since I started my weight loss journey, and I can honestly say it's the first one I dreaded. As I approached the weigh day all the other weeks,I was full of joy. I had been sneaking my measurements and could see that they had gone down, and of course, my CDWIs (Constant Daily Weight-Ins) offered mostly good news, too. If my weight bumped up at all, it was only by a pound or so, and then it went right back down the next day or even lower.
But all this week my weight has been creeping higher and higher, no matter what I did. I actually upped my walks from 25 to 30 minutes this week, so I am exercising more, not less, and I increased the incline on my treadmill from 1% to 2% just to make my workout a little harder. The only thing I didn't do this week was my arm workout because I overdid it last week and pulled a muscle, so I took the week off to give it time to heal.
Yeah I know. It's damned hard to hurt yourself with three pounds weights but I managed it.
I stuck closely to my nutritional plan - no sodas, no ice cream, no cinnamon toast - just healthy food in reasonable portions consumed before 8 at night except for that one meal out on Wednesday, the night of the by now legendary Chocolate Eruption. But that one lapse was last Wednesday and the weigh-in was today, so I should have been alright, right?
Wrong.
Every day last week, the scales crept up and up. I was pulling my hair out (like I really need to add baldness to fatness). What was I doing wrong? I was exercising, I was eating right, but my stubborn body was hanging on to every fat cell like it was a pearl beyond price. The Keebler Elves of Fat were working overtime inside my Pillars of Hercules to make sure my thighs stayed properly plumped.
Now I am NOT starving myself. First of all, I like food too much to do that; secondly, as a medical reporter I know not eating enough sends your body, particularly the female body into panic fat storage mode. But despite my care to eat normal meals at normal times, my body has gone into panic fat storage mode anyway. In fact, my body is currently in panic fat manufacturing mode. If I listened closely enough (and understood thigh) I swear I could almost hear my thighs whispering to each other in their guttural, prehistoric tongue: Ugh, woman eat last of woolly mastodon this morning. Must conserve fat. Must make fat. Must make more fat. Ugh.
So anyway, here's the tragic truth of the weigh-in:
I know. MY EYES! MY EYES! That's what I said, too. But since I pledged from the beginning that I was going to be honest on this blog, that's the numbers, horrifying though they are.
Hear that, oh hott one?
I GAINED almost a pound and a half, apparently from breathing in too much air; either that or my scale's been smoking crack cocaine. I GAINED .2% in my body fat, going from 40.4% fat to 40.6%, and this after 4 weeks of walking 6 days a week. According to my fancy, Harvard-educated scale, all that exercise caused my muscle mass to fall from 28.8% of my body to 28.7%. What? How can I even stand up? It's a wonder I have enough muscle power to press the keys on this computer.
HOW CAN I STILL BE SO FAT AFTER FOUR WEEKS OF EXERCISE AND MODERATE EATING? HOW CAN I HAVE ONLY LOST BARELY A POUND IN A MONTH OF HARD WORK AND DEDICATION? WHERE IS KIM LYONS WHEN I NEED HER?
I walk on a treadmill so I know exactly how fast I am going, 3 miles per hour, so it's not like I am crawling like a slug upon the ground. But no matter. I still GAINED a half inch in each thigh this week, the same half inch it took me three weeks to lose. But before you kindly try to tell me that maybe it's muscle, let me just say...muscle doesn't jiggle.
All this goes against common sense, logic, fairness, all that's holy, and I think maybe even Robert's Rules of Order. I was robbed, I was cheated, I was kicked around by the Universe and spat upon.
But, and but...look at my blood pressure and resting heart rate. When I started, even with medication my blood pressure was 140 over 94, not terrifying like it was back in March, 217 over 107 when I took myself to the emergency room, but not great either. Now look at it: 128 over 78 (she says proudly...). And my resting heart rate has gone from 77 beats per minute down to 65. Maybe that doesn't mean much to you but to me it means I am getting more fit, even if my damned scale refuses to believe it.
My first reaction to all the bad news this morning was to go on a binge, even though I am not a binge person. I wanted to fry up a pound of bacon and roll around in it. I wanted to slather butter on a whole loaf of bread, coat each slice with sugar, then coat the sugar with cinnamon, and stick it under the broiler until the butter bubbled up through the sugar and made a luscious crunchy crust on top of each slice. I wanted to drizzle chocolate sauce all over my hands and lick it off. I wanted to suck whipped cream straight from the Lucky Whip nozzle. Why the hell not? Apparently it didn't make any difference to my body what I ate or didn't eat; it was going to stay fat even if it had to manufacture the stuff out of thin air. So why not enjoy myself?
Here's why. Because if I let this set-back defeat me, a year from now I will still be a fat person. And I don't want to be a fat person any more. So I didn't eat all that food I fancied; I just enjoyed my carefully measured one cup of raisin bran with one small sliced banana. I did allow myself the satisfaction of going into the bathroom and staring at my scale with evil intent. I resisted the urge to pick it up and smash it against the bathroom wall. I mean, I just painted. No sense ruining a perfectly good paint job in a fit of pique.
So, Round 4 goes to the scale. But I will win the match.
I will.
Fat Cat
But all this week my weight has been creeping higher and higher, no matter what I did. I actually upped my walks from 25 to 30 minutes this week, so I am exercising more, not less, and I increased the incline on my treadmill from 1% to 2% just to make my workout a little harder. The only thing I didn't do this week was my arm workout because I overdid it last week and pulled a muscle, so I took the week off to give it time to heal.
Yeah I know. It's damned hard to hurt yourself with three pounds weights but I managed it.
I stuck closely to my nutritional plan - no sodas, no ice cream, no cinnamon toast - just healthy food in reasonable portions consumed before 8 at night except for that one meal out on Wednesday, the night of the by now legendary Chocolate Eruption. But that one lapse was last Wednesday and the weigh-in was today, so I should have been alright, right?
Wrong.
Every day last week, the scales crept up and up. I was pulling my hair out (like I really need to add baldness to fatness). What was I doing wrong? I was exercising, I was eating right, but my stubborn body was hanging on to every fat cell like it was a pearl beyond price. The Keebler Elves of Fat were working overtime inside my Pillars of Hercules to make sure my thighs stayed properly plumped.
Now I am NOT starving myself. First of all, I like food too much to do that; secondly, as a medical reporter I know not eating enough sends your body, particularly the female body into panic fat storage mode. But despite my care to eat normal meals at normal times, my body has gone into panic fat storage mode anyway. In fact, my body is currently in panic fat manufacturing mode. If I listened closely enough (and understood thigh) I swear I could almost hear my thighs whispering to each other in their guttural, prehistoric tongue: Ugh, woman eat last of woolly mastodon this morning. Must conserve fat. Must make fat. Must make more fat. Ugh.
So anyway, here's the tragic truth of the weigh-in:
I know. MY EYES! MY EYES! That's what I said, too. But since I pledged from the beginning that I was going to be honest on this blog, that's the numbers, horrifying though they are.Hear that, oh hott one?
I GAINED almost a pound and a half, apparently from breathing in too much air; either that or my scale's been smoking crack cocaine. I GAINED .2% in my body fat, going from 40.4% fat to 40.6%, and this after 4 weeks of walking 6 days a week. According to my fancy, Harvard-educated scale, all that exercise caused my muscle mass to fall from 28.8% of my body to 28.7%. What? How can I even stand up? It's a wonder I have enough muscle power to press the keys on this computer.
HOW CAN I STILL BE SO FAT AFTER FOUR WEEKS OF EXERCISE AND MODERATE EATING? HOW CAN I HAVE ONLY LOST BARELY A POUND IN A MONTH OF HARD WORK AND DEDICATION? WHERE IS KIM LYONS WHEN I NEED HER?
I walk on a treadmill so I know exactly how fast I am going, 3 miles per hour, so it's not like I am crawling like a slug upon the ground. But no matter. I still GAINED a half inch in each thigh this week, the same half inch it took me three weeks to lose. But before you kindly try to tell me that maybe it's muscle, let me just say...muscle doesn't jiggle.
All this goes against common sense, logic, fairness, all that's holy, and I think maybe even Robert's Rules of Order. I was robbed, I was cheated, I was kicked around by the Universe and spat upon.
But, and but...look at my blood pressure and resting heart rate. When I started, even with medication my blood pressure was 140 over 94, not terrifying like it was back in March, 217 over 107 when I took myself to the emergency room, but not great either. Now look at it: 128 over 78 (she says proudly...). And my resting heart rate has gone from 77 beats per minute down to 65. Maybe that doesn't mean much to you but to me it means I am getting more fit, even if my damned scale refuses to believe it.
My first reaction to all the bad news this morning was to go on a binge, even though I am not a binge person. I wanted to fry up a pound of bacon and roll around in it. I wanted to slather butter on a whole loaf of bread, coat each slice with sugar, then coat the sugar with cinnamon, and stick it under the broiler until the butter bubbled up through the sugar and made a luscious crunchy crust on top of each slice. I wanted to drizzle chocolate sauce all over my hands and lick it off. I wanted to suck whipped cream straight from the Lucky Whip nozzle. Why the hell not? Apparently it didn't make any difference to my body what I ate or didn't eat; it was going to stay fat even if it had to manufacture the stuff out of thin air. So why not enjoy myself?
Here's why. Because if I let this set-back defeat me, a year from now I will still be a fat person. And I don't want to be a fat person any more. So I didn't eat all that food I fancied; I just enjoyed my carefully measured one cup of raisin bran with one small sliced banana. I did allow myself the satisfaction of going into the bathroom and staring at my scale with evil intent. I resisted the urge to pick it up and smash it against the bathroom wall. I mean, I just painted. No sense ruining a perfectly good paint job in a fit of pique.
So, Round 4 goes to the scale. But I will win the match.
I will.
Fat Cat
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Frustration
Tomorrow is weigh-in day and already I'm dreading it. Until now, I could look at my daily weight loss journal entries and even in the spiraling ups and downs of my weight, still see a gradual pattern of weight loss emerging. But this week, the sprials have all been up and what I see emerging, even though I am only four weeks into this thing and have really only lost three pounds or so...is a dreaded "plateau."
Now a plateau, at least in the world of dieters, is when your body basically says, "F@#$!!@!! you!" I've dropped all the pounds I care to drop. You want to lose any more? Get lipo! Get a lap band! Leave me alone. I prefer the ass just like it is now, got it?"
Yes, I know. It's appalling that my body would speak to me in such a manner. I myself was raised by a true Southern belle who had exquisite manners (Thank you, mama...). But since I am the only one who "raised" my body (grew it all by myself, with a little help from Blue Bell and Coca-Cola) it's not quite as well-mannered as I, or at least, as I pretend to be when people are looking.
Translated into plain English, this means my body has gotten used to the amount of exercise I am doing and the type and amount of food I am eating and in order to lose more, I am going to have to do more and eat less.
I HATE THIS! IT'S NOT FAIR!!!
I must take a few paragraphs to whine. Don't you think giving up guzzling Coca-Cola should count for something? By my estimate I got rid of 897 calories a day just by switching to water (3 12-ounce cans a day x 155 calories = 465 calories + one 32-ounce gut buster from any convenient drive-in a day at 432 calories = 897 empty liquid but simply divine calories a day.) Multiply that times the 28 days I have been on this program and it equals 25,116 calories. Divide that by 3,500, the number of calories you have to either burn or give up to lose one pound, and that equals 7.176 pounds. So, survey says, I should have lost 7.176 pounds from this sacrifice alone by now, but my body is saying, "Oh, hell no!"
That's not even taking into account the ice cream and chocolate I have given up, or the hot, buttery, crunchy cinnamon toast that I make so well but won't let myself make any more because I am trying to become healthy.
That's also not taking into account the fact that over the last month, by sheer dint of will, I have transformed myself from:
• a human sloth who got up and moved away from my computers (yes, there's more than one) only to eat, go to work and attend to the call of nature
into:
• a fantastic human exercise machine
Um, err, well...
into:
• a human sloth who grudgingly gets up on the treadmill every day so I can make an honest check mark in my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program journal.
So with all the calories I've burned walking this past month and all the calories I haven't taken in by giving up many of my favorite indulgences and NOT replacing them with any other indulgence, I think I should have lost 10 pounds or so by now. But once again, my body is saying, "Oh, hell no! We likes it fat! We likes it blubbery!" (I have no idea why my body is talking like Golem, but it's kind of creepy and scary...)
So this week, despite my faithfulness to the program and sticking mostly to my diet (what's one Chocolate Eruption amongst friends?) despite that...it looks like I am going to have a weight gain this week, not a weight loss, and it also looks like I am not losing any additional inches this week.
In the past, my old self would have said, "Screw this! I'm not flogging myself and depriving myself for no reason. If my body wants to stay fat, let it stay fat! I'm not working this hard for nothing. If it's a choice between lounging on my double-wide, snorkeling in Coca-Cola and weighing 204 pounds or busting my hump on the treadmill, counting every calorie and still weighing 204 pounds, then bring on the Coca-Cola! Bring it on!"
But my new self is watching the one number that does keep going down...my blood pressure. And my new self is focusing on the true reason I am on this program, which is to get fit and healthy. And fit and healthy does not always mean skinny. Apparently, at least in my case, it will NEVER mean skinny. But if I keep going as I am, I will be able to wean myself off my blood pressure medication and keep my pressure under control simply through regular cardiovascular exercise and healthy eating. Notice I didn't saying dieting, because I am not on a diet, I am on a journey.
Actually, I am on a mission. And you know what they say, there is no one more fervent than a recent convert. I am a recent convert who doesn't want to become a recent martyr.
And so...I walk.
Fat Cat
Now a plateau, at least in the world of dieters, is when your body basically says, "F@#$!!@!! you!" I've dropped all the pounds I care to drop. You want to lose any more? Get lipo! Get a lap band! Leave me alone. I prefer the ass just like it is now, got it?"
Yes, I know. It's appalling that my body would speak to me in such a manner. I myself was raised by a true Southern belle who had exquisite manners (Thank you, mama...). But since I am the only one who "raised" my body (grew it all by myself, with a little help from Blue Bell and Coca-Cola) it's not quite as well-mannered as I, or at least, as I pretend to be when people are looking.
Translated into plain English, this means my body has gotten used to the amount of exercise I am doing and the type and amount of food I am eating and in order to lose more, I am going to have to do more and eat less.
I HATE THIS! IT'S NOT FAIR!!!
I must take a few paragraphs to whine. Don't you think giving up guzzling Coca-Cola should count for something? By my estimate I got rid of 897 calories a day just by switching to water (3 12-ounce cans a day x 155 calories = 465 calories + one 32-ounce gut buster from any convenient drive-in a day at 432 calories = 897 empty liquid but simply divine calories a day.) Multiply that times the 28 days I have been on this program and it equals 25,116 calories. Divide that by 3,500, the number of calories you have to either burn or give up to lose one pound, and that equals 7.176 pounds. So, survey says, I should have lost 7.176 pounds from this sacrifice alone by now, but my body is saying, "Oh, hell no!"
That's not even taking into account the ice cream and chocolate I have given up, or the hot, buttery, crunchy cinnamon toast that I make so well but won't let myself make any more because I am trying to become healthy.
That's also not taking into account the fact that over the last month, by sheer dint of will, I have transformed myself from:
• a human sloth who got up and moved away from my computers (yes, there's more than one) only to eat, go to work and attend to the call of nature
into:
• a fantastic human exercise machine
Um, err, well...
into:
• a human sloth who grudgingly gets up on the treadmill every day so I can make an honest check mark in my 90 Day Fitness Walking Program journal.
So with all the calories I've burned walking this past month and all the calories I haven't taken in by giving up many of my favorite indulgences and NOT replacing them with any other indulgence, I think I should have lost 10 pounds or so by now. But once again, my body is saying, "Oh, hell no! We likes it fat! We likes it blubbery!" (I have no idea why my body is talking like Golem, but it's kind of creepy and scary...)
So this week, despite my faithfulness to the program and sticking mostly to my diet (what's one Chocolate Eruption amongst friends?) despite that...it looks like I am going to have a weight gain this week, not a weight loss, and it also looks like I am not losing any additional inches this week.
In the past, my old self would have said, "Screw this! I'm not flogging myself and depriving myself for no reason. If my body wants to stay fat, let it stay fat! I'm not working this hard for nothing. If it's a choice between lounging on my double-wide, snorkeling in Coca-Cola and weighing 204 pounds or busting my hump on the treadmill, counting every calorie and still weighing 204 pounds, then bring on the Coca-Cola! Bring it on!"
But my new self is watching the one number that does keep going down...my blood pressure. And my new self is focusing on the true reason I am on this program, which is to get fit and healthy. And fit and healthy does not always mean skinny. Apparently, at least in my case, it will NEVER mean skinny. But if I keep going as I am, I will be able to wean myself off my blood pressure medication and keep my pressure under control simply through regular cardiovascular exercise and healthy eating. Notice I didn't saying dieting, because I am not on a diet, I am on a journey.
Actually, I am on a mission. And you know what they say, there is no one more fervent than a recent convert. I am a recent convert who doesn't want to become a recent martyr.
And so...I walk.
Fat Cat
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
It's a Habit Now
Okay, so yesterday was Day 21, and the folks who know about such things maintain it takes 21 days to form a new habit. Here's a stunning observation...I think they're right. For all the moaning and groaning I did all week long, for all the problems I had...really bad, searing pain in the back of my right calf for two days straight during the fast part of my walk; my lousy "Why should I have to do this, I'm already a Goddess," attitude; the Devil-made scales barely budging despite my dedication to regular exercise and caloric restrictions, I kept going. And today, Day 22, a mandated walking break, I actually find myself wanting to walk, and missing the walk.
Who knew? I am a certified, card-carrying, exercising-hating sloth. I hate to sweat. I am much too dainty to sweat. It's not ladylike, and yet now, after 21 days of torture, the walks seem like a necessary, if albeit sweaty part of my daily routine. Yes, I have only lost a little over three pounds, but I have also lost 5 inches and my fat is arranged much more fetchingly, even if I do say so myself.
So, tonight, since I am feeling so chipper and didn't have to walk today, I am actually going to put one of my 783 pristine, unopened, still-have-the-cellophane-on-them exercise tapes into my DVD or VCR (depending upon when in my seven years of desperation I actually bought them) and I am going to try to get through a beginner's exercise routine. Here is what I think I will find. I will find that I am still nowhere near actually being healthy and fit; I will sweat like a pig and suck in air like a drowning woman going down for the third time. I will use muscles I didn't know I had, I will hurt and I may not be able to finish.
But at least I am going to try, am willing to try, am actually looking forward to trying...and that, my friends...is a miracle.
Fat Cat
Who knew? I am a certified, card-carrying, exercising-hating sloth. I hate to sweat. I am much too dainty to sweat. It's not ladylike, and yet now, after 21 days of torture, the walks seem like a necessary, if albeit sweaty part of my daily routine. Yes, I have only lost a little over three pounds, but I have also lost 5 inches and my fat is arranged much more fetchingly, even if I do say so myself.
So, tonight, since I am feeling so chipper and didn't have to walk today, I am actually going to put one of my 783 pristine, unopened, still-have-the-cellophane-on-them exercise tapes into my DVD or VCR (depending upon when in my seven years of desperation I actually bought them) and I am going to try to get through a beginner's exercise routine. Here is what I think I will find. I will find that I am still nowhere near actually being healthy and fit; I will sweat like a pig and suck in air like a drowning woman going down for the third time. I will use muscles I didn't know I had, I will hurt and I may not be able to finish.
But at least I am going to try, am willing to try, am actually looking forward to trying...and that, my friends...is a miracle.
Fat Cat
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