Where am I? Volume 11 (Alternate title: There was a little girl …)

It’s Tuesday – time to take a step back and get a feel for where I am in my weight loss health and fitness journey.

Weeelll … do any of you remember the poem:

There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good
She was very, very good*
And when she was bad she was horrid.

Basically, I’m that little girl.

Well, minus the curl … my hair is straight as a board.

But “very good” and “horrid” describe the past week for me, when it comes to health and fitness.

Let’s get the “horrid” unpleasantness out of the way first. My eating. Ugh! The past week was horrid, at least until yesterday. I ate junk and crap, and then some more junk. I stress-ate on Friday and mindlessly ate socially on Saturday and Sunday.

Friday I pigged out on cookies and indulged in fried goodies food; Saturday I ate too many pancakes with full-calorie syrup and butter and later drank lots of beer and ate fried chicken strips; and Sunday I had lasagna, then went to a hockey game and ate (I kid you not) a couple cups of popcorn, a small plate of tortilla chips and salsa, 1 beer, 2 Dr. Peppers, part of a cookie, some cotton candy, and part of piece of cake. My stomach ached Sunday night, not surprisingly.

And also not surprisingly, the scale reading isn’t looking the way I’d like it to look at the moment. It’s above the maintenance range I’d set for myself. I’m over my 134 “stay below this weight” target, and my past-week average is over 133. The numbers did drop today vs. yesterday, and I’m back on track now so I expect it to get back down into my goal range in the next few days. But MAN! I lost it there for a few days.

Thank goodness that a few bad days don’t undo months and months worth of work.

And, from a health and fitness perspective, the past week was not all bad. Despite my complete lack of being on-plan from an eating perspective and slightly over goal, I had a very, very good week when it came to exercise.

In fact, I even earned my exercise badge:


My goal last week was to do two couch-to-5k runs during the week, and run an official 5k on Saturday. I also wanted to do one full-body strength training workout and, later in the week, an upper-body strength training workout. I did it! I did all of it!

And in running the 5k, I beat my goal in terms of time. I’d walked a 5k in the past (with an occasional jog thrown in) at around 45 minutes. That time was without any real training – I was doing step aerobics so I wasn’t completely out of shape, but I wasn’t training to run or walk at all. I decided I’d try to beat that by 10 minutes, and aimed to come in at or around 35 minutes. When I did my test run on Wednesday I hit just over 35 minutes, and when I actually ran the 5k on Saturday my chip time was 32:08.

Not only did I meet my goal, I beat it! Woo hoo! And I officially graduated from the couch to 5k program – Hooray!

So, looking back at the past week, it wasn’t a bad week, but it wasn’t a good week either. My goal for this week is to be able to look back and say it was a good week.

Goals for the week:
- Eat on plan from Monday-Friday (Monday went well – yay!)
- Go to Mexico for vacation on Saturday and eat reasonably (but not perfectly)
- Do cardio and strength training Monday (done), and then run 30 minutes on Wednesday and Friday (or Saturday in Mexico … I’m aiming for Friday, though). I want to get an upper body workout in before the end of the week, too.

I’ll be away next week on Tuesday “where am I” check-in day, since my husband and I are going to Mexico for vacation for a week to celebrate our 5 year anniversary. We leave Saturday and return the next Saturday. I’m looking forward to a nice, relaxing week. I’m actually excited to be going to a place that I can wear a bikini. My body is by no means perfect (far from it!), but I’ve worked really hard on it, and it looks better than it’s looked in a long, long, long time.

My plan for the week of vacation is to eat reasonably (but I have no delusions that I’ll be perfect), and to do 3x cardio and 2x strength training (with one strength session being only upper body if my cardio is a 30+ minute run). There’s a fitness center, but I’m hoping there’s also a place for me to run outside. Cross your fingers for me.

I’ll post a couple times before I leave, but for those of you who are Healthy You Challenge Tuesday-only check-in-ers, have a great couple weeks!



* Apparently this line should actually be “She was very good indeed,” but that’s not how I learned the poem. I’m mis-quoting it the way I learned it. Also, this poem was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Who knew!?!

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?

Oops.

I did not have the best weekend.

I mean, from the perspective of “was it an enjoyable weekend?” it was quite nice. But from a fitness and healthy eating perspective … ugh.

Friday night I met up with some friends for happy hour, and we ended up staying for dinner. Luckily we were at an Asian fusion restaurant, so I was able to have sushi for dinner. I didn’t drink much and I stayed on plan using a few flex points. It was all-good on Friday … my healthy eating halo remained untarnished.

But then Saturday came along.

To stay on plan, I would have needed to do my couch to 5k run on Saturday, and I’d need to eat reasonably but not impeccably on Saturday and Sunday … I had about 20 flex-points left. Completely doable, right?

Apparently not.

Remember late last week when I was saying that I needed to go to the grocery store? By Saturday morning, it was a desperate situation. If you opened the cabinet door, moths flew out.* Anyway, I got up Saturday morning, did some cleaning and organizing, and then got ready to head out of the house. My plan was to go visit a friend in the hospital, then go grocery shopping, then go to the gym, then go home and have dinner with my husband. Unfortunately, by the time I got out of the house on the road, I was RAVENOUS. I’d eaten a little something, but not much. And when I get to the point where I’m so hungry I could gnaw my arm off, I don’t make good choices.

And then I saw those golden arches. And as I was driving by, somehow a quarter pounder with cheese and a large order of fries jumped through the window and into my mouth. It happened just like that, I swear! Damn you, combo #3!

Ugh. That was definitely the largest single misstep on the eating side of things. But it all just snowballed … I got back from seeing my friend hours after I expected, making my grocery trip much later than expected (yay! We have healthy food again!), making going to the gym before dinner not an option, and the Saturday gym hours making a post-dinner gym visit impossible … ugh. That meant no weekend workout, since I didn’t want to do my couch to 5k run on Sunday because I knew I’d be doing couch to 5k and strength training tonight.**

Add a couple late-Saturday and Sunday not-horrible-but-not-the-best-choice-ever food choices to the Mickey D’s fiasco, and by the end of the weekend … well, let’s just say that by the end of the weekend my points balance was waaaaaaaaaaaay into the negative range.

All I can do after a weekend like this one is get up, brush the crumbs off my sweater, and move on. I’m trying to look back and learn from the weekend, and not beat myself up about it.

What went wrong? Looking back, it boils down to priorities. Not going grocery shopping did me in. I should have jumped out of bed Saturday morning and gone straight to the grocery store rather than doing cleaning/organizing. I’ve been trying to do some de-cluttering every weekend, but the de-cluttering should have been a lower priority than the grocery shopping trip. I shouldn’t have let myself get into the position of being that hungry, because I get irrational. I don’t give a rat’s ass about healthy eating when I get that hungry.

Also, I hate to admit it, but I should have gotten up earlier on Saturday. Beauty sleep be damned - there just wasn’t enough time in the day. If I’d gotten my arse out of bed there would have been more time. If I’d shifted the hospital visit to earlier in the day, there would have been time for the workout before dinner.

All in all, though, it’s not the end of the world. The scale is up, but it will go down again. I made some bad eating decisions, but I also made good eating decisions. My “bad weekend” was nowhere near as bad as the weekends I had before I was being health-aware.

I’m not having a terribly hard time getting over the food mistakes. I’m more annoyed with myself about not doing my couch to 5k run. Not doing the couch to 5k run has set my 5k training plan back; the missed run shifts the workouts I’ll be doing for the next 6 weeks. Since I’ve got my sights set on a specific 5k to run, now I have a tad less flexibility when it comes to repeating days or weeks as the running gets more intense.

Oh well. Time to move on. Tonight, the gym and I will get reacquainted. Sorry I blew you off Saturday, gym!



* Even though I suspect moths are a low-point choice, I'm not eating moths. Period. I ate a stir-fried silkworm pupa once when I was overseas ... I'm not eating bugs again. Blech.
** Remember, Monday is always workout night - I meet up with my husband, a friend, and a trainer.

What a weekend!

I had a completely unhealthy, exercise-free, eating challenged, drank-too-much weekend. It was wonderful.

Saturday morning/early afternoon my husband and I had a big Valentine's themed brunch party. I stayed up most of Friday night cooking, got up early Saturday morning to finish cooking, and put out one hell of a spread ... I made three kinds of quiche, egg and sausage casserole, hash browns, cookies, homemade coffee cake, homemade strawberry bundt cake, homemade cherry pie, toast, bacon, cheese and crackers, and we bought donut holes and sausage rolls, too. Champagne, mimosas, poinsettias, screwdrivers, bloody maries and coffee with Irish cream and Kahlua flowed freely.

I was so busy entertaining that I forgot to eat (it's true!), but somehow I didn't forget to drink, and I ended up passing out from exhaustion and intoxication at around 5 PM. I woke up at 2 AM with a hangover, but managed to get back to sleep, and when I woke up again at 8 AM I felt better.

Then on Sunday I ran errands and ate junk food all day ... why do McDonald's and Dr. Pepper and pizza all taste so good post-drinking?

The only thing wellness-related that I did all weekend was buy a new pair of running shoes. I'll be doing week 1 day 2 of the couch to 5k program this evening. I'm not letting a weekend of being off-plan derail me.

I have to confess ... I don't feel at all bad about my weekend of depravity and decadence. I feel like I should feel bad, but I don’t. In my married, suburban, 30-something existence, weekends like this don’t happen very often.

Cleaning out the house

Other than starting this blog, yesterday was a crappy day for fitness. I ate and ate, then I ate some more, then I had a little more to eat. Then I ate. Ugh.

During the week and a half around Christmas and New Years I ate whatever I wanted to eat, with no consideration of calories or fat or health. Our house filled with junk food that normally wouldn't be here. Yesterday morning my husband took some of the junk to work with him, but not all of it, and I went a little nuts eating my way through what was still here. Cookies and candy and leftover lasagna and more cookies and .... blech. The more I ate, the crappier I felt, but somehow that didn't stop me from eating.

It was a little crazy, really. What was that all about?

Finally around 8:15 PM I made myself get on my stationary bike and do 30 minutes of cardio. I didn't want to get on the bike, but I forced myself to do it. And since it's hard to ride the bike AND shove food in my face, that stopped the binge.

I didn't buy this junk food - my friends and relatives brought it into the house, and I haven't felt like I could remove it until now, post-holiday. I don't trust myself to have junk food in the house. Once I get into it, I can't get myself out of it. I open the bag or box or tin and fall right in. Junk food I haven't touched yet is somewhat safe, and I may never touch it. If I haven't tasted it, I have some level of control. But if I've tasted it, heaven help me. I know this about myself - I don't completely understand it, but I know it - so after the bike ride I threw away the rest of the leftover lasagna and put the rest of the junk food in a grocery bag for my husband to take to work today.

OK, in all honesty, I had one more homemade Christmas cookie, THEN I put the rest in a grocery bag to send to work with my husband.

I'm trying to look back at yesterday as something other than a complete failure. I started this blog, I did a little cardio, and I ultimately did the junk food clean-up. It was a start. Now I just need to keep on going.