this time for sure, rocky

Pink Soup

2011-10-06T11:19:00.001-07:00

Pink Soup
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

This week, I made the pink soup. It's a fall treat I make every year that's basically a root vegetable soup that becomes pink because beets are among the root vegetables. This year's concoction came completely from organic roots sourced from both the South Shore and the West Allis Farmers' markets. If you only care about organic vegetables in a passing way, well, if you don't insist on organic on anything else, you want organic root vegetables: onions, potatoes, carrots. And I wish I liked radishes. Lots of people don't like my pink soup because, as pretty as it is, they can't stand beets. Well, as pretty as they are, I can't stand radishes. (I do, however, enjoy horseradish). I was at the 'Stallis Farmer's market last week, and this one organic farmer had the most beautiful radishes in a variety of colors. He emphasized that some of them weren't as harsh as regular radishes. I asked if I could buy just one though, and he would only sell as a set. Oy.

But my pink soup is based on a root vegetable soup in SallySchneider's A New Way To Cook. Following her basic lead, here's what I did:

Went to the market and bought some fresh leeks, onions, garlic, celery root, a bunch of gorgeous parsnips, potatoes and of course, beets.
Cut up the leeks and a few onions and sauteed them in some Wisconsin butter. (This is truly a locavore recipe).
Peeled and cut up the celery root, two small potatoes (one red and one yellow), and the parsnips and the beets and dumped them in and sauteed a bit just to get a bit of carmelized flavor
Dumped in about 4 cups of chicken stock (that I had in the freezer, made of course, with chicken carcasses and vegetable scraps from local sources)
let this cook for 2 hours until the vegetables were all soft
Grabbed my handy stick blender (as Steve Albini asks, how did people make soup before stick blenders?) and pureed it down.
Stirred in about a cup of skim milk to lighten the color a bit.
Garnished and plated my completed pink soup.

This came in at about 150 calories for a bowl. And I came in a pound down this week.

I continue to eat well (locally)

2011-09-18T07:58:00.001-07:00

The Oats lady is back!
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

The relative ease of being a relative locavore continues. Blueberries are gone, but Michigan peaches are still about, and the melons are coming in with a venegance and they are actually good for smoothies. There's a wonderful cheesemaker who makes some really good cheese. I was buying a wedge of her really nice cheddar, and raving about how good it is stirred into steel cut oats. And whaddaya know, the oat lady was finally around with bags of steel-cut and other oats! Yum. Now I can make this wonderful recipe that my online friend Mimi turned me onto with ((except for the sea salt and the really good Olive Oil) completely local ingredients. It's called Sexed Up Oatmeal.

Like the recipe says, this works wonderfully but you really have to use top ingredients. Do NOT use pre-shredded Kraft cheese. You will need too much to get the flavor, and everything that is good and wonderful and wholesome about this will go kaput in a haze of over-cheesing. No, you want really good, flavorful, sharp (and i've used parmesan or some good stinky cheese made by my favorite cheese lady) cheddar for this. You also want excellent olive oil for this. You want to taste the fruityness of the olives. This is not the big ol bottle of cheap olive oil you use for cooking or salad dressing. This is the tiny bottle that just smells amazing when you open it. And that's the thing about eating this way. Cheese and oil are not ingredients, they are flavor agents.

So I loaded up this morning with this savory oatmeal which kept me really happy most of the morning, and finished it off with a peach. Had grass-fed beef burgers over the weekend and I dropped a pound this week. Half the battle I've learned over the years is enjoying, really enjoying your foodinstead of just slamming it down. That's easier to do when you feel good about it on a number of levels.

Holding stead this week, no gains, no losses.

Jumping back on to the (local) bandwagon

2011-09-07T10:01:00.001-07:00

OK, fine, I admit it. I've fallen severely off the wagon and I'm not admitting just how much until I've climbed comfortably back on. Let's just say at least I dropped some 10 pounds over the summer, but I have some ways to go before I get back to where I was on a roll. I've decided to start writing again, on weight and body issues, mostly to keep myself going.

Right now, it's kind of easy to eat well. It's September in Wisconsin, and the farmer's markets are bursting with excellent fresh fruit and vegetables. I've even been able to pretty much eat ~80% local. I just made a wonderful potato leek soup with ingredients I got from the farmer's market, and even the chicken stock was made with carcasses I had from local chickens I roasted by putting them over cans of locally-brewed beer. We've had a lot of meals like this lately. Pizza on the grill made with fresh, not even cooked, tomato sauce, and topped with veggies I picked up at the market. Pasta covered with a pile of sauteed vegetables. Stir fries made with those same sauteed veggies, augmented with some locally-raised, grass fed beef, topped with a touch of shredded, local cheese. (There's this one cheesmaker that makes a wedge called Saxony that I've been all over lately.) Breakfast made with free-range chicken eggs, with uncured bacon on the side.

Just yesterday I picked up some fresh broccoli, and not in heads, either. The farmer had already picked off stalks, because it's the second picking and that main shoot that comes off a broccoli head just divides up into several smaller shoots that come later in the season. And she was right: this broccoli was actually sweet and -- get this -- juicy. We had it lightly steamed as a side dish for dinner last night. And I just snacked on these wonderful grape tomatoes that were incredibly flavorful -- almost salty without the added salt. I went to Woodman's for my weekly grocery run, and I pretty much skipped the produce section because I loaded up direct from the farmers the day before. And that's saying a lot, because Woodman's produce section rocks. I'm pretty much a Woodman's fan all around -- they *do* have a lot of fairly local brands, and lots of independent producers are there on weekends handing out free samples of their stuff. The only place that beats Woodman's is of course, our locally-owned and operated natural foods co-op, the Outpost. But like most of those natural foods co-ops, they can get pricey -- they don't have the economy of scale that a larger place such as Woodman's, enjoys.

But yes, it's easy to eat well and wonderful this time of year, which makes this a good time of year to get back on the wagon. It's a good time to develop a taste for fruits and veggies, when they're at their best, so that when winter kicks in and the tomatoes are once again tasteless and mealy and not quite ripe, you still find uses for them. (I found a recipe for oven roasted tomatoes in A New Way To Cook that really does make nasty, mealy greenhouse romas worthwhile -- just slow roast them in the oven for about 4 hours and use 'em in a soup.) Being a locavore means I'm eating a lot less crap, and crap is what really puts on the pounds, those pounds I'm not admitting to quite yet. So that's my gocal for this month: really stick with being a locavore and developing a taste (and the time) to keep an eye out for making good food.

Oh, and dropping another four or five pounds would be good, too.

Climbing down and then back up

2010-06-08T18:59:00.001-07:00

We climbed down and
back UP this cliff
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

Well, it's been awhile. I've admittedly been dark. And I have no good reason, just the excuse of stress, which is starting to lay off a bit. However, I did gain all the weight I lost back, and now I've had to work up the guts to admit this to the world. I was unemployed for a year, and underemployed for some of it. I'm on a contract job now, and I'm at a point when I can concentrate on weight loss.

Oh, and I can do without the lecture about how, while I was stressed out, I should have been taking care of myself. Well, I kind of was. I was anesthetising myself with comfort food. And whatever they say about how stress raises your cortisol levels (and subsequently lowers your metabolism), I'm ready to believe. I wasn't stuffing myself, but I was gaining weight, even with exercising, and even trying to keep an eye on what I was eating. But still, I purposely wasn't paying hard attention until even my fat clothes were starting to feel tight. Ugh.

So, here's this picture. Last week, the kids and I went for a hike and we saw this giant cliff down to the beach, and the kids really wanted to climb down. And i knew that we'd need to climb back UP. It's something I would have done without hesitation five years ago, but right now, I was actually afraid of going down that cliff, as overweight and out of shape I am, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to climb back up.

"Puh-LEASE?" the kids begged. I couldn't say no. "We'll help you climb back up!" Yeah right. You and your 11 and 6 year old bodies are gonna haul my 200+ ass up a giant cliff. But, I went down. And climbing back up wasn't easy. At one point, I kind of got stuck. I could feel my calves burning while trying to figure out how to get past this one spot. Stella offered her hand, and I didn't want to pull her down, so I took it for the split second it took me to get to the next root in the ground. And I did it. I can't be afraid of this anymore, and I can't be afraid of going online anymore.

Anyway, I'm back, and true to the title, This Time For Sure. Like Jane at the Fatslayer Chronicles said, something to the tune of, ya fall down seven times, well, ya get up eight. And speaking of her, it's nice to see she's back. I'd just begun to follow her when she went dark for awhile, and was sad when she did. Now I understand. Whatever it was, she had stuff going on in her life (which she explained before she went dark) and needed to concentrate on that. I can totally relate.

I think it was PastaQueen (who's also still blogging -- she's met her goal and now maintaining, and dealing with dreadful constant chronic headaches to boot, but she still has her magnificent sense of humor) who'd posted a while back about seeing various bloggers come and go, partially because many didn't necessarily give up on weight loss, but gave up on blogging. It's HARD to come up with something new and interesting when you've been doing it awhile. (Pasta Queen still manages to!) But also, she pointed out (wish I could find the post) that now that we have Fadcebook and Twitter, a tweet or FB status is all many of us have time to do. Rebecca is still going Durch Dick und Duenn, Amy is still wondering if this font makes her look fat,

Anyway, I ran down my blogroll and cleaned it out of people who seem to have gone dark permanently. Some aren't blogging about weightloss, but they're still a good read and I discovered them via weightloss blogging. Case in point: Big Ass Belle, who has decided she's happy with what she's got but still has a lot of things to say. The Angry Fat Girls have moved and published a book (which I should probably read, since I was a fan of their blog).

I'm gonna miss:

Big Blonde Bombshell and her acerbic comebacks to people who hassled her
Anonymous Fat Woman and her brilliant posts (I know her in real life now, and she's still brilliant and I'm glad I know how to find her elsewhere on the web.... she's still anonymous...)
Dumbell in a Home Gym, a motivating blogger who'd come back from about where I am now....
Fat Girl Camp, which appears to have closed for the season
Anne, who had WLS and went on to bigger and better writing escapades
Renee getting fit and
The unbearable fatness of being Coco

OK, I'm still not where I was last time I blogged, and I'm too chickenshit to give you a Wednesday Weigh In yet. Let's just say I climbed up that cliff and beyond that, lemme get back on track first. Suffice to say, I've dropped five pounds in the past month. And I'm back. This Time For Sure.

I wanna job

2009-09-21T13:05:00.001-07:00

OK, this video pretty much illustrates why I haven't been posting a whole lot lately. I've been busy looking for work, and you'd be amazed (or maybe not) at just how exhausting -- both emotionally and physically -- being unemployed is. So much so that I'm here to tell you that this whole Maslow's hierarchy thing has a lot to it. My big worries these days are not "What is my BMI?" or "How much has my fat percentage decreased over time. " However, I do have to watch my weight so that I can fit in a darn interview suit.

You'd be amazed how fattening stress is. I've gained all the weight back that I lost when I started this blog. I'm up to 248. This sucks. I'm stress eating, and ugh. However, lately, I've been making an effort to exercise every day. I go for bike rides that help take my mind off this. It's the end of he summer, so good healthy food is plentiful and cheap. I'm going to try to start writing again, but by top priority is summarized in this song. So there you go.

Little Victories in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest

2009-02-12T11:42:00.001-08:00

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

Wednesday Weigh In (even though it's Thursday), 249.1, so only down a half pound. Still, I was quote unquote, good. Writing down everything. Working out every day. It's those times you have to remember that the a victory isn't always reflected on the scale.

And it wasn't just the writing down of EVERYTHING that was a victory. The kids are on this "trying new foods" kick and you best be sure I'm capitalizing on it. Just the other day, Sammy noticed one of my favorite cookbooks, Mollie Katzen's "The Enchanted Broccoli Forest" and he's been begging to make that recipe. (The fact that I have a 5 year old boy who loves broccoli is celebratory enough.)

As you can see, our version of it bears little resemblance to Chef Katzen's version. But Stella, who loves red peppers, said that this forest needed some people, and the red peppers could be the people. (If a broccoli tree falls, and there are no people to hear it.....).

Being home a lot these days (I'm looking for work) is giving the opportunity to cook from scratch a lot more, which means I have more control into what goes into my food. That's a victory in itself, too.

Wups -- accidentally deleted last week's post

2009-02-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

For the record, weekly weigh in was at 249.6, and I had nothing really profound to say. so it's not like we missed anything here, friends.

I'm back! And I'm annoyed.

2009-02-02T11:55:00.001-08:00

No really, I am. I've been admittedly lax. I've been stressed, I've had a lot going on in my life, and I gained all the weight back that I lost. And I'm not happy about that, not one little bit. In fact, I'm a bit over the line. I'm at 250. So I finally said, this has got to stop, and I'm back on the wagon. Part it it was realizing, "I really don't want to have to do the Danskin Triathlon carrying an extra 25 pounds. I just don't. It's bad enough I slowed down in the run this year." I was training in the pool this weekend thinking, "I really don't want to have to buy a new tri suit."

So get this: the Danskin for the Chicagoland area (because even when it's in Wisconsin, it's still Chicagoland!) is TBD this year. It's usually the weekend after July 4, and that's fairly convenient. I'm wondering why they haven't published this yet and I just learned the answer today: the Trek Women's Triathlon is that weekend in Kenosha. I was actually quite happy to see such a thing -- so somebody besides Danskin is sponsoring a women's series. Cool!

Except for one thing.

See, on of the reasons I felt totally at home at the Danskin was that, as a large woman, I wasn't called out. We're separated by age and that's it. There's one more wave that's called out (besides elite competitors, which is standard for any race), and that's the Survivor wave, and that seems to be more of an honor than an advantage/disadvantage. They get to go first (after the elite racers) after all. But as a large woman, I'm in a heat with other women my age, we're all together, and, as I posted after my first Danskin Tri we're all considered athletes.

But the folks at Trek seem to have missed this very important point. There's age and elite and survivor designations, but there's also "Athena." Do I need to tell you what "Athena" means? Neither did Trek. C'mon, everybody knows that when you use any ancient western goddess besides Aphrodite, it's code for "the fatties." (Note to Trek -- it's usually Juno/Hera that gets designated for the "large/mature" woman. )

That in itself wouldn't as bad (yes it would but I'm saving the best for last), guess what the cutoff weight is to be eligible to compete as an "Athena." 150 pounds! What, if we weigh more than 150 pounds, we couldn't possibly have a chance against the other athletes in our age category? Because, Trek, consider this -- in the bike portion, yes that's YOUR main product, I've finished in the top 11 percent of all people in that category when I raced the Danskin the past two years. I went flying past plenty of women who were definitely under 150 pounds. I had younger and smaller women come up to me afterwards and say, "You are an awesome cyclist."

And, when I lose the weight (c'mon, I admit, I'm still trying to lose, but frankly, my goal is still above the 150 pound cutoff...) I'll still be "eligible" to compete as an "Athena." I have broad shoulders. I have thunder thighs. My goal of ~160-180s is appropriate for my age, build, and lifestyle. But according to Trek, the BMI scale, and a bazillion blowhards who have nothing to do but hate on women who don't meet ridiculous standards of weight, we're still "Athena." That's fat. As in, "too fat to compete with the real athletes." But really, if I drop 100 pounds from where I am today (at 250) you can bet my fat percentage is going to be way down. It's going to be way down, probably near the "Average" place if I hit 175, for chrissakes.

I'm glad that Trek (as well as other companies, such as woman-designed and woman-run Terry Bicycles>) makes bicycles with Women Specific Design. (Even though, with my relatively long torso, broad shoulders and relative long wingspan, WSD bikes solve problems I don't have!) I'm glad this whole industry has begun to notice that women love bicycling as much as men, and is catering to that market.

But Trek, if you're going to take the place of my beloved Danskin, a race I entered and enjoyed without being separated out because of my weight, you need to understand that one of the big points of a women's triathlon is to unite us all as athletes, to make us really believe that we all belong out there, that we are all participating in an athletic endeavor. At this point, I'm still waiting to find out where Danskin will end up having the "Chicagoland" race, cos frankly, I'm a little reluctant to do yours, and certainly I won't be registering as an "Athena." If I do the Trek (because Danskin Chicagoland is unavailable for me), I'm entering in the 45-50 age group.

Not beating myself up over not beating myself

2008-07-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

238.2. Here I am again. I've done a LOT of bike riding, even more so because my car's in the shop, so those last few things I've done by car have succumbed to the bike, and days where I wouldn't have felt like riding I was forced to anyway. The car's out of the shop today; after work I go to pick it up.

But still, it was a good thing, in terms of this. It's forced me to re-evaluate how much i drive, how lazy i get, and how easily lazy I get. I've been cooking for myself, too -- not eating out has saved me money and pounds. But I'm still in a high stress time, and I still find myself eating to combat the stress. The answer isn't to wait until the high stress eases off. The answer is to deal with it better.

Still, my ego was bruised at the tri last weekend, and that's kind of a good thing. Yeah, I finished, but i didn't beat myself. That's the thing about things like Triathlons. My tri buddy Jen commented last week that i still beat her in time, but that's not what i was going for. As far as I'm concerned, she beat me, because she beat herself. I remember doing cross country running in high school (and track team people were the same about this): the ultimate opponent in any race is yourself. It doesn't matter if you were first or last: if you beat yourself, you've won, and if you didn't -- i don't want to say you've lost, but at the same time... ugh. That's what's getting me. I didn't beat myself. But I'm not beating myself up over it. I just didn't hit an unwritten goal.

So here I am, working out better after this race than before it. Go figure.

2nd Gig Blues: Free Your Mind

2008-07-14T19:00:00.001-07:00

on the bus, after the race, quite pleased with myself
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

OK, numbers first --I'm still hovering around 240, so weightloss hasn't been a priority lately. I ran the Danskin Triathlon this weekend, and I finished almost exactly with the same time 1:47:20 as I did last year (1:46:51), but with improvements and disappointments.

Improvements and disappointments:

I shaved off about 3 minutes from my transition time.
I massively improved on the swim. Part of that can be attributed to the fact that we weren't swimming against the wind this year, but still. Still,I shaved 2 minutes off my time, putting my swim rank in the top 28% overall (up from being in the top half last year), and the top 20 percent of my age class. So, I really improved in the swim, and I think I'll attribute that to really concentrating on staying on course, and not starting off so hard that I poop out a quarter of the way through.
On the record, I only improved my bike run by 10 seconds, but my chain fell while upshifting, and got stuck in the spot between the front chainring and the crank. That took about 1:30 to repair, plus about a half minute of regaining my momentum. So had this not happened, at the pace I was at, i would have improved greately. And I'm still a bicycling badass, in the top 11% overall and top 12% of my age class. In fact, at least a few women spotted me at the end and told me they though I was an awesome cyclist, which was a bit of a rush. So I bet I would have finished in the top 10% (which was my goal) if not for mechanical failure. I hope I inspired others, as we climbed hills together, as I told them, "Keep Pushing" or my favorite, "Uphill and against the wind! Are we loving this, girls?" There was one woman whose gear kept clicking clicking clicking and I learned by overhearing another telling her, "Downshift and then shift back up, you'll expend too much energy trying to pedal like that!" It was good advice, and the woman followed it. It was advice I was about to give myself, but I didn't want to come of f as too know it all. That advice giving woman taught me there's no such thing. Advice given with a true heart is not a bad idea-- the recipient can either take it or leave it.
OK, all that gain in the transition and the swim was lost on the run. I was up by 3 1/2 minutes this year, but at least I still ran (if you want to call what I did running, OK) the whole thing, which was my goal. I did not walk a step. I have to figure when you weight 20 pounds more than you did the last time you did this, you're going to be slower on the run. But I still ran it.

OK, here it is. I just didn't train as hard for this year as I did for last year. For one thing, I've been super busy, and had the accompanying stress. Just this past week, I was considering blowing off the tri, dealing with a major financial setback (the transmissions on BOTH our cars went kaput this week) but ol DH said, no, you need to do this. And so I did and I'm glad, even though I didn't show an overall marked improvement. I had Second Gig Ever Curse. Last year, I used a band analogy to describe the waiting for the race to start, this year's band analogy will be used as an excuse for my performance. Let's face it, I did it last year, was quite pleased with myself, and didn't take the second gig as seriously. As a result, results were not as satisfactory. Those numbers posted in the run are the kick in the ass I need.
That's my problem with weightloss in general. I get a little success, I get cocky, and then I get lazy. Look at my photo this year -- I even know, on that bus, that this year I didn't deliver with my whole heart. Although, that last stretch of the run, my heart was the only thing that kept me going. In fact, God bless the women who had En Vogue's "Free Your Mind" blaring from a boombox at the last turnaround. I belted it out with em, using George Clinton's original lyrics -- Free your mind and your ass will follow.

A few other highlights, musically and otherwise:

Every heat gets an inspirational word from Sally Edwards, that you should chant to yourself. This year, my heat's word was "The Best." As in, "I am The Best Swimmer." "I am The Best Cyclist." "I am The Best Runner." However, all I could think of was the scene in Men In Black, where Will Smith is being recruited, and he's in the room with all those military guys, and they're asked, "Do you know why you are here?" and they answer correctly, "Because we are The Best of The Best of The Best! Sir!" and Will Smith is laughing and going, "Yeah, these guys are cracking me up with all this best of the best of the best stuff and they don't even know why the heck they're here, really." And then i remembered that the reason Smith is ultimately chosen is that, in addition to being street smart, he also chased a major bug through Manhattan on foot, and that's what i had to imagine myself doing if I was going to finish this race. Yes, Sally, *I* am The Best of The Best of The Best! Sir! I laughed all the way to the finish line.
My pals Jennifer and Peg improved on their times, and i was secretly jealous of them for that.
This race, however, has got to figure out parking. Normally, everybody parks at Dairyland Greyhound Park (a few miles away, but can accomodate 5,000 racers and their families a lot better than the Kenosha Rec Plex, which is kind of a sad statistic), and then you catch a shuttle to the race, and then afterwards, you catch a shuttle back to Dairyland, and then drive your car to the Outlet Mall, catch a shuttle back to the Rec Plex, and then ride your bike the one mile to the mall. I know this sounds convoluted, but it worked. This year, they cut out the shuttles from the mall. So where were you supposed to park to get your bike out of transition? We ended up on the greass out in the country, and without instructions to tell me otherwise, I managed to flag down a sympathetic shuttle driver, because nobody else seemed to know what was going on. Not the Kenosha Police (and I have too many friends in the Kenosha Punk scene to have a fundamental respect for them to begin with, but I've tried to give them the benefit of the doubt and they once again have lived up to their reputation of cluelessness. One more strike, Kenosha Blue, and you're out.). Not even the guy in a van marked "Kenosha Rec Plex." WTH? Huge event at your facility and you know nothing? Whassup with that? And I will whine about the Kenosha hospitality industry on my other blog.
The above is really sad, because it put a major damper on an otherwise wonderful event and day. OK, I didn't finish as well as I would have liked, but I still finished, i still did something practically everybody else I know drops their jaw over ("Half a Mile swim? I'd quit right there") and I still improved my times on some things, despite a 20 pound weight gain this year.
Oh, please, for the love of all that's holy, please no horrid nu-country music or sappy R&B or worst of all, "Eye of the Tiger" while I'm crossing the finish line, and my prayers were answered. I got some unidentifiable, but unmistakably Gay Bar Music! Yes! 120 BPM, high energy, wailing female vocals, where's-my-amyl-nitrite, DANCE MUSIC! Yes! Followed by YMCA! Thank you Jesus!
I will mention the wonderful Crocs shoe company, not because I love their shoes, but because they sponsor an ice bath foot soak for athletes, that pretty much ensured that my plantar fasciatis would not kick in so nasty the next day. God bless 'em. They pretty much justify their existence for that ice bath, and I was only happy to say so on video for them.

OK, so that's this year's tri. I'm glad it did it again, and I'm doing it next year. I will shake the 2nd Gig Blues, and I will Free My Mind, and my ass will indeed follow.

The New Scale Works!

2008-06-11T05:57:00.001-07:00

And it says 237.6, which, while up from last week (and that was a number I really didn't believe anyway), is still down from this massive upswing I've had over the past few months, and it's also a number i can trust. It was'nt five pounds different an hour earlier, or even five minutes earlier. I like it.

I've admittedly been off-kilter from detox, but the detox weeks accomplished what they meant to: they sort of broke my dependence on all these morning treats and massive eating all the time i was doing. I'm not so hungry all the time anymore; i can actually think about really trying to do this again, get back on the wagon, and train for this triathlon.

That's all for now. The new scale works!

My Scale's Not Working Right!

2008-06-04T15:22:00.001-07:00

Well, isn't that usually what people say when the number is too high? No, my number was way too low this morning. It said I lost 17 pounds since last week. As I did not undergo liposuction, I'm pretty sure it's wrong.

I wish I could trust my scale. It's a digital scale, and i've had it for at least five years, and maybe it's dying. Because when i weighed in this morning, it said, 223 pounds. I'd love to believe that, but I know for a fact I did not drop 17 pounds last week. Fat Flush notwithstanding, nobody drops that much weight in a week. Then an hour later, it said 235.2, which is what I'll post for this week, but that's still a 5 pound drop. Not as ridiculous, but given the fluctuation on what the scale says (and that's a 20 pound fluctuation), I can't trust it. Another scale is on the way from A mazon.

I know that there's a lot of people who believe one should just throw out the scale, but I need an objective metric with which to measure my success or what's working for me and what isn't. And if I can't count on my tool, that just throws everything out the window. So I can't wait for the new scale. Betcha you never heard a fat chick say that before, eh?

Meantime, I'm back on the wagon and feeling good. And once again, I'm running the Riverwest Beer Run this Sunday. Yes, it's as preposterous as it sounds. A 1.8-mile race (and there are people who actually RACE it) with four stops, each of which runner down a 12-ounce of barley pop. First person to stagger across the finish line wins. In the spirit of the preposterousness that it is, myself and my friends are doing what we did last year -- running it in evening gowns and tiaras as "Team Prom Queen." Actually, only the two of us are actually running it. The rest are taking it easy. Good for them.

Off and on the wagon

2008-05-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

I didn't fall off the detox wagon. I planned to step off gently, and I did. I had lovely whole wheat lemon blueberry pancakes like I predicted i would, and took it easy the rest of the day. And I had a cup of Leon's Butter Pecan Frozen custard on Monday to celebrate the summer-like weather. And Tuesday I got right back on the wagon, and here I am. One pound down anyway.

240, fat percentage down a point to 47. Not bad for the week preceeding Rickshaw Ride.

So I'm back, and feeling good about the control. I hate that i have to be this conscious about it, but I've kvetched about this before.

Week One of Detox

2008-05-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

... and it's going well, not just because I dropped 3 pounds (that was simply a side effect) but its doing what I intended for it to do: force me to think about everything I eat. It's really odd, but cutting out an entire food group (refined carbs) really got me thinking about all the crap I randomly eat without even thinking about it, and how much crap it really is. A couple of days ago i had the classic carb withdrawl headaches, but now i'm past them, and the meals are seeming really filling. I remember feeling this way the last time I did this.

I have to admit though, I'm a bit unclear what I'm going to do this Sunday, when we have a pile of people over to watch Indycar racing, (especially since I traditionally make whole wheat lemon-blueberry pancakes for breakfast for the hardcore race fans who arrive early to watch the Grand Prix of Monaco with us). I think I'll just have to take a day off from it. That's life, and if you can't live life (albeit a carefully planned one), you might as well check out now.

Granted, those blueberry pancakes will follow a massive traditional bike ride.

Anyway, numbers: 241, fat % at 48. It's good to be back following something, but it's better to have numbers that reflect it.

Jump Start

2008-05-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

Today (at 245) I started Fat Flush -- phase I, again, not because I need a fad diet, but I need something to force me to think about food. Doing Weight Watchers is too much flexibility, so much that i'm not paying attention to food and why I'm eating it.

I've done Ann Gittleman's Fat Flush before, and though i can't possibly eat that way my whole life (phase III even), I do admit I feel great when I do it. It's not Atkins-style low carb, but Phase I -- which only goes for two weeks --is basically a detox from overprocessed carbohydrates. You basically get some fruit for carbs, and that's it. You pound cranberry water (unsweetened cranberry juice diluted -- which is the only way a normal person can take unsweetened cranberry juice), you pound omega-3 rich foods, you develop a relationship with Flax Oil, and you eat meat and avoid salt. There's more to it than that, but clearly it's a detox rather than a diet plan. Phase II become a diet plan, and you get to eat some more carbs, but they're those ones you really should be eating: non processed carbs, whole grain, stuff like that. It's really a healthy plan, doesn't cut out one food group completely, and it works. I can't do it forever, but i need a jumpstart, and I need something that makes me analyze and plan my eating, beacuse I'm out of control.

Anyway, that's what I've got this week. A Jump start.

Bike to Work week, as I wrote in my regular blog, isn't that big a deal for me simply because I've been biking to work for a couple of months now, and actually a few years during the summer. Still, it's nice to work in a place where I'm not the residetn oddity because I do this.

Two months to the triathlon. I best get a move on, literally.

No numbers progress, but reporting in anyway....

2008-05-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm slowly getting my act together. I'm still hovering about 244 pounds, and I think I'm going to do something like Fat Flush or Atkins or some other low-carb thing, not to necessarily lose weight (but that should come with it), but more to get me into a disciplined way of thinking about food again. I'm not paying attention to points, I'm eating on the run, and it's just not working for me here. And it's bumming me out. Today I'm wearing what one year ago, were loose-fitting work pants. They're tight. I feel like crap.

In the meantime, however, on the exercise side, I continue to get my act together.

Rarely do i drive to work these days -- and this being Bike to Work Week there's all sorts of little incentives all over town (many of which involve snacks and breakfast treats...) for bicyclists. But half the time I don't even bike to work because of the health benefits. It's more about clearing my head. When I arrive at the office after riding for an hour (or, if I'd gotten sweaty, I hit the shower at the Y) I just seem to work better. It's like I've flushed out a load of poison from my system.

I started running last week. I suppose I should get a move on on this, seeing as how i'm running a triathlon in July again. Oh, and the Locust Street Beer run in a few weeks. I admittedly avoided getting started again, because i haven't been a very good girl regarding treatment of my plantar fasciatis, but I've taken steps for that. I have a couple of golf balls in my desk at work (to massage my heels after exercise) and a cold pack in the freezer with my name on it to ice down my feet. This stuff really works -- if you do it!

The nice thing about working normal hours is that I can get more trips to the Y in -- I'll ride my bike, and then shower at the Y, and if i get there early enough, i can lift weights for a bit before hitting the shower. Usually during the summer the weightlifting gets cut way back, but this way, I can at least still get some arm work in.

Oh, I earned a "Bronze Award" at thePresident's Challenge for Physical Fitness! Not that I'll actually send in for a certificate or anything (I'll wait for Gold....) but still. It's a milestone.

But the "loose" pants are still tight. I know I shouldn't let this get to me, or maybe I should. Well, whether it should or not, it does get to me, so perhaps maybe this is my wake-up call. There's a whole bunch of people on this blog (and others) who don't update all that often, and I suspect that it's because we see no point in going, "same old, same old." Well, I'm going to force myself to write something weekly, even if I don't lose a single damn pound. Maybe that will help me keep my eyes on the prize.

Spending money on fat clothes

2008-04-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

OK, numbers: I'm back down (!) to 239.4, so it's down something like 5 from last week, but a net loss over the past two weeks of .4. That's POINT 4, but it's still something.

The catalogs for summer sports clothes are coming in, and last summer i was fantazising about ordering only L or XL for this summer, and ain't gonna happen. I need a few more pairs of bike shorts, but I'm loathe to order any in XXL, because that seems to give me permission to stay here, in the mid 200s, instead of in the low 200s or high 100s, where I wanted to be by now, or certainly during this summer. But I have to remember i had this setback, and I still have to look at it as a setback, not a defeat. Heck, I'm still here, aren't I?

Still. I hate spending money on fat clothes.

No matter what...

2008-03-26T10:27:00.001-07:00

Seen on my Easter Sunday Bike Ride
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

No matter what happens, no matter how crappy the weather is, I ALWAYS take my bike out on Easter Sunday for its shakedown cruise for the year, and this year was no exception. OK, fine, we got 12 inches of snow on Good Friday. OK, fine, Saturday was COLD. Sunday actually was a great day to be out on a bike. The streets were clear, actually they were dry, and it's just, as you can see, not the scenery I expected on my Annual Easter Sunday Shakedown Bike Ride. But I do it, no matter what.

And that's how i've got to think about this weightloss thing, that I have to keep at it, No Matter What, because i'm up 5 pounds this week, and I'll attribute that to tons of candy and the delicious pork roast i made and all the eating out i did this prior week. What a bummer, waking up after Easter and seeing that scale jump. But instead, I remember that I went out on easter, no matter what, and i have to keep this up, no matter what. Back to the food journal, back to routine.

Numbers: 244.2, fat percentage 48. But here's something -- I measured for the first time in weeks, and maybe there's an inch in my arms, but all the weight is in my waist and hips. The thighs didn't even get bigger. This is somewhat heartening, and at the same time, well there you go. Straight to the hips, as the old saying goes.

There's something to be said for routine

2008-03-20T11:06:00.000-07:00

Honestly, I didn't not post last week because I was chicken. I genuinely was busy. As a matter of fact, last week was I lost -- 242 (down 1) -- and this week i'm at 239.8 (down another 2.2). I'm really attributing this to getting back on a regular workout schedule, because, still, my eating habits aren't the best. I'm kind of tracking my food, but only on work days. It's a nice boost to feel like I'm back on track, not stuck on this upward spiral into the 240s that my body seems to want to settle to. Sometimes i fear, is 240+ that weight that I've read about, that place my body really wants to be, and is it going to be a struggle for the rest of my life NOT to be there? Or will i hit some place, like the high 100s, and be stuck there for awhile? Honestly, being stuck in the 180s would not kill me. But being stuck in the 240s like i was in the past few months was really getting on me. I felt awful, I felt FAT, my clothes were tight, I felt uncomfortable standing up, sitting down, my back hurt if i had to stand for more than 20 minutes. It sucked. And somehow, getting out of this right now seems to have lifted a weight that's much more than 5 pounds.

Plus, the bike is coming out. I normally do my shakedown cruise on Easter, but there's no big bummer than feeling like a long ride and then discovering some awful bug that prevents it from being so. Last Saturday was a lovely day out, so I rode about 5 minutes, realized i needed a lube on my chain, and went back out. Have a few more things to tweak on my bike, but I'll be ready for my Easter Ride. The weather may not cooperate. It's supposed to snow this weekend, but the thing about my Easter Ride is that I ALWAYS do it, no matter what the weather. One year I did it in 20 degree crappy rainy yuckieness. And it looks like I'll do it this year in crappy wet yuckieness as well. but I will still do it.

Executive Challenges

2008-03-05T11:12:00.000-08:00

Numbers. 243, up 1.5. I'd like to blame this on riding the rickshaw, which I just climbed on this morning, but I didn't work out so much this week (I had the car in the shop and it was a challenge to get to the Y) but I also ate stupidly as well. This needs to be the week that I really track and pay attention to the food tracking, despite the cases of Girl Scout Cookies that have contaminated my house, which present a challenge in and of themselves. . (Caramel Delights are very good frozen, and the exgtra effort it requires to chew them frozen does assist in stopping one from downing a whole box in one sitting.)

In other news, I've just joined the President's Challenge on Physical Fitness. Gosh, I remember the President's Physical Fitness award from when i was a kid. You had to run, jump, sit up, pull up and throw a softball. Yeah, like President Johnson did any of this. You had to score in the 85th percentile to get the patch, and I would have done it if it hand't been for that dang "Flexed Arm Hang." It was sort of the substitute for good old fashioned pull ups. You'd see your classmates hanging there like it was the test of life or something.

Anyway, that's all changed. Now just if you even try, you can get an award. And you don't have to be a kid. We're doing this at work now, and it's basically an online activity tracker/logger, but still, I like the attitude. I think when I was a kid, there was this understanding that some kids were athletes, and some kids weren't and that was that and there was nothing you could do about it. In fact, you had to be in the top 15% to be considered for this "award" and that kind of discouraged "regular" kids from even thinking about themselves as active people.

Anyway, here's the link to get set up. As you may know, Dubya isn't exactly my favorite president, but it's still a challenge, and right now Florida is leading the pack in the challenge. Oy.

EDITED TO ADD: Oh, doh doh DOH! Huge! I registered for the Danskin Triathlon last night. Jen has our motel room booked (again, it's not the Ritz-Carlton, but we just need a place to flop the night before after a hard day of registering and outlet mall shopping.) It was tempting to register for the New England race, just so I could tell people I swam in Lake Chaubunagongamaug, but that's not a good enough reason to book tickets to the east coast.

Damn, I'm fat

2008-02-27T17:34:00.000-08:00

But at least I'm not as fat as I was last week. I'm actually down two pounds, but that's down to 241.5. Ugh. Oh, it's just water weight, blah blah blah and today, as I got my picture taken for the employee directory at my new job, I'm looking at the proofs, and it was the wake up call.

"Jesus Holy Christ, I'm fat."

It's not like I wasn't fat at 218 or 211 or whatever I was starting to feel good about all this at. But this was the wake up week. That fat picture staring back at me. My smile was even fat. My favorite clothes aren't fitting me. But then I clicked on Akkasha's page. Remember Akkasha? She lost something like 250 pounds, but it wasn't easy. And it wasn't without a few times of faling off the wagon. OK, so I gained back almost all the weight I lost. So did Akkasha at one point, but I go to her for inspiration because she just picked up the pieces and got right back on, and now she feels and looks great.

I think it's helping that I'm starting to establish and follow a good routine. I've got a way to get a workout in every day. I wasn't doing that so much the past few months, and it showed. I didn't really change my eating habits this past week, simply put the daily workout back in and that accounted for a two pound loss right there. And when the weather gets warmer, I'll be back on my bike to get to and from work, which is instant workout right there.

So I'm clawing my way out of this hole I've dug for myself. OK. Damn, I'm fat.

No, really, I'm back. This Time For Sure

2008-02-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

Now I'm really back. OK, now I can speak freely. I paid absolutely no attention to weight loss these past two months, so it would be hypocritical to write about it. Fact is, I gained. And now I can talk about it.

I was in the interview process (which in my field can go for two months) and I got the offer this week. I turned in my resignation at my current job (where I've been for a decade!) and now I can finally talk. I was afraid to post here because I lay my emotions bare on this weightloss blog, and I didn't want to risk anybody finding out that I was interviewing.

But yeah. Here's the thing. In the past bunch of months I started realizing more and more that I'm in the wrong industry. It started to come into focus (pun intended) when I project managed that art opening. For a while I had a nagging feeling (bordering on resentment) that I wasn't where I needed to be. And that wasn't fair to my current employer (who's always been good to me), and I was loaded with conflicting feelings and guess how I took that out?

Well, put it this way. I'm back up to 235 -- where I started this journey. And I hadn't really made much progress in the months preceeding. I had to buy a whole new interview suit because my regular one was really ill-fitting -- I haven't had to wear an interview suit in 10 years! (It was also 10 years out of date, and it *looked* so 1997 that I couldn't have possibly have shown up for an interview with a cool employer located in the artsy refurbished warehouse district smack off the set of Thirtysomething and … well that's just an excuse. It could have been some smashing Stella McCartney or DKNY ensemble and it would have been wrong because it didn't fit.

But after I got The Call, even my husband noticed that my muscles finally loosened up. And I'm now ready to re-claim my plan. 2007 was certainly a year of rediscovery, as one of my commenters noted. I ran a triathlon, I had a successful art opening, I'm gettting freelance writing articles published in the MSM, and now, I got this new job that's going to allow me to leverage both my business skills with my artistic background. And maybe I had to go through all of this. I found myself, ever since Wednesday (the day I got The Call -- which, truth be told, was actually The Email, but the 20th century "call" just seemed more dramatic) not reaching for food every ten seconds to pass the time.

The lesson learned here, though, is that I still haven't cured the fact that I STILL use food as an (ultimately ineffective) stress relieving tool. It's not even effective short term. It satisfies a moment, rather than nourishes. I have work to do. And not just at the new job.

OK, I'm back.

2008-01-02T11:45:00.001-08:00

OK, I'm back.

I had a very stressful December and totally bailed out on any weightloss. And I hardly worked out at all. So of course I gained even more weight than I'm already up.

I've decided that 2007 was a lost year when it came to weightloss, but a majorly found year when it came to myself. My weight wasn’t stopping me from doing things I wanted to do, but it's stopping myself from being comfortable in my own skin. And at 234, this isn't some esoteric thing. My pants are tight. My cute clothes that I went out and bought 20 pounds ago aren't so cute. I have a few outfits I can wear to work.

Oh, how I hate new year's resolutions, but I might as well jump on the bandwagon, chop this up into workable pieces, and get back to work. I'm going to take an "agile" approach, set a short term-goal, evaluate what it took to get to it, and then re-evaluate when I get there.

No timeline, just a goal. Just back to 218, my pre-Sammy pregnancy weight, the place where I started to get out of control.

Too chickens*&%to post

2007-11-21T06:33:00.000-08:00

Because for the past two (coming up on three) weeks, I balloned up to 224-225-226. I didn't even weight myself today. I've had a nasty cough, which means I didn't exercise (why get on a stairmaster when it's going to trigger a 45-minute bronchial coughing fit?) and I was genuinely spooked when I stepped on teh scale and it read 226 and I thought it must be a fluke, and then I realized that I've been shoveling snakiepoos in. I've written before, its amazing how, even though neither Dextromethorphan nor Guaifenesin is listed as an ingredient on a box of Ginger Snaps, I still pounded those cookies in an attempt to soothe a nagging cough.

Anyway, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which really isn't that hard a day for me to get through, food wise. Back when I was a kid, Turkey was this really special thing that you only had once (or maybe twice, like at Christmastime) a year. But now turkey is the de facto meat ingredient everywhere. You can get sliced turkey at the deli, turkey dogs, turkey sausage, turkey everything. It's just another meat.

We're going to make Trash Can Turkey this year. It's been recommended by too many people I trust, and doing so will free up my oven for vegetable casseroles, freshly baked bread, and other things that will make it a special food day. (How often do I have the time to make a loaf of fresh baked bread! Now that's special). Here's basically how Trash Can Turkey works: you get a metal trash can, (which, believe me, was hard to find in these days of Rubbermaid bins!) and you put a stake in the ground. You put the turkey on the stake -- like those watermelons or squash you see in target practice -- and you put the trash can upside down over it. Then you get a load of hot charcoal coals, and surround the can with them, and put a bunch on top -- sort of like a giant Dutch Oven at camp. According to the girl at work who told me about this the other day (as well as the forty google hits on the subject), voila! You have a perfect turkey in less than 2 hours. We will see.

So yeah, I didn't weight myself today. I just have to establish a better exercise schedule, and just get back on track, accept that I'm way behind of my original goal of being down to 212 by 12/1 (that part's hard) and keep going. Because when I comb the other weightloss blogs of people who actually succeed, this didn't happen overnight, there were setbacks, but they never totally gave up. OK, so this has been a year long setback.

Half day at work today, so Gots to go. Happy T-Day, friends!

All right kid, don't get cocky -- The Sequel

2007-10-31T12:32:00.001-07:00

The rickshaw dropped me back home today, as well as 3.6 pounds along the way. See, it was premenstrual gain. And I'm back on track for my pre-holiday goals. 218.4, 45% fat.

I kind of cheated this week. I weighed myself on Monday, and it's a good thing I did because I was getting depressed. I did a lot of bike riding on the weekend but I still felt bloated and such. I was actually quite good as regards Halloween candy but still. I had this two pound weight gain hanging over me that my head assured me was premenstrual, but the heart was saying "No, just give up. You're doomed to be this fat forever." I stepped on the scale and noticed that not only had I dropped three pounds, but the fat percentage had gone back down to 45, which is significant. That boost of being on the right track after all kept me honest these past couple of days, and now, here I am, dutifully loggin in on Wednesday Weigh in, checking in with all the other weightloss blogs, and writing down even the two pieces of Halloween candy.

But it's also probably good that I didn't let myself be fooled that much of this was PM gain. Because that was my mode for the past few months: oh, I'll just lose this water this week and I'll be fine the following. Oh, I'll just run/bike a few more miles and that will wear off the binge I just had. I'd written about metrics about a month ago, but they mean nothing if I keep guesstimating effects of things I can't positively measure, and thus I'm fooling myself and living in denial.

So that's my big lesson learned this week. I'm coming up on November, which for many people is a dangerous time of year to begin weight loss. But for me, the challenge it sets actually puts me on higher alert that I normally would be. This worked for me two years ago when I started this blog, and I'm fired up enough that I think it will work for me again. I've pulled out an old tool -- my paper notebook, where I will write not only what I ate, but what food group it belongs to. Previously I was just relying only my Palm pilot WW calculator, which gets you the basics, but I've learned my way around it and its routine. I've blathered on about Beginner's Mind a lot, now I need Beginner's tools. So, I'm keeping up with the H20 consumption, and now this week's addition is to really journal what I'm eating, if I'm balancing out my protein/carbs/fruit-vegetables ratios well, and most importantly, WHY I'm eating what I'm eating. I've been in denial and fooling myself too much lately. Time for my own journal to smack me up. As my very third blog entry EVER reminds me, now is NOT the time to get all cocky.

I'm up, but I still rock. Let me count the ways.

2007-10-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

222. I'm up 1.5 and this is the danger part for me. I can look at this very logically and remind myself that the rickshaw is scheduled to pick me up and take me for my monthly ride around the block, or I can get self destructive, during what is turning out to be a very stressful week at work, and head for the baskets of chocolate dotting all our cubicles at work on this Halloween weekend.

Instead, I shall list her for your reading pleasure, all the ways in which I rock. File most under "V'ron had one busy week with her camera."

The show I did with the Cream City Photogs, "Fear" at the Art Bar, opened last Friday. Since it wasn't an official Gallery Night stop, it wasn't packed, nor did we expect it to be. But I had a great chat with the bar/gallery owner. He likes our work and I'm really starting to feel like I could actually make a dent in this field.

So Tuesday, my boss calls me into her office. Apparently they'd hired a pro to take some shots of this aspect of our department we're really proud of, and the pro did an unimpressive job. I agreed to take a literal shot at it, and, nervous as all hell, I took in all my good gear, approached it with beginner's mind and shot. The thing about it was that it was a massive lighting challenge, and while I consider myself an available light expert, flash was required here. After a while, I chucked the flash, shot raw, improvised available light, and God Bless Photoshop. Boss was pleased.

A week ago I got an invitation to exhibit my work at a private party for the opening of this rock and roll compound, where there's recording studios, rehearsal spaces, play spaces, etc. I slapped together a show based on two previous shows ("audiences" and a retrospective of my BW work from the early to mid 80s) and got it hung last night. Show's Sunday, and I pulled this off.

Then, a friend's daughter needed HS Graduation photos and asked me. Again, I'm not a portraitist, but I shot her outdoors in available light and she's pleased with the results. She's coming over today to make her final selections.

My band got booked for the Saturday after Thanksgiving at a venue I've always wanted to play in. This was last minute (three week notice in this town for a band is "last minute") and I'm really happy about this.

Stella's birthday party was Sunday, we put that together at a roller rink at the last minute and the kids all gushed at how much fun they had. Phew.

At work, I'm in the throes of a massive project that's coming to a head this weekend, such that I couldn't take any time off this week to just go home and be sick and take care of myself, and I think this is going to come through allright anyway.

And on top of this, I bought the halloween candy, since my neighborhood has nighttime trick or treat this Saturday, and I haven't opened any of it, much less eaten it. I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow.

Routine transmission overhaul

2007-10-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

220.5, down a half pound. I did indeed drink all my water this week, and I journaled and stayed within points. Guess the digressions from previous weeks have finally come to roost. It's the Catholic in me I gues, always knowing you never get away with your sins.

It's time for workout transition. During the nice weather months, my workouts basically consist of power bike rides and I honestly don't do that much weightlifting. But come winter, I do a lot of weightlifting. Part of it is that I love the summer so much I can't bear to go indoors to lift weights, so maybe I'll be riding my bike and I'll stop and do some chest presses and tricep pushes against a tree or something, but no real formal workout.

Winter's different. I'm at the Y, there's machines all around, it's very conducive to a specific "program" of sorts (provided I make room in my schedule.) But a Y visit is a 2 hour ordeal, really. About an hour of travel/getting ready/post workout shower, which gives me an hour workout. It all seems so time-consuming, but I know I spend more time on stupid stuff. So I feel like I'm changing gears, from a speed-based high gear to a power based low gear, and interestingly enough, it's not really that hard on the trasmission, but still noticible.

My muscles ache from getting back into weightlifting mode, while a half hour on the stairmaster barely gets me winded or sweaty. I actually kind of like this transition period, and it's boding well with this whole starting over thing. I feel like I'm starting fresh: slightly achy muscles, but achy in a good way, like I'm accomplishing something, like I actually worked them. I come home and make myself a fresh, nutritious tossed salad and my motivation is fed by those achy muscles.

OK, theme for this week: determine and establish an indoor workout routine, despite the fact that this month is anything but routine.

Stress is contagious

2007-10-10T06:15:00.000-07:00

Numbers first: 221, down 1, but woooo, did my fat percentage go up, to 47.1.

OK, first week of the challenge, and my goal this week was to journal everything, rather than let myself fake it out. And that accounts for only losing one pound (as opposed to the pile you get when you change your eating habits). I journaled everything, and according to my journal, as of last night, I'm about 15 points in the hole, so the only reason I lost this week was either some residuals from prior weeks, or the bike riding I started catching up doing.

Saturday I'd gone to girl scout camping leader training, and while the food wasn't exactly watcha call "diet food" I'd stayed in range and was journaling everything. The problem came when I went to a friend's house for an evening BBQ/party. It wasn't a celebration of sorts, though. My friend had just gotten (or perhaps just faced) some bad news about a family member and he was doing the right thing to deal with what is going to be a long-term source of stress for him by surrounding himself with his friends. Unfortunately for me, he also surrounded himself with plenty of wine and cheese and other flex points busters.

The thing was, I didn't have any wine (too tired to deal with alcohol) but that's not why I binged on the cheese. My friend was stressed out, there were a couple other people there with stress in their lives, and I learned just how contagious stress is. And I am definitely a stress eater. Some people medicate their stress with alcohol; I medicate with food. So admidst the laughs and fun that go with just brining a bunch of old friends together, there were the subtle and constant reminders of the sources of stress, which I internalized and fed by popping piece after piece of cheese or chips into my mouth. I just got stressed watching my friends this way, and because I was in a relaxed state from earlier in the day, I just went on auto pilot. I don't even remember what that cheese tasted like. I just pounded it. I finally stopped myself, feeling terribly unhealthy (and thus not in a state to be helpful to my friend anyway), bid my farewells, and left. I pulled out my points journal, wrote it all down, and beat myself up over it. Breaking 20 year old habits is wrong.

The next day I got up and rode a good 30 miles on my bike, which is a better way to shake the stress. Still, it doesn't make up for the bad behavior to begin with. I've got to learn to anticipate these things better and stop reaching for medication. Because food in this case isn't nourishment. It's medication, and when it comes to stress, medication only attacks the symptoms, not the cause.

OK, theme for this week (back to basics) is WATER. I've been living on diet soda, and not drinking enough water. 40 oz a day, minimum. I will journal this.

Time for a challenge

2007-10-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

I've been binging a lot lately. Partially its from boredom, partially because I just have these cravings for stupid sweet stuff, partially because outside of work, I'm so busy at home that I'm living off of fast food and easy to prepare but hard to make healthy meals. I'm up three pounds this week. I seem to have lost my resolve so I'm going to set some tough goals, put them in print, and hopefully that will hold me accountable.

By December 1, I want to be down 10 pounds from now, at 212. This is do-able if I really set my mind to it. By January 1, I want to have gotten through the Holiday season without a net gain. This I've done twice, so I know that's do-able. And maybe with Halloween coming up and the holidays, I can do this because since there are specific challenges, I'll go into challenge mode.

I also need to be challenged, publicly. Know why I didn't post last week? Because I gained, that's why and I was too chickenshit to post. That's why. So if I post goals, I know I have to meet them, else people will stop reading this blog and write me off as another also-ran. That would be the worst. I'm totally sure of that.

No Changes; Plus Things You Notice

2007-09-27T12:31:00.000-07:00

I weighed in and no change. That's ok. I ate pretty much what I wanted (at times) this week, so staying the same is ok.

Now that I've lost almost 10% of my previous weight, I've noticed that my abs really suck. My butt is much smaller and so are my legs and face and everything, but my abs are flabby and gross. Dang.

I might have lost weight, but sometimes I don't feel like I look all that great.

I need to start working on that part of my anatomy - AND FAST!!!!!

Must stay in front of this, not behind it

2007-09-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

We have a great leader, Gayle, at our WW meeting. She claims she's writing a book about her experiences as a leader. It's a book I'd like to read (and we're all in it she says! :))

One thing she said that's really stuck with me is this:

"You must stay in front of this thing, not behind it"

My take on it:

Once you have a weight problem you always have one, and to stay within range you must constantly be proactive, vigilant, and take nothing for granted. Don't wait for it to be a problem, instead, make sure it's not.

BTW - I'm down 17.2!!!!!!! Yeah!

The Metrics System

2007-09-20T11:59:00.001-07:00

My weightloss continues at a glacial pace, and so does my return to hardcore recordkeeping. I'm a good little journalista during the week, on the weekend, all hell breaks loose. Numbers this week: 219.2, fat % 45.0.

But while I'm only down point .6 (I puit the word and the actual period there to emphaside that when I say "only" point 6, I mean ONLY point 6, not 6 pounds), my fat percentage dropped some 2 percentage points, down to 45%, and that's the lowest it's been in a while. Now that fall is kicking in, and I'm in the gym at least once a week, I'm lifting weights, and just over two weeks I've dropped three percentage points. At this point, I need to really trust the metrics behind the fat percentage. Because if you go on the assumption that total fat = total weight x fat percentage, I've lost 4.67 pounds of pure fat, and that's not a bad thing for re-starting a weight loss program. Maybe I should call it a "fat loss program" because that's what I'm really trying to lose.

I know, I know, I'm reaching here, but I need metrics, and right now, the popular standard -- simple weight -- is failing me at a time when I need a boost of confidence. I stumble all over the fatophere and I see all sorts of different metrics -- BMI, actual measurements, "how my clothes feel" and they're all legitimate measurements of success in the weight loss arena. But we all get pulled back to that simply weight factor. I can go on and on about how I dropped 4.67 pounds of fat in one week, but the number that only moved a half pound overall still bothers me. I have to get over this.

The Badass in us All

2007-09-12T08:49:00.001-07:00

beerleader
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

Wednesday Weigh In: 219.8, fat %47 (ugh), down .4.

OK, so I'm down less than a half pound, but heck, at least I'm down something. I'm a weekend cheater and I have to do something about that. I had the girls over for dinner Friday night, and we really didn't make pigs of ourselves, but plenty of Fat Bastard wine (and other brands, but I'm gonna drag out the ol Fat Bastard phrase as much as I can) probably didn't help.

No, instead I'm going to talk about how I think that at least some bits of media/body acceptance are creeping into my daughter's life. I took her to the Roller Derby Saturday night, and explained that it was all girl, that its was going to be as much show with costumes as it will be a sport with uniforms and rules. "Mom, I hope its not going to be all skinny girls like on TV," she said. She's going through a self-debate on this, I can tell. She's thin and tall (for her age, and if her grandmother's genetics have anything to say, she'll always be tall and likely lean/thin) but she sees a bit of flesh on her thigs and she thinks it's fat. I tell her its not, but I'm her mom so in that department my opinion means nothing. Still, she doesn't like Bratz, she gets bent out of shape when she sees women being exploited on TV, and she's particularly annoyed that people are calling Britney Spears fat. So hearing her hope for the rollergirls was a nice slice.

This wasn't your 60's Los Angeles Thunderbirds Roller Derby. This was New Feminism, celebrate-women's power in all shapes and sizes roller derby. The Brew City Bruisers are Milwaukee's Rollergirls, and they are tough, strong, beautiful, sexy broads who range from rail thin (helps you cut through the pack) to Livin' Large (helps you keep someone from cutting through your pack). The cheerleaders (beerleaders) are all sizes, too. Halftime entertainment is a troupe of bellydancers who also have a variety of body types. The Rollergirls are dead serious in their sport. They're good, they're competitive, they're great sports entertainment. I found myself kind of jealous, that this ol 47 year old broad with a crappy knee and a crappy ankle was born maybe a little too early to catch sisterhood with a whole league of toughass chicks. There's a regret that I'm not able to put on a pink shirt, torn fishnets, strap on some wheels, hang a cute moniker on myself like "Pound Anya" and do my stuff. I am intimidated by them, but also inspired by them: it's Stella who reminds me that running a triathlon, riding a bike 60 miles a weekend and fronting a punk band is pretty badass in and of itself. I just need to remember that it’s the same with body image overall: I'm not ever going to be thin, but there's a certain beauty in the curves I have, and losing the weight will accentuate those even more. I simply have to find my beauty and run with it.

Nevertheless, its was empowering just to watch a crowd of all ages, backgrounds and such to find fun and strength and beauty in this league, and I got a warm fuzzy watching Stella enjoy this. She's seeing the teamwork, she's seeing the strength, she's seeing the confidence, and she's seeing that every one of these women have fans in the crowd. All though this whole weightloss thing Stella hangs over me: what message am I thrusting upon my daughter as I work through my own body issues and images? Soemtimes I hear her worrying about how she doesn’t look like a girl, sometimes I hear her grousing that her thighs are fat, sometimes I hear her noting that she sees other girls as fat. Somehow, mommy's love exempts me from fatness, but still. I see and hear her having all these images and thoughts, conflicting in her, and trying to make sense of it. On one hand, she sees me talking body acceptance and cheering along with the Beerleaders, on the other hand, she sees me weighing myself weekly and taking measurements and counting my food points. Am I dooming her to some kind of hell? Or am I (hopefully) both intimidating and inspiring her to find the thing that makes her both badass and beautiful, and run with it? Because that's my Stella: the tough competitive soccer player who plays in a skort, because she looks really cute in it. And I have to remember that this beautiful badass little girl came out of me.

I deserved this

2007-09-10T06:23:00.001-07:00

Fat Bastard Wine
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

So I had the girls over for dinner/grillout last Friday, and we all drank way too much wine, and I happened to tell the Fat Bastard story, and one of them broke out a bottle of Fat Bastard wine, which I drank a lot of.

You might want to know that we had lots of good fruit and veggies, so its not like we feasted on fattening food. But we did eat meat. Meat marinated in all sorts of good yummy things. Girl food. It was fun.

And there's nothing like a glass of Fat Bastard by the light of the citronella candle.

Severe Attitude Adjustment Needed

2007-09-05T06:07:00.002-07:00

OK, after the big announcement, I'm sorry to say that I'm up a pound this week. Excuses include: labor day all-weekend eat-a-thon (heck, even Jerry's lost weight!), Djing and having a few beers, and of course, that ubiquitous rickshaw I just started riding with an extra passenger of bloat. Excuses, exshmooshes. I did the classic, "Well I blew it on Thrusday, so the heck with it." I need an attitude adjustment. I was really tempted to just say I'm holding steady this week, but this blog is nothing if I'm not honest.

I especially need an attitude adjustment after this weekend. All this talk about fat acceptance, and here I am, I run into this guy I can't stand at a party, and the first thing that popped into my head was, "Ha Ha Ha! He's FAT!"

He's always been a big guy, but now he's even fatter than me! WAY fatter than me! Ha Ha HA! I know this is terrible, and probably hypocritical of me to think like this, but I can't help it. I can't stand this guy, and I was in glee that he's become FAT. Here's the thing. The reason I hate this guy (didn't like his pretentious ass from the get-go, but then he showed his true colors many years back when) he got into drumming in my (then boyfriend, now husband)'s band, a band whose repertiore and reputation DH painstakingly built with his buddies over some 10 years previous. Fat Bastard stole my husband's band's name and toured Europe under it, and the combined tenure of the guys of this bogus version of the band was maybe 1 year and some months. None of the people who'd been playing with the originals for at least 5 years were at all involved. The tour ruined the european reputation of the band because, frankly, they SUCKED, and none of the original members could afford to take him to court to stop him them. Fatso wanted to be a rock star so bad that he'd do anything, even pilfer another band's name and reputation to do it. The whole incident was loaded with bad juju, and it crushed the original band members. On the "karma's a bitch, ain't it" side, it's caught up with him. I've noticed that he since has never gotten drumming work with anybody playing original music -- original musicians are only so naïve, especially when they can see what you'll do with their work!

Anyway, ever since he stole my DH's intellectual property, I've always been disgusted by him. But I have to admit, the first thing I thought when I saw him was not, "Look at that backstabbing thief!" No it was: "Wow, that bastard has gotten FAT," and I was viciously laughing at him in my mind. Because while I'm all about fat acceptance, being fat isn't something I'd wish on my worst enemy. I wouldn't wish the health issues, the low self-esteem, the societal hatred, the whole bit on anybody. And now that fat bastard has to face it all. Ha Ha Ha HA HA! No, I wouldn't wish fatness on him, but since he brought it on himself, despite his self-rightous, look-at-me-for-I-am-correct, vegetarianism, (Yeah, he's one of those "Hey Waiter," asking loudly so the whole freaking restaurant hears them ask the question that only vegetarians ask: "Does this soup use a vegetable or chicken stock?" so that now everybody knows they're better than you kinds) I now have one more thing about him I can trash him with. But I can't use it without being correctly accused of "look who's calling the kettle black", nor can I use it when I lose the weight.

But here's the thing. I hated him before he was fat. Hell, I saw through and disliked him well before he pulled this crap on my husband. And so I don't hate him because he's fat. And I would never use his fat to hurt him, but it's tempting. I know exactly what hurts a fat person, I know exactly where to hit a fat person where it will do a lot of damage. And it's a tool I would never, never use. There's plenty of crap to throw at him that doesn't involve his fat. Like, the fact that apparently his entire artistic output of note has been made by sucking off of other people's creativity: he runs a website curating local band poster art, he is a massive fan of a band from our part of the country that made it big and thus plays cover/tribute bands devoted to them, he also is a tireless promoter of things like preserving this local architectural experiment in a postwar planned community for its historical significance. But you see, he doesn’t seem to have done anything much with his own ideas.I prefer to use this fact as a basis for trashing the ol fat bastard. He's at best a pilferer, and I'll take a fat ol girlfriend in my life over a petty ripoff artist any day. But it's still somewhat vindicative, to see this person I hate has gotten FAT. I can't stop other people for hitting him where the fat hurts, and while I would jump to the defense of any woman (for that matter, person) who does get trashed because she's fat, I wouldn't say a damn thing if somebody threw some potent fat hate in his direction. (Because, face it, men don't get trashed for their fatness as much as women.) Really, when it's people I like, I don't notice the fat. And if I don't know them, being a fat person myself, I give a person the benefit of the doubt. But I felt an ugly viciousness come over me when I saw Fat Bastard at this party. I was glad he got fat. I was glad I almost didn't recognize him because the shape of his face had changed as a result of his fat -- that's how fat he'd gotten. I hope people point at him and instanstly judge him the way my fat girlfriends are instantly judged and hated. Because I loathe that fat bastard, and I'm glad his picture of Dorian Gray has come to roost. I really don't like myself for thinking this way, but, there it is. This blog is nothing if I can't be honest. But boy, I sure do need an attitude adjustment. Are there such a thing as "mental chiropractors" who can perform such a thing?

Enough. Time for a change.

2007-08-29T06:32:00.001-07:00

As you can see, I've totally changed my blog template, and I was spurred to do this pretty much because I'm in such a weightloss slump. I ended up re-designing my entire net presence: my regular blog and my homepage and all have this same look and feel, and I finally decided to do a 30-second google search to get the html for "open link in new window" so that you, dear end user, won't have to flip back to this page every time I redirect you through a link to some other non-sixthstation link. But what started out as a teeny little project to change maybe the colors on this blog turned into a full-fledge complete web presence redesign. Sort of like those times you thought you'd wash the floor in the kitchen, and end up totally cleaning out all the cabinets and throwing out all that "gift food" you get around the holidays with gourmet mixes you'll never use. I still have a little graphic work to do, but the bulk of my redesign is done. I think its easier to read, too.

School starts today for the kids, so summer's officially over.

And the point of all of this is, as I've been threatening to do for some months now, is start fresh, with Beginner's Mind, new web design, new everything. The fact that school starts today puts the entire family back on a predictable routine, and I said out loud to the family last night, "Enough. I've lost 20 since I started this thing, but I haven't lost a net pound in a full year. Enough." Especially after this weekend, which was kind of stressful, and I fed it by eating binging. I knew it, as I shoveled a Wendy's doublecheeseburger down my throat at 2 am. Gulp, I'm binging, this is bad, this is what I shouldn't be doing, chew chew chew gulp. This isn't "consistent with my weight loss goals," I thought, spooning that dairy substitute dessert they call a Frosty into my mouth. And it didn't even feel good.

I begin with a gain of a half a pound, up to 219.2. The silver lining to this is, well, at least I know that once I get to goal, maintenance won't be a problem for me. I'm not gaining any more; clearly I've taugth myself to eat normally (besides the binging incident) and that the occassional frozen custard, slice of cheesecake, or 12-oz prime rib (complete with yummy fatty outside) won't balloon me up twenty pounds. But I still have to lose, and by already dropping 20 I've proven to myself I can do that too, and even hit milestones I never thought I would.

So here we go. I had a good breakfast this morning, I have a lovely grilled ahi tuna citrus salad planned for lunch, and I have a snack and some fruit here at work as well. Enough.

Up Again

2007-08-22T12:39:00.001-07:00

OK, I'm in that state of mind where I've been at it too long, and I've gotten away with not journaling, and so here I am. Ugh. Back at 218.
Today I even journaled the candy I had. Taht's good.

I'm working on a new template for this blog because I'm getting sick of this. Maybe I'll just make it like my regular blog, just a diffent color scheme.

That is all.

Beginner's Mind, again

2007-08-15T07:48:00.000-07:00

OK, down point 4, but I'm riding the rickshaw and I feel really bloated. I'm actually down a few measurements, which argues strongly for the fact that I journaled EVERYTHING this week, just to get back into that swing of things. Even the State Fair Cream Puff, which I ate and enjoyed immensely, with not an ounce of guilt. That's the thing. It can't be a guilt thing.

Went to a party Saturday night and was offered food and actually said, "No, thanks, I've already had dinner." These are habits that kick in when you're just starting out, and fall by the wayside, and are reasons I got stuck, as detailed last week. I've visited this topic before: I have to approach this again with Beginner's Mind.

I don't know what it is about right now, but now seems like as good a time as any to approach something with Beginner's Mind. Maybe because I had an ephiphay that I haven't mastered this weightloss stuff, even though I've been at it a long time. If I'd mastered it, I'd be at goal now. But you go through the whole journalisnig everything, oh, that's such a BEGINNER's thing to do, it's so beneath me. Well, the scale isn't budging. It's not beneath me to begin to take metrics again.

I'm stuck

2007-08-08T07:55:00.001-07:00

I'm at 218. I'm up 2.

I'm stuck. I've been stuck here for a year now.

I'm going to State Fair today, which is basically a walking eat-a-thon on a stick.

It's alwasy something. But I have to remember, I can do this. I've done it before. I dropped some 25 pounds already. That's 25% of what I want to lose overall.

This is hard, but not impossible.

I need to go re-read this entire blog and learn where I've come and re-focus. I haven't posted last week not because Iw as busy, but because I was too embarassed to admit that I havehn't made any freaking progress.

But I can't just give up. That's not the title of this blog. This Blog isn't "Oh well, I tried." It's "This Time For Sure." I'm not happy with this weight, and giving up won't make me happy. It will just be failure. So I just have to figure the hell what is up with me that I can't get past this. I feel like I'm really stuck, stuck at the convergence point I discussed when I wrote this post. I clearly still haven't figured out how to get past it. But I can't go back down that ladder.

I've made strides in other aspects of my life, but the numbers are failing me (or I'm failing the numbers), and I'm very much a person who needs empirical statistics to confirm or deny what I'm doing. Yes, I generally *feel* better about myself, but I'm still not where I want to be, and I am not on the right road to get there.

More late. My freaking bike got its FIFTH FLAT Tire this morning. Brian's coming to pick me up from work and take me and my bike to a shop, where I'll fix the flat and hopefully (if I can get while-u-wait service) ride it home. Then shower (for what its worth on this miserable hot and humid day) and go to State Fair. Fortunately the concept of deep-fried s'mores on a stick isn't all that appealing to me (but those dang cream puffs are!)

Hey Wisconsinites, has anybody ever gotten a realistic Points (TM) count on a Wisconsin State Fair Cream puff. I really need to count this.

Down 10! Feels Good!

2007-07-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

I'm down 10.2 lbs as of Tuesday. Wow does that make a difference in how I feel. Finally, I feel like I'm moving in the right direction.

Walking, Biking, Water, Eating sensibly, well and healthy, Not boozing it up too much (and making sure to really enjoy it when I do!), attending Weight Watchers meetings. These things are all helping. It also helps to not sit in front of the TV eating chips and drinking Chardonnay when I'm depressed. I've been drinking tea and reading instead.

It's a slow road though. 10 lbs. in 9 weeks. Not bad actually....a pound a week basically.

Everyone have a great weekend!

BTW - Looking at doing this in a few weeks: Hank Aaron State Trail 5K Run / Walk

Short and sweet this week because I'm sure you're sick of my giant essays...

2007-07-25T12:07:00.000-07:00

Today, Wednesday weigh-in: 216.0, fat % 46. I've been essaying up a storm, time to be short and sweet. I'm going to run a local triathlon because I'm still really into this whole "being in training" aspect, but I must eat better. I've been doing that lately. Maybe it's the farmer's market season. I buy these fresh veggies and then I'm really into using them in good food combinations. Yesterday I made this wonderful shrimp artichoke salad form a recipe I found (and kept in my recipe binder) in Health or Shape or Fitness or one of those magazines. It had no farmer's market ingredients in it, but just going to the market puts me in that wholesome food mood.

Can't wait to hear how BlogHer went.

Fat Loss vs Fat Acceptance, Redux

2007-07-20T10:57:00.001-07:00

OK, numbers first, as usual. 217.3 -- up 1.5 over the past two weeks. I didn't weigh in because I was on vacation, and I just didn't want to think about it.

I guess it's time for me to chime in on a discussion going on in fat blog land…. And Erin at Minx, Redux, puts it very succintly: "I absolutely do not understand why there must be a size acceptance camp and a weight loss camp and ne'er the twain shall meet."

Quick background on why this seems hot right now: BlogHER, basically a convention of women bloggers, is next weekend in Chicago. (Wish I could be there, but, frankly, I've got one blessed summer weekend with no official plans and I'll de danged if I'm going to spend it cooped up in some hotel conference room. Next year, sistahs.) There's a panel about body issues going on and the fabulously witty wieghtloss/weight issues blogger Wendy Mc Clure is (appropriately) a panelist. Apparently there's a camp of people disgruntled by this, (represented by the comment "What business does a former Weight Watcher have on this panel") because as somebody who apparently "bought into" the whole dieting thing, what could she offer on fat acceptance? Erin's post on the topic covers about 90% of what I have to say on it (the next 10% coming up) so I'll just excerpt (links and emphasis in the excerpt are MINE, not hers):

I think it's stupid, actually, because anyone who approaches this with an ounce of common sense will recognize that the healing process of losing weight, of accomplishing more things with your body than you thought possible at first, of being able to slip on clothes without worrying about what you look like...of those vast improvements in mental health far outweigh and often support the physical benefits of weight loss and a healthy lifestyle. Every single person whose life has been changed through weight loss has talked about the immense sense of freedom they attain while they're going through the motions of working off the fat. They talk about the broken relationshps they've been able to heal, of the new self-confidence, the sense of efficacy...and yes, they gleefully recount the times they've been checked out by someone at the supermarket, or the day that they managed to walk into a non-Fatstore and try on a pair of jeans without tears of shame. And I know the Size Acceptance movement says it should never be about the last part, but it is. It always is, and it always will be. Validation for one's successes, at least in some small measure, will always be an innate human need, and there's nothing that redefining how we're supposed to think about ourselves can do to combat that.

I'll add that that last part -- the validation -- wouldn't be truly effective without some measure, be it a scale, dress size, or ability to hit a milestone/objective, that is, as we say in the IT world, "SMART." (Good ol Specific, Measurable, Achieveable, Results-focused, and Timely. Anything else is just the same ol' "When I get a Round TUIT" which means it will never happen. Anyway, she goes on to add:

I also understand that another problem with weight loss blogging as a means of size advocacy is that it's a fairly self-centered activity … When I write what I ate, what I was thinking when I ate, how I'm feeling, etc., I'm not doing it to inspire anyone at the moment. (Although when people say they draw inspiration from my words, it's a phenomenally gratifying feeling). I'm writing here because I don't have a support network in my own real life, and this is the best way I know to reach the widest variety of people going through a similar process. In my writing, I am not changing minds or effecting societal progress...I know this.

In other words, we're looking for, and we've found, community. The fact that so many of us write the similar posts as we hit milestones means we've found it. We have found a common ground in the joy of fitting into the skinny jeans. We find a common ground in our shock that one damn burrito at Chipotle will wipe out your flex points well into 2015. We find common ground in the fact that this topic right here is a hot one, and its getting us thinking. And that in and of itself is "effecting societal progress." Every movement has its proponents that are moderate to radical, and often the radicals are the squeaky wheels who get the grease, and are thus identified with the entire movement. Do all feminists agree with, say, Andrew Dworkin or Catherine McKinnon? (For that matter Susan Faludi or Naomi Wolf?) But at the same time, all make important points which should be discussed, and are good touchpoints for forming your own value and belief system. Anyway, Erin continues:

But as I considered that, I also realized the other question I have for the size acceptance proponents:

If size acceptance is built upon the idea that you should be comfortable in your own skin, regardless of your weight or appearance, then why be political about it?

Because in general, like Erin, I like the concept/spirit of size acceptance advocates. And I understand the anger that often fuels it: whether I'm walking down a street and have somebody lean out of a car and scream "FAT" at me (this happened to McClure, and its happened to a lot of us), or if I'm at a business conference with some blowhard acceptantly tossing off fat hatred, or reading about some nutcase who's calling for the detrhoning of a singing contest winner because she isn't rai-thin. Or even the time I was sitting in a Weight Watchers meeting a few years back and some wiener runs in and screams "FATTIES" and runs out. There is a lot of fat hatred going around out there, and outisde our safe little community it gets vicious and vile. I won't deny that the fat acceptance movement is as necessary and vital as femininsim itself. Erin wraps up her post thusly:

I suppose what I'm trying to say, in a very inefficient manner, is that I like the spirit of the size acceptance activists. I like what they stand for, but I do not like their politics. I'm angry that Wendy McClure was made to feel even a little unwelcome because she had the audacity to look for a tool that would help her feel better about herself. I'm angry that talented writers like Jen are told there must be something psychologically wrong for them to want to reduce their body shape and look better. I'm irritated that just because I want to feel that profound sense of relief when I walk into a store knowing that there WILL be something there to fit me, that I've been branded as superficial, body-conscious, shallow for wanting to look a certain way. If that's the case, then label me as such, but I'm fairly certain that in the last seven months of learning how to eat correctly, to vanquish bad habits, to move past all the hang-ups I have about how I am and what I can do, I've done more for my own self-acceptance through dieting than I ever would by simply throwing my hands up in the air and saying "so what?"

I'll say it again: the sense of achievement I've gotten from success in the weight loss realm has indeed bled into the rest of my life. I've re-ignited my band. I ran a triathlon. I bought a two-piece swimsuit and wore it in public. All of these things are things I said I wouldn't do until I was at least down to a size 12-14 (and I'm not there yet, honeys!). In addition, I helped organize and participate in my first art show of my photography, I stumbled onto a stage alone and sang acoustically, I climbed a challenging alpine tower. I wouldn't have had the confidence to do these things, but because I had the confidence that came with achieving a SMART objective, I did them. And I'm still fat. If anything, I've underscored the lesson that my fat is not a cause of any pain or lack of self-confidence I have -- it's a symptom, because being fat didn’t stop me from doing any of these things.

I think the problem might have a lot to do with as (and I wish I could find the post, because the line in it was perfect and I want to give credit where credit is due) somebody said, "One persons goal is another person's starting point." In other words, we all have our own definition of where we need to be to feel comfortable in our bodies. Frankly, my goal of 160, and perhaps 145 (and maybe I'll feel good at 185, I'll know when I get there, because last time I was 185, I didn't feel perfect but I could wear and do what I wanted and that was good enough for me) still will be considered FAT by the media's standards. And if the fat acceptance movement is about feeling good and being accepted at whatever weight YOU feel good in, count me in! I just saw the fabulous Candye Kane wail the blues a few weeks ago, and while I get the impression she's a little unhappy at 220 or wherever she's at, I also know she's fine with being fat overall, and she'd be happy at 210, and if that's where she's happy, good for her! She's beautiful NOW, she's sexy NOW, and she's comfortable with herself NOW. It's just that right now, I don't feel good for both physical and vanity reasons, at 217.4. I can do most things I want to do, but I can't wear what I want to wear and I can't do everything. And I've also realized my eating habits are bad because I'm not eating fat food to nourish. I'm eating it to relieve stress and to soothe some pain. I'm using food as an anethestic, and mentally and physically, that's not right. I'm using food as a drug and I'm addicted. That much I've figured out. And I'm still trying to figure out more. But here's the thing. Again, my weight is tied to SMART objectives, because it’s the one thing about myself I can be truly objective about: I can MEASURE how many pounds or dress sizes or whatever I've achieved. I can't do that with "happieness" or "stress" (perhaps by measuring blood pressure, but frankly, my BP has always been great.). I need to be able to measure.

But I think that all us us suffer from some level of insecurity, and this whole issue of fat acceptance vs. the dieters (us sellouts!) is a symptom of it. About a year ago, I wrote on this blog my thoughts on "what happens when I DO lose the weight" and it's a topic that surfaces in the fatosphere now and again: when we lose the weight, will we will accept our fat sisters as the beautiful people that they are? (Some ex fatties don't, you know. They become some of the biggest fat haters ever.) And even in this process, I wondered aloud:

In this respect, I think I'll always have empathy for overweight women, but when empathy transitions to sympathy, when does it become patronizing? And how do we keep from being patronizing, beyond the obvious difference between "I remember when I was there, here's what worked for me" as opposed to (and I've seen this in more than a few books/blogs written by former fat women) "I remember when I was such an idiotic fat cow." That's the easy difference, it gets harder when you realize that, after all these years of being victims of a form of elitism, we're sort of joining the elite. Its like I've written before, I love the people in this phat little club of ours, but given the choice, it’s a club whose eligibility I'd rather not qualify for. I'm seeing a lot of us at this point struggling with this: to remain "fat accepting" yet to want to cast off our own fat. Is it elitist to say: "Well, fine for you if you're OK with being fat or not ready -- for whatever reason (god knows it took me a while to be truly ready to do this) to lose it yet, but its not acceptable for me."? It really is the opposite of the Woody Allen paradox: "I wouldn't want to be a member of any club that would have me in it." We are members of this club, and we want out. Is that an insult to the current club members?

I think the fact that I/we want out of this club is being taken as an insult to the current club members. And the more radical among them are turning it around and getting elitist on us, calling those of us who follow the diet plans or track our numbers the joiners, the blind falling for the media expectation. I think what I loved so much about McClure's book was the very thing that some reviewers on Amazon hated: that she was/is this extremely intelligent woman who was conflicted in succumbing to basically the self-brainwashing that is required to succeed at weightloss. (Because if you are going to lose weight in the long term, you really have to change your life, your way of eating, the way you approach food. McClure has found a tool that seems to be working well for her… I'm still looking for mine.) But this concept of behavioral modification is just plain icky to people like me and McClure and many of us, because we've spent our whole lives as intelligent women taking pride in the fact that we are thinkers, that we don't do things blindly, that we don't run with the pack. And now, here's some of the people in the fat acceptance movement, people we thought were our sisters, telling us that we've fallen prey to the great media monster, that we're doing exactly with Big Diet Industry wants us to, that we've covering up our reasons for doing so with the "health" card. No, I admit it, its vanity. I admit it, I do want to lookbetter. I admit it, I'm not comfortable in this skin of mine. But I also agree that we need a movement that will say, as I so enthusiastically say to Candye Kane, "Girlfreiend, you're beautiful. All 220 pounds of you. And don't let anybody tell you you're not." Because Kane is beautiful because she at a place and look where she feels so. And I suspect she won't be insulted when I finally feel great in this body of mine, whether its at 199, 185, 160 or 145, because she's got the confidence in her own heart.

(((whew))). I went a long while on that, eh? But this is complicated, and this self-serving blog exists for us to sort things out, not change the world.

My First Triathlon, by Veronica Rusnak, Age 46

2007-07-09T19:15:00.001-07:00

self portrait on the shuttle bus to go get the car
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

Well, I couldn't decide which blog to document this all in, so I'm splitting it up. Part one of The Triathlon experience is at my non-weightloss blog because it seemed to belong there.

But here's Part II. In the other blog, I documented everything up to the point where I put on the swim cap and got in line for my heat. So here i am.

Overall, I'll tell ya, I really liked the vibe of the Danskin Triathlon. It was upbeat and feminist enough, but not to the point of making me want to vomit. They didn't get in your face about it. It was a woman's athletic competition, but at the same time, it was like we were all helping each other out. And germane to this blog, it was a place where I don't think any woman of any size felt "wrong." Like my friend Jen had told me, we wouldn't (and weren't) the only large women there, all decked out in skin-tight tri suits. I actually wore a black sports bra and boy shorts for the swim, which I was getting psyched up for, standing knee deep in water I didn't expect to be this warm at 7:20 in the morning. And another thing that contributed to this vibe is that we were always referred to as "athletes." As in "only athletes are allowed in the Transition Area" or "This table of food is for Athletes Only." Not "women racers." Not "participants." Athletes. And we were treated as such, and I think that in turn trasnformed many of us (who never used the term to describe ourselves before) into such.

Sally Edwards wades over by us. She's the national spokesperson, and its at this point I learn that she's turning 60 this month. She looks great, a bit weathered seemingly more by having done hundreds of triathlons rather than sheer age. She's a cheerleader for us. Each heat gets an inspirational "word" that we are advised to chant to ourselves. Our heat's word is "phenomenal." (Jen told me that her word for her first tri was "Beautiful" or something like that -- "It wasn't a word having to do with performance, it was an esthetic word like that.") Nonethless, I'm glad my heat's word is truly a word that describes a performance, rather than "beautiful" or "Stunning." Our heat's caps are green. (I wanted purple, but, oh well.)

So I spit in my goggles (to keep them from fogging) put them on, the countdown goes, and we're off. I put the hammer down to start, and probably started off too strong, because it was a pace I couldn't keep up for more than 50 yards, and I'm slowing down already, and have to succumb to doing to breaststroke to get my wind back, while women who took it normal are passing me. Still, the majority of women I'd talked to were just afraid of the swim overall, so I know I'm going to be at least average (which I turned out to be). I find my stride doing a good freestyle crawl, I'm hearing Sally's "I am a phenomenal swimmer" chant in my head, and I'm going. Every wich way. Its a windy, choppy morning, and I'm doing what I learned I tend to do -- I'm veering to the left. About halfway through, I picked a few other green caps to follow, and of course, they're veering left as well. So I decide to try to overcompensate. I probably zig zagged across the entire course. A few green caps are passing me, but I'm also catching up to the yellow caps of the heat before us, and nobody from the heat behind us is catching up to me, thank God. I see the end and realize I truly did overcompensate -- I'm totally to the right of the finish pad and BLAM -- I knock my knee into a canoe that's at the right. Somebody warns me about rocks I'm about to step on, and my knee is killing me, and I have to climb up this sandy hill with my throbbing knee but I manage.

So into Transition, where I remember I'm blind as a bat without my glasses, and I'd neglected to count how many racks over my bike is in. (I'd counted on being able to see the signs!). So its like I'm in a parking lot and can't find my car. I find it, finallly, and congratulate myself for thinking of putting a bottle of water for the purpose of squirting sand off my feet, which I did. Note to self -- my favorite baggy bike shorts are too big, but they were still hard to get on a wet body. Opt for true tri bottoms next year. On with the bike shoes, helmet and road shirt, and off to the Bike Start.

I hop on and start flying. I'm flying past all these other women and I'm wondering, "Wait, am I breaking some sort of etiquette? Am I not supposed to put the hammer down until we get out onto the open streets?" Another woman zooms by and I realize "No. I'm just a strong cyclist." And unlike a lot of the people here, I'm on racing wheels and my tires are new racing slicks, and that makes a monster difference right there. I shift up and I'm off. At first I'm wondering if I'm pushing it too hard, but again, I realize, this is my leg. The bike is my strong suit. I've alrady trained and proven i can hammer the bike and still make the run, so I go. I'm calling out "Passing on your left" so many times I'm starting to feel like a broken record. I keep wondering if I'm going to peter out and these people are going to pass me later, snickering. And then there's the ones who don't move to allow a pass. Duh.

About four other women who are clearly bikers are in a pack with me, and by mile 4 we've formed this little mini-peloton. We alternate passing each other (2 of them are better hill climbers than me, where me and this other woman were better at straightaways than them) but it's like we've found our own little impromptu team. We take turns being the one to holler "Passing on your left --- there's 2/3/4 of us!" and frankly, it's a rush. It's the first time in this race that despite all the talk of "athletes" that I really start to think of myself as such. I'm a bicyclist. And while I'm pounding it up a hill, passing still more women (and cheering them on, telling them hang in there, because I remember those days of grinding up a hill against the wind at the beginning of training), I'm feeling like yeah, maybe I will someday compete in a bicycle race.

It's a ferocious headwind on the homestretch back. I feel like I'm in the Tour de France, hearing all the strangers cheering for me and my fellow cyclists, reading all the chalk graffiti aimed at particular racers along the route, hearing those cowbells going off as we pass, being waved at by local residents, families with "Go Mom!" signs, the local cops both watching us (because it's not like there was a whole lot of traffic to worry about in rural Kenosha, WI at 8 am on a Sunday morning). Finally, I'm still passing people on the stretch to the Bike Finish, I slam on the brakes, dismount, and take it down a notch, running my bike back to the rack, and sucking down my third dose of Clif Orange Cream carbo gel. I get the bike shoes off, adjust my ankle brace, slam on the running shoes, replace my helmet with a headband, squirt water on my head and go.

It's at the Run Start that I'm conscious of the timing chip at my ankle, going beep as I step on the mat and head out to the running course. Damn, that sun is hot at 9 am. It's already something like 85 degrees out. My feet are already hot. I start my chrono timer, because in training I found that it takes me about 10 minutes off the bike and into a run to find my stride.

It's been 10 minutes, and I'm just barely finding my stride, but darn it, my goal was to RUN this whole run, not walk a single step of it. There's plenty of women passing me, just as I passed people on the bike, but at least I'm still running. God, it's hot. It's freaking hot. And finally, after 12 minutes, I hit my stride. I've got a good rhythmic breathing going and I see a sign and what's this? It's only been a mile? Heck, I could swear we were halfway done! OK, keep pushing. We go past a beach house and I see one woman attempt to use the bathroom there and it's locked and I say out loud, "I'm so sure they've locked that!" to laughs around me, and doing so reassured me that I must be at a good level of effort because I can have a conversation, so I'm not overworking. Isn't that the rule of thumb (at least it is in aerobics classes.)? Anyway, there I am. We get to the part where you have to run out and double back, and there's a woman with a garden hose spraying us down, there's people handing out water, and those Jelly Belly Sport beans, which are suddenly the most delicious things in the world, but I'm too spent and concentrating on running to be able to open the package. Another woman sees me and says "Hang in there, do you want some of these beans?" She hands me a few, and they're delicious. Like Quench Gum, they are, they zing in my mouth and give me the jump I need. And there's the water people again, on the doubleback, handing me a cup of water to wash it down. And there's teh sign: 2 miles. One to go.

And a ferocious one it is. A slight uphill, and we're also against the wind. That's when I start chanting that phoenominal word again, a word I can barely spell by now, but trying to spell it is taking my mind off the fact that I'm ready to drop. No, I've come this far, I'm running this whole thing if it kills me. And I see the finish line. A man in the crowd catches my eye and can somehow see, thorough my sunglasses, that I need an encouraging word and he says, specifically, "Hey, Number 799, you're almost there, keep going, you can do it!" and I do. There's the finish line. It's about a football field away. I'm Fucking Brett Favre and there's nobody in my way and I'm going for a touchdown on the first play of the game. My legs feel alternatively like rubber and steel and I'm pushing it and I hear the announcer saying names before me and I step on the first mat that clearly gives my name to the announcer who pronounces it correctly and I hit the second mat and I whip off my headband and start swinging it around and there's my name "here's Veronica Rusnak, great job!" and I hit the third timing mat under the finish line.

And there she is, Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the First and her court, straight from the Renaissance Faire, to give me my medal. As I mouthed off to her at last year's Ren Faire, I curtsey deeply as I recieve my medal, and people hand me water and and and.... I'm done! I did it! I ran the whole run! I swam the whole swim, and I hammered the bike. I did it! I am phonemonal, even if I can't spell it to save my life.

I walk around the general area, and I spot the Crocs Vendor display. They're offering a foot ice bath for athletes, I sign a waiver, and take advantage of that. It's just the thing for me and my plantar fasciatis, and as I'm swishing around my toes in the baggies and the ice, I think aloud, "I will never ever diss this company's ~~butt ugly~~ wonderful shoes again. God bless the maraketing genius at Crocs who came up with this brilliant idea to associate their name with foot comfort."

Jen and Peggy's heats are just getting going, so I've got at least an hour and half before they're done. I finally end up doing what turned out to be brilliant -- I catch the shuttle bus back to Dairyland Greyhound Park to get my car, and since I'm on an early run, I get a great parking place at the outlet mall and catch the shuttle back to the race. (This was brillian, instead of waiting for Jen and Peggy, to do it now, because by the time Jen and Peggy are done, the line for the shuttle bus is about as long as the run itself!) It's on the shuttle bus back that it hits me. I did it. I've always wanted to do this, and I did it. And being fat didn't stop me from doing it. If I waited until I'd lost weight, I might have never gotten around to it.

I'm still looking for Jen and Peggy, and I still hear the amazing announcer, who has been upbeat and wonderful since 6 am, still calling off the names of each woman who passes the line, with the same enthusiasm he did for me, as he did for the first person who crosses the line, as the last person. I reunite with Jen and Peggy and we gush and take pictures, and we ride our bikes to the mall and we're done.

We do lunch, and it off to home sweet home. My mind is a daze. I'm making conversation, but I'm outside my body as I do it.

So I get home, and get my times, which are posted on the other blog (and also with this picture, if you click on it.). I have goals now. I have to do better transitions. I could probably shave a minute or two off the swim by practicing more in open water so I don't zig zag. Next year I'll have a stronger ankle, but I do need to improve the run. But frankly, hammering on the bike didn't affect my run. My run time/pace was pretty much what it is when it's NOT preceded by another sport, so if I felt at all like I might have held back on the bike (which I really didn't), there's no reason to do so. Specifically, I'm in the 88% percentile of cyclists. My goal next year is to hit that top 10%. The bike is my thing, always has been, and this race validated that. I've never really been a runner, (and this race certainly validated that), but I still ran the whole thing. But despite my rookie status, and despite my fat, I learned something.

I'm an athlete.

Countdown to Tri

2007-06-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

Numbers first: 215.8, down 2.2. That's what traning will do for you.

Racing slicks put on bike, new chain, new rear cassette, complete tune-up. Check.

New running shoes. Wow, you don't realize how bad the old ones are until you're in the running store trying on new ones. Wow! I love new running shoes. Check.

Bought a bunch of carbo-gels at Jennifer's adivce: "Learn which ones don't make you throw up BEFORE the race." Check.

OK, triathlon in 2 weeks.

OH, BTW, just to be a bitch, I posted this entry at my regular blog. I know, I should give this a rest but I couldn't resist.

I could and I should and I DID

2007-06-21T12:56:00.001-07:00

self portrait at the bubble after a run on a really humid morning
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

Numbers first. 218, so I'm up about a pound.

OK, so get this. I'm at a conference this week for work, it's a conference about web content management. Overall it was pretty good. There were more marketing people there than IT people, and since I'm being assigned to a lot of marketing projects, it was a good exercise in my learning about their world. There were a few dud sessions, and there were a lot that spoke to me more as an individual web denizen rather than the corporate project manager I was sent there to be.

I know, I know, I'm talking about work in my fat blog. But there's a point coming up -- and that is, can I NOT go anywhere where I'm reminded about fat in this world? At least the last time I hit a conference and fat was brought up, it was by a speaker who used her diet as an example of project management and it was positive. This time around, I had to deal with some speaker's fat hatred.

This Howard Tullman guy had an impressive enough resume -- apparently he pretty much saved Kendall College from dying by eliminating some programs and beefing up others -- namely their culinary program. His speech topic for us was pretty broad (in that it didn't address web content management) "Managing Radical Change in Turbulent Times." He may be a good administrator, he might have some radical management ideas, but he has tired, cliché ways of making a point. Really, his powerpoint presentation was basically a series of (as he admitted) "fortune cookie sayings" that frankly, if I needed to see that, I would have simply sent for my free "Successories" catalog.

Can you tell he lost me early in his speech, and I therefore spent the rest of the speech nit-picking all the things about him I didn't like?

Here it was: he mentioned early on that one of the programs they eliminated from Kendall College was the athletic programs. Was it because they weren't bringing in revenue? Was it because they weren't cost-effective? No, according to Tullman's speech, 400-pound culinary students don't really care about volleyball!

Huh? I was left wondering, well, do 127-pound culinary students have an interest in volleyball? Were/Are Kendall's culinary student body made up of entirely obese students? Are all culinary students therefore obese? Of course! Only fat people know how to cook food, right? And thin people don't eat that much, therefore they must not not cook well, because why? Why would they actually enjoy making excellent food prepared well? They certainly don't eat it! They're too busy playing volleyball!

I'm going off on this because Tullman made reference to his 400-pound students several times in his vulgar language spewn speech. (Granted, I cuss with the saltiest of sailors myself, especially when I'm fronting my punk band. But I don't do it in a ballroom full of business professionals. To coin a cliché fortune cookie phrase, the type of which Tullman is so fond, "Vulgarity is the vernacular of the inarticulate." But remember, he already lost me early on, so I'm nit-picking.) At least four times he dropped little digs about his 400-pound culinary students, their lack of athleticism, their propensity to eat. You could tell he was disgusted by them -- disgusted by his own student body, the very people who paid his salary with their tuition dollars. But still, I stayed in that room until the final groaner, when he was rattling off yet another cliché: "Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should." And what image did he use to make this point? Was it a picture of the Homermobile, that atrocious car Homer Simpson designed for his brother's car company?. That would have been an effective, humorous way to make his point.

No, it was a photograph of a very large woman in a string bikini, drawing groans and moans from the audience (I'm sure some in shock, some in disgust), so much so that even Tullman knew it was tasteless and quickly clicked to the next slide full of "You Can't Have Value If You Don't Have Values" type cliches.

Howard, was this absolutely necessary? You've already established your distaste for fat people. Did you have to nail it home, with a tired, everybody-knows-that-fat-people-shouldn't-show-their-cellulite-in-public sentiment? You couldn't make your point without resorting to this? But why should I be surprised? You couldn't make your point without resorting to cliches and foul language, either. I complained to one of the event organizers, and I was going to email Tullman himself, but I decided to put into practice one of the things I learned in this conference: the best way to get your name out there is to get blogged about it! (Try it, fellow bloggers! Google up some topics you've written about. Don't be surprised if blogs, especially your own blog, turns up early on the Google hit list! I'm not even that popular a blogger -- I'm no Wendy McClure and yet my regular blog turned up above the fold on a bunch of topics I wrote about!) So I decided to write about Howard Tullman here, where I can do some damage. Woo Hoo! Be careful what you wish for, dude, you just might get it!

Anyway, here's a picture of me the next morning. I was in Chicago, and believe it or not, while I grew up in the Chicago 'burbs, I have not yet seen "the bean" at Millenium Park, but I still wanted to get a run in. After all, whether Tullman believes it or not, this 218-pound fat person who shouldn't be wearing a swimsuit in public (but I can and I do, so put that in your culinary school menu and eat it!) has a triathalon in two weeks to be in condition for. So I got up early, grabbed my camera, and ran from my hotel in the Loop to Millenium Park to do some shooting while simultaneously getting a cardio workout in. It felt great. I was actually amazed that by 6:00 a.m., the Loop was still fairly dead, nobody to point at my flabby abdomen jiggling as I thawumped down Randolph Street to Millenium/Grant Park, snapping off shots. And there was "the Bean," the local nickname for Anish Kapoor's "Cloud Gate" -- a beautiful sculpture, which like Milwaukee's Santiago Calatrava-designed Art Museum wing, screams to be photographed. Actually, it screams "Take a Self Portrait That Looks Like You Just Bought a Funky Wide Angle Lens" because of the lovely curves. And so I did, the photo that accompanies this post. Like other photos I've posted here, it's not the most flattering of me ever, but I like it anyway. It was a ridiculously humid morning, so I'm even sweatier than I usually get after running an hour. My face is clean and makeup free, my heart has quickly (I'm proud of this) returned to its resting rate, and I'm wonderfully spent and enjoying this amazingly interactive piece of public art. I actually felt accomplished, beautiful, athletic, working toward a goal that had nothing to do with weight, with whether I should be doing this or not. I like this picture of me not because I should (I shouldn't, for the sweat the you can probably smell off this web page) but because I think it captures a bit of my own surprise and pleased-with-myselfness that I think it radiates. A year ago, I would have never thought I could, much less should, run through the Loop to Millenium Park at six in the morning to get a workout in. Less than a year ago, I never took a self portrait because of Tullman's attitude that overweight people shouldn't show themselves, that we are too ugly to be seen. Now I take them all the time, examining my own beauty in unliklely settings, despite the fact that some people don't think I should. I ran to Millenium Park with my camera, I took this picture of myself sweaty and un-made up, I published it and posted this on my blog simply because I could. Because, Howard, you blowhard, just because you can do something is very often good enough reason to do it.

Time

2007-06-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

...as I caught my flabby arms and my big "mom gut" in the window reflection, I thought to myself "this is going to be a long road".

ONE DAY AT A TIME.

Stayed within range yesterday, made great choices, kept up my walking.....this is all I can realistically do. Must leave the rest to time and to nature and NOT GIVE UP.

No Change, but Not Discouraged

2007-06-20T08:05:00.001-07:00

Weigh in # 5 - up .6. I consider that no loss or gain because it's most likely water weight or the jeans I had on.

I'm not discouraged. I've changed many habits and attitudes. Dinner last night was good. Small portion of spaghetti, one meatball, one (well, ok two) glass of nice red wine, salad, good conversation and company. Chewed slowly and enjoyed.

Walk this morning was nice.

Press on....

Secrets of the French Women

2007-06-19T11:21:00.001-07:00

Week 5 weigh in is tonight. Some thoughts before I "weigh in" tomorrow.

The French women are all skinny. Fat French Women do not exist. They have methods and secrets. My sister lives in Paris now and shared a few with me:

1. First, they watch HOW MUCH they eat. Period. They acknowledge the fact that they can't just eat whatever, whenever. This is an ongoing thing for them. A life commitment.
2. They allow themselves treats, but then make up for it the next few days.
3. They WALK. EVERYWHERE. DAILY.
4. They have "meals". "Meal" meaning they sit down with other people, have conversation, and truly enjoy the experience. I've found that when we sit down to a nice family meal or to a meal with friends, I tend to eat less, eat better, eat slower, and enjoy each bite.
5. They favor quality over quantity.
6. They drink wine in moderation. No sick drunken displays. My sister claimes she's never seen a drunk French woman.

Those chic bitches!

:)

Prom Queen Sized

2007-06-15T09:11:00.001-07:00

MissConception
Originally uploaded by sbug.

EDITED on 6/16 to swap out the photo. I already used Jake's in the previous regular blog post, so I'm using Sbug's for variety here.....

anyway, back to the non edited text....
Numbers for for Wednesday (ha!) weigh in. 217. Down 1. Not bad.... I guess. Still not paying as close attentino as I should.

This is me doing the the Riverwest Beer Run at Locust Street Festival. Locust street is the thoroughfare in the middle of the the student/artist boho neighborhood in Milwaukee where I used to live. The Beer Run is as, (as I write in the blog in the above referenced link) prepsterous as it sounds -- a 1.8 mile race with four beer stops. Me and my girlfriends decided that if you're going to run through a neighborhood drinking a beer on a Sunday morning, you might as well do it wearing evening gowns and tiaras.

Well, it was this nice little warmup to the Danskin Tri I'm doing in a couple of weeks, but it's actually underscored my problem lately. And that is, being fat isn't stopping me from being myself, from doing the things I want to do, etc. So I'm not trying as hard. I just don't like being fat in and of itself, its uncomfortable, there was a prom dress that would have been even more perfect that didn't fit, (I know, that's the least of my worried), but heck, I got my band going, I RAN the whole beer run, Jesus, I'm running a triathlon in a few weeks. Being fat isn't ruining my life.

But it is hampering it a bit....but beinig Queen sized isn't stopping it. And that's my problem. I'm unhappy being fat in and of myself, but it's not stopping me from living, and thus I'm not as motivated to really pay attention to my eating habits.

Chipotle - RU Kidding Me?

2007-06-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

Rumors tell me that Chipotle is a horror in terms of WW Points. Rumors do come true.

http://www.chipotlefan.com/index.php?id=nutrition_calculator

According to this, the Veggie Fajita Burrito I had for lunch is 40 POINTS! 1718 Calories! 79 Grams of Fat! I asked them to just dust the cheese and sour cream so maybe that gives me a point or two. The tortilla alone is 330 calories!

RU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

"Get Real" strategy is: If you're invited to Chipotle, you order a Bowl (sans tortilla), have them skip the cheese and sour cream altogether and eat 1/4 of it...maybe a third at best....

BTW - Down 6.4 in 4 weeks and feeling good.....

Time to catch up

2007-06-08T05:59:00.000-07:00

When's the last time I posted? Probably at 60 lbs lost. Well, I'm back to 55 lbs lost as of yesterday. I'm totally not following program, but feel I'm maintaining. Accomplishments since last post are finishing my second Syttende Mai walk (17 miles) on May 19 in 4 hrs 31 mins and my first marathon, Walk Wisconsin marathon in Stevens Point (full 26.2 miles) on Jun 2. Finished in 7 hrs 50 mins. Our time could have been better, but it rained on us and we needed some breaks to change socks, apply bandaids. And we stopped for some pictures at mile marker 26. I met another solitary woman walker right before we started and so she and I walked the whole thing together. It really made the time fly in a way my books on mp3 would not have. And now I have a new walking friend, although she lives in Muskego, so it may be a while before we walk together again. Gar and kids met me at the finish line and the kids want to do the quarter marathon next year. Since I walk a 10K every Tuesday with the Dairyland Walkers, I need to start them on some short walks and hopefully they can join me on some Tuesday nights later in the summer. Gar and I are planning on going on a Fall Color Walking Tour with the Dairyland Walkers in October. Eight 10K walks in 5 days in WI, MN, and MI. My sister and her husband will fly out to watch the kids so we can get some couple time for the first time in years!

Big driving vacation coming up in the first couple weeks of July. I wanted to be all skinny for my sister's wedding, but I'm sure I'll be right about where I am now. And with road food for much of the trip, I'll be happy if I just maintain.

Lose a Weight Watcher Point While You're At It

2007-06-07T08:57:00.001-07:00

Lose a Weight Watcher Point While You're At It
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

"Lose yourself in a moment." Yeah, right. Wish I could lose at least 25% of me in a moment.

My cubbie mate said the other day, "I've got to give Weight Watchers another try." And she inspired me to just go back to journaling my food again. Especially the part about "And I'm going to log this Dove Chocolate thing, even," she said. "It's a point."

A whole friggin point, just to lose myself in an all-too-short moment.

Anyway. numbers. 218.6. Up a little over a half pound. Could be worse. I've been loseing myself in too many moments. But I logged this one today.

That is all.

Biking in lots of questions...

2007-05-31T10:58:00.000-07:00

So, I haven't checked in lately. Today? 217.4, up 1 but even more depressing is that I reference my entry from a year ago in my regular blog (because I discuss teh Miller Lite Ride for the arts) and I weight just as much today as I did a year ago! Bummer! It's like I blew a whole year to waste. I'm still fat. I haven't lost a pound in a year.

Thing is, being fat did not stop me from accomplishing a lot this year. I got my band back together. I put on a successful photo show and actually sold a piece. My day job is going well. All these things that fat people aren't supposed to do. And I did them. But I'm still fat! How come I can do all this stuff and not get this weightloss thing going? How come I can't seem to stick to this? How come I always get cocky after early positive results and still be fat?

Lots of questions, no answers.

Oh, blog maintenance. I've had to enable comment moderation because some dickslap decided to post some crap -- and I don't know how to delete it. So please continue to comment -- I'll check as often as possible and accept your comments, as long as they are germane to the discussion.

Injury

2007-05-21T10:32:00.001-07:00

I also wanted to mention that 12 months or so ago, I started doing Yoga. Yoga is wonderful. Great for flexibility and breathing and stress. Great for toning. Great for having some quiet time in your week.

About 6 months ago I noticed a tightness in my right shoulder. The twists wouldn't go as far on the right side as the left.

Then, 2 Sundays ago I took a real awkward fall and slammed my shoulder. I heard one of those awful "pops", and it HURT!

No emergency room, but an MRI the week later, a subsequent trip to a few docs, and today's visit to the physical therapist. Throw in a trip to the acupuncturist for good measure.

The diagnosis: partially torn rotator cuff. It should heal on its own. It will be a long road though before I can do yoga or spin or ride a bike the way I did before / without pain. Hopefully not too long because we have a trip planned to Governor Dodge in mid-june, and we always bring the bikes.

Bottom line: getting injured sucks.

Walking a lot right now. That's good.

Hello Again

2007-05-21T10:24:00.001-07:00

Friday: Bought new running shoes. Walking shoes.

Saturday: Went to my first Weight Watchers meeting in [WAY TOO LONG = FOREVER]

Weight: 181, Spirits: Confident I can lose the weight and keep it off.

Thoughts: It's VERY easy to forget how much you really eat. Restaurants give huge portions, your stomach stretches, you make bad choices in general, once or twice a week you sit in front of the TV with wine and Fritos - BINGO! 181lbs.

Moving right along

2007-05-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

216.4, %46 even. Down 2.6. This was a gift though. I still need to be journaling more. And as much as I celebrate spring and the advent of summer, its like pulling teeth to get the weather to cooperate. Last Monday we had record highs; yesterday it was pouring rain and brought chilly weather along with it. All I want to do is get outside and hang out and run around, and the weather is not cooperating.

Triathlon training is moving right along as well.

That is all. No huge insights this week.

Random May Ramblings...

2007-05-09T11:01:00.001-07:00

Random ramblings at This Time For Sure, Rocky:

Summer de-wussification, which I wrote about in my regular, non weightloss blog, continues. Got caught in the rain riding into work this morning, and it felt great!
Lots of partying this weekend, which probably accounts for the only .4 (that's point 4) loss this week. Oh well, any loss is a good loss.
I think I'm overtraining for the triathlon. My numbers are dropping, rather than getting better. Need to have rest days.
OK, numbers: 46% fat, 219 pounds, down point 4, but the fat percentage is dropping more.
Hey, has anybody noticed that the three girls left on American Idol are not exactly waifs?!?! This is so hopeful. I mean, OK, Jordin isn't what I could call fat; but at the same time, girlfriend's got some meat on her bones, and she's beautiful. They all are. And they all have some serious pipes. I don't expect to hear Britney Spears belt out "To Love Somebody" like that anytime soon.

Over and out.

Granny Panties

2007-05-07T07:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry haven't reported for a few weeks. Was holding steady around 175. Then finally pushed it last week and was down to 170 for 4 straight days and my official weigh in on Thursday was 170.8 - 61 lbs lost. Got my "next 5" star and rewarded myself with a new sports bra. Let's hope this one supports me well.

Speaking of undergarments, I had some undies that were kind of big when I got them, but these days are downright huge. So I finally threw them away. It felt so good. My next biggest ones are feeling too big these days, too. But I'm reluctant to throw them out just yet. I hate buying new clothes right now because I know I have more to lose before I get to my goal. I don't like the thought that I'm throwing my money away. I like the clothes I've been buying. It's going to be a happy day when they are too big, but it will be a sad time too as I say good-bye to some new favorites. At least they'll be in decent condition when I donate them!

I was looking through photos this morning, trying to find ones of me around my goal weight from high school and college. Back then I thought I was fat. As if. Sure I didn't have a flat stomach and carried about 10-20 extra lbs that weren't acceptable at that age, but after age 25 are perfectly legit. Now it's my goal to be that weight again. In the photos, I'm always wearing a baggy sweater or my t-shirt hanging out. Trying to mask that "fat". I finally found some with shirt tucked in. I look pretty damn good. Why did I think I was fat? I found a cartoon a couple years ago "I wish I was as thin as I was when I thought I was fat." Me exactly.

On the right road, and the side trips were actually part of it

2007-05-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

The Best Damn PM Ever
Photo by Nicole Bruni.

First the numbers: 219.4, Fat Percentage 46.5. Down 1.2. This time for sure, people, I feel like I'm back on track. For sure it was the stress of putting on the show, and if anything good came of that, it's that I really have to be conscious of stress as a binge trigger. I was having issues, I wasn't turning to people for help, instead I reached for food. I didn't plan anything, I just drove through fast food and shoveled it down my throat on my way to meetings, to getting things done. So if anything, the victory is in recognizing this, and having it thrown in my face in such an obvious way.

This is a picture taken of me by one of my colleagues, and I admit, it's not the most flattering picture of me ever taken. But I really, really like it anyway, for reasons besides the generous title she gave it. And I'm discussig it here, because as I'm learning, my fat is not a cause of my pain, it's a symptom.

As you may know, I have this day job in corporate amerika that, as far as day jobs go, really isn't that bad. It's high stress sometimes, but pretty much all the things that suck about it are all the things that suck about having to work, period. But its still not where I want to be, it's still not the dream. The dream is making a living creatively: writing, photographing (music will still be the obsessive hobby!), in effect, telling stories. I'm not turning in my notice tomorrow; I've got a few more years in a cubicle before I can make that jump. (I have a mortgage, college funds to seed, a little debt to get out of). But I'm fine with that. I'm confident in my plan. The events of the past few weeks and months have convinced me I'm on the road I want to be on, going in the right direction, and the journey is as every bit important as the destination.

When you're in college or art school or wherever studying creative as a youth, you are pretty much conditioned to reject Corporate Amerika like it was the devil, the dark side. It's like you're being baptised into the creative, and you're paraphrasing the catholic baptimisal rite: "I hereby renounce Satan, and all his works, and all his empty promises." Nothing about this world can be good for a creative, you must reject it all or you're One Of Them. Well, I'm One Of Them. I'm a fucking yuppie. I drive a nice car, my house is nice, my kids wear good clothes, I have health insurance. I can afford to get a massage and facial every quarter (and you bet your sweet ass I do). But for many years I looked longingly at my creative friends who were toiling away, and I was jealous. They never sold out to The Dark Side.

The thing is, though, when I got out of college, I didn't start writing right away. To be successful at creative, you have to have a certain confidence in ones self that will push you through the constant rejection that all creatives get. Much of that rejection comes from your own soul, that you aren't good enough. (Gee, my fat friends, we don't have this problem, do we?) You have to have a side that says "Yes I am!". I didn't have it. I didn't see myself as a writer/artist/whatever. I saw myself as a pretending wannabe. I didn't take myself seriously.

Over a bunch of years I flailed about, tasting different lives, always sad that I hadn't become the creative I always dreamed of being. Then I landed in Corporate Amerika, and bit by bit, I took classes, learned skills, and started to realize that there was a place here, in staid, stuffy old Anonymous Law Firm, for an obnoxious, take-charge, boisterous extrovert like me. I'm at the point now where I'm making a good living, as a Project Manager, using phrases like "action items" and "deliverables" and "agenda topic" and such. I'm taken seriously for it, and I can tell because I can stroll into a project meeting, populated by a bevy of network engineers and desktop managers and web developers whose language I can read write and speak, (but not fluently) -- and yet wield authority because, as I often introduce myself and my job, "I don't really do anything, but I get things done." But I'll repeat: they take me seriously, and in turn, I'm taking myself seriously.

For the past few months, I've taken these management skills -- skills I and many of my creative colleagues pooh-poohed as skills only those on The Dark Side valued -- and applied them to something I have passion for. I used them to help put together the art opening I've obsesseed on this blog about. They were an element of why it was a success. (It goes without saying that the entire team kicked ass, and this was my piece.) But I never once felt any self-doubt about the value I offered as a project manager, and as I warmed up to this group of photographers and our style of working together, I felt confidently authoritative arriving at our meetings, agenda in hand, action items to assign, deliverables to evaluate. In turn, we produced an event, and in doing so, we've all discovered something about ourselves that we take seriously.

When people who have been in Corporate Amerika decide to leave (for something more "passionate"), often they do so with that same rejection of values that creatives have against The Dark Side. Not here. I'm going to be a success in Creative, I'm going to be a success as a writer/photographer (and, to stay on topic with this blog, a not-fat person!) because of the experience and skills I learned in Corporate Amerika. My being an IT Project Manager is the reason why I even had the guts to say, "Hey, guys, I think my photography's good, and uh, by the way, I have these skills I think will help us get it out there…"

That's why I like this otherwise unflattering picture of me so much. I don't look like somebody in Corporate Amerika: I'm disheveled, no makeup on. I'm wearing hot pink and I'm sitting outside on a Sunday morning, enjoying a cup of latte. But do you know what I'm doing in it? I'm conducting a Post-Project Lessons Learned Meeting, and specifically, checking my palm pilot for a next meeting availability!

I'm here, I'm at a point where I'm taking myself seriously as a writer and an artist, because of my years in the Dark Side. So when I finally am ready to shake off the golden handcuffs, I'm not going to be rejecting Corporate Amerika doing so. Its always going to be a part of me, and it’s the part of me that was missing for so many years of insecure self-doubt. Its given me a confidence that is spreading to the parts of my life that I need confidence in. That will always be me, organizing meetings and setting agendas, even while I'm tattooed, wearing funky headbands and hot pink, and arguing with myself what my next project's theme is going to be.

Thanks Nicole, for this shot. Its so perfectly demonstrates why I haven't (and never will) completely renounce the Corporate Amerika that many so pointedly regard as Satan.

Oh, and I'm down 1.2 pounds.

For some reason, I'm not stressed about tomorrow

2007-04-25T08:16:00.001-07:00

Well, I have some catching up to do, eh? I blew off last week, but there was nothing new. I was at 224, and I know now to blame this completely on stress. Because after the my art opening I ate normal, I exercised, I could feel the stress falling out of my body and I'm down this week, almost 3 and a half pounds, down to 220.6. If I've learned anything through this, its that I'm a stress eater and I have to find a better way to deal with that.

In the meantime, remember all these posts about getting the band back together? I'm not nearly as nervous about our first show in 8 years tomorrow night as I was about the art opening. Maybe it's because I'm used to this sort of thing. Maybe it's because it’s a small club, I didn't promote it that heavily, and the audience will be comprised mostly of friends and fans. Or maybe I'm just more comfortable on a stage than on a wall.

The thing is, and I've discussed this before here, is I have a certain persona on stage. She's a tough, detached, cynical bitch. It's a very nice costume to wear when singing songs that I suspect a lot of people don't realize are highly personal. I didn't have a persona at the gallery opening. It was just me, my photos up on those walls, pictures of audiences staring back at me. I felt naked, without a safe little costume protecting my soul. The good thing about this rock and roll costume, thought, is (unlike my fat), it's fairly healthy. I can slip in and out of it fairly easily, and its not too far from me. And I suspect most folks can see right through it anyway. I even have a new song that covers this fact. It's called "I Can't Play Poker For Shit."

The triathlon training is now going. I've taken baseline times in each of the three disciplines, and I can finish them all separately, easily. So now the training focuses more on strength and endurance. I already know I can do it. Now I just want to get a respectable time for a large woman in her 40 doing her first tri. I know they say "You won't be the last to cross the finish line," because they get Sally Edwards, this triathlon training expert, to always be the last person to cross the line. Well and good, but the symbolism is lost on me. She's not finishing last because she's slow. It's not like she probably couldn't even WIN this thing. She just does this symbolic crossing of the line last. Well, I don't want to be second to last, either. And I feel bad for that penultimate finisher, but it's not going to be me.

Up three. Need to start journaling.

2007-04-13T06:41:00.000-07:00

Ach, I'm up three pounds to 224. I seem to be hovering around here; there's no discipline involved and I need to get it back. I'm disciplining myself to work our every day, but I'm not planning meals and I'm paying for it.

I'm hitting this icky "Oh, the heck with it, I'll never do this" feeling that's wafting over me and thank god for this blog, because coming here, and re-reading old entries is indeed keeping me going. I have to start journaling the food again; that's all there is to it.

Still busy. I've got my photo show and of course, a week beforehand we are hitting a few last-minute snags that have re-introduced "corncob" to my rotating pool of oft-used vocabulary words. Can't go public quite yet on the source of that corncob's trail, but suffice to say as a Project Manager, I should have known it was going all too smoothly, all too perfectly, a project isn't a project unless it hits a crisis or two. And as far as crises go, this isn't really that bad: it's not really detracting from our original scope or goal, which was to host an event-based exhibition of our work. But still, last minute curve balls either have to be slammed out of the ballpark or just accept the strike. And as previously blogged, this is all a source of stress, and as my numbers are showing, I'm medicating my stress with food, and that's not good.

Training for the triathlon is going glacially, but at least I'm sticking to my goal of doing something workout related at least once a day. But maybe next week, when the kids' schedules are back to normal, and maybe Wisconsin weather gets back to normal (snow in April, WTF?!?!?) I can just put my training schedule and work it in. I've got to do more than 30 minutes of cardio a day if I'm going to make a decent effort in July.

Holidays

2007-04-12T12:07:00.000-07:00

175.4 - Up 0.4. I'm giving myself permission to eat whatever I want during holiday meals and social events with family and friends. I've tried all the tricks - smaller portions, eating before you go, make healthier foods, leave the kitchen, etc, but I still end up eating lots of food and all the "bad" food anyway. So instead of indulging then feeling guilty and beating myself up, I'm now giving myself permission to eat and be merry and have no guilt! I've made so many healthy changes into my diet and have eliminated a lot of the day to day unhealthy junky foods that I can allow myself to indulge occasionally.

Up this week, but probably not due to Easter completely. Some of it might just be the different clothes and layers I'm wearing today to keep away the extra chill from the snow. My goal this week is to get 10 Lighten Up Wisconsin activity points each day. I got 17 on Monday from a treadmill walk, lunch walk, and 11K walk after work. I got 8 Tuesday. Yesterday was a snow day, so I only got 3 from the treadmill. Playing board games with the kids doesn't give you activity points but definitely racks up the Mom points with the kids and is so much fun! So I need to make up 2 pts in the next few days in addition to my daily goal. Got the ACS 10K walk on Saturday that will help. A nice long morning walk on Sunday should do the trick.

Back to Boca

2007-04-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

3/29/2007 - Unofficial 170 - down 5 lbs.
4/5/2007 - Official 175. up 5 from last week - same as 2 weeks ago.
Last week we took a couple spring break days, so I was down at Medieval Times eating 1/2 a chicken, skin and all, with my fingers at the time I would normally be weighing in. I don't know how I got so low last week, or how the pounds came back on so fast. It couldn't have been the chicken skin, could it?!

One thing that helped last week was Boca burgers for lunch. A co-worker found Western Bagels that she ordered from CA. They have 1 pt per bagel. So that was my entree all last week. A 1 pt bagel with a 1 pt Boca burger, some mustard, lettuce or spinach, and onion. They were good! My new favorite lunch. How can I go back to the 4-6 pt frozen meals again? Well, this week I have leftovers from dinners. Too many points and too much weight gained back. Back to Boca for me!
I got some really good walks in this weekend and somehow dodged most of the rain. But guess my eating kept up with my exercise. Easter is Sunday and I know I want to eat some Peeps and some ham and whatever else we make. So I better plan accordingly with the rest of my food because I've seen 170 and I want to see it again soon!

I'm In, Even Though My Body Is In Entropy

2007-04-05T09:16:00.001-07:00

I'm in.
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

WWI: (even though it's Thursday) 21.2, so I'm down 1.8. I was battling a nasty sinus infection, and get this, I sprained my ankle on Saturday. That's really putting a damper on my plans to do the Danskin Triathlon but I'm going to do it anyway. My doctor says I'll be able to run again in, now, about 8 more days, and I'm already doing PT to deal with it. I've got three months to train, this isn't out of the question.
Plus, I also have Planta Fasciaitis. My PT for that was going well, and although the doctor says it will take a while, I was already feeling significant improvement and was very hopeful that conservative treatment (lots of stretching, icing, etc.) was all I was going to need. Then I went and blew out my ankle on Saturday. One step forward, two steps back, literally. But I'm gonna do it.
Then, last Friday, I'm at a friends out and suddenly, my I keep joking that my body is in entropy. Weight wise, I wish!
I've always wanted to do this and not waiting until I lose the weight is a glorious violation of the Fat Girl Rules. I'm so glad the fine ladies at Angry Fat Girlz articulated those and posted them. I didn't follow them all, but I was a major disciple of "I can't try to work on any other goals until I get rid of this fat." That really hit home when I read it, and from that point on, I've made a point of violating it, and it feels great. I wrote last year that I wasn't pouring a 200+ pound body into a triathlon suit. Fuck that. I'm running.

Still, I'm down almost 2 pounds. I got all my photos printed and mounted for this show I've got coming up, and that's lifted a huge amount of stress from me and I know that's got a lot to do with it. But the lesson learned here is that stress is my binge trigger. Yesterday I had a heinous day at work, with a fire to put out that's still raging, and I got up and went to the cafeteria and bought some chocolate covered pretzels from the Easter Candy Lady that was set up there and as I swallowed them I realized exactly what I was doing. I was stressed out from work and I was anesthetizing with food. "This stops now," I said to myself, looking over my numbers for the past two months and realizing I'd thrown plenty of good work out the window. For dinner, I carefully made some grilled chicken, a little pasta, and some asparagus. (Mmmmmm, asparagus. It's asparagus season.) But it really did feel good to be back in control, to make a healthful, delicious dinner. That's also been an issue besides the stress: I've been swamped with stuff, and I claim no time to make dinner, which, when I make it, is always better for me and my goals than something that's quick and easy to nuke up or re-heat or get in a drive through. I need to really concentrate on making and eating good food. And I have to learn to identify my stress trigger earlier and catch it before I eat stupidly again. You'd think two months of backpedaling would teach me.

OK, back to fires.

Not posting doesn't make those three pounds go away

2007-03-31T05:31:00.000-07:00

I'm still stress eating, eating stupidly, and I'm up three pounds.

And I've put off this post saying so.

Ugh, what is the blog if I can't be accountable to it?

I don't have time to get all introspective, but at least I've posted. I've got this flickr photo show coming up, and on the good side, I've got the Danskin Triathlon I've decided to start training for. But I've had to take a break already because I've got a nasty sinus infection, that I hope will clear up by the end of this dreary weekend.

The V'ron you know will be back soon, but for now, I'm just going to try to stay in control, get back on track, get this photo show and this show with my band out of the way, and then look back and see how i could have handled this better. I'm not in a position to self-evaluate very well right now.

Creeping up

2007-03-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

3/15/2007 - 174.6, up 0.2. Last week was terrible. Ate way too much and all the wrong foods, barely got out. I was lucky to get about 4 miles of walking in on Sunday afternoon. I was supposed to walk 10 miles on Saturday. A lot of comfort eating and then a lot of "I've already blown it, so eat it all and get it out of my system and out of the house" eating. What "saved" me was tooth infection. A tooth with a root canal got infected and was suddenly causing major pain. Had to have oral surgery and then could only eat soft, cold things for a day or so. WW Frozen Fudge bars!!

3/22/2007 - 175.0, up 0.4. Spaghetti dinner at school last Thursdayt night. Breakfast with the girls Friday morning, St Pat's luncheon Friday noon, game night with friends on Saturday. Other bad eating. Got out a little more. Did a 7 mile walk at the mall with a couple friends. But still haven't trouble dragging my butt out of bed in the morning to exercise. I know I'm not getting enough sleep, so I don't blame my body. Maybe I can "catch up" this weekend. Ha! Like that ever happens.

Lighten up Wisconsin. We just finished month 2 last week. The leaderboard should be updated soon. Our team was right in the middle of the list on both weight and activity last month. We're all having trouble motivating ourselves and sticking with our eating and exercise plans. I'm too tired to care right now. But I have to shape up soon if I want to meet any of my LUW goals or overall weight loss goals. When I hit the next 5 pounds, I'm getting a new sports bra. And I so need a really decent, supportive one. I gotta get motivated for this, or I'm never going to get beyond and get my Magic Bullet.

First real bike ride of the season

2007-03-22T12:10:00.001-07:00

Stats from the first ride of the season
Originally uploaded by V'ron.

Spring really is here! I took the bike out on Sunday and as you can see, blasted out on a good almost two hour ride. I'm a little disappointed in my average speed, but somethign to work for.
I usually wait until Easter for the shakedown cruise, but the weather called out to me. It's like breaking other rules in my life, like those fat girl rules the Angry Fat Girls talked about (and I've mentioned here, too). I already broke in Bike Butt. And maybe it was the ride, but I did drop two pounds this week. Down to 220, fat %46.1

Stress eating

2007-03-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

I've got a lot going on, don't really have time for long insightful weightloss blogging, I'm up 2 pounds, fat percentage stays the same, I'm late for wednesday weight in, and I'm stress eating.

That is all.

Donut desires

2007-03-08T13:14:00.000-08:00

174.4, up 2.2. Not surprised, but disappointed since I really wasn't "bad" this week. I did treat myself to one fru-fru drink at Cheeseburger in Paradise on Saturday, but had a reasonable meal and only a few sweet potato chips that came with my entrée (instead of ordering a whole appetizer as usual). We did have lava cakes at home afterwards. Should have counted the points first and shared with the kids instead of eating mine plus a portion of my daughter's), but at least they are out of the house now!! It's just that time of the month and even though I've kept pretty good reign over my ravenous appetite, I have had no energy to get up early to exercise or stay up late to do my walking training. I misplaced my tracker for a few days, so maybe I wasn't as good as I want to think. Or maybe it's just water retention?! At least I've gotten out walking at lunch each day and aim for at least 3 sets of stairs a day (4-6 flights each time). Well, "that time" has almost passed and I'm just waiting for the energy bounce to kick in.

Tomorrow is payday and I've been craving a donut. I'm considering working one into my week. I've been so good with not eating payday treats. I've probably only eaten a handful in the year and a half that I've been doing WW. If I do it, I'm going to eat it slowly and savor every bite. I should make a rule that I only get it if I actually get up and exercise tomorrow. And I should study up tonight to see what the point values are for the different kinds and decide how many I'm willing to spend. OK, that's too passive. I WILL follow the rule that I must exercise and I WILL decide tonight which lower point donut I can have. After all that I might decide it isn't worth the points, but I've been putting off this craving all week, and sometimes I do deserve to eat something bad just for the sheer pleasure. I don’t want to live in a world where I can't have an occasional donut.

Cleaning the Car

2007-03-08T07:58:00.000-08:00

I know its Thursday and thus I'm late for "Wednesday Weigh In." I'm up one pound (220), my fat % is around the same (46.0), I'm riding the rickshaw, and I've just been eating out of control, as evidenced by the crap in my car.

I just cleaned out my car this morning (because its going to the shop today, and I can't bear for it to be filled with crap while they work on it) and it hit me how mindlessly I'm shoveling crap into my mouth. You should never eat in the car, say all the weightloss gurus. They're right. But I've been so busy, running around with a lot of stuff going on in my life. I'm not sleeping enough, and I'm too tired to cook well, which means I'm not eating well.

This morning I cleaned the following out of my car:

A few "Take Five" candy wrappers
A empty box of Girl Scout Lemon Cookies (Stella helped with this. I didn't eat the whole box. A large portion of it, tho.) They're changed the formula. They're really good.
Bags from Arby's, McDonald's and Wendy's. And the accompanying wrappers for medium roast beef, cheesburgers, and fries. Fries! I'm so sure I'm ordering fries.
Empty cans of soda. At least its diet soda. But still.
An empty bottle of Aquifina Splash
An empty box of Tic Tacs
Four empty bic lighters
A nasty sippy cup with chocolate milk that has since turned into chocolate cheese
A bazillion individual Starburst wrappers

OK, some of this I can attribute to Stella and Sam (the starburst wrappers and the nasty sippy cup, respectively.) But otherwise no. This explains a lot. You don't update your food tracker whilst driving, and its like I'm eating this crap like, "I'm driving so it doesn't count!" Oh, what a newbie thing to do. I'm really ashamed. I deserve this weight gain. I needed a wake up call, and nothing wakes you up like cleaning the crap out of your car on an early winter's morning.

In other news, my band has booked a gig. For late April. Looks like I'll be above 200 for that, but then again, its a good thing to violate of the Fat Girl Rules, namely, "I can't try to work on any other goals until I get rid of this fat" which I modify to: "I'll wait till I'm thin to get on with my life." No, I'm not waiting until I'm thin. Losing the weight needs to be a side effect of life changes, not the catalyst.

2007-03-02T06:14:00.000-08:00

172.2, down 4.4. So close to next 5. My friend and I both have 0.4 to go for next 5, so next week we'll get it! This week I barely touched my flex points. I generally try to eat all my daily points and the extra activity points each day, but leave the flex points alone. The walking training is in full swing and I'm sure it helping. And it was just so cool to watch the scale go down this week. I think my body was ready to dump this weight. I'm finally making these lifestyle changes and making them stick. We'll see how well my resolve stays during restaurant meals and social events.

Breakfast and lunch are pretty routine. Protein shake or high fiber cereal in the morning. 5 veggies, 2-3 fruit and a protein shake or frozen WW or LC 3-5 pt meal are in my lunch bag to snack on throughout the day and at lunch. Veggies must be eaten first to load up on all the 0 point foods. Marinated beets are 1 pt, but I get one healthy oil in with them. I now make a roasted veggie recipe every week that I love and it's still 0 points, too. Gary found that vanilla Slimfast + Target's sugar-free fiber powder mixed with water tastes like a dreamsicle. It is pretty good and now that's breakfast on most days. This still leaves me with many points for the evening and I don't feel deprived.

My sister gave me a sweater and shirt for Christmas that I really like, but felt my gut still showed too much so I haven't worn them. Finally re-tried the sweater today and it looks pretty good so I'm wearing it at work. Not too clingy in the middle so I can "hide" the fat as has been discussed on these pages before. My plan is to be way too small to wear this sweater next year, so I wanted to make sure I wore it now.

Perfect Skin

2007-03-01T08:08:00.000-08:00

Ugh. I'm up a few pounds. Three to be exact. But my fat % is way down, and my net fat is thus still down from last week so I suspect the Rickshaw driver is coming and I'm just loaded with water bloat.

Numbers: 219 (uggghghghghghg!!!!), fat percentage 44%. Normally these numbers would really bum me out, but I've got bigger fish to fry. In fact, I'm having a crisis.

This Saturday I have a photo and video shoot for this photography gallery show I'm doing with some local photographic artists. Fat? Nothing a black turtleneck and a omniprescent stare into the camera can't solve. Hair? I'm getting this cut and color I desperately need later in the day (I know, why not before? Because scheduling on both the videographer's and my hairdresser's parts conspired for this not to be) but nothing I can't correct with a scarf or well-chosen millinery.

But yesterday, I felt something hurting on my cheek. It's a zit. A giant, freaking, cystic zit. Not on my forehead, where I can cover it with the aforementioned scarf or hat. No, its on my cheek. On my good side. I've never had a zit there. NEVER. And it's not any old zit. It's huge, and its red. It looks like the button the president pushes to start World War III.
I know, I lead a charmed life if having a zit before a photo session is a crisis. But here's the thing. Look, I've always thought I was fat, even when I wasn't fat. But I do have some things I feel good and attractive and beautiful about, and the big one is that I've always, ALWAYS had perfect skin. PERFECT SKIN, people. Facials are a luxury for me, not a necessity. I don't even know how to pronounce "dermatologist." I have a mole, yes, but its right on that part of my face where Cindy Crawford and Marilyn's is, so a touch of red lipstick and the mole only accentuates via contrast just how perfect, my skin is. The Aveda blemish lotion that normally clears up these things isn't working. So what if I put on a few pounds this week? I'm headed for a photo shoot this weekend and I don't have perfect skin. Look how this is getting to me. I'm going overboard with the italics. Short of sitting in the steam room at the Y, what's a girl to do?

Got my next 5!!

2007-02-22T12:14:00.000-08:00

176.6. Down 1.0 from last week. Down 55.2 since joining WW. Yeah! Nine months waiting for that next 5 and it's finally here. I almost can't believe it and happy that I've gotten down this far. And mad at myself for taking so long. I lost 50 lbs in 9 months, and then it took another 9 months to get 5 more lbs. But now I just have to look forward. Look toward the next goals.

As further motivation (in addition to the WW, HELL, LUW, AOM things that are already supposed to motivate me), I'm finally assigning tangible rewards to my goals. Written down, not floating in my head. For this one I get some new socks. Walking socks that I love that are something like $8-10/pr. I want at least 3 more pair. With 60 lbs lost, I get a Magic Bullet. Many WW people and other friends have been raving about them and I'd like one too. I've got more goals and rewards and will post soon.

WWI: All You Can Eat Sacrifice

2007-02-22T06:02:00.000-08:00

WWI numbers: 216, fat %46, down exactly 1. This was a gift. I wasn't tracking this week, so any loss is pure luck. I spent Fat Tuesday eating sushi.

Fat Tuesday, Ash WEdnesday. Lent. For whatever reason, nobody in the fat blog community that I follow seems to ahve touched this topic this year, and yet last year we were all over this. Maybe we've all said everything we wanted to say about it. Here's my post from last year. I really have nothing to add, except a little rant about the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

Here's the thing. The point of Lent, and not eating meat on Fridays, is to be giving something up. I remember my mom and I going to Red Lobster on fridays and getting Lobster becasue we couldn't eat meat. So we got LOBSTER. Oh, what a sacrifice! (In retrospect, maybe because we live in the midwest, and it had been so long since Mom had been home in New Jersey, that she couldn't remember what really good, fresh lobster tasted like. So maybe going to Red Lobster was a sacrifice.).

Similar point here in Milwaukee, in Wisconsin, one of the most Catholic-dense places in America. The restaurant/hospitality industry caters to Catholics during Lent on Fridays by offering fish fries. But these aren't any ol' fish fries. These aren't a piece of broiled perch on your plate, stare at it and reflect on the fasting and suffering Jesus Our Lord and Saviour made on our behalf for 40 days (and 40 nights!). No, we follow the letter of the law and eat the darn fish and eschew the beef and other white meat. But we do it grand! All you can eat fish fries! Oh, what suffering! All you can eat, people, all you can eat! You're torn: do you try to maintain the spirit of the Friday Lenten observation, or do you also try not to waste money, and get the very best value for your $6.95 (which includes coleslaw, a slice of marble rye bread, and some fish-tinged fries, as if you haven't had enough trans fats today.). And wash it down, of course, with What Made Milwaukee Famous.

40 days and 40 nights of suffering and sacrificing like this. Jesus has got to be shaking his head, saying, "Oh me. I should be annoyed at this, but I'm not. I see what you mean, Dad, you just gotta love humanity."

A day late

2007-02-16T07:08:00.000-08:00

177.6, down 1.8. Not enough to hit next 5 but less than a pound away! I got my friend Sue's 1.8 and she got my 2.6 + to get her next 5. I'm so happy for her. This morning's scale was down more than a lb since yesterday even after I splurged on one of my mom's "cookies by design" type cookies last night. A day late as usual lately (we weigh in for HELL on Mondays when I'm up from the weekend and I seem to drop 2 lbs by Tuesday every time).

This weekend will be a challenge and I need to rise up to meet it. This morning was a girlfriends breakfast but I kept my order to a single strawberry crepe. Walking at lunch and watching my food intake today should help. Then we head up to our friends' cabin this afternoon. Usually the chips and booze flow freely at the cabin, so I'm arming myself with tons of fruit and veggies, 94% ff popcorn and, well, I'll just really have to watch my alcohol intake. Maybe just a splash of something in my diet soda? Hoping to try out snowshoeing tomorrow and maybe attempt some cross-country skiing if the snow looks good since I'm so bad (at least it's a good workout since I'm basically walking in skis). And if needed, I'll just go walking on the roads, but I really got to get activity points.

Marathon training starts next week. I'm eyeing up a 1/2 marathon in Eagle River on May 12, Syttende Mai 17 miles on May 19, and full marathon in Stevens Point on June 2. The first two walks work right into the marathon training. I found that one of my walking friends' husbands is doing the Walk Wisconsin and I decided that's the one for me. I'm working on our WW leader to join me in the marathon.

0.8! 0.8! 0.8!

Valentine's Day Weigh-In

2007-02-14T11:40:00.000-08:00

Don't get me chocolate today, people. Chocolate on Valentine's Day is probably more for people who don't have it that much, so it’s a treat and one of my issues is seperating treat from meal. Plus, if you were going to get me chocolate, don't get me one of those giant sampler boxes in the shape of a heart. It's overkill. This whole holiday is overkill. I love roses, but not for $150 a dozen delivered.

Wednesday Weigh In numbers: 217.0, fat % 46.2. Down 1.4. Two weeks in a row, and I *feel* like I'm back on track. Especially since I've really weaned myself well of highly processed sugar (which Valentine's candy is case study in). I don't even have a craving for it anymore. I'm sure I'll want a piece of candy now and then, but going cold turkey (or at least cool turkey) was the best thing I've done lately.

Not much more to say. The Old Navy pants are loose again. This is good.

Vickie Lynn Died For Someone's Sins But Not Mine

2007-02-09T06:59:00.000-08:00

Regular readers of this blog know that I've had this fascination with Anna Nicole for some time. It all started back in '01 or thereabouts, when at Trash Fest, somebody (probably Paul "The Fly" Lawson, master of horrific puns) suggested that I be "Patti Nicole Smith." Like Anna Nicole, I was at the peak of my fatness, and I agreed that it would be milk-snorting-out-my-nose funny if I were to get all dressed up like Anna Nicole, and sing Patti Smith's greatest songs. God bless the Aimless Blades for having the chutzpah to be the band, who barely had to learn the songs, as Patti was already ingrained in their persona, but they were still loaded up with enough sardonicism to be able to laugh along. Yeah, this was me at my fattest. I'm not even going to publish what I weighed. And I could be all bitter about it, or, I decided I could say to myself, "Well, if I'm going to be a fat blonde with big tits, (the first two things usually outweigh everything else, EXCEPT for fat), who has a punk rock history, I might as well put on a tacky dress, sing a punk icon's songs while looking and sounding like a trainwreck of a pop culture icon, while appearing at an event called Trash Fest, and get some laughs out of it."

C'mon, sing along with Patti Nicole Smith: "In heart, I am Moslem. In heart, I am an American artist. AND I HAVE NO GUILT!" (The Aimless Blades sort of chickened out of the rest of the song that follows that intro, but in retrospect, I can't blame us. It really is hard for us guilty white folk to use the N-word, especially that many times.)

But we did "Dancing Barefoot" and "Land" (the boy looked at Johnny and did Johnny ever want to run!) and "Because The Night." And of course, "Gloria," if only to be able to drawl out meanacingly, "Jesus died for someone's sins, but not mine," in Anna Nicole's voice, insisting, "My sins are mine they belong to me. ME!!!!"

We all got away with it because who in the underground crowd doesn't love Patti Smith? And the only way I was ever going to get away with doing Patti was in parody. I'm not that serious enough a stage performer, and my thing is not deep poetry, to be able to ever pull off Patti seriously. So I already had this gratitude to Anna Nicole for giving me the chance to do Patti, even if it was with a horrible white trash persona. You'd be amazed what you can accomplish in costume. (Just ask David Bowie!)

Before that, I knew very little of Anna Nicole except that she'd been a centerfold, wife of a ridiculously rich and old man, and had let her weight go in recent days. I normally had no time for persons of this low-class ilk. But since I was going to parody her, I knew that the elements of good parody required accuracy. So I went and did my research and watched her show and learned her voice, her mannerisms, her everything. And to my feminazi horror, I realized that, well, I liked her.

I liked her for the same reason I like Cher: she didn't give a shit what anybody thought of her and her behavior. She was who she was and in true subgenius mode, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. She seemed like a fundamentally nice person, fun to be around, all that. Let's face it, she had one good thing going for her and girlfriend played it. OK, she wasn't going to come up with the cure for cancer. She knew that. No, she was going to make her money with her moneymaker, and she did. I happen to be one of those people who believe she was entitled to some of her late husband's $$$$. He knew what he was buying, they agreed on a price, and the deal was sealed.

And then she got fat. And that's when I really loved her, because with Anna Nicole, being fat changed nothing.

She still didn't give a shit what people said and thought about her. She just went on living her life, being the ditz she was, still commanding attention, still being Anna Nicole. She even got herself a show, and an entertaining show it was. That was when I started saying (and I've said it here often on this blog), "…And as Anna Nicole has taught us all, it matters not that you are fat."

And then she decided she didn't want to be fat anymore, and she stopped being fat. I don't know if it was Trimspa or whatever, but she was this inspiration, this "I let myself go and now I'm back" I saw her have, triumphantly strutting in those Trimspa commercials. I don't care about the methodology -- we each have our own and we have to find our own. But there she was, looking gorgeous and not fat. Because she decided to be not fat anymore. That's power. That's a skill I still have to learn.

And I chose to say "not fat" instead of thin because that's the other wonderful thing about Anna Nicole. She was never a size 0. Or a size 3 or 5 for that matter. She was always a big girl. A big, powerful, commanding presence of a woman, too much woman for some. Bigger than Tyra even. Right up there with the greatest of them all, Size 12 Norma Jean.

And that is also some of the sadness about her, and her passing. The name changes. The "costumes." The personas. That Anna Nicole was a name to make her more glamourous, like Marilyn's was more glamouous. That part of us didn't take ourselves seriously as beautiful, as desirable, that we had to put on these new names, these costumes, like I had to do as Patti Nicole. That if we didn't have our fat to cover up and protect us from harm, from people seeing the "real us" at least we had our costumes, our "personas", our name changes.

And so I cheered with her when she lost her weight. And I cheered with her when the Supreme Court rules that she deserved her day in court. And as a mom, I cried with her when her son died, while wondering how she was handling this with postpartum hormones raging about. And I realized that we're all in this sisterhood together, this miasma of fat-fighting, mothering, trying-to-be-both-a-girl-and-woman, trying to figure out exactly where our person and our personas meet, sisterhood.

I still hate to admit that I had a lot to learn from a white trash, poorly educated, ditzy whore from George Bush's neck of the woods, but Vickie Lynn Hogan, you did teach me a very important lesson. You are who you are, and it matters not that you are fat.

Rest in peace, girlfriend.

On our way to our goals

2007-02-09T06:27:00.000-08:00

179.4, up 1.4. I was expecting a 3-4 lb gain, so I'll take 1.4. "Rough" week or maybe "weak" week is more like it. Friday night started with the monthly hormone imbalance, anemia induced free-for-all where I could eat anything and never feel full or satisfied. That continued until Sunday night when the pizza caught up with me and I finally felt so stuffed I contemplated purging just to relieve my swollen abdomen. Free lunch on Tuesday, surprise party for Gar's 40th including cake on Tuesday, more cake courtesy of the volleyball team on Wednesday. Throw in a shot of I'm-not-tracking-and-what's-the-point-anyway-after-all-this-overeating attitude, that that was my week. So, it could have been worse.

So 2.6 needed to get next 5. I'm still aiming for that for next Tuesday. Another friend has 1.8 to get to next 5. She was celebrating her own birthday last week and gained .4. We left our WW meeting chanting our lbs to lose for next 5. Gotta keep that in mind.

Getting some women together for walking in the mall tomorrow. Aiming to complete 10K in 1.5 hrs. I joined the Dairyland Walkers on Wednesday, an AVA group based in Madison. They are working on a special program for walking a 10K in every county in WI. I thought I'll have to combine this with geocaching and meet two goals at once. They had a member speak at the meeting. She had power walked in a marathon in each of the 50 states. It's a great achievement. So now I'm even more inspired to walk a marathon and am looking at the Fox Cities Marathon, since it offers early start to those who need more than 6 hrs to finish. And with 100 porta-potties along the route who can resist!

Focus! Focus! Resist the payday donuts! 2.6! 2.6! 2.6!

WWI: Being sick throws everything off kilter

2007-02-07T07:57:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a week!

MoPie is finally back with a renamed blog, Anne is back and posting again, PastaQueen got a book deal, and well, I lost 2.1 pounds. So Wednesday Weigh In numbers are 218.4, fat %46.0. Fever: 103.4 at times.

Yeah, I have to credit some of my loss to The Nasty Virus, which had me, as I mentioned in my other blog, curled up in a fetal ball of fever all day Saturday. What was I thinking going out on Friday night? I'll tell you: I'd been cooped up all week, and I *had* to get out and socialize. I was darn good, too. I alternated diet cola with microbrew, and kept it all under ten points. But being sick cramps my style, both in general living, and in trying to stick to an eating plan.

So I was on a soup-making frenzy this week. Its so darn cold around here, and soup is good, warming, and usually low-fat food, especially if you make it yourself. That was the mistake I made the last time I was (and usually when I get) sick: mistaking food for real medicine like ibuprofen or pseudoephidrine. Its like, helLO, chocolate cake is NOT going to loosen up any of that phlegm in your lungs like dexomorphan can. Or nice warm chicken soup. I didn't have the energy to actually buy a soup chicken and make real from scratch chicken soup or stock, but I did the next best thing, bought some Swanson's Chicken Broth, and went nuts.

I did the ol Mushroom Barley thing: combining the standard Weight Watchers recipe with Mollie Katzen's from The Moosewood Cookbook. (I have an old edition of Moosewood, back from when the way to introduce everybody to vegetarianism was to drown everything in cream and butter. You learn to make changes.). Then I made a huge pot of split pea soup, which is one of the few soups I make that Stella likes too. And last night I made a pot of curried lentil with spinach, and gave it a little twist by dumping a can of tomatoes in it. (This time of year there really is no reason to even consider "fresh" tomatoes). I also made my favorite garlicky red lentil with carmelized onions thingy, from "A New Way To Cook" (by Sally Schneider: the "new way" is to view butter, bacon fat, and cream as flavorings, not as dominant ingredients.) Put it all into single serving disposable tupperwares, ready to pull out of the freezer for my own "lean cuisines". The work freezer is packed with Lean Cusinies, yet yesterday everybody panicked because the cafeteria was down (the cold has resulted in busted pipes.) You're going through the workday, and what have you got to look forward to? Hot cafeteria food or a Lean Cuisine? Well, I've got plenty of home cooked food right away. All labeled with points values, just like Lean Cuisines, but hardly any fat, absolutely no HFCS, and lots of good housewarming karma.

Still going good on the processed sugar fast. Not completely cutting it out, but the consciousness of it has resulted in my not eating nearly what I was going nuts on in January. I'm still off kilter, though. I can't get back into a good routine because being sick just throws routine out the window. The kids are still coming back from it, they're not 100%, and when a three year old boy ain't happy, ain't nobody around him's happy either. And fat girls, what do we do when we're not happy?!?!?!

Make soup!!!!!

Walking on

2007-02-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

178, down 0.4. Not big numbers, but down anyway, back to my lowest point again. This week has been pretty good, but still gotta keep my focus. It could have been better. Lunch out on Saturday and Lunch at the women's basketball game did not help. I had a salad at Joey's seafood restaurant. It was the coconut chicken, but I'm not fooling myself into thinking the chicken is at all good for me or low points with its coconut batter and then deep fried. Then I notice Gary's meal is two pieces of grilled fish with sides. I could have had that and two sides of the sauteed veggies and been about the same or maybe better. Oh, well. Gotta think about those grilled options more often. Saturday mornings for the next few weeks are devoted to the theater where for $2.50 you get a seat at a recent kids movie and a bag of popcorn. Can't beat that. Exactly how many points for the butter on the popcorn?!

The walking did go well this week. Four of us gathered at West Towne mall early Saturday morning for the Snowman Shuffle 10K, which was nine laps around the inner perimeter of the mall. We finished in less than 2 hours. Not too bad, but I did feel it near the end and I was so tired in the afternoon. If I'm doing 17 miles in May, I do need to get with the walking program. A few of us are now thinking of mall walking most Saturdays. I may skip this week but I'm definitely doing it next week and then on the 24th at the next Dairyland Walkers 10K at East Towne. Jenny and I walk at lunch almost every day. I'm so used to it now that I hate to miss a day. When friends invite me to lunch I almost want to turn them down so I can walk.

Spikes

2007-01-31T06:49:00.001-08:00

Guess I'm in an overall drag mood. Both this kids have this really nasty virus that includes spiky fevers, and overnight coughing fits that make them sound like they've got croup or something. Brian is getting something nasty too, and he's a joy to be around when he's sick. Saw the doc about all this; it’s a virus, there's nothing we can do but just pound the fluids and be good to their/our bodies. But it's still unnerving to cuddle this broiling hot child while putting yet another dose of ibuprofen down her throat. I'm washing my hands like a madwoman and pounding the echinecea and other Vitamin C sources in an attempt to stave this off so I don't get it. So that's contributing to this overall drag I've got.

Anyway, the Wednesday Weigh In numbers, which hopefully hearald the end of this weight spike. 220.5, 46.5, down exactly 1. Normally this would be cause for happyness, but I'm still depressed with how out of control I got during January, and how I blew all the goodness of the standard holiday season. I know, I know, forgive myself and move on. But it feels like wasted time, like I totally blew everything I worked for. I'm not even where I was back in September. I'm even above a major milestone that I remember doing the happy dance over many months back. There's just this spike in my weightloss graph for January, and its sticking out on the chart like this cyst-like zit I've got brewing on my forehead.

The refined sugar fast is going well. I haven't been totally good, but at the same time, those first few days were significant because I was presented with temptation and I got past it. So I guess I should feel good about that. At least I'm not having massive blood sugar spikes from eating a whole bag of Butterfinger BBs. That's been the one good thing about this week. I've severely cut down the refined sugar, and already I feel good (all things considered) physically. Brian was even mentioning this the other day. Last year, he had high blood pressure and besides your standard BP meds, the one dietary change he made was to cut out High Fructose Corn Syrup, and it's made a difference in his BP, his attitude, his overall feel-goodness, all that stuff. I know the scientific jury is still out with their verdict, but going on what we feel in our bodies, we just know something is up with that stuff. "Man, what a difference cutting the HFCS makes" Brian mused over the epiphany he had when I mentioned I was going on a refined sugar fast. "HFCS really fucks you up." Indeed.

Lighten Up

2007-01-25T11:40:00.000-08:00

1/18/2007 - 183, up 1.4.
1/25/2007 - 178.4, down 4.6. 53.4 lbs lost total. Last time I was here was 11/16. The 55 lbs lost mark is within reach. And I'm finally ready to face the challenge and get there.

OK, let's call it J18 and LUW and HELL and AOM. That's what's turned me around. Something in the 1/18 meeting finally struck a chord. Couldn't tell you what. But I was motiviated. And maybe it was the weight gain, too. What am I doing? Am I just throwing my $$ away to WW if I'm not going to follow the program? So J18 - that's the first factor in my turning around.

I'm on a team in the Lighten Up Wisconsin (LUW) challenge. We report our weight and activity each week to our team lead even though we only report to the challenge monthly. This keeps me going, that feeling of being accountable to the team. And we can win prizes! But it's more just the motivation.

These same teammates are doing another thing called Healthy Eating, Live Longer (HELL). As part of that we get beads. A black one if you gained, a yellow if you lost, and a happy face for each 5 lbs. You pay if you gain and the maintainers and losers share the pot. Since we do that on Monday, it's extra motiviation to be good on the weekends, my usually downfall time before I get back on track on Monday.

I signed up for America on the Move (AOM) where you record your steps/activity each day. Trying to continue to work in activity to stay with that. With all these ways to track my food and activity, I have no excuses!

My final thing that will keep me going is walking. I've been wanting to do more walking and made it a priority goal this year to really get out there and walk. Long walks, organized walks, endurance walks. So I finally stopped just talking and started taking steps to fulfilling my goal. I sent out an email to local girlfriends to see who will join me in these walks. I'm also very excited about the whole Volkssport thing. There's a local chapter called the Dairyland Walkers that have some great organized walks and other anytime mapped walks. I'm going to a membership meeting in two weeks. There's a 10K this weekend already and a couple friends are joining me. It's a big step for me, not only in really committing to my exercise goals and weight loss, but in getting myself to stop just thinking about it and actually doing it.

55 lbs lost here I come.

I Am A Cliche

2007-01-24T06:22:00.000-08:00

Today's title come to us courtesy of the B-Side of punk/ska priestesses X-Ray Spex's 1977 British hit, "Oh Bondage Up Yours."

"The Average American gains approximately 6.5 pounds over the holiday season." Well, here's Wednesday Weigh-In Numbers: 221.5 (jesus!), up 2, which brings us to (drum roll) 6.5 pounds over the holiday season. Yes, I Am A Cliche.

And so, in cliche fashion, I'm panicking. I'd like to blame this on the party Brian and I had this past weekend, but I was actually in control there. It's work. I'm getting wavy at work, and I'm getting this craving for sweets, and I'm horribly indulging it. I'm not quite sure why, but I can feel a sugar addiciton. That's the thing about refined sugar; its like heroin. Maybe that's why its called "JUNK" food. Anyway, I can feel the blood sugar spike, almost in a relieving way, after I down an entire bag of Butterfinger BBs, which I did yesterday. And I just wanted more. For some stupid ass reason I got more.

So, time to detox. I've done a sugar detox before. The first few days you actually get headaches from the withdrawl, but then afterwards you feel really good, with more good, positive energy than ever. So I'm going on a sugar/refined carb fast starting today. Its loosely based on "The Fat Flush Plan" which is in the low-carb, south beach camp, but the author of the plan, Ann Gittleman, allows fruits, which technically are carbs. I'll also have a little barley in my mushroom soup that I made a big pot of last night, but barley's a pretty complex carb. (besides, that soup is filling, and its only 2 points.). But I'll be taking flax oil, cutting out all the refined sugars, and pretty much do that for 1-2 weeks, just to go cold turkey on my need for refined sugar/starch.

And because a lot of this is specifically to wean myself off the taste of refined sugar, that means no diet soda for at least a week. Now that's going to be a toughie. I might succumb to that, so its a lofty goal. But real sugar, yes, I can keep that out for at least 10 days, which is what I need to do to stop these cravings I'm getting. I will probably lose some weight as well, but the purpose of this, (like Renee at Renee Gets Fit's fast a month or so back) is not to lose weight, but to detox my body.

But to do something drastic like go on some crazy I'm-going-to-cut-out-an-entire-class-of-food diet, yeah, that's cliche. Oh well. "I Am A Cliche" was a great song done by a great punk band.

Up again. Bluuhhhh. Ick.

2007-01-17T09:32:00.001-08:00

219.5. Fat %46. Up a pound again. Bluuuhhhh. Ick.

OK, time to analyze, get real, and learn from others. From Kdk13, I also need to account for my exercise, because I'm making the same mistake she's making: I dn't count exercise in my caloric needs for the day, I then get super hungry, and I make bad food choices. Duh. You go into this thinking, oh, the exercise is just gravy, and it doesn't work that way.

Also, I've called the end of the holiday season this Sunday, so I'm eating like I have extra time to lose. I don't. I was downright cocky this week. I didn't track my food, and well, I'm paying for it with a pound gain. Its going to be hard to track this week, because this party we're having Saturday will come complete with horsodeurves (and there is no such thing as "lite" hors o deurves, at least none fit for human consumption), and drinkie poos. Drinkie poos are actually more damaging than hors o deurves. Not only are they high calorically, they go down way too easily, and then once you're toasted, you have the munchies, so you dive into the hors o deurves. And you don't go for the healthy crudities, because when you're toasted, you want carbs, protein, and fat. Fiber is the last craving you have. (Note to self: see if you can find a time when you actually crave fiber.). I can save points until the cows come home, but really, to make up for Saturday, I'm pretty much going to have to fast. Bluuuuuhhhhh. Ick.

I had a lovely bowl of oatmeal this morning. Lunch will be a salad. I'm going to have to eat this way all week. I have mini- Beef Wellingtons to save points for. And drinkie poos. Bluuuhhhh. Ick.

Then January 21 will roll around before I know it and I will have to get back in the saddle. Oh, and I'm stairclimbing today. Fun. (once again, what's the HTML tags for sarcasm.)

I know, this wasn't one of my regular, thought out essays on the anthropology of weightloss. It's just that I'm above the milestone of my pre-Sammy pregnancy weight, through my own damn fault, and its pissing me off. Bluuhhhhh. Ick.

If there's any silver cloud to this, my measurements haven't been too bad. I gained an inch in my chest, but my lower body measurements, like hips and thighs and even waist, have gone down. Weird. Very weird. Bluhhhhhhhh. Ick.

J8

2007-01-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

181.6 - down 2.2. Back once again to 50 pounds lost. How many times do I need to get here before I can move on to 55?!

J2 didn't work so hot for me, but J8 is going well. Been going well this week after a Friday night at Melting Pot and then the weekend of continuing to eat through the holiday treats. This weekend will be spent in Chicago at a friends's house. She asked if I needed any special food for being on WW and I said "oh, no". What was I thinking? She's offering - stand up for yourself KDK and tell her. Actually I did say I'd love salad, veggies and fruit and I'll bring the fruit. Maybe I'll bring my own breakfast too…and roasted veggies and…

OK, I don't know if I'm fooling myself or what, but I think a part of my not losing consistently last September - December was that I was hungry. I was working out with the trainers and working out at home and climbing stairs and cleaning house and I only gave myself minimal points for the gym and working out time. Could I really have been burning calories and making myself hungry? I don't know, but I was hungry and I made bad decisions. So, now I'm going to give myself points for legitimate activity, even if not regular exercise. Like when I mop the floor vigorously for a half an hour I'm taking those points. Then I make sure to eat all my points for the day including activity points, but try to steer clear of the flex points.

I really don't want to be posting a "J15" subject next week, so I gotta stick to this.

Up to 11 on the 11th!

2007-01-11T12:01:00.000-08:00

Brian had taken in my primary electric guitar to the shop last week for an overhaul, and I just got it back. Ready to plug in. (And Nigel, I have an amp that goes up to 11!) And regular readers of this blog know that my getting back up on stage with a guitar strapped on is a major part of getting my moxie back, and gettting rid of my fatness, because as we all know, 95% of this weightloss thing in in our heads, and not exactly the left side of the brain, either. That logical left side stuff is easy: eat less, move more. Duh. No, its the right side of the brain, the emotional, the creative, the musical, that needs to (literally) get in tune for me.

It's time to turn the weightloss efforts up to 11, as well.

Really, it all goes hand in hand. You have to believe you're worth it to do anything, and not be afraid of being noticed, looked at, and possibly critiqued. I've read in enough blogs, and I'm finally starting to understand, that being fat, in an odd way, is a way to become invisible. Invisible was safe, but you don't accomplish much being invisible. All the things I want to do: write, photograph, and play music -- are the antithesis of invisible. Losing weight is all part of losing invisibility. I'm finding that as I once did, I like being visible, and out there. I'm visible, I'm loud, my knobs do go up to 11.

We are scheduled to rehearse for the first time in years this Sunday.

WWI: Can I get a fast pass?

2007-01-10T05:46:00.000-08:00

Numbers: 218.5, fat % 46. Hey, I'm down a half pound! Not bad, considering I still did a holiday party (and it wasn't the food that got me, I was in control there!) and I'm riding the rickshaw this week.

I'm trying so hard not to succumb to the "New Year New You New Resolution" kind of post, but I can't help it. Everybody around is on this "I gotta get in shape" kick, which should wane in about a week or so. And I'm caught up in it. I find myself being extra mindful of my habits. (You'd never know from my weight post this week!) But for the time being, I have to put up with the Y being packed, with everybody around me "starting" diets, and for weightloss spam to be packing my email box and cluttering up cable TV. I'd posted a comment on somebody's blog (perhaps Pound?) that I kind of felt like I should have a free ticket to skip waiting -- like you can pay extra for at Six Flags -- for various weight machines. The holidays spoiled me: I'm not used to having to wait for a bench press or an elliptical machine, dammit! Hey you 115-pound newbie, I've got tenure here! I know that's rude, so I don’t actually say it, but still. Don't I get some kind of priviledge for slogging it out on December 23 before I hit the vicious par-tays? I guess my "reward" is already being in exercise condition, and for not massively gaining. And even though I've put on a few pounds over the holidays, (and they're not over yet, I have one more party a week from Saturday at my house that involves holiday hors o deurves), I'm declaring victory. Once again I was mindful and didn't go nuts. Its usually much, much worse, and that in and of itself is a reward, I guess.

J2

2007-01-05T11:44:00.001-08:00

183.8 up 4.4. Well, at least it was less than 5 lbs which I was hoping my gain wouldn't be more than. This holiday I just enjoyed myself. And ate whatever I wanted. The worse for me, the more I ate of it. I wanted it all out of the house by Jan 1. Didn't quite get there, but definite strides towards the goal. The problem is it all goes through my mouth on it's way out of the house. I was also feeling under the weather for a big part of the week between big events and had very little energy to get up and exercise.

J2 - That's what our leader calls this time - January 2 when the tracker comes back out and the renewed focus starts again. My renewal started yesterday with our meeting. I can't make my goals unless I focus and plan my diet and exercise. And I need some sleep instead of my 4 hours I seem to get a night since there's never enough hours in a day.

And just when my renewal is starting what am I doing? I'm going on a date tonight with my husband to the Melting Pot. And we're doing the Big Night Out that includes cheese fondue, salad, entrée fondue, and dessert fondue. Got a booth in "Lover's Lane" all reserved. I'm also indulging in the yin-yang chocolate martini. Most (all? Next weeks, too??) of my flex points will be going toward this meal. Saturday night we're headed to a candlelight hike in Blue Mounds. At least I can earn some points with the hike, but I'm sure those will get used quickly by the free hot cocoa and roasted marshmallows.

Stairclimbing season again. Real stairs are different.

2007-01-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

Its too cold and yucky to ride a bike to work, but there are days when I'm not going to have time to get a workout in. So back to those darn stairs. As I wrote when I first started this thing, real stairs vs. a stairclimber is a major difference. But I've gotten in better shape, even since I wrote this and I'm actually climbing the building stairs, not the parking garage stairs. My building has 41 floors, plus three or four service floors. And I'm not sure if that means a total of 44 floors, because they don't start labeling them until 3, but there's double floors between what would be 2 and 3, and the ground floors all have names of streets and ... and ... and... its just too confusing. Suffice to say its about 46 flights of stairs.

Baseline time for going up once, measured today: 14:30. Last year I was averaging 16 minutes or so, so already I'm better than that. But the fact that I don't have to just go up and down three flights in the parking stairwell is major too.

Wanna do this with me? Then we can kvetch together! You will need:

A spare T-Shirt. An extra sports bra helps too.
Gym shoes in your desk. Don't count on remembering to bring your regulars every day.
One bottle of Jonathan Redo Freshen-up Mist for Hair & Skin. I rarely make product endorsements, but this stuff really works. Its worth the $18 for five stinking ounces. Spritz this on afterwards, brush through your hair, and you're good, at least for the rest of the workday. Believe me, if you remember Psssssst! The Instant Spray Shampoo from the 60s, this is way better. (And yes, I had to sing the little theme song in my head to get the number of s's right.) Pssssss! was gross. It left these little grains in your hair. No, this just freshens you up so you don't smell like a football player in your cube. OK, now back to our regularly scheduled blog.
Facial cleanser and moisurizer. You will want to wash afterwards.
Some absorbent head thingy to hold your hair back and soak up sweat.
An iPod or other personal stereo.

OK, gather all these up and go climb stairs. Start little -- like I did with the parking garage-- go up four flights and then down, to give yourselve a break. Lather rinse repeat. Then, if your building is larger, go for it. Don't hit the 40 floors instantly like I did three weeks ago and then had difficulty even getting out of bed because my calves were so sore. I don't care if you've been climbing the stairmaster since October. Like I referenced in the first paragraph, real stairs are different, repeat real stairs are totally different.

Oh, and don't eat beforehand.

I sooooo can not wait until spring. Did I mention how I hate stairclimbing? But its all I can do on days like this when I have no other time to do anything else.

Truthiness in Holiday weightloss

2007-01-03T06:41:00.000-08:00

Some weeks ago, pastaqueen had this entry about considering not admitting a weight gain and if there was a week to lie on the blog about weigh in, this is it.

But I'm not going to. Today I weight 219, that's a three pound gain. Oy. C'mon, I even ran for an hour on Christmas Day! Last year I lost weight during the holidays. But here's the thing. Unlike pastaqueen, I have not yet declared the holidays over. I still have my company holiday party this Saturday, and my husband and I throw our annual Christmas party in late January. After that, we take down the tree and declare the holidays over. So I still have three weeks to post an overall holiday loss. Just to tell you I'm not lying (would somebody who posted a three pound gain after a 2 pound gain start lying now), here's a link to when I declared the holiday eating season over last year. Note date.

Hey, at least the fat % is down to 45. And my measurements haven't budged. The ol "cousin from the country" (do people really still call it that) is [excuse mode] due any day now [/excuse mode off]. I had a lovely fruit and yogurt breakfast. And I was pretty stupid this past weekend. First, on new year's eve, I worked out like a horse, on a very small breakfast and nonexistent lunch. When I showed up to meet my friends for an afternoon new years toast (it was midnight in Paris, after all!), I had an apres-workout ravenous hunger that could not be satisfied. I stuffed myself silly with french pastry and such. Even the next day I felt bloated, like people normally feel after Thanksgiving dinner. What was I thinking? I wasn't.

OK, forgive myself and move on. The holidays are not yet over; I still have the challenge of two major parties ahead of me. Which means I still have the opportunity to beat this holiday eating thing.

Well, duh its Christmas

2006-12-28T14:21:00.001-08:00

216. Up 2.2.

Egg Nog is good. That is all.

On a roll

2006-12-27T06:28:00.000-08:00

And I'm not talking about ham, turkey, or roast beast with mayo. I've lost 6.4 lbs this month - a month when others gain 10. While I still have Mt Everest to go, I am feeling a bit of joy over brushing the snow off of my shoes and taking the first step. The next boulder is New Year's Eve. Going to a six course foodie extravaganza - everyone brings a course. Have plans to use exercise to compensate but have worries that the food and drink will use up all points for 2007!

Still holding on to the same goals: write, water, and motion.

Here's to a healthy, happening 2007.

I am so totally good

2006-12-25T14:56:00.000-08:00

It's Christmas day, and since the Y wasn't open, and the weather was something like the mid-40s, I went out and ran for an hour.

An hour, people.

I rock. Santa, didja hear that? I am so totally good.

Goals for the new year

2006-12-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

179.4 - down 1.4 The traveling tracker helped this week. Even with 3 social "free food" meals and a few other temptations out there, I managed to lose. Had I not had two pizza-centric meals yesterday and had controlled the other snacking better, I may have lost even more. I did eat lots of fruits and veggies and limited my pizza intake much better than I would have in the past, so I'm making progress.

I don't have weigh-in next week and probably won't post, so time to set my 2007 goals. It's been over 6 months since I hit my 50 lb goal and it's time I moved on. Only 2.6 from the 55 lb goal. I want to be there for the 1/4/2007 weigh-in. That's my first goal.

These goals are set with a more realistic 1 lb per week loss. My average since I started the plan is around 0.80 right now because of my "maintenance" period for the last few months.
171.8 by 02/01/07 - 60 lbs lost for Gary's birthday
158.0 by 05/24/07 - BMI defines my weight as "Normal" In time for Memorial Day and the first swim of the season
156.8 by 05/31/07 - (1 yr from first weigh-in) - 75 lbs lost
140.0 by 09/27/07 - Lifetime goal. 2 year anniversary of joining Weight Watchers
131.8 by 11/22/07 - 100 lbs lost, just to say I did 100. Thanksgiving. And I'll be giving thanks!

Only two social events remaining for the year: Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. I'm making a fruit platter for both and I can make wise food choices and still enjoy myself. Here's looking forward to the new thinner me in 2007.

this is a test post

2006-12-20T11:50:00.001-08:00

content to follow

When I'm home I behave

2006-12-20T06:16:00.000-08:00

213.8, fat % 47.1. Not happy about this fat percentage, but overall weight is down point 2, which is better than gaining, I guess. Lots of eating crap. I didn't go over points, but let's just say I haven't been ODing on the veggies. And holiday cheer (in the form of beer) is a factor as well.

Next week shouldn't be all that bad. When I'm home, its really not that much of an issue. It's when I'm at work, and people have all this stuff put out, that I falter. I think that's where a lot of people falter. But I'm taking the whole week off work. The presents are done, so I have time to get in really good workouts, plus this nasty bronchitis is finally waning, so I can get in true cardio workouts. Plus, I have a massage and facial scheduled for after Christmas, so I'll be taking good care of myself.

Last night we baked christmas cookies with the kids, and I had a few wads of cookie dough, but really, that was it. Again, at home, its like I'm conscious, I'm in control. But then Melissa at work brings in a tray full of cookies and, well, that's breakfast. I had three and a cup of coffee.

Happy Christmas, friends!

Cookies almost gone

2006-12-18T10:39:00.000-08:00

12/7 - 182.4 - up 0.6. Cookies are still a problem. Still eating 10 or so a day. Gotta cut that out.

12/14 - 180.8 - down 1.6. Don't know how this happened, but I'll take it. Must be losing muscle weight as I haven't exercised much lately. Had the cookie exchange on Saturday. But tried to steer my snacking toward the fruit. Had dinner at the Melting Pot with the girls. Had a wine flight instead of a fru-fru drink so only 2 points. Went with the California salad and the vegetarian fondue in broth. Two reasons - 1) keep the points down & 2) when I come back with Gar in January we're going for the Big Night Out and lots of meat! The 4 girls at our table shared a small chocolate fondue which finished the evening off nicely and not too terrible. Cookie consumption down to 5 a day. Walked at lunch with Jenny most days.

This week I have the "traveling tracker" for our group. Forcing myself to track and knowing others will read my entries make me watch myself. Gar had a work party Friday night. Limited myself to two wines and tried to balance the "bad" with the "good" at the appetizer buffet dinner. The scale is looking good so far this week. Exercise activity has been up, too. Free food coming on Wed and Thurs - my usual downfall. Must stay focused and on track.

Awareness, its the first step

2006-12-16T12:36:00.000-08:00

The good thing about the last two weeks is that I kept track of things - how much I ate, how much exercise I did(n't) do, how much water I drank. Now I really know that I am overeating, only exercising 10 minutes a day, and drinking only a glass or two of water.

But onward ho I go! I went ice skating at the outdoor rink in Centennial Olympic Park this morning. Glorious to skate outdoors in 70 degree weather even if it is a small rink. Milwaukeeans, think Winterfest in Cathedral Square Park. We're going to visit as often as possible while its available. A little walking is also on the schedule for this next week.

Lost 2.2 since my last post. More to follow, I just know it. One step at a time.

Blog Maintenance Notes redux

2006-12-13T05:01:00.000-08:00

OK, I'm on the new Blogger Beta, and its not liking dealing with the new templates, and I'm going to have to work on this this weekend. Please bear with me during construction. Whole new look and everything.