A Dumbbell In A Home Gym

Well, Phooey.

It seems as if just a couple of weeks ago at the most, I was writing this cheerful entry.

And today we visited the community pool for the last time this summer. Already. Damn.

I didn't get nearly enough time there this year; we had a spate of weekends that were either too cool or too stormy for a pool visit, and I didn't go much on weeknights because the pool was invariably taken up with swimming lessons or swim team practice. It seems I'm not going to get away from the swim teams or classes hogging the pools unless we get our own pool, and since our backyard is the size of a postage stamp, that ain't happening. Oh well.

You cannot accuse me of slacking off on the exercise this weekend. I got the afternoon off on Friday and promptly hopped on the subway to ride back to my old DC haunts and walk around Georgetown. I logged about 13,000 steps according to my pedometer.

Saturday morning was too cool to go swimming, so we went on the first bike ride I've been on in ages.

Man. Oh, man. That was painful. But it's something I really needed. As I was chugging along sucking wind and feeling my thighs burn, a voice in my head spoke up: "There's no faking it on the bike. If you get on this thing, you better be ready to work."

And for me, it's true. I suppose that for people who ride hundreds of miles in a weekend, they could do an "easy" 50-miler. I guess I could find a ride that's all downhill ... but then I'd have to ride all uphill on the way home. Which is pretty much what I do anyhow; I never realized until I got the bike that our house is at the highest point of our development. And boy, do I feel it when I'm churning my way home after a long ride.

I can half-ass it at the gym; I can lift weights I know are way too light, or I can just sit on the stationary bike with the difficulty set to the lowest level. As for swimming, I can cut the laps short, or just splash around and do handstands.

But I can't goof off on the bike; even when I'm doing a relatively easy ride on a mostly-flat part of our trail, I can really feel myself working. And again, there's that whole "The way home is uphill" thing.

Anyhow, we went to the rec center and lifted weights on Sunday, and this morning we went on another arduous, ass-kicking bike ride; by the end of it I was so exhausted that it took me two tries to raise my foot high enough to put the kickstand down.

And then we went to the pool this afternoon. I didn't do any real lap swimming, but I "jogged" up and down the length of the pool several times. Because I was determined to have some fun, I also went off the diving board, did handstands, and then simply floated on my back for a little while, enjoying the sun warming my poor sore body while the water buoyed me up.

I still smell like sunscreen and chlorine. I'm going to miss that smell. May 2008 seems like a long, long way off from here.

Whineorama.

Okay, so I'm not exactly rocking the updates lately. Again.

I'm listless. I'm uninspired. I do not handle change well, at all; sometimes I think it's a minor miracle that I'm not still in my first apartment out of college, or still at my first job.

And I'm staring a really big change in the face: My company move has me a lot more upset than it probably should. Next Thursday is my last day in the old building, and my last day working in DC. Given that I can't do a damn thing about this other than change jobs to somewhere else in DC, which I'm also unwilling to do, being upset about it seems like a colossal waste of time and energy, and yet I'm still sulking. I'm somewhere on the grief scale between anger and acceptance (denial lasted from the initial announcement of the move two years ago until the beginning of July). I've started cleaning out my cubicle and packing, which has brought on a desire to Get It The Hell Overwith, Already. That counts as cranky acceptance, I suppose.

Part of what I'm unhappy about is that we'll be leaving the cafeteria in our building. I'm not exaggerating to say that this cafeteria has been a huge factor in my weight loss over the past couple of years. (That sounds as if I'm being rude about their cooking, doesn't it? I don't mean it that way!) They have a hot food bar that always has roast turkey breast, the perfect choice for a lean, filling, protein-a-licious lunch. And the salad bar always has wonderful fresh fruit, no matter what the season.

And one of the cafeteria's employees was the first person outside of my family or my circle of friends to notice my weight loss, and she's been a big cheerleader of mine.

It's going to suck to leave all this behind. I'm sure I'll find nice places and form new friendships in the new place. But I don't wanna. There was nothing wrong with the old place or the old friendships, as far as I'm concerned.

Other stuff: Along with the yearbooks, my mother brought me several boxes of old family photos, some of which appear to hail from the Civil War era. That got her and my aunt talking about some of my distant, long-dead relatives. It didn't take long for me to realize that my female ancestors can apparently all be sorted into one of three categories:

a. Was a beauty;
b. Was said to be a beauty, but wasn't really; and
c. Was a beauty, but fat.

And that's about it for the women in my past. Yeesh. I really need to start working on finding that cure for cancer or writing the Great American Novel, because I'm going to be horribly depressed if that's all that's left to say about me after I'm gone.

Oh well. Just so this isn't a total bitchfest, something funny happened last week: I was standing by a few other people on a streetcorner on my way home. An older man looked at the woman to the left of him, the two women in front of him, and then the woman on his right, aka me. And he burst out: "Wow! I'm surrounded by beautiful women!"

Ha. It's been a while since I earned a random street compliment. I'll take it.

Happy weekend all. I'll try not to be such a damn downer next week.

The Shape Cover I'd Love To See.

Shape Magazine Declares July 'Let Yourself Go' Month.

I love the Onion.

And I needed a good laugh this week because apparently I pulled something in my right hip in the pool last weekend, due to some aquatic jumping-around and me forgetting that I'm no longer eight and made of Silly Putty. I'm 38 and much more breakable. So I've been hobbling around all week with a gimpy hip, which makes me feel very old and cranky and like I'll yell at you kids to get off my lawn if you come visit. Ugh.

I've been trying to baby it and stay off it as much as possible and it seemed to be responding, but I went for a long lunchtime walk today out of sheer spite. Up yours, sore hip. It was too nice outside after days of suffocating heat, and I was sick to death of just sitting around. But the walk just made everything really hurt all over again.

Sigh.

To mitigate the boredom from the forced inactivity, I've started playing around with my eating. This week I've really increased my protein and tried to whittle down the carbs I take in.

I've been resistant to low-carbing for a long time. The reason why is both simple and rather petty: during one of my abortive dieting attempts in the 90s I participated on a dieting message board that was invaded by a squadron of low-carbers so militant, quarrelsome, and obnoxious that the board degenerated into World War Three. And I thought "Good lord, those people need to eat a damn donut and shut up already" and figured that if that's what low-carbing did for you, you could count me right out, thanks.

Ten years is probably enough time for me to get over it, already. And I've been pleased by my feelings of satiety this week; as I've been unable to do any real exercise, at least I've been able to cut down the food intake a bit. I'm certainly not going to give up my morning whole-wheat bagel before I have to, though.

And with that, happy weekend, all. I may be scarce online next week because as I said before, I'll be hiding from the Harry Potter Spoiler Brigade. Can't believe the last book is almost here.

Please Stop Saying "Purge."

As I've mentioned, our company is moving to a new location in August.

For the last month, we've been encouraged to start "purging" our offices and cubicles, which basically means "clean out all those ancient meeting agendas that date back to when Bill Clinton was still president".

I don't know why they couldn't just call this process "cleaning." "Discarding." "Throwing away." "Packing." Oh, no. It had to be "purging".

Our division heads have started pressing our department to get cracking on this. This afternoon's activity? Get together lots of yummy snacks to encourage people to start "purging". And call it a "purging party".

So this afternoon, when I walked down the hall with an armload of papers and passed the yummy snack room, I was hailed with "Hi! Are you purging?"

Couldn't they have called it anything else?

Oh well. Happy weekend, all.

Blech.

Sorry for the update lag. I have been hit with a monster cold (yay), and have spent the last few days being a walking goo factory. The only thing I have to say about the cold is that it does seem to have nipped my raging appetite in the bud, at last.

(Yes, I know it's kind of screwed up to be happy that an illness is taking my appetite away. I'm trying to look on the bright side, ok?)

I'll try to post something more substantial when (if) I'm ever feeling better. Hope everyone's doing well.

It's Not Faaaair!

So I've finally hit on a surefire way to make myself want to exercise: Get sick enough that I can't exercise. It'll be all I can think about doing.

I went for long walks on Saturday and Sunday despite still feeling under the weather -- it was so beautiful out after this hellishly arctic winter that staying inside and sleeping was truly unthinkable. As a result, on Monday I woke up feeling so sick that I could barely get up to brush my teeth without fainting. I called my boss and hauled my pathetic carcass back to bed.

And I'm pissed that I can't exercise. It's still gorgeous and warm here (finally!), and I was just getting back into a good, regular exercise groove. So here I am in Setback City, yet again. I can hear kids running around and whooping outside, and I feel pretty much the same way I did in second grade when I got the chicken pox and missed the class field trip to the Air & Space Museum.

And this brings up an interesting question: when I'm on the mend and can walk around the block without feeling jelly-legged and shaky, am I going to remember this feeling? Will it motivate me to get my lazy butt on the treadmill -- or outside on the trails -- even when I just don't wanna? Stay tuned.

And for those of you who are feeling fine but having trouble getting motivated to work out today: GO! Do it for poor, pathetic, sniffling, coughy me. Please?

*achoo*

What Happened?

I really don't even want to update, but I feel like I owe it to myself and to people reading this blog to be honest about the shitty weeks as well as the good ones. Because make no mistake, there are going to be shitty weeks. And this has been one shitty week indeed, probably the worst one since I started all this in January 2005.

I swear ... it's like the last almost-two years never happened. My eating has been awful. I'm not watching my portions. I'm continuing to eat after I'm full; I'm aware that I'm doing it while I'm doing it and that it's an awful thing to do, but I won't stop. And my body's responding to that kind of training by making me want to eat all the time. And doing that makes me feel miserable and fat. And the ugly emotions make me want to eat even more.

And my exercise motivation has been nonexistent. If it weren't for my husband, who's not one to let my sloth get him down, I wouldn't have moved my body at all this week.

This is just plain inexcusable. We're right smack dab in the middle of my favorite time of the year. You'd think that if nothing else, I'd get off my ass at lunch and walk around downtown to drink in all the Christmas decorations. (Except that it's so unseasonably warm here right now that it doesn't even feel like fall, much less almost-December.) Our company is moving headquarters next year, so this is likely my last DC Christmas. I mean, it's not like we're moving to Jupiter; I could still come down on weekends. But it's probably the last Christmas season when DC will still be right outside the office door.

And am I taking advantage of that? Nope. I've been sitting in my cubicle and daring myself to not eat all the peanut brittle in the Trader Joe's trail mix I bought.

Pathetic.

I've got no answers for why this is happening. Hell; I don't even have the right questions. This is unbelievably depressing.

I'm trying very hard to be kind to myself; I know too well that beating the mental crap out of myself just makes things even worse. I'll tell myself "Self, if a blogger you like wrote about going through this, you'd try to be supportive. You wouldn't write or even think 'God, you're disgusting -- what the hell is wrong with you!?' So give yourself the same consideration."

Sounds really good in theory, but it's hard. It's as if the Old Mindless Me moved back in overnight. I thought I'd made my peace with her, and I thought she understood that while I don't bear her any ill will, she wasn't welcome back.

Seems she didn't get the message.

Sigh. Today, I tried something a little different: I ate my normal breakfast and then a small meal (okay, another bagel; someone brought them in) at about 10:30. For my lunch break, I was full and didn't eat; I walked around Georgetown for an hour. I even stopped in a snooty boutique to try on a skirt (which was a very daring thing for me to do considering how bad I've been feeling about myself lately). I was honestly surprised that the Large was too big -- I guess I really was that disconnected from myself and my body lately. In the afternoon, I worked on a serving of trail mix and a handful of grapes. That helped to keep me from going on an eating rampage, but I don't know if the meals switch-up will keep working.

And we went to the rec center tonight, where I busted ass on the elliptical trainer for a while.

And this feels like the first "normal" eating and exercise day I've had all week. I can no longer take these for granted, it seems.

PS: Just because I don't want this entry to be a complete moanfest, a general question for a Friday. Which store name do you think is more embarrassing: "Fcuk" or "Dress Barn"?

Happy weekend, all.

No Change.

So I'm going to bite the bullet and call it: No change in my weight for October. I'm still at 164.5.

On the one hand I'm disappointed. On the other hand, I'm relieved that things haven't started heading in the wrong direction. October was just an insanely busy month, and my eating and exercise routines were both blown sky-high.

I really wanted a new progress picture for this month, but when my husband took a few shots of me yesterday I realized that the workout pants I was wearing make me look really fat. D'oh. Comfortable, they are. Flattering, they're really really not. I'll have a new photo soon, I promise. The black jeans I just started fitting into should make for a nice picture, I think.

Anyhow. On to Progress Prompts:

"List 3 likes and 3 dislikes about losing weight."

This is harder than you might think it would be.

Likes (what, only three?):

1. Clothing: Having a reasonable expectation that I can walk into most stores and find clothes in my size. Having a much wider variety of outfits to choose from.

2. Fitness: Not wanting to slit my wrists if I'm confronted with a steep staircase or an out-of-order escalator. Being perfectly amenable to parking well away from our destination. Being able to walk around shopping malls, museums, or zoos without wanting to keel over from fatigue and pain after an hour at most.

3. "Going In." If we go to a restaurant and are given a table that's situated between two other tables, I'm no longer terribly phobic about being the one to squeeze through the gap between tables to the other seat. When I was at my heaviest, my husband was always the one who had to "go in" (and still is if the space between tables is especially narrow). My favorite Thai place near my office used to give me fits because they'd frequently give me one of these tables; I'd just sit on the aisle with my back to everyone. I must have been an outlaw in a previous life because I really don't like sitting with my back to a room, but I didn't dare risk going in; I had nightmare visions of my huge ass sending tableware, water glasses, food, drinks, and everything else at my table and the neighbor's table crashing to the floor.

So I like "Going In." Weird that this gets the most coverage of my three likes, eh?

Dislikes:

1. Blowing through the cute clothes I like and have been delighted to be able to buy is a bit of a bummer, although that hasn't been as much of an issue lately as my weight loss has slowed down. I've been schlepping around in some of last fall's heavier tops and sweaters even though they're way too big and unflattering now. I can't afford to replace everything, and I figure that sweaters are supposed to be kinda big anyhow.

2. I'll admit it: Sometimes it pisses me the hell off that I can't just eat the way I used to, even though I know that the physical and emotional price I paid for doing that was way too high and I feel so much better now. There are days when I miss the mindlessness, when I wish I could walk into a place and stuff myself to bursting on whatever I wanted to without thinking of the consequences for my body. Sometimes I still have trouble with the whole "This is realio-trulio for the rest of your life" thing.

3. As I've said before, sometimes I still get twitchy about feeling so visible again. I know this is likely an "Oh, poor you" kind of problem, but male attention really throws me for a loop. Some strange little man kept trying to start conversations with me at a coffee shop in Hartford last week, and I ended up getting so flustered and annoyed that I just gathered up my things and swept out of there. Aside from the whole "Hello -- married!" factor, all I'd wanted that morning was a nice, peaceful breakfast with coffee, a bagel, and the paper. (Peaceful meals tend to be a rarity at Skate Americas.) And I didn't get it.

So there you have it. Don't get me wrong: I wouldn't trade my problems now for the problems I had in 2004, but yes -- the weight loss does have some aspects that can be less than supershinywonderful.

Cutting Me Down To Size.

So remember when I went to pick out a bridesmaid's dress for that wedding in October?

And remember how one of the people who helped us was a sour bitch who seemed to want to make us all believe we were bigger than we were? (For example, telling one of the size 10 bridesmaids that she had a 40-inch waist?) And how I was a little skeptical about her suggestion of a size 16 for me, given that the 14 sample of another dress fit me just fine and was even a bit loose around the waist?

(What? You don't remember all that? You're not committing every entry of mine to memory? Oh fine. Be that way.)

I went back to the store to pick up the dress last night. I tried it on first to make sure it was the right dress and that it wasn't a size 6 or something silly like that.

I was swimming in it. The waist on the skirt is big enough that you could probably fit me and another bridesmaid in there. I expected that to an extent because I've always had a bizarrely small waist compared to how big the rest of me is. But there's no doubt now that I could have taken the goddamn 14. Easily.

And the top is really big too. I'm honestly a bit worried that even taking it in might not be enough. However, I do need to get a good strapless bra; once my breasts have the proper support, that should make a difference in the fit. I hope, anyhow.

The girl who helped me last night looked me and the dress over with a very puzzled expression. "Did you get your measurements done here?" she asked in a baffled tone.

"Yup." How I wish I'd remembered that surly woman's name. It'd have been fun to complain about her a bit.

If you're wondering why I'm taking this a little hard, it's because I'm really mad at myself for what I did the day we were picking out the dresses: I pretty much let the bitch push me into a 16 even though I knew it'd be too big.

Why?

Because I was paranoid about appearing to be the stereotypical "Overweight chick in denial about how fat her ass really is" type. That's right: This woman was surly and unpleasant and yet I was actually concerned about what impression I might make on her. Really stupid.

Okay: I was also thinking "Well, this woman's worked with this line; perhaps she knows what she's talking about when it comes to the sizes. And bridesmaid stuff tends to run small anyhow, doesn't it?"

(See, if I'd known at that point about the whole 40-inch waist story, I'd have known how wrong I was to give her any credit. I didn't hear about that until we were in the car on the way home, alas.)

Gah. I should have put my foot down, even if it made me look like a Maidzilla.

Rain Sucks.

I need to apologize to everyone. All the rain that many of us, including me, have been dealing with? My fault. Totally. If I’d never gotten the stupid pool passes, I bet we’d be in the middle of yet another bone-dry summer.

I’ve been pool-deprived and bike-deprived all week. It’s making me very cranky.

Wednesday night was especially cruel. It was gorgeous outside all day long; a little humid, but no rain and no signs of impending rain. All I could think about was going for my first swim since Saturday afternoon.

I hustled home early from work, fed the cats, stuffed myself into my bathing suit, gathered up a towel and my pass, and took off for the pool. As I walked to the community center, I thought about how hot and humid it was outside and how good it was going to feel to splash around in the water. Even if it was starting to look a little ominous out, I figured I’d be able to get in a few laps before heading home for dinner. As I drew close enough to hear splashing and yelling, my pace quickened and I started to grin.

And then I heard the bullhorn. A bullhorn? The lifeguards didn’t usually use those. Did they? Huh. Maybe they’d just started using them to make the straggling kids get the heck out of the pool faster during Adult Swim breaks. Yeah. That was probably it. Oooh, hey, had I made it just in time for Adult Swim? Cool. It’d be easier to swim laps without all the little peanuts splashing around.

And then I got to the lifeguard office. A big yellow sign adorned the door.

The pool, which had been off-limits since Saturday because of the storms, was CLOSED because of a RASSAFRACKIN’ SWIM MEET.

Man, was I pissed. I stomped back to the house in the highest of high dudgeon. I lifted weights in the basement. Very, very resentfully.

Oh, and remember how I said that thing about my husband and how much he hates the pool, and how I said that less than two weeks ago?

He was on a business trip Wednesday night. He packed his swimming trunks, so at approximately the same time that I was trotting to my pool and about to have my fondest wish for the day dashed to bits, he was swimming in his hotel pool. Now you tell me -- how fair is that? I mean, I’m thrilled that he’s warmed up to swimming. But I liked it first, dammit.

Hurumph.

Gotta tell you, this little dumbbell is getting mighty sick of that home gym. I don’t mind the occasional rainy gray day, but this has been ridiculous. And I do realize we’ve been very lucky; as far as I know the rains haven’t damaged our house. They’re just pissing me off a lot.

Sigh.

Not much else is new. I’ve had a pretty good week in terms of eating and exercise. I’ve put myself on “once a week” rations for chocolate. I didn’t want to do that, but after reading Dietgirl’s commentary on Bullshit Calories, I had to admit to myself that I’d been doing precisely that with the Scharffen Berger dark chocolate bars -- bullshitting myself that eating one for dessert almost every other night was okay because hey, dark chocolate has lots of antioxidants. Right?

I don’t know why telling myself “It’s fine to have this once a week” can do the trick to stop me from gorging on stuff, but it does. I started to unwrap yet another chocolate bar Wednesday night -- hey, I deserved it after being so cruelly deprived of my swim, didn’t I? -- and then I reminded myself of the “once a week” thing. And that was that. I put it back.

(Something else I ration to once a week: Starbucks’s Marble Mocha Macchiato. Even the Tall size with skim milk has a fairly robust 270 calories.)

One last thing that has nothing to do with fitness or weight loss; I just have to know if anyone else thinks this is strange. On the bus ride home tonight, I spotted one of those little posterboard advertising signs people stick in the ground here and there. It was advertising a website where you could obtain custom business cards and flyers.

The URL? www.nudezines.com.

Does that look like it should be hawking something completely unlike business cards, or do I just have a really dirty mind?

Oh well. Happy weekend, all. Maybe some of us will even get to experience dry weather!