Saturday, June 23, 2007

Momentum Can Be Fleeting

Ever since I started my new job I have had the hardest time getting into some sort of exercise routine. I have about an hour and a half of commuting every day in the car and that kind of saps my will to live. I generally like to drive, but not in rush hour, in bumper to bumper traffic, feeling like I'm killing the clutch of my new car and getting aggravated at the stupid STUPID people that I share the road with. I also sometimes maybe have a touch of the road rage.

So by the time I get home I really just want to make my dinner and plop in front of the TV, or maybe take a stab at tidying up my room. Or sometimes I drive down to Providence after work to hang out with my boyfriend. Also, now I have real work where I use my brain all day and I'm still acclimating to that because seriously, it's wearing me out. I went to law school and work and had an internship and headed the Health Law Society and helped out with mock trial and moot court and all those competitions, you would think I could handle using my brain 5 days a week. Apparently not.

So basically the yoga and the strength training hasn't been happening so much.

Then there's the swimming. I didn't go last Monday because I don't remember why. I'm sure it was a good reason, or at least I justified it as such.

Tuesday I swam. Yay! 104 laps because I'm a rock star and didn't feel like stopping at 100. Then I got a half migraine because I'm still trying to figure out how much to eat for this whole morning swimming thing and apparently whatever I ate wasn't enough.

Tuesday night I was in Providence and in order to go swimming on Wednesday, I would have had to have left Jason's at 5:30 AM. Um, no.

Thursday - Thursday was the dumbest. I had my gym bag and my work bag all packed, and my breakfast and lunch all set to grab from the fridge. All I needed was to pull on my swimsuit and eat a little something before driving to the pool. However, I forgot to reset my alarm and woke up an hour late. Hmph!

Friday, well, let's just say a little friend came to visit on Thursday and I just didn't swim on Friday. I know I don't want people swimming in the pool with me when that's going on with them, so I'm showing the same courtesy. Do unto others and such.

And here we are at Saturday and I'm sitting on Jason's couch trying to get some work done for one of my jobs. To my credit, the state of his apartment and my pent up energy has so far resulted in him now having a clean bathroom and two loads and counting of clean laundry. So at least I'm doing that rather than rooting around in his candy stash.

My point is, this has become the excuse blog as of late. I'm rediscovering how easy it is to lose momentum. I think about how good my momentum was before when this whole weight loss thing was pretty much all I really had to think about. My schedule was set and I was in control. Now my schedule is haphazard and my brain is being pulled 50 different ways and some days I just want to sleep for another hour instead of drag myself to the pool.

But we're about to start a new week. A new week, all sparkling fresh with newness. I will inaugurate the new week with a Monday morning swim. And I will continue throughout the week because swimming makes me happy and strong, and not swimming makes me feel like a lump and feels me with this dread of gaining back this weight that I have worked so hard to lose. I feel a bit like Scarlett O'Hara, but she knew what was up when she said, "Tomorrow is
another day." Losing weight is my own personal Rhett Butler.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

182.2

My roommate commented to me last night how much it really looks like I'm losing weight. She could tell before, but it's just getting really noticeable.

On that note, the scale this morning read 182.2. It's not my official weigh-in, but is notable because it means I've lost exactly 20 pounds since January 31. In the weirdest way, I'm freaked out. 185 was the magic number before. It was the lowest I got during the summer of 2005 the last time I lost weight. For the past couple of weeks, my weight has been consistently under 185. I'm greedy for it to keep going down, but at the same time my immediate, gut reaction this morning was to say out loud, "Well, that's a little scary."

Why? Why is it scary? Because I'm becoming not the fat girl anymore? Maybe soon I won't even be the chubby girl anymore? I don't really have an answer and I'm kind of surprised about the trepidation I feel. Not that I'm going to stop my efforts. I want to get down to 160. But I'm a little freaked out.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Toenail

80 laps this morning. And let me tell you, it was kind of rough. Not only have I not really done laps regularly for 3 weeks, but I am not used to working out in the morning anymore. My body was kind of wondering why I wasn't still at home in bed. This is going to take some getting used to.

However, other than being ravenously hungry*, I feel really great right now with the endorphins. I love endorphins.

The Y is much better in the morning and I had my own lane for about half of my workout. I forgot my hairbrushes today and discovered that my hair looks pretty much the same when I blow dry it while running my fingers through it. Good to know.

I am convinced that the fates have been conspiring against me to prevent me from working out. From the Y not being lap swimmer friendly in the evenings during the week when I could only go in the evenings, to my boyfriend being in a nasty car accident, to the most recent toenail incident.

***Warning: the following is kind of icky. I'm just sayin'.***

About 6 years ago, I ripped off my big toenail on my left foot. Honestly, it really didn't hurt that bad when it happened, it was just unattractive. The nail has never grown back right and I've suffered through many summers of wearing sandals while trying to hide my toe. Last summer, I discovered that I could get a fake nail and I was so, so happy because I could have cute painted toenails for the summer and no one ever knew one was a fake.

Well, the first guy who did it just filled in the nail bed on top of the little nail nubbin that was there. It looked great and natural. The woman who did it this year (about a month ago, actually) put an acrylic tip on top of the nubbin and then filled in the rest. I didn't like it as much this year because the nail stood up really high from the nail bed and occasionally I stubbed it. However, it seemed liveable.

On Monday night I planned to do about a half hour of yoga and pilates, followed by a half hour of strength training. On my way to doing a teastand, my standing-too-high-off-the-nail-bed toenail caught on the yoga mat and pulled back. I collapsed and grabbed my foot. Blood was already pooling around the edges of the nail. Sure enough, the fake acrylic AND my little nubbin of a nail had pulled completely away from the nail bed and are now hanging on by a thread.

So now I'm kind of stumped as to what to do. I cut the acrylic down as much as I could, but I can't soak my toe in acetone to get it off because, um, ow. I guess I'll just have to wait and see if it heals and then go from there. I'm worried that after this I won't even have a nubbin to attach a fake nail to. My grand idea is to see if a plastic surgeon could put in some sort of permanent implant. But that's a little frivolous for my current financial situation.

***End of grossness***

As of today, I am back in the pool in the mornings, assuming I can keep waking up at Freaking Insane AM.


* I ate some pineapple before I left home, which is my normal pre-workout snack, but I may need to add something else.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Life

I hate when life dictates that not only shall there be no working out this week, but that I will also be eating out a lot and not really controlling my food. Oh sure, I could have gotten a salad at Longhorn, but when you're at a STEAKHOUSE, it seems kind of rude to order salad. Like, maybe the super steak chef would spit in my dressing-on-the-side or something. And I don't really feel like eating salads at 9 AM at IHOP.

Let me explain. This past week has been crazy. My boyfriend was in a nasty car accident on Wednesday night. He is fine, but his car is totaled. When we finally got out of the hospital at 8:30 the next morning, we headed to the nearest breakfast place for food because we were both starving. I got an omelet and pancakes. And it was good. I only ate half the omelet, so that counts for something.

Then later that day we were out and about, stopping by the tow lot to get his belongings out of his smashed up car and checking out car dealerships for his next big purchase. We were still pretty tired, so we went to Outback for dinner. I got a burger. And it was good. As a disclaimer, I substituted salad for the fries (the Wasabi salad. If you go to Outback, try it. It's really yummy). I also only ate half my hamburger bun.

Friday was fine, since I was at work and just ate my normal healthy food. But because of the chaos the swims that were supposed to happen Thursday and Friday mornings obviously didn't.

Saturday morning I ate Kashi oatmeal. Good choice, yes?

Then we went out and I bought a new car. Actually, that was the plan all along for Saturday since I'm driving to work every day now and need a more reliable car. Jason used the opportunity to check out the 2007's as well. After the purchase, which, you know, takes HOURS, we were starving and went to the Longhorn Steakhouse down the street from the dealership. I got another burger. This time I only ate half the burger and I got a baked potato with the toppings on the side instead of fries.

Saturday night we went to a Mexican place and I got fajitas, but I didn't eat all the tortillas, I didn't eat all the cheese and I didn't eat all the sour cream. I also brought home half of my grilled meat and onions.

So really, I think I did not too bad for not actually ordering the salad option at every meal. According to my scale I haven't gained anything yet and I'm hoping that starting this week off right with a swim in the morning will stave off any gain. I'm looking forward to being back in my healthy groove. Sometimes life just really gets in the way.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Lesson Learned

Last night I discovered that going to the Y when there are only 2 lanes open for lap swimming is a bad idea. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks early evening is a good time to go swimming. They have morning lap swim with all 6 lanes available and I'm sure that's when the hard core swimmers go. And hat's when I'll be going from now on.

I'm going to be b***hy swimmer girl for a moment and complain, so just move along if you'd rather not read a tirade.

First of all, midway through my workout, this dad and his kids decided to cross the lap swim lanes to get across the pool. So fine. You wait until the swimmers have passed and then you go. But no. Two of the boys went just as I was getting to the end, and then the third little boy vaulted off the lane line into the middle of the lane, right in front of me. If he had jumped a couple of seconds later, he would have landed on top of me. I know kids are rambunctious, but Dad was standing RIGHT NEXT TO HIM, just watching him go over the lane line. I popped up and the dad said, "Oh, sorry about that." I was the only one in the lane at that point. Would it have been awful to, you know, hang onto your kid for a few seconds and wait for me to go by?

Then about 10 minutes later, I was in the middle of a 200 when I realized that there were a man and a woman standing at the end of the lane, blocking me from doing a flipturn. Okaaay....

I popped my head up and the woman said, "We can swim a circuit." For those of you who don't know, circuit swimming is basically what you do during swim team practice when there are a bunch of people in one lane. You space the swimmers and swim up the right side of the lane and back down the left. Now that works just fine when you're all about the same skill level and going about the same speed, but it is a disaster when levels are mismatched. As shown last night.

The woman said, "You go first because you're stronger." At this point I was still standing in the middle of the lane about 10 feet from the end because they were still blocking the entire end. I asked, "Well, can I have some space to push off?" I think that was when they realized they were blocking the entire lane because they looked surprised and moved out of the way.

So I started swimming. The woman came after me, swimming a leisurely freestyle. Then came the man, swimming a veeeery slow breaststroke. So basically I did a 50 and caught up to the man, but as I was going to pass him, the woman came swimming by on the other side, blocking me. My only choice was to stop in the middle of the lap and wait.

At that point I realized that continuing to swim was pointless, and I got out. Only 64 laps.

Usually when I swim, everyone just waits if there are already two people in a lane because they recognize that circuit swimming doesn't really work, but I guess they both wanted to swim really badly RIGHT then. Annoying.

Let's hope swimming in the mornings is less chaotic.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Back in the Saddle...Again

Well this has just been crazy time for me and not a good time for exercising. Basically in the span of 8 days I interviewed, second interviewed, and then got a new job. Then the next day my pool closed for renovations.

Work started on Wednesday. I spent most of Saturday shopping for business casual clothes. For the past year I've been working at jobs where I could wear jeans every day if I wanted and I only needed to dress up occasionally. Add to that the 18 pounds I've lost since January and basically nothing besides my jeans fit me right anymore. I found a bunch of skirts and discovered that at least in the skirts I'm a real, genuine size 12. Yay!

I have entirely given up on ever finding slacks that don't look completely freakish on me. My bum and thighs are just too big and my waist is too small. It doesn't make me feel particularly fat, though, since I remember being thin and having that problem too. I have 2 pairs of Lane Bryant slacks in 16 that are falling off of me. I popped in there on Saturday to see if I could fit into 14 dress slacks, but LB 14's are officially too big for me. Well, not their jeans. I still wear their jeans. But their slacks are too big, which is good, but also bad since they're the only store that takes the .7 hip to waist ratio into account. I've heard Banana Republic is good, but they're pricey and I wasn't willing to pay a lot for what I hope are simply interim clothes.

The bad thing about the job is it's in the suburbs, which means no more mile walk to and from the T, and no chance to walk home from work. Now I'm driving everywhere and feeling kind of guilty as I add myself to the long line of commuters and wish I had a Prius. I was planning on using this week after the pool closed to search for a gym and to walk the 3.2 miles home from work every day for exercise. Instead, I've been driving every day and trying to find the least crowded routes to and from work. I've been bone tired when I've gotten home and haven't done any sort of exercise at all this week. I've tried to eat on the low end of my calorie range, but I admit to indulging in treats, particularly at Jason's choir potluck on Wednesday night where there was decadent chocolate cake and pavlova.

Despite the crazy week, I haven't actually gained any weight, but I haven't really lost any weight or inches either. The lack of exercise has also taken a toll on my mental well-being. I miss my endorphins.

Today I went to go check out a gym on my lunch hour. As the sales rep was showing me around I started having a sneaking suspicion that there was no way I could afford this gym. From the pretty, dark wood lockers, to the AMAZING pool with the windowed ceiling, I wasn't really shocked when she told me the monthly fee was $105. And that was a special discounted rate available for people who join this month.

I went back to work discouraged since I had just been planning on joining and maybe even going for a swim tomorrow morning. I looked online for what else was in the area and discovered the local YMCA, also just down the street from work. Ah, the trusty Y. It's not fancy, but it's got a pool and locker rooms with changing rooms, which is more than I can say for the fancy clubs I belonged to briefly in downtown DC and Boston. I'm very happy that so many women are so very comfortable just walking around with it all hanging out, but I do not happen to be one of those women and I am tired of changing in the handicapped stall of the bathroom. The Y is $52.50 a month, and I can cancel any time I want with no penalty, also unlike those fancy clubs.

Starting Monday, I'm back in the pool. Since I don't have the option of walking anywhere anymore, I'm going to have to step up the amount of yoga, pilates and weights that I do at home in the evening just to maintain the exercise level I was at. No more being lazy right when I get home.