A Dumbbell In A Home Gym

Happy Holidays.

Might as well make it official: I'm taking the rest of the year off from blogging. (Since I've only been updating about once a week anyhow, it's not like this is going to leave a glaring hole in the blog or anything. More than anything, I'm just giving myself permission to not feel guilty about my lack of updates for the next several days.)

This has been a wretched Christmas season thus far and I just don't have that much to write about without turning the blog into a big fat moanfest.

I will be back in the beginning of 2008, and I will bring with me a renewed focus on my goals. I've realized in the latter half of this year that while maintenance is okay, I really wasn't quite done with my weight loss yet. I know it's rather trite of me to be making new weight loss decisions for the new year, but heck. That's how it all started for me almost three years ago.

Anyhow, I hope everyone's enjoying the holidays. Thanks to everyone who reads and posts here. See you next year!

Party Girl 2007.

Hi, all. Long time no update. Sorry about that; I just haven't had much to write about.

I realized that I haven't posted any entries about frenzied hunts for the perfect outfit for our company Christmas party, as I did in 2006 and 2005. That's because I pretty much knew what I was going to wear; I wore the same dress I wore to the family wedding back in October. Have a pic:

I cranked the contrast on the picture way up so you could see the dress; standing in a black dress against a dark Christmas tree made me look like a floating disembodied head and arms in the original photo. (We hadn't gotten around to decorating our tree yet; we did it the next morning after my hangover wore off.) This time, it was more than cold enough out for me to get away with the wrap I couldn't wear in the steamy South.

The party was on Saturday night. This kicks off a whole month of partying and celebration; my birthday is a week away and I've already given myself a four-day weekend as a present (and have three of those days booked with fun activities). I want to make the last year of my 30s memorable.

Making The Best of Things.

Wow -- it's already been a week since the move.

I'm still pretty "meh" about it all, even if I must grudgingly admit that things could have been worse for me. I'm not fond of many aspects of my new cubicle, but I'll give it this much: it does not have a big honkin' concrete pillar stuck right smack in the middle, unlike some of the other cubes I've seen on this floor. I'm glad that my boss apparently liked me enough not to stick me in one of those, as I'm pretty sure that if I'd walked in last Monday to be greeted with that, I'd have put my boxes on a dolly and rolled myself home.

The surrounding environs are okay, in that pre-fab "Suburban 'City' Out Of A Box" sort of way. (Contents: Overpriced condo developments, several office buildings, assorted chain stores and restaurants, two mandatory Starbucks outlets, and one walking path. Just add water and stir!) The distinguishing feature of our new location is that a substantial portion of the city is underground. In fact, it appears to be possible to walk through the entire city without ever seeing daylight. That might sound kind of cool in a Batman/Phantom of the Opera sort of way, but I'm finding the various catacombs linking our buildings and the shopping areas very confusing to navigate, even with signs pointing out the various twists and turns. On the positive side, I'll be able to go for lunchtime walks no matter how dreadful the weather is.

In fact, I cannot knock the walkability factor here at all. We're right by the Mt. Vernon trail, a cool walk that goes right by the airport and leads to my favorite park in DC (though it'd be a bit of a hike for an office lunch hour); it has me musing about the feasability of bringing my bike in for a lunchtime ride. And there's a cute little water park nearby that was fun to explore. On every day I wore my pedometer last week, I smashed 10,000 steps without even trying all that hard; given that I no longer have that long trek from the subway that always upped my step total back at the old place, I'm very pleased.

So if I'm healthy and uninjured and don't get any daily walking in, there's no excuse for it; it's because I'm being the slackiest slackass who ever slacked.

As for the food: I never thought I'd say this, but my replacement breakfast haunt at the moment is none other than Dunkin' Donuts. They have whole-wheat bagels and decent hazelnut coffee, and they're right on the way to my office. (Oh yeah: They also have donuts. Fortunately, I'm not even remotely tempted by donuts first thing in the morning anymore.) As for lunch, I already told you about my experience with the local Mexican place; on most days I've been defaulting to Subway's six-inch turkey subs. Hey, if they were good enough for Jared ... There are some non-chain non-crap restaurants here, but right now I'm going with convenient, cheap, predictable, and easily trackable in SparkPeople.

And I've already bought two different things at Dress Barn: a cute top just because I liked it, and a black cardigan sweater because the building maintenance "fixed" our air conditioning over the weekend and I could practically see my breath when I came into work today. Brr.

So that's where I am now. I can't go back, so I might as well resolve that I'm going to move forward. Wow, man. That was deep.

Back from Limbo.

Sorry about that, folks. I wish I could say that my absence was due to me having some amazing adventure, but the truth is that I just haven't been able to think of a thing to write about. There's really not much new in the world of Nicole. I'm neither gaining nor losing (and not really trying to lose at the moment, honestly). And I'm having a bad case of "Been there, wrote about it already" as far as this journey goes.

And I'm probably going to have to take an extended break from the entire Internet in the latter half of July. The last week of Sopranosmania has convinced me that I can be on the Web next month or I can avoid spoilers for the last Harry Potter book, but I cannot possibly do both. (Mostly because I lack the self-discipline to not go snooping around to see what people have heard. I think it's a sickness.)

I *did* get a new bathing suit; it's a sporty Nike number that's more geared to lap swimming than my previous suit was. It took a few pool visits for me to make friends with the new suit, which reveals far more of my back than my old suit did. It does not, however, reveal so much of my backside; that's a tradeoff I can live with. I'm amazed by how many of you had the same "transparent butt" problem. I wonder why swimsuit manufacturers haven't been able to fix that one -- probably because they want us to have to buy new suits regularly.

And do NOT even get me started on the price discrepancy between women's swimsuits and men's swimsuits. My husband picked up some new trunks at the same time I got my suit; he spent about a fourth of what I did, and I tried to pick out a relatively inexpensive one. Grrr. I was going to complain that women should just be allowed to swim topless, but it occurs to me that this could make going off the diving board a very painful experience.

Oh, and a recommendation: I've already raved about the Jell-O sugar free puddings, and now they've come out with Mochaccino, a chocolate/coffee blend. SO good. I've also decided that one of my favorite things about summer is the blueberries; I love getting the big fat fresh ones from the store and mixing them in with my morning granola and Fage yogurt. Mmm. They're also nice to mix in with the sugar-free vanilla pudding for a dessert that tastes far more decadent than it is.

So that's about it. I'll try not to take so damn long for the next update. Hope you're doing well.

I Swear I'm Not Dead.

I'm just ... boring.

I can't think of a dang thing to write about. There's just not much new under the sun. No major eating or workout breakthroughs to report. I'm just holding steady.

The only thing of note that's happened lately was on Monday afternoon when my husband and I went swimming at the rec center. I'm almost certain that the guy in the lane next to mine tried to hit on me. That's just utterly bizarre on so many levels. Aside from the fact that I am not a pretty sight in a bathing suit (I'm not saying that to be all self-effacing and compliment-fishy; it's the stone cold truth), nobody looks good when they're swimming. My hair's sticking up all over the place, I've got water and snot flowing from every hole in my head, and I'm wearing goggles that really make me look like a dork, in case the crazy hair and the snot weren't fetching enough.

And I don't care; I'm totally over the days when I flirted with the lifeguards and tried to be a bathing beauty. But man ... that guy must have some weird "waterlogged chick" fetish or something.

So yeah. It's been quiet here. Hope everyone's doing well.

Friday Roundup.

I'm really not trying to put this blog on a once-a-week update schedule. It's just that I'm in dire need of one of the Time Turner gizmos featured in "Harry Potter," so that I can keep going back and getting more hours to work with every day. I've been very into drawing this week, and I've found myself sitting down with my pencils and sketchbook intending to draw for about a half-hour, only to look up at the clock later and find that ninety minutes have passed. D'oh.

Anyhow. Randomly:

1. So the final season of "The Sopranos" started last weekend, which means one thing: Fat people are on my TV again! Hurray! And by that, I mean "Characters who happen to be fat but their fatness, while acknowledged, is not the focus of every damn storyline they're given, and they're portrayed as realistic human beings with families and sex lives rather than as walking punchlines or pathetic, isolated gluttons." Don't get me wrong; I'd watch the show even if all the actors were the standard-issue TV hardbodies. But I love it that they aren't. (You could argue that portraying them all as members of organized crime may not exactly be one big step for fat acceptance. But I'm not feeling picky.)

2. You're probably already reading PastaQueen but if you aren't, you need to see this entry. I have driven myself absolutely batshit trying to figure out a way to describe what it is I'm doing. I sometimes use the word "diet" as shorthand because it's to the point and people get it right away, but I don't see myself as being on a diet, and I never have. I've gone crazy trying to avoid using that word these last two years. The alternatives I've come up with all sound clumsy: "Lifestyle change." "Behavior change." "Way of eating." "New habits." Anything but the old "Die"-with-a-T-on-the-end. A workable alternate term? I got nothing. Sorry.

3. Debbie had this to say in the comments of the last entry:

"I look at that picture and wonder why are you still trying to lose weight? You look like you're there already."

Well, first off, that's an extremely flattering picture, and I'm convinced that my husband's new lens makes me look thinner. I'm very fussy about what I show people here, which is why I haven't posted certain pictures taken from a recent hike; my husband stood back and snapped pics of me clambering my graceless way up onto a rock and the resulting photos look like "Buttzilla Invades The Forest."

I have to admit, though, that this question made me think. It's a good one, and I'm honestly not sure what the answer is. I'll write more about that soon.

And finally, a friendly warning:

4. Lately I've taken to buying sugar-free hard candies. They satisfy the occasional post-meal sweet tooth without packing on the calories.

Easter gave me a terrible jellybean craving, and on Monday I was in the drugstore looking at a bag of sugar-free Jelly Bellies. The calorie count was low enough that even if I lost my mind and scarfed the entire bag, I wouldn't do extreme damage. (This is not the case with regular jellybeans, if you were wondering.) But while I was scrutinizing the label, a word I didn't expect to see on a bag of candy suddenly jumped out at me: "LAXATIVE."

Um ... what!?

"I said Excess consumption may have a laxative effect, stupid." The label went on to recommend that I start with only eight sugar-free Jelly Bellies until I knew what effect they'd have on me. Good grief!

I hustled back to the office and examined my bags of sugar-free Werther's butterscotches and Creme Savers. The same warning was on both bags, although these companies didn't recommend a specific number of pieces beyond the usual serving size.

And you know what? This explains a lot. Without getting into details that nobody wants to hear, I had been experiencing some unusual (and unpleasant) digestive issues lately. I'd chalked it up to fruit and some overly spicy soup. Whatever candy ingredient is causing the BLAMMO! effect, I must be very sensitive to it, because I wasn't exceeding the serving size. And this hasn't happened since I stopped eating the candies.

As for the Jelly Bellies, those went back on the shelf and I bought a bag of the honest-to-god sugar bombs I remember from my childhood, which were what I'd wanted in the first place. I picked out a handful of the red ones (my favorite), ate those, threw away the rest of the insanely caloric bag, and went on with my life. I had a case of sugary yuckmouth, but no potty emergencies.

Happy weekend, all, and watch out for those sugarless candies.

Dumbbells, Bikes, and Bad Naked.

My favorite search string of the week, and possibly of all time: "issues with dumbbells falling through floor." Yeah, gosh, I just hate when that happens. Fear me and my mighty ten-pounders!

(Confidential to the searcher ... I think maybe you might want to switch to a lighter weight. Or lift in the basement. Just a thought.)

So here I am. Thanks for the kind comments and insights on the last entry; I'm glad that resonated with so many people because I wasn't even sure about posting it. I don't want to imply that I never had any problems when I was fat; I'm just tired of fat people always being depicted as depressed, isolated, self-hating losers.

On Saturday, I finally got to go for the first bike ride I've been on in far too long. Good grief, was that hard. The lack of steady bike riding has taken a definite toll on my leg strength and I found myself struggling up hills like never before. It was a good nudge to get myself going back in the right direction with my regular workouts, because I really don't want to lose my cycling fitness.

Last Thursday at the rec center, I used a stationary bicycle as my cardio for the evening. Riding my bike for real on a sunny, warm(ish) morning after slogging along on the indoor bike at the gym reminded me of that point in "The Wizard of Oz" when the movie goes from drab black and white to full-blown Technicolor. I'm actually thrilled that the time is going to change a couple of weeks early; I can't wait to start adding outdoor walks and bike rides to my evening rotation. That is, of course, assuming that the temperature ever climbs back above "Sub-Arctic" here; that's not looking good right now and we're being threatened with even more rassafrackin' snow tomorrow.

And finally, I feel the need to blog about an exercise trend that I really hope does NOT catch on at my local rec center (the following link is Not Safe For Work, folks) ... Naked Sundays.

Okay. I like to think I'm not a prude. I'm certainly not one to fall down in a dainty heap at the merest hint that people have Naughty Bits lurking under their clothing. I don't stress out while I'm in the changing room at the pool.

But as Seinfeld said, there's Good Naked and there's Bad Naked. And naked workouts at the gym are Very Bad Naked. Good lord.

(At least they had to put towels on the equipment.)

The Bookworm Blues.

I've mentioned that I have another problem that seems like a fraternal twin to compulsive overeating: compulsive overspending.

This was brought home to me in a very dramatic way this weekend, when I finally decided to start doing something about the fact that we have far more books than we do available bookshelf space, and that "Keeping excess books piled in wobbly stacks on the floor" wasn't going to be a realistic storage option for very long. We visit bookstores -- whether big box chain stores or used bookstores -- at least once a week, and I also have a very bad ongoing Amazon habit. For whatever reason, I don't get the same feelings of guilt from buying books that I do if I blow a lot of money at Sephora.

(And yes, I am aware of these new, revolutionary inventions called "libraries." I even have a library card. The thing is that if I really like a book, I want it on hand all the time so I can go back to it whenever the mood strikes me. I hate having to give a great book back to its rightful owner.)

So my husband rustled up some boxes from the basement, and I started packing up books I know I'll never look at again. Maybe I'll sell them to a used bookstore; maybe I'll donate them to a book sale. I don't know. They just need to be gone.

And good lord ... there are SO many of them. I've filled up four boxes and still haven't gotten to all of them, and my husband hasn't even started pruning his collection yet.

Most of the ones that got boxed up were just really dumb impulse buys. I'm sure that at the time, buying those really thick hardcover celebrity biographies seemed like a good idea. Now they seem like a waste of money and space (to say nothing of the brain cells I probably wasted reading the inane things).

I've also put together a not-insignificant stack of books I bought but haven't read yet; I mean well, but they get bumped out of the queue by other books that grab my interest. That's just embarrassing. I didn't spend any money to speak of on clothing back when I was really fat, so instead of being the person who buys all kinds of outfits she never wears, I'm the person who buys books I never read. (I only wish I had that problem with eating. "Oh, shoot -- I bought this big old plate of nachos and forgot to eat it!")

And that's how I spent most of my day off work. I slowly and steadily swept through our bookshelves and the piles on the floor, and as I cleaned up the mess I started musing on the various excessive behaviors I've tried to get under control in the past couple of years. I can't say I've gotten the compulsive overeating completely under control ("especially not today," she said with a guilty look), but I do much better these days than I did in the days when 3/4ths of a family-size bag of tortilla chips and a jar of salsa was my pre-dinner "snack." And I'm doing much better on the overspending since my husband and I put ourselves on a budget.

Maybe there's hope for getting my book weakness under control too.

Catching Up.

Hi, folks. It's time for another random roundup o' stuff.

1. This has happened twice now: We've investigated a new fitness/recreation option, found that the facility is busy but not crowded to the point that it's unpleasant, and plunked a lot of money down (a membership at the rec center, or bowling balls and shoes) only to have the place turn into a madhouse once we've made the moves to commit. You know that oft-blogged syndrome about gyms that are packed to the rafters in early January but empty three weeks later as the New Year resolutioneers burn out? That's totally not the case at my rec center. It was insanely busy on Saturday, and for the first time ever I had to pointedly glare at a couple of people who were blithely chatting away while seated on a weight machine I wanted to use. Grr.

And the bowling alley has been chaotic. We've always been able to get a lane; the staff tends to be great about keeping all the kiddie birthday parties at one end of the center and groups of adults at the other end and the crowds aren't a *huge* deal, but the noise and activity levels can get incredibly distracting. To say nothing of the cigarette smoke. I like to think that bowling is a decent exercise option, but being surrounded by groups of people guzzling pitchers of beer at 11:30 in the morning doesn't exactly get that Olympic theme song booming in my head.

2. I knew that Oz the cat was going to be a perfect fit with our family the day I noticed that his favorite room in the house is ... the kitchen. In fact, I've had to physically restrain him from climbing into the refrigerator. Part of it is that he gets an enormous kick out of taking running dives onto the linoleum floor and skidding across the room, but he also figured out very quickly that the kitchen is where the food lives.

3. I raved about Jello Sugar-Free chocolate pudding a couple of entries ago, and I must add that their caramel pudding also kicks ass. However, when did companies stop calling that flavor "butterscotch"? I went to the store craving butterscotch pudding and couldn't find any. Did "butterscotch" become a politically-incorrect term while I wasn't looking, or did the company decide that "caramel" sells more pudding? Does the mere word "butter" strike terror into the hearts of diet-minded folks? I guess I'll never know. A sugar-free butterscotch pudding by any other name still tastes pretty okay for dessert.

4. I frequently wear a Siouxsie and the Banshees T-shirt to the rec center. For whatever reason, the shirt is a big hit with the women who attend the place. I get more compliments on the silly thing than I ever expected.

5. I've written before that I wish could get back the intensity and focus I had in the beginning of my weight loss efforts. Lately, I've realized that a possible piece of the puzzle is my reading material. When I first started out eating less and exercising more, I couldn't get enough of fitness-themed sites, magazines, books, commercials, infomercials, Metro train ads ... you name it, I read it. That definitely helped me to stay focused.

I got out of that habit last year when all the advice started getting incredibly redundant. There's only so many times you can read "Exercise for at least 30 minutes a day!" and "Eat raw vegetables instead of nachos!" before you start muttering "Well, no duh" and clicking away to a celebrity gossip site or a figure skating board.

But even when you're a big know-it-all like me, the occasional refresher course can't hurt anything. Right? Right. Today I picked up "You: On A Diet." I'm also trying to get back in the habit of reading the Lean Plate Club and the fitness section of the Express paper. Let's see if that helps me get my mojo back.

Hello, Kitty -- Part Deux.

My husband has been very ambivalent about getting another cat since one of our kitties died last May. He became somewhat less reluctant when our little girl cat, who missed her playmate something fierce, started tormenting our elderly diabetic cat on a regular basis.

And then he IMed me after lunch last Wednesday to tell me that he'd gone to Petco to get some cat food and seen a few cats up for adoption via 4-Paws, a local cat rescue organization. And he saw an eight-month-old orange tabby kitten who was incredibly sweet-natured and outgoing. My husband was so taken with the little guy (and so shaken by the sign on the kitty's cage saying that he'd been saved from euthanization -- who could put this little darling to sleep?) that even though he hadn't wanted another cat, he grabbed an adoption application. After clearing it with me, he filled it out and faxed it over.

And on Saturday morning, we picked the little sweetie up. Click on the thumbnail for a bigger picture:

We really don't know much about his history, and a couple of his mannerisms make us worry that he might have been abused at some point. (Sometimes if I pick my hand up to pet him too quickly, he really flinches.) But he's just about the sweetest, most affectionate kitty we could have asked for. We weren't thrilled with the name given him by the rescue group, so after about a day of deliberation I hit on Oz, vaguely inspired by the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" character of the same name. Our kitty isn't a whole lot like that character unless the BtVS Oz had been given to racing around the room for no apparent reason, or emitting farts that could blister paint off the walls. (Our Oz is still getting accustomed to his new kitty food.)

As for exercise, chasing him around the house trying to get him back in the guest bedroom for the night has proven quite taxing. We did take a break to go try out our new bowling stuff on Saturday. It made a huge difference -- I bowled one game over 100 for the first time in eons. Watching teenage boys in the adjacent lane going to great pains to avoid the remotest chance of touching my bright-pink Hello Kitty ball was just a bonus. Hee.

So it's been a good weekend.