Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Weigh In

Thanks for all of the well wishes about Singapore - you guys are so sweet! I have to say, as we've started to tell people, I'm getting more and more excited. Everyone is just so positive about it and it's nice to know that most people think we're making a good decision.

Anyway, today's weigh-in = -1 lb. Not a huge loss and I would have liked to see more, but I'm okay with it going down regardless. I saw my sister last night for the first time in about two weeks (she's been on vacation and traveling for work) and she said she definitely thinks boot camp is changing my body, so even though I'm not seeing a ton of movement on the scale, I do think I'm losing inches. I wish I would have measured myself before I started boot camp, but oh well. I know my jeans are fitting better and that's always nice.

Boot camp is going well for the most part, although I have to say that normally I am pretty middle of the road when compared to a group of fit people, but for some reason this group just kicks my ass. Every time we run, I am one of the last people to come in. I know I'm just out there doing it for me, but it sucks to be last. It just does. I think part of the reason is that the people who were more at my level have begun to drop off/not show up anymore. It's pretty grueling to work out that hard four days a week, especially when I know people are coming from long days at work, so I think people tend to skip once in a while. I'm proud of the fact that I haven't missed one workout yet though, even though I contemplate skipping almost every day - I think it's part of the reason I really am seeing results. Gotta keep it consistent. Even when it sucks.

It's supposed to be nice out today, so in addition to cleaning the house to get ready for our guests and doing some work, I'm going to try to get out and put some patchmaster in our grass so it's there when we get the rain we're expecting tomorrow. I've also got to hit the grocery store, as we have literally zero food. My husband is traveling right this week so it's easy for me to subsist on english muffins and peanut butter for dinner, but I guess I'm going to have to try to step it up with guests coming. I'm so excited to see my cousin though - I think we are going to have a great weekend!

On that note - I'm off to walk the dogger and get moving on the rest of my day. Hope you all have a great one.

Monday, April 28, 2008

News

So. So I have some big news. Really big news that has been in the works for quite some time now, it just hasn't been official. Well it feels really big to me anyway.

The boy and I are moving to Singapore in July. We're going for his job, and we'll only be gone for six months (maybe seven if we travel after his business has been completed). As of now we don't have an exact date, but it looks as if we'll be leaving right around the 1st of July. The potential for this move has been the reason I haven't really been looking for a full time job, and it's also the reason I've been upset about my lay off, but not completely freaking out. It's also the reason I haven't been sleeping all that well and the reason I haven't been focusing on my weight loss quite as much as I would have liked.

I've been experiencing such a wide range of emotions since this opportunity came to us: excitement, nervousness, fear, thrill, even downright terror. More than anything though, is the anticipation of the unknown. This is a great opportunity, both for my husband's career and for our life together, and I cannot wait to see what it brings to us. It's a fairly short stint, so even though I know I will miss my family and friends, I'll see them again soon.

I have so many questions about what life will be like in Asia, what I'll do during the days while my husband is working, the kind of people I'll meet, where else we'll be traveling. I'm contemplating starting a new blog about our experiences over there as well, one that I'll probably open up to all of my friends and family back here, and you all as well if you'd be interested in it. I'll definitely still keep this one as a record of my weight loss endeavors as well.

Anyway, that's my big news for now. I'm sure I'll be talking about it a lot more as we approach our move date. I'm also still trying to stick to my plan and would like to lose 10 more lbs or so before we leave, so we'll see if I can make that happen while trying to rent out our house out and pack and plan and attend two bachelorette parties, a baby shower, two weddings, take a trip to Texas and have guests in town from San Francisco all within the next two months.

Today marks the beginning of week 4 of boot camp, and honestly I'm ready for it to be over (one more week after this one). I like the workouts, but I don't like waiting until the end of the day to get them completed and I don't like the lack of control I have when it comes to doing what I feel like doing that day. I don't know if I'll see a loss this week based on my scale reading this morning, which annoys me because I had a very healthy weekend for the most part, but I tend to see a drop on Mondays and Tuesdays so we'll see.

Thursday my cousin and her husband are coming to town to check out Denver (they are thinking of moving here from San Fran before they dive headfirst into babyville) so that should be fun, but having guests in town always presents a challenge when it comes to my typical routine. I'm really excited to see them though.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are off to a good start this week.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Career Dieter

First, just to get this out of the way - yesterday's weight was the same. I maintained. Boring. I hate maintaining, especially when I feel like I'm working my butt off. But in my scale's defense, I'm super sore from boot camp this week, so maybe I'm holding water in my muscles. I really don't know. Hope to see a downward movement next week though.

So the boy is out of town for work right now and when I got home from boot camp, I snuggled up on the couch with the dogger and made a few phone calls, watched some TV, and read my new Self Magazine. I'm sure you've heard about the study they did - the one that says up to 75 percent of women engage in "disordered eating." Wow. That is a lot. But I know for sure I am one of those types.

What type am I?

Career dieter. For sure.

From the article: "Career dieters may not know what to eat without a plan to follow; despite their efforts, they're more likely than other types to be overweight or obese."

The career dieter has been on a diet more than 3/4 of her adult life. Honestly - I'd say I'm pretty damn close to that. I can't remember a day when I didn't think - a lot - about what I was going to eat, what I was eating, what I just ate - and how it was going to change my results on the scale.

I've tried a bunch of programs. WW, Slim 4 Life, Atkins, South Beach, Slow Carb (just did that, for like 10 minutes, remember?) and now I'm counting calories on Spark People, which is what I did in 2006 when I was really successful with weight loss.

Part of me just likes having the accountability. But part of my reads an article like this and says, "holy shit, what am I doing to myself?" I'm a career dieter and I'm still overweight.

It's tempting to just throw in the towel. But I also know that even though I'm counting calories, right now I'm not following any "diet plan" other than my own, and I'm actually seeing some success (despite the maintain this week.)

Do I want to count calories - and think about food, a lot, for the rest of my life? No, of course not.

Do I think I might anyway? Yes. I know myself, and I know I have a tendency to get out of control with it if I don't think about it consciously at every single meal. Every single meal.

So yeah, I might be a "career dieter." I might have to think about food a lot. It doesn't mean I'm happy about it, or that it's healthy. But honestly, I'd rather do that than avoid thinking about it, because I know when I do that I fall into my worst place, a very bad place, and I end up gaining. I'm 28 now, and I don't want to go into my 30's mindlessly and continue to gain weight as I age until I get to a place where I don't even recognize myself.

What about you? Do you fall into any of these categories?

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Happy Earth Day

Well I made it to boot camp last night. The weather was shit, windy and dusty and not quite warm enough, but we went outside to the park for most of the workout and ran, did sprints, stairs and lots of squats and lunges. When we got back inside we did abs and cardio for the rest of the time. My legs and abs were dying - shaky and burning, but I'm surprisingly not sore today. I don't know if that means I'm not working hard enough, or that my body is just getting used to these types of workouts already. Frankly either one is not a good scenario.

I'm still feeling sick, just stuffed up and gross, but it's early yet so it's hard to tell how the day will take me. After boot camp last night I went to dinner at my parents for my stepdad's birthday. My mom made steaks for them on the grill and I had a chicken kabob (since I don't eat red meat.) It was delightful. She also made twice baked potatoes and red velvet cupcakes, but I only had 1/4 of a potato and 1/2 of a small cupcake.

My sixteen year-old sister and her teeney tiny friend each had three cupcakes. Three! But it doesn't matter because they have the metabolism of hummingbirds and they were getting ready to go to hockey practice at 9:30. It makes me sad because:

1. I know I used to eat like that.
2. That's how I got overweight in the first place.
3. These girls are surrounded with enough negative crap about body image and food everywhere they go - so they don't need someone like me telling them maybe to not eat three cupcakes, maybe just have one or two.

I didn't say anything about it, but I thought about it a lot when I got home last night. I swear, I don't know how parents do it. How do you navigate the waters between making sure your child is making healthy choices, but also avoid perpetuating negative associations between food and body image? It's enough to make me want to go celibate right now.

Okay, not really, that would be crazy town time, but really. Really? Really.

It sucks. And my little sister, and all the little girls out there right now, have to deal with constant bombardment of beautiful women who say they got down to a size 00 by going on long hikes with their dog when really they've only eaten one Dorito a day for the last six months. And then and they'll probably have blogs about this very issue some day. Lame.

So yeah, the other thing that is crazy is that they can only get ice for girl's hockey practice at 9:30 on a Monday night. Sad. I'm just glad she's out there kicking ass at a non-traditional girl's high school sport. Or even if it was traditional. She's out there night after night just because she loves being on the ice. I think that's rad.

Today the electrician is here putting up our kitchen light, the one we bought when we redid our kitchen last fall and never got around to putting up, so that will be nice to have finished. After that I've got massive cleaning to do, work, and then the doctor, who I will be chatting with about my inability to fall asleep and stay asleep. I'll post more about that once I talk with him, but the long and short of it is that it's killing me and I need some answers.

On that final note - It's Earth Day! So in honor of Earth Day, I'm going to make sure our new kitchen light has a compact fluorescent bulb and by my mom some reusable grocery bags like mine so she doesn't have to keep getting plastic all the time. Hope everyone has a wonderful Earth Day.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Sick

Monday morning. I think I'm sick. I started sneezing, wheezing, coughing being stuffed up on Saturday, but I thought it was just an allergy attack. Yesterday it started getting worse, but I still thought it was just allergies because I was outside all morning working on the front yard. After a horrific night's sleep and waking up this morning feeling even worse, I'm not sure. I want to think it's just allergies so it will go away, but now my ears are itching and my head is so stuffed up I can barely think. It sucks. I've been taking my allergy meds but now I'm wondering if I should take some additional cold medicines too.

Hopefully I'll start feeling better as the day goes on, but this definitely begs the question: to boot camp or to not boot camp? I've always been of the mind that you should work out unless you are sick below the neck (meaning aching, wheezing, hacking up gross stuff, etc.) but I'm not sure how to judge how I feel. I am a little wheezy, but I don't know if it warrants missing a workout. On the other hand, if we're outside and I'm exposed to even more allergens, I don't think that will be a good thing at all. But on the third hand, or whichever hand we're on now, I know I'll be so guilty if I miss. What's a girl to do?

I guess I'll just see how I feel tonight and then go from there.

Now back to this weekend, which was a minefield of eating hell: I did okay. Not great. But it wasn't a total disaster either, so at least that's some progress from the weekend before. I am up on the scale this morning, but I'm hoping some of that will go away after a day or two back on my routine. Friday night I did well - stuck to two glasses of wine and ordered a chicken salad for dinner, although I did end up picking at some of the boy's fries. I was okay with that though.

Saturday I got up and went for a run before the shower, so I felt great going into it. I skipped the cake, but I did have two mini brownies and some chocolate covered strawberries, so that was kind of a wash. Especially since we went for Mexican food before the hockey game (Go Avs!) and I had two margaritas and some chips, etc. Oh delicious Mexican food, why do you always do this to me?

Yesterday was again okay, not great, we ended up going for pizza with some friends, but I stuck to one slice and had some salad so it was all good. Oh well, enough about my boring food choices.

One thing that did come up in conversation this weekend was the news that Canada is banning BPA plastic from baby bottles. I cart around a water bottle pretty much every where I go, both because I drink a ton of water and because I think it's irresponsible to purchase plastic water bottles. But given all the recent news on BPA and how harmful it can be, the boy and I decided we should move to BPA-free products whenever possible. So as of Saturday, I am the proud new owner of a BPA-free Nalgene bottle, all the better to hydrate myself with. I loved my old one and will miss it, but I think I can get used to this one. CamelBak is coming out with new BPA-free bottles with their special bite valve in May, so I'll probably get one of those once they come to my local REI. I love that bite valve.

Now that I've officially stopped drinking diet soda, I think this is just one more step to ridding my life of gross chemicals that I don't need. I'm sure there are about a million more things in my every day environment that could kill me at a moment's notice, but I still take comfort in knowing I'm doing what I can to save both my health and my environment.

Okay I'm off to the store to see if I can find some sort of relief from my illness, then it's freelance work and the boot camp decision. Hope everyone has a great day.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Friday

TGIF! Honestly, the biggest reason I'm excited it's Friday is that I get a day off from boot camp. It's been a good, tough week and I'm still really glad I'm doing it, but wow, getting through these next three weeks is going to be a process.

On Wednesday night it was snowing here - big, wet spring snow flakes, so I thought for sure we'd be inside. Well unfortunately we had an instructor with something to prove, and he decided to take us outside the whole entire time. It was basically a running night, with some pushups and rolling down snow covered hills thrown in for good measure. Basically everyone was pissed. My friend M. was pissed because she's one of the best runners in the class, and she felt like she could have done a run inside on the treadmill and gotten a better workout than he gave us. He just seemed so unorganized, and basically like he was just trying to get us wet and dirty. The slower people in the group were pissed because we never got to rest, once we'd finally catch up with the fast runners, they were off again. And I was pissed because it's just dangerous to take people out to run around in the the slippery snow, even if it is in a park, when we could have been inside doing a better workout with more weights, etc.

We had girl's dinner afterward and the four of us who are doing the boot camp all bitched and complained, and M. even talked to the owner about it, so at least he knows. We made up for it last night though, we got my favorite instructor, the only woman. She'll give you a kick-ass workout, but she's still nice. And encouraging. Which is extremely helpful when you're sweating your ass off and trying to get that one last chest press or hop up completed. I love her and wish we could have her every night. She did a double Ironman last year. Double. Do you know how crazy that is? I can't even begin to comprehend.

Today I'm resting my sore body, but tomorrow I plan to go on a run with the boy and/or hit the gym for a spinning class. I'm want to try to do a minimum of five workouts a week, so Saturday seems like a good day for my last one this week.

I'm definitely seeing my weight go down, but it's frustrating how slow it is. It sucks that you can put it on so fast, but it takes so long for it to go down. After lots of days of great eating (and eating what seems like very little food, even though I'm getting around 1400-1500 calories a day) I just want to be magically thin and trim. But alas, it does not work like that. I just need to get through this weekend without totally screwing up again and I'll feel like I'm on my way.

Weekend plans: Tonight, drinks with a former colleague and some friends. Tomorrow I plan to work out, get some yard work done, then I'm attending a shower for a good friend whose wedding I'm in coming up in June. After that, we're heading to the Av's game to watch them kick the Wild's arse! Woo hoo! I love playoff hockey, it's so fun! Sunday should be low key, no plans at this point.

Let's see if I can stay on the wagon and avoid pizza tonight, cake at the shower, and nachos at the game. It's a dieter's worst nightmare, but I think I can do it! Wish me luck....

P.S. Erinn - email me and I'll give you all the info on the boot camp. :) You can get me at myfutureme at g mail dot com

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Weigh In

Well I don't know how I did it after my atrocious weekend, but I lost 1.2 lbs this week! Woo! I'm so happy to see losses two weeks in a row - I think this is one of the first times this year I've been able to do that. I'm so happy, I feel like I'm finally on the way to getting in the groove.

And speaking of losing weight - The Biggest Loser last night - holy crap! Ali looks amazing. I mean it is incredible. She is totally buff. And I think it's so nice to see a woman win the whole thing. And I was so glad Allison Sweeney called Mark out for being such a crybaby. Somebody needed to say it. I saw Jillian and Ali this morning on the Today Show and she said towards the end, they were sometimes working out 10 hours a day. 10 freaking hours. Are you kidding me? Obviously that kind of weight loss that fast is not a piece of cake, but regardless I think it's always nice to see someone change their life like that.

Kind of made me think my boot camp pain is a drop in the bucket. This week at boot camp has been just as tough as last week. Last night we started with stair running, then came back inside to do 200 push ups. Lovely. After that it was a circuit and I am feeling it in my chest, abs and back today. Wow.

I also had a kind of "woe is me" moment last night because there were quite a few people absent last night, including some of the slower folks, so I was bringing up the rear all night long. That was fine, I still thought I was doing my best, but at one point in the night the instructor said "One of you is slacking, and I doubt you'll be back tomorrow, and I think you know who you are."

Well I plan on being back tomorrow, even though I am struggling more than a lot of other people, so really, rationally, I don't think he was calling me out. But automatically my brain goes - OMG, he thinks I suck. He hates me. I'm the worst. I suck. Why am I even attempting to do this with all of these really fit people? And on and on and on. It's just that old feeling coming back, and I hate it. I couldn't stop thinking about it all night. Was he talking about me?

Well even if he was, I'm going back tonight and I'm going to kick as much ass as humanly possible. I may not be able to run as fast as most people, and I may not be able to do as many pushups or hop ups or whatever else he makes us do, but I'm going back and I'm going to effing try. Dammit. If Ali can do it, I can do it.

Tonight is girl's dinner after boot camp, which means I can't control what I'm served for dinner, but I'm hoping there will be a salad and I might bring a Luna bar to sneak in case it's all pasta or something. I'm trying to control my carbs a little more and I think that's really been helping in terms of the weight loss, so I want to keep that going if possible. Have a great day everyone!

Monday, April 14, 2008

Weekend Free For All

Ugh. After a particularly awesome, on the wagon, woo hoo carrots week I woke up this morning feeling like Bloaty Mc Bloaterson and just disgusted with what I did to myself this weekend. The best laid plans of mice and men I guess...

Friday was good, we headed to the mountains after everyone got finished working, but they had closed the tunnel due to some bad accidents so it took forever. By the time we finally made it up, the four of us were climbing the walls and wanting to have some fun, so we headed to the Brewery for some beers and some dinner. I only had two beers and got the soup and salad, so I was feeling pretty good about Friday night. But then we got home, opened some wine and stayed up until about 2 talking about religion and politics and you know how those conversations go. Of course the boy and I got in a fight, even though we were agreeing with one another, I guess it's just how we agree. It was stupid but it's all good now. What is it about wars and God that just gets everyone all in a tizzy?

Anyway, after about five hours of sleep, we got up to head to the mountain, but not without first stopping by the bagel shop. I was good - only ate half a bagel with tomato and cream cheese and some coffee. The snowboarding was amazing, the snow was great and it was a beautiful day. I'm so sad most of the resorts closed after this weekend because we had so much fun this winter, but I guess we'll just do it again next year!

The rest of Saturday included too many beers, little eating all day until we were finally served dinner at the wedding, which consisted of chicken fingers, mac & cheese, and of course cake. Thank god there was some salad. It was all great food and we had a great time of course, but my planning was less than stellar and even though I barely ate all day, I know I made up for it at the end of the night.

Yesterday was even worse, being hungover, having to drive the 2 hours home, and then of course having an empty kitchen meant I was just trying to fill my body with the easiest, fattiest greasiest food possible. This is cringe-worthy, but I had both french fries and ice cream yesterday. Gross. I'm paying for it on the scale this morning.

Why is it that when I leave my home-turf, the place where I can best control my eating, I suddenly lose sight of everything I'm working toward? It's like everything I know I should be doing just flies right out the window and it's a free for all. I know I tend to do this whenever I'm away - I fully know this about myself. Yet it's like I just go on auto-pilot and think, once I get home, I'll do better. But over the years, the damage has been done. I feel good, like I'm on the right track to actually losing some of this weight I've gained in the past year, but this spring is going to be incredibly difficult if I keep doing this to myself whenever I go out of town or have some kind of party/wedding/shower to attend. I need to learn how to celebrate with my friends and have a good time, yet still focus on the goals at hand.

The good news is, I'm looking forward to getting back to my normal eating habits this week and hitting boot camp hard again. Hopefully I'll make up for some of those calories I consumed this weekend with tonight's workout. It's super nice here today so I'm guessing we'll be outside, which makes me nervous but I also like. Outside means more time out in the beautiful weather, but it also means the likelihood of running increases, which is not always my favorite.

Regardless of what we do, I'm hoping I can get back on track and take this week to figure out just exactly what I need to do to stay on track next weekend. I do not want all of this hard work I've been doing to be ruined by a couple of crappy days.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Recovery

Happy Friday! I am so exhausted from this week. I'm feeling better this morning after sleeping for more than nine hours, which is ridiculous I know, but sometimes the body just needs it. And my body definitely did.

Boot camp has been wonderful this week - I've alternated between pure elation at what my body is able to do and being on the verge of breaking down into tears, and multiple times. Each night this week I didn't think it could get worse, yet somehow it did. Tuesday we ran. And ran. And ran. We did a run test - two times around a nearby park, I think it was probably about a mile. I did it in 9:25, which is very fast for me. Then after the test we continued to run around the park, up and down hills and stairs and it never ever seemed to end. But it did, and I was fine, even though I was in the back of the pack most of the time, and I burned over 900 calories on Tuesday night. Wow.

Wednesday we stayed inside, alternating between a minute of cardio (up downs, jumping jacks, high knees, etc.) and minute of weights (chest presses, shoulder presses, squats, etc.). For 75 minutes. We did. Not. Stop. But I made it through.

And last night, inside again, but this time with sprints around the room, more weights, more cardio, and this thing called widespread panic. Widespread panic truly lives up to its name. You stay in a pushup position, slowly lowering down, holding in that down position for as long as the devil instructor says to, and then coming back up. And then down, and up and so on. It's ok at first, but then you get so tired of holding yourself up, and you can't go down to your knees, or you just have to go that much longer. Yikes. It's hardcore.

I'm sore all over - my bum, my shoulders, chest, quads, triceps, neck, everywhere. So needless to say, I am looking forward to a rest day today. No exercise whatsoever, save a couple of walks with the dogger. I've been able to maintain great eating throughout this week of boot camp, which makes me happy as I was nervous I might be ravenous. In actuality, I've sort of lost my big appetite for nighttime, so now when I get home I've been having something small, a sandwich or english muffin with peanut butter, that kind of thing.

I haven't mentioned this, but I've started doing a bit of freelancing while I'm out of a normal full-time job, so I'll be doing that today, cleaning up around the house, and getting ready to go to the mountains. We're going to a wedding in Beaver Creek on Saturday, so we're going to get one last weekend of spring snowboarding in (even though I think they've gotten like 15 inches in the mountains in the past couple of days, so there may be one more weekend yet).

Mountain weekends are fun, but they are always hard in terms of eating. It's the famous "apres ski" that always gets me in trouble, everyone loves to sit and have a beer, or three after hitting the slopes. Couple that with free booze at the wedding tomorrow night, and it could be a recipe for disaster. So my plan is to bring a Luna bar for breakfast tomorrow morning, have a nice salad or soup for lunch and avoid the afternoon drinks, and then try to stick to two or three glasses of wine at the wedding. I know I'll feel better if I do it that way, and my body will thank me for it.

Oh and P.S. I was down 2.8 lbs this week! Woo hoo!

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Testing Results

Boot camp was brutal, as I should have expected it to be. I picked up my friend S., who lives down the block, and we were both so nervous. I had that nervous stomach feeling so I was afraid I might puke or something but it ended up going away once we got started.

We got to the new facility, which is really nice, and sat down and watched all the other girls filter in. There is one guy in this class - I feel sorry for him. At least he's there with his girlfriend though. LOL. Pretty much all of the girls look to be in pretty good shape, so I'm worried about being the last person when we go on runs, etc. but I think I'll just deal with it.

Anyway, last night's workout was the testing I remembered, and my results were:

Sit Ups (full body, not crunching): 67 in two minutes (three more than last year)
Hop ups (two legs at a time, not step ups: 62 in two minutes (five more than last year)
Pushups (regular pushups, once you fall to your knees you're done): 10 in two minutes (3 more than last year)

So I'm doing a little better fitness-wise this year than last year, but not by much. I'm hoping to improve those numbers over the course of this five weeks but we shall see. We didn't do a run last night, instead after the testing we did intervals consisting of more pushups, crunching, bicycles or other ab work, squats, hop ups, up downs and various other tortures. I'm already sore this morning so I'm dreading what I'm going to feel like by Thursday. Hopefully I'll loosen up some once I get going on tonight's workout. I'm assuming we're going to run, which will suck, but must be done to get in shape!

I have a goal to get down 10 lbs over the next five weeks, 2 lbs a week, so I'm hoping I can make that. I may start posting my weight here again, but I'm kind of hesitant too because it's just so painful right now.

Le Sigh.

Food today

B: oatmeal and one hard boiled egg
L: turkey and hummus on whole wheat wrap, apple
S: Luna bar (before workout)
D: veggie chili and salad

Monday, April 07, 2008

And it begins...

This weekend was good - lots of fun with friends and lots of downtime, which was nice because the next three weekends in a row I have either weddings, wedding showers or baby showers to attend. Saturday morning was wonderful - I slept late with the dogger while the boy got up early to go snowboarding. I would have gone to enjoy some fun spring riding but I had a hair appointment that I couldn't move, so I decided just to enjoy the time to myself. My haircut is interesting; I've been going with the Reese W1therspoon type bangs for some time now and I really like that, but my stylist thought I should try the Heid1 Klum bangs, like the ones she's been wearing on Proj3ct Runway, so I decided to go for it.

Well my hair isn't quite as thick as hers, but I think it looks okay. I'm actually looking a little more rocker, which I kind of like. I'll try to post a picture at some point but that would mean washing my hair and styling, which hasn't been done quite yet today. :)

After my haircut I went to get a mani with my sister, so it was a nice little day of pampering. I went with Russ1an Navy on my nails to compliment the new rocker cut. Love it.

Saturday night we ended up going to an impromptu birthday party for a friend of a friend, and I was pretty proud of my choice to stick to mostly salad and only have one tiny sliver of pizza rather than just shoving it in my face like I might normally do. It's the little things at this point.

Sunday the boy and I went to brunch and ran a few errands, hung out around the house and played Rock Band with some friends. Overall, a pretty dynamite weekend. Food was good and I peeked at the scale and it's finally moving in the right direction, so I'm feeling good. I took both days off from exercising because I was pretty sore from the squats I did on Friday and I wanted to rest up because I start boot camp today.

Last time I did this boot camp the first day consisted of a few fitness tests. I went back through my archives and found my results for my first day of boot camp last year, which interestingly enough was almost exactly a year ago. They were as follows:

Sit Ups (full body, not crunching): 64 in two minutes
Hop ups (two legs at a time, not step ups): 57 in two minutes
Pushups (regular pushups, once you fall to your knees you're done): 7 in two minutes

I also did the 1.6 mile loop around Cheeseman in 17:38.

I'm not sure if we'll do the same exact tests tonight, but I'll be interested to see how I compare fitness-wise. I know we won't be doing the loop around Cheeseman because I'm going to a new location, but I bet we'll do at least a mile run so I'll probably be able to figure out the comparison fairly easily. Judging by my current workouts, I'd say I'm probably in a fairly comparable place, and sadly I think I may weigh a little more than I did last year at this time. But hopefully I'm on the way down.

I'll check in tomorrow and let you all know how it goes, but wish me luck!

Friday, April 04, 2008

Friday

The weekend is here and I'm feeling good and ready for it. The sun is shining - finally - and it seems like everyone is in a good mood on a Friday afternoon.

Eating has been really great the past couple of days. I've been incorporating lots of veggies and monitoring my calories on Spark People, which I'm really enjoying. I still sort of count points in my head without even thinking about it, but I like seeing exactly how much protein, fiber, etc. I'm getting. Yesterday I racked up like 38 grams of fiber. Wow.

I took yesterday off of exercising but I hit weights and the stepmill today (the stepmill is killer by the way, I can do like 20 min max) so I feel great overall. Next week I'm starting a five week boot camp with some of my girlfriends, so I'm getting pumped for that. It's four days a week, 75 min a day. I also plan on including at least one, if not two additional workouts a week while I'm doing the bootcamp. I'm really looking forward to it because while I do okay on my own, I always push myself harder when I have some kind of guided support, whether it's a class instructor, a trainer or now a bootcamp instructor.

The one thing I'm nervous about is doing bootcamp with the friends I'm doing it with. All three of them are great friends, but they are all on a completely different level fitness-wise than I am. They don't really lift weights and keep saying I'm going to kill them on strength stuff, but they are super fast runners and have amazing cardio fitness. One is running a half marathon on Sunday, the other two ran the Steamboat marathon last year and they're training for Chicago later this year.

Now I know I ran a half marathon too, but they are all just so much faster than me. When we do runs, I know I'm just going to have to go at my own pace and not worry about what everyone else is doing, but it always feel shitty to be in the back. I think I'm just going to have to find a buddy that is closer to my pace so at least I'll have someone to hang with.

Tonight is happy hour for opening day for the Rockies, then probably just dinner with some friends. Tomorrow I'm going to run in the morning, then I'm getting a cut and highlight (sorely needed.) The rest of the weekend is open, which is nice given all the stuff we've had going on over the past couple of months.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Things are good. Better I guess. I don't know how many times I'm going to have to write posts like yesterday until something finally clicks, but hopefully this was one of the last. I cooked dinner last night, something I realized I've actually been enjoying since I started experimenting with new recipes and what not. And it was good. And there were carbs. But I'm okay with that.

Today is kind of a mish mash day - I'm working on some freelance stuff, finishing up our taxes and taking them to the post office, errands, brow wax (sorely needed) and girls night tonight to catch up on The Bachelor. We've been recording it on Monday's and then watching on Wednesday's when we all get together. I know it's kind of ridiculous that we're still watching this show, but I love it. And this bachelor is dreamy. Seriously. He's hot. And he makes me laugh, which only adds to the hotness.

Oh yeah, I also hit a spinning class this afternoon, the first one I've been to in a long time and it was fantastic. The only thing I don't like about spinning class is the lady, and it seems like there's always one of these ladies, that feels the need to contribute the "woo!" and "come on" and "there's a lion chasing you" comments. I mean, that's what the instructor is for. If he wants to tell me there's a lion chasing me that's one thing. But if you really feel the need to yell that out during class, maybe you should get your teaching certification and get your own class. Otherwise let's just keep these comments to ourselves shall we? Okay? Okay.

Hope everyone is having a good day.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Here it goes again

What the hell is wrong with me? Last night I was awakened by a sneak allergy attack. Coughing, sneezing, snotting, all that lovely stuff. I don't mind that stuff so much because I know I can just run to Target (say it the french way) and pick up my drug of choice. What I do mind is that once I woke up, my mind was racing, mostly with thoughts on food and working out and fatness and swimsuits and all that crap until at least 5, if not later.

I don't know what the deal is right now. If I'm looking at myself, I know I'm at least 15 lbs over my "happy weight" right now, and to be honest with you, that wasn't really a happy weight either. I thought I'd give this slow carb thing a try, but I've decided to abandon it because frankly, I sucked at it. I had a couple of days where I did it perfectly, but the monotony and stringent rules of a plan like that don't work for me. You'd think I would know this by now, but I guess I don't. I don't even like egg whites, and I've been eating them every morning. Choking them down. And that is no way to live, even if it is only for four weeks.

Last night at dinner, I had more than one bite of the oatmeal whoopie pie dessert that my husband picked out (as usual, the eating habits of a five year old). And then I berated myself for the rest of the night for not "sticking to the plan."

Excuse my french, but fuck that. I cannot do this to myself for the rest of my life. I know what works for me and for some reason I'm doing everything but that. I'm having super clean eating days, and then I'm blowing them with crazy weekends that start on Thursday and go until Sunday. There is no moderation in my life right now. It just seems to be one extreme or the other.

So today I am starting something different. It's April 1, spring is here (even though it's still freaking cold here) and I want to drop at least these 15 lbs. That should put me back squarely in a size 12 dress, which is the size I'd like to be when I'm a bridesmaid in a friend's wedding at the end of June. The good news is, we're wearing black and get to pick out our own dresses, so I have some time before I have to order what I want.

I think I'm going to try tracking my calories on Spark People again for a bit just to see where I am, but for the most part I'm just going to go back to what was working for me in the fall of '06 before my wedding. Lots of veggies, limiting sugar and alcohol but mostly just taking care with what I eat. Giving my body healthy, nourishing foods. I can do this. I want to do this and I will do this.