Status check: month 3 of Weight Watchers

Weight lost
This week: -4.2
Yeah, but last week I was "officially" up 3 pounds, thanks to Mardi Gras. (I think I actually gained/lost about 6 pounds last week.)
So far: -14.4 (Would 6 more ounces be so much to ask? Pleeeeease?)
Average weight loss per week: 1 pound

Total inches lost
Arms: - .5 inch
Bust: -.25 inch
Waist: -4.5 inches
Hips: -3 inches
Thighs: -.5 inch

Yes, I'm disappointed at how slowly I'm losing weight.
I can understand that it might not seem like a slow loss to someone who doesn't go to the meetings I go to. I see people there losing 5 pounds a week. Each friggin' week. It's not a bad group of people, I'm not saying that, but I'm a little miffed.

What bothers me most, I think, is that I am exercising three times as much as anyone else there, and losing far less. (Mind you, I have calf muscles that would do a calf proud. Wish I'd thought to measure them from the start.)

The other night, one woman spoke about how she struggles to exercise for 15 minutes a day. Since December, I have averaged 50 minutes a day of exercise. (I've been tracking my exercise since then. The actual average is 51 minutes/day.) Is she losing more weight than I am? Of course she is. Silly question. ("Hello, my old and familiar dilemma. Stop exercising and lose muscle as well as fat? Why yes, you are a tempting idea sometimes.")

Last week I couldn't make the meeting and had to go to another location instead. I was amazed at the people there who said it had taken them several months to lose 15 pounds. Why aren't these kinds of people going to my meeting? (Maybe they are and just don't say much.)

I want to keep going to this meeting because it's within walking distance of my house, I like the woman who leads the meeting, and the group is basically quite nice. The other meeting would require driving my car, and has the very grave drawback of being right next door to Powell's bookstore. So we're talking serious bucks spent each week. (What's that? Who said oh, just don't go to Powell's after the meeting? You don't know me very well, do you? I can skimp on cake,* I can skimp on doughnuts.* Don't ask me to skimp on books.)

*Except during Mardi Gras. But that's once a year. I haven't been binging on a regular basis. Honest.**

**Oh all right. I binged 3 times. Once over Christmas, once because I had a hissy fit after not making it to 10 pounds, and once at Mardi Gras. There. That's honest.



Exercise du jour: Cycle 5 miles
Semi-FAIL. I honestly did try. Even though I ended up working a 12-hour day, I ended up walking a whole mile. Oh boy.

Weight Loss: a kind of evolution

My body is a devout believer in evolution.

When it comes to weight loss, anyway. Specifically, my body loves the theory known as punctuated equilibrium. When change occurs it seems sudden and drastic.



I'll go for a few weeks gaining or losing mere ounces, not pounds, then within a few days I'll lose 4 or 5 pounds and get a strict warning message from the WW e-tools. ("You're losing too fast!" Ha.)

In the past week I have had fried chicken, wine, chocolate cake, pizza (!!), and more fried chicken. I've also lost 5-1/2 pounds. All those weeks of being good and eating tons o' celery, and I never lost nuthin'. Huh.

Darwin would be proud.

(Okay, yes,for the benefit of the snickertly persnickety out there, I do realize Darwin wasn't known for the punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution. Hey, he could still be proud of me anyway. Maybe.)

Site du jour: It's probably not as much fun to live through as it is to read, but Nunhead-Mum-of-One's stories about her family, in-laws, and neighbors are going to make a great book one day.

Exercise du jour: Cycling to work and back, even if only partway. Hell, I'm going to be ambitious and state publicly that I want to cycle the first 3 or 4 miles of the morning route. There. I've said it. Now let's see if I can get up early enough to do it.
Done! 4 miles in the morning, barely 1-1/2 in the evening. Legs tired. Muscles sore. Need a hot bath and a hot masseur... er, that is, massage ...


Image courtesy of wikimedia commons

You can never tell ahead of time

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You can never tell if a run is going to turn out okay after all.

Well, maybe if you've just broken both legs you can tell. Otherwise, no.

Even if you (I mean me, but it's easier to tell this to someone else) really don't feel like doing the workout, you can end up having a good time.

So far, I'm making it through the last week of the C25k, running 30 minutes at a time. The shins seem to be accepting this level of exercise without too many complaints.

I'm doing pretty pathetic on the cycling, partly because it involves a lot more organization beforehand, i.e. I have to lay out cycling clothes, pack clothes for work, and -- this is the clincher -- haul myself out of bed early enough so I can ride in. Have to confess, sometimes I take the Max in and then cycle back. Better than nothing.

Surprisingly, my horrible week of eating only earned me half a pound more on the scale (+.6). I'm really surprised that it wasn't worse than that. Then this morning, I lost 2-1/2 pounds. It's been a couple years since I was last down at this weight.

Plus, at the meeting last night, I met a couple of girls who are just starting the C25k so they could run the Shamrock 5k. I told them if they signed up for the Shamrock 5k, I would too. (Um... I suppose that means I have to do it. I was thinking of maybe not going for it -- there's going to be a lot of people -- but I suppose that means there might be 2 or even 3 people slower than I am!)

Site du jour: This week Middle-aged dating is posting re-runs of her most memorable dates from the last year or so.

Exercise du jour: Walking to work from the Max station plus the all-important hour's walk at lunch. I'm getting rained on a lot this week. God bless Oregon.
Done! Walked 5 miles, split between morning, noon, and night.

Who cares if I lose weight?

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For all my bitching when I fail to drop a pound, it's still just numbers on the scale. I'm posting this here so I don't lose track of my fundamental goal.

What I want is to be fit: to be able to run and not get out of breath, to be flexible enough to do all the yoga poses that the instructor can, to get down on the floor and do a bunch of push ups just because.

I think it will be easier to do all these things if there's less of me trying to do them, and I think that I will get thinner as I practice living in a healthy way, but being thin is not really the point. Being able is the point.

Exercise du jour: Cycling to work & back. If I can fit it in, an hour of yoga as well.
Did an hour's worth of walking instead. In the rain, which as I've previously stated carries a lot of weight with me. Or at least it carried a lot of weight with my sweater. I know I said cycling today, but I woke up too late. Besides, when it comes to exercise it's good to be flexible. Off to do some yoga, to be even more flexible.

Status check: month 2 of Weight Watchers

Are you really curious about this? Okay then, here are the stats after two months on Weight Watchers.

Weight lost
This week: -.8
So far: -9.6 (9 point friggin 6. All it would've taken would be 4 ounces more for me to be just a leeeetle bit happy.)
Average weight loss per week: 1.2 pounds

I am not pleased. Another woman, who joined the week before me, has lost 20 pounds by this weigh-in. (Yes, okay, she does weigh more and work out less. I don't care. I am Not At Home to Ms. Reasonable right now. Everybody is losing weight but me. I'm pissed.)

Total inches lost
Arms: -1/2 inch
Bust: -1 inch
Waist: -4 inches
Hips: -3 inches

What, you think I should cheer up because I'm fitting into smaller pant sizes? Was that Ms. Reasonable I just heard knocking on my door? Sorry, not answering the door. I sat through that WW meeting absolutely starving. I couldn't stand that everyone was talking about food, food, food!

Look, I know it's silly, I know I'm paying too much attention to numbers. I'm still bummed.

Exercise du jour: Cycling to work and back. For that matter, walking at lunch. I'm not working out hard enough, damn it.

Update du later on: Sorry. I wrote most of that last night right after I got home from the meeting. I was tired and ab-so-lute-ly starving, and that tends to make me wear the cranky pants.

I kept it up there because it was honest. Yes, I do want to lose weight as much as the next person, even if the next person is also losing water and muscle as well as fat. I want the weight to come off quickly and stay off forever. I also want a pony, with a pink glittery bridle.

I'll settle for a healthy body that's progressively moving downward on the scale, albeit at the speed of a slug on prozac.

Weight Loss through Sleeping In

I don't explain it; I'm just reporting the facts.
Got up this morning. Weighed myself.
Went back to bed for a couple more hours. (Hey, I couldn't get to sleep until about 4 in the morning, okay?)
Got up again. Weighed myself again.

Don't ask me how 2 more hours of sleep translated to 2 pounds off the scale.
I'm just going to enjoy the moment. Pardon me while I bask.

No, not that kind of Basque.

This kind:













Exercise du jour:
Went for a bicycle ride for a couple hours. Flat terrain, easy pace, and even so I had to struggle. Damn but I'm outta shape.

Photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Sneezing burns calories... who knew?

Spent yesterday mostly blowing my nose. Exciting news, no?

No wait, don't click that mouse yet. This was going somewhere.

All that sneezing caused me to lose 1-1/2 pounds. No exercise, moderate food intake, sneezing, and voila the weight, she is gone.


Oh all right. I suppose it is just water weight and my body is merely adjusting to a new plateau or whatever, but you know what? I don't care. It's weight loss, and I'm going to celebrate it. After all those weeks where my weight didn't budge a pound, up or down, and my measurements didn't change an inch, and it felt like my body was locked in a stasis field, I get excited over any weight loss, however small.

I'm going to try to keep this loss off this week. Somebody pass me the kleenex. I'm planning to do a lot more sneezing.

Calories in: 2191
Calories out: 0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/armadillo444/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Happy the woman

Who has to buy a belt because her pants are too loose.


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The stomach isn't going anywhere, but those aerobic DVDs seem to be working on the rest of my torso quite nicely. The clothes seem to be fitting a bit looser around the waist, despite the fact that my weight has been pretty steady for a whole week. (That in itself is a cause to marvel – usually I go up and down like a seasick rollercoaster, up to six pounds gained and lost per week.)

Not sure if I should get a measuring tape and start checking the inches or not. What if the pants suddenly stretched when I wasn’t looking? It might be an illusion, but it’s an awfully comforting one.


Exercise du jour:Cycling halfway in the morning (take the lightrail halfway) and cycling home.

Also,

Week 4 of the (full) 100 push up challenge
Day 1
(90 seconds rest in between)
Set 1 - 12
Set 2 - 14
Set 3 - 11
Set 4 - 10
Set 5 - 16

Week 4 of the 200 sit ups challenge
(60 seconds rest in between)
Day 1
Set 1 - 18
Set 2 - 21
Set 3 - 17
Set 4 - 15
Set 5 - 24

Done!

Could be worse

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Taking the day off exercising, mostly because a headache suddenly came up.

Haven't lost any weight in the last three days, despite the fact that I've done 5 hours of cardio in that period of time.

On the other hand, haven't gained weight either. (Gained and lost 2 pounds last week, which threw off my totals.) It could be worse.

Last week's totals:
Avg. minutes/day exercising: 80
Avg. weight change: +.06

On the down side, I just did 22 full push ups. Which means, according to the 100 push ups website, that I can go back to week 4 column 2. Wah. Don' wanna.

I've decided to compromise with my inner slug and do week 4, column 1.

Framing Kansas, the Seven Dwarves, and sundry annoyances

Topographical map from Maps.com

Got a beautiful, artistic topographical map of Oregon, so I wanted to get it framed. The woman had to trim a couple inches off the side, but she apparently had difficulties because she couldn't make the state look 'square.' Apparently she'd prefer to only frame maps of Kansas.

Anyway, people were staring at me like I was a complete nut. Framing a map?
One woman asked if I were a teacher doing this for a project.
"No, I like maps."
"Oh." Blank stare.
I tried again. "I like to know the area where I live. For example, that mountain over there," I waved my hand south. "What's its name?"

From the Yamhill County website

She looked at me with gentle pity. "Mount Hood," she said.

Mount Hood is east of Portland. Has been for years. Plus it's about 10,000 feet taller.

"Um, no. If you go south toward Newberg, you climb over a mountain.* Do you know its name?"
Another blank stare. At her side, the saleslady also frowned, deep in thought. Then they both shrugged and went back to framing the thirteen identical pictures of the woman's toddler.

Maybe it is strange, but knowing the names of places makes me feel that I'm not living in a void. Names give a landscape solidity. That's not quite the right word, but they act like anchors to ground you in the world around you.

Seems strange to me that people could live in a valley, drive around it every day, and not feel part of the place. It's a vague backdrop that fades into insignificance compared to important matters, such as what's on television that night.


Becoming 5 of the 7 Dwarves

At last count, I am Bashful, Sleepy, Dopey, Grumpy, and Wheezy.**
Not Happy, though I did go to see Doc. She said the coughing et al. sounds like asthma, take this, and that, get seven samples of blood drawn and take three more tests at different doctors' office.

I'll say this for her, she's thorough.

One of the tests I have to take is at the office of Dr. Watson, which immediately made me think of how many times this man has had to hear Sherlock Holmes jokes since he got his degree.

It's nice to be able to apply a label to the coughing and shortness of breath, and it's a lot better than some of the possibilities that it could have been, but I'm still miffed. How am I supposed to exercise if I can't breathe good? Hopefully the drugs will help so that I can get out and do things instead of being a couch potato.



*If you drive from Hillsboro to Newberg, you cross over the Chehalem mountains.

**Wikipedia and Walt Disney are in a conspiracy to make people think the 7th dwarf is named 'Sneezy,' but I like my version better. Artistic license.

I'm in! Backaches and feng shui

I now own a house.

I'd gotten quite cynical, didn't think it was really going to happen, but I've got the keys, they've taken the For Sale sign down, and I've started to move stuff over. Must really be happening.

Damn, but I've got a lot of stuff.

I've moved three times in the last five years, so I'd gotten to the point where I just left stuff in boxes until I needed it. Yes, I'm lazy, but I've also been a pack rat all my life, and damn but I got a lot of stuff. I'm hoping that leaving it in boxes this last move has helped me disentangle myself.

One of the books I have on my overflowing shelves is called Clear your clutter with Feng Shui. I thought it was a joke; somehow it's hard to take a title like that seriously. But reading a book on a subject is one way to get myself motivated, and one thing the author said got me thinking.

According to the author (Karen Kingston), people who collect lots of clutter also tend to be overweight. In both cases, the excess is used as a buffer between the self and the outside world. This could be true, at least in my case. It's a theory I can test, at any rate.

I'm giving myself this week off from regular exercise. I justify this on the grounds that carrying endless boxes of stuff down two flights of stairs constitutes enough damn exercise already. Thankfully I only have to carry things up two stairs. (Not two flights, two stairs. My back loves this.)

Next week, I'm planning to do two things:
1- sort through all this damn stuff
2- go back to my regularly scheduled exercise program

I'll have more time to sort and exercise, since Verizon is cutting me off from Internet and phone for a whole week. I'll see if getting rid of stuff helps shed pounds.

Once I find where I packed the scale, that is.

I gained HOW much?

Oh no, no no no.

I don't believe it. I don't want to believe it. In other words, no.

In the past five days I have gained six frickin' pounds. (That's similar to a regular six pounds, but even heavier.)

I suspect my thyroid is throwing a temper tantrum, 'cause that's just plain strange. I'm tempted to pull an Oprah, and move to Hawaii for a month. This time last year I was in Maui, sitting on a balcony taking pictures like this one. (View of Moloka`i from G-G's condo.)



Ever seen the view from my office window? Right now it looks like this. Yeah, that's what I thought too. And on top of everything, I'm gaining weight like a Sumo wrestler gearing up for a championship match. House hunting was supposed to help me lose weight.

The trouble is that I can't concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Right now all I can think about is finding a house. Tomorrow I'm going to go view my first house. Need to get prepared.Exercise? Oh yeah, I should do something like that. Later.

I've decided I'm going to be Positive about this. Setbacks are a chance for me to develop my skills. The only way I will successfully lose weight and keep it off is by learning to keep to my exercise & veggies routine even when things are hectic. It's okay to feel stressed about buying a house, dealing with realtors, banks, and the prospect of taking on obscene amounts of debt. Just so long as I keep exercising and eating healthy stuff.

This preoccupation with weight seems terribly narcisisstic when I compare myself to people I know who are facing challenges like chemotherapy or the loss of a loved one. What the hell am I complaining about? I know on an intellectual level that my sitting back and feeling gloomy won't lighten the burdens they have to carry. All the same it feels self-serving to say "well, life goes on," even though it does.

The prospect of death emphasizes the importance of life. I'm focusing on ways to lose weight because I want to enjoy my life while I'm living it, as much as I can. Or at least not look back at the end of my life and see that I never made any effort to live the way I want to live, look the way I want to look, etc. the way I want to etc.

This blog is meandering into maudlin musing. Should I post it or delete it? You decide.

Geez, the things I do to lose weight

Surprisingly enough, I survived my vacation. Didn't even gain any weight. Stress is good for my diet. Of course, the day after I came back, I put on two pounds. I figure I can either go away on vacation again, or find some other way to stress myself out.

So I'm looking into the possibility of buying a house.

Being a single woman all by my lonesome buying a house for the first time, well, this is going to do good things for the diet.

If you've been following the Dog saga, an update. Her ladyship stopped scratching herself as soon as we got out of town. Her fur was already starting to grow back within a day of coming back to California.

The vet had said that the blood test results showed an enormous amount of inflammation in her system. I think some of that inflammation must have settled in her joints, and being away from the source of the allergy reduced the inflammation dramatically. Not only did she stop scratching, she agreed to a very short walk the first day. By the third day there, she'd started suggesting the walk herself. By the end of the week, she had extended the length of the walk several blocks, and still had enough energy to bound after an uppity squirrel. She wasn't happy about my leaving her, but at least she's showing definite signs of recovering.

To me, this suggests another reason to move out of this place. Any location that made the poor dog so very sick can't be all that good for a human either.

I took loads of photos on my vacation. In case anyone was suffering from insomnia, I'd planned to post a couple of them here. The photo up top is sadly not a self-portrait. It comes from Flickr.