Diagnosis: Unknown

Yesterday wasn't the best day I've ever had.

First, I took my new car in to the shop to get window tint added, and I ended up sitting in the car rental place for an hour before they had a car for me. I was sooooooo late to work.

Then in the early afternoon I went to my doctor's appointment to get the results of my CT scan, and (before she'd even talk to me about the test) my doc (TMI warning) gave me a pelvic exam. Not my favorite activity, let me tell ya.

The good news is that the pelvic was fine, but when we (finally) talked about the CT scan I found out that the CT scan results were inconclusive. There is a lesion on my liver that could be nothing at all to worry about, or might be something to worry about. Guess what I get to do this afternoon? I'm going to get an MRI. Joy. Not only do I have to wear a paper outfit and get injected with strange contrast chemicals again, I also get to spend yet another weekend wondering what the hell is going on with my body. I hate waiting on test results. I'll probably hear results on Tuesday.

There's also a cyst on my ovary, which she suspects is just your typical uninteresting and not-of-concern cyst. She's going to leave it alone and re-check the size in 3 months. So in three months, I get to have an ultrasound.

Woo hoo! I'm so excited, because you really can't have too many radiological tests!

Yes, that's sarcasm.

Anyway, to top it off, I get back from the doctor's office and I find that the mailman brought me a present. The car dealership had sent me a big tin of cookies as a thank-you for purchasing my car.

Yummy, tasty, chocolate-chip cookies.

What do I do? I eat a big freakin' pile of them. Yes, I totally regressed into stress eating late yesterday afternoon. I hadn't done that in a loooooooong time.

Argh!

Hey, at least I ate them with non-fat milk, right?

Couch to 5k: Final Week

I’ve completely lost track of what week and day I’m on in the couch to 5k program. Week 9, maybe? Is that the last week? I guess that’s the downside of switching to my own music rather than using the magical podcasts that help me keep up with this stuff. Oh well. Bottom line: I’m done with the prep-work for the 5k, and I'll be a couch to 5k graduate after I run my official 5k run on Saturday.

Yesterday I did my final pre-5k run, and I approached it differently than the other c25k runs. The couch to 5k program is set up such that you can run based on length OR time. All along, I’ve been running based on time … time was easier to keep up with, and I could pace myself as needed as I built up to longer and longer runs. But yesterday, for the first time, I ran based on distance. Instead of running for 30 minutes, I went to mapmyrun.com and created a course that was exactly 5k. Then I didn’t set my timer to beep at 30 minutes – I walked to my starting point to warm up, and I ran until I got to the end of my 5k distance.

I ran 5k yesterday!

It took me 35:35 minutes to run my own personal unofficial 5k. When I’d been running based on time I’d only worked my way up to running for 30 minutes, so this approach increased my running time by a little over 5 minutes. I could definitely feel the difference. It was hard. My original plan was to finish the couch to 5k program about a week or week and a half ago, and then work gradually up from the 30 minutes to longer to get to 5k. I think that extra time would have benefited me from a comfort perspective. But whatever – comfort schmumfort – I did it, and now I know with confidence that if I pace myself on Saturday I can do it then, too. Woo hoo!

I was very pleased with my 35:35 time. My hope was that I’d be at or close to 35 minutes. I’d run/walked a 5k and the time was around 45 minutes, so 35 minutes seemed like a good first-run goal. Now, the question is whether I can do the Saturday run in around 35 minutes. I figure I’ll have the adrenaline going for me, but I know the actual race route is a little hillier than my completely flat neighborhood. But I also had the wind working against me during some of my run yesterday, so if the wind is calm Saturday morning, maybe … just maybe … I can still be around 35 minutes.

And hey, ultimately, it doesn’t matter all that much how long it takes. The primary goal is to RUN the entire 5k. If the running is slow, so be it. That’ll just give me another goal to work towards.

5k, here I come!


(Oh, and PS, I did watch BL last night. Yay!)

Coming soon

I feel like there will be so much to talk about SOON and nothing to talk about NOW.

Soon, tomorrow afternoon, I should get the results of the CT scan I had last week.

Soon, tonight, I will bottle my homemade wine. Yes, I'm making homemade wine. It's a Merlot. I expect it won't be wonderful, as it's my first attempt at wine making. I won't be able to tell you how it us until a month after bottling, though - it won't be ready for consumption until then.

Soon, Saturday, I run my first 5k. (I've done a 5k before, but never running.)

Soon, this afternoon, I do my last pre-5k run.

Soon, sometime very soon, I will get to see the Biggest Loser finale that's saved on my DVR. (NO SPOILERS PLEASE!)

Soon, in 10 days, I go on vacation to Mexico.

I'm full of anticipation, but I'm not full of things to write about at the moment. But soon! I'll have stuff to write about soon.

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EDITED TO ADD: OK, I really want to go catch up on everyone's blogs, but I'm coming across unexpected and without-warning Biggest Loser spoilers. ARRRRGH! People! Warn us only-watch-TV-on-DVR folks before you go abruptly giving away surprises! Come on! I'll avert my eyes, but work with me here and warn me that eye averting is necessary!

!!!

No more blog reading for me today!

Where am I? Volume 10 (Alternate title: Look at the bright shiny badges!)

It’s time to ask the question I ask every Tuesday … Where am I in my weight loss health and fitness journey?

Except I didn’t ask that question for the past two weeks. I was MIA for a little while. You can see my last couple posts for an explanation of that mess. The important thing is that I’m back now.

Anyway, where am I? I am at goal and maintaining! Woo hoo! I made goal a few weeks ago, and I’ve been able to successfully maintain the weight loss, staying within my goal weight range. So, a badge is in order.



And actually, come to think of it, even though I’m maintaining I technically get another badge or three, because my weight has crept down a little within my goal range and within the past week my exercise has been on track. Let’s look at the numbers:

Weight loss since fall 2007 (most recent leg of weight loss journey): 20.8 lbs (152.4 vs. 131.6). Hooray, a 20 pound badge!

Total weight lost (entire weight loss journey): 35.4 lbs (167 vs. 131.6). Woo hoo, a 35 pound badge!

Exercise: While I was MIA my exercise fell off some … I wasn’t feeling up to working out as much, unfortunately. I did get at least one run in per week (although one week it was just 1 mile – not an official C25k workout) and one weight training session in per week. But I definitely didn’t do as much as I would have liked.

Last week, my goal was 3x cardio via couch to 5k workouts and 2x strength training. And I did it!

I’m on the last week of the couch to 5k program. Wow. Yesterday I ran 30 minutes. THIRTY MINUTES! I never thought I could do that. In that 30 minutes I went approximately 2.8 miles (I'd definitely be over 3.1 if I included my 5 minutes of warm-up walk and 5 minutes of cool-down walk, but I'm not counting that). Tomorrow I’m going to measure my run by distance, and I'll run a little further - at least 3.0 miles. And then my real-deal 5k is Saturday! After that I’ll be an official couch to 5k graduate. Woo hoo!

So my exercise goal for this week is my 3x/week couch to 5k runs, including running my 5k on Saturday. I also want to do 2x strength, but I’m going to say only upper body for my 2nd workout, since I don’t want to mess with my ability to run my 5k.

Wish me luck on the 5k! I wish all of you luck on your weight loss and fitness journeys, too.

Symptom, my ass

In my post on Friday I mentioned that I’d been having some abdominal pains, and I went to the doctor, and she ordered a CT scan. Still no results of that scan – I’ll keep you posted. Anyway, I want to share one strange twist to this story, which I thought of when I was eating my low points, high fiber lunch this afternoon.

Last week, the doctor did an initial exam and asked me a few questions, and then she referred me to the radiology center. When I took the referral papers from the doctor’s office to the radiology center so I could pick up my barium (YUMMY!), I saw the following on the “reason for ordering” section:

Reason for ordering: Abdominal/Pelvic pain and weight loss

Um, hello??? If weight loss is a symptom, it’s a symptom I sure worked hard to get! After months of tracking my points and water intake and increasing my exercise and changing my life, it was somewhere between humorous and annoying to see my weight loss being listed as one of the reasons the doc ordered a CT scan.

What the heck?

And yes, we did talk about the fact that my weight loss was intentional. We talked about how she herself suggested I lose a little weight and increase my exercise, since the last time I was at her office I had slightly high cholesterol. We talked about how I’m doing weight watchers and running.

I guess the doc has to cover her buns and go ahead and list weight loss as a symptom, but damn! I went in expecting to be congratulated for losing weight, and instead I added concerns to an already concerning situation!

Harrumph.