New Weight Loss Plan!

Getting so sick that absolutely nothing sounds good or tastes good. Except for the Frosty I had last night. But seriously, I had eaten about 300 calories up to that point in the day and a Frosty from Wendy's (or something similarly cold and creamy) was the only thing that appealed to me at all. Any other food I thought of made me want to throw up a little.

Today I managed to choke down a few bites of oatmeal, a few bites of the soup I bought for lunch (though the texture of the garbanzo beans in the soup was totally freaking me out), and a couple of slices of deli turkey. It's not that I'm nauseous, just everything is gross to me.

Obviously until this is over, and until every little move doesn't make me start coughing uncontrollably, I'm at a standstill with the working out.

Steel Cut

After a crazy week of visiting the in-laws, busy times at work and Valentine's Day, last week was kind of a wash. I was going to go swimming this morning, but I took advantage of this holiday by cooking some casseroles for breakfasts and dinners this week, plus a stew for tonight's dinner and that all took awhile and now it's 2 PM and I just got around to eating lunch and there's no more lap swimming today. However, we're having some people over for dinner and in an hour or so I'm going to start some heavy duty cleaning. That's always good for burning some calories.

This morning I made steel-cut oats for the first time and I am a new fan. I made one serving per the directions on the container and mixed in about 1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt, a small squirt of agave nectar and a dash of cinnamon. It tasted almost exactly like rice pudding, which is one of my favorite foods. Rice pudding for breakfast. Mmmmm.

Swimming Sore

76 laps yesterday
90 laps today

Today as I walked up the stairs to our apartment after running an errand I realized my legs were TIRED. Swimming is kind of like pilates for me. I don't really feel the muscles straining while I'm swimming the laps or contorting myself into odd isometrically-challenging shapes, but later on, ow!

So maybe it's a good thing I didn't swim 5 times this week. 3 seems to have been plenty for my body right now, and I don't want to injure myself. Again.

We're going out of town for a few days so no swimming until sometime late next week.

Encouraging

It's really nice after huffing and puffing through 70 laps, and feeling continually disappointed by my times, to be told by the lifeguard that I must be a "serious swimmer". I don't know what that means exactly, but it sounds positive.

We talked a bit and he said he observed that my technique is better when I breathe on both sides. Which I suppose is what my right shoulder has been telling me for a couple of years. When I only breathe on my right side, after a few days of swimming my shoulder aches like crazy.

However, when I breathe on both sides, I'm slower. Not by a lot, but some. Which is annoying since I'm slow right now anyway. So today I did about half my laps breathing on the right side and half alternating sides.

But the point is, out of the several people at the pool this morning (a couple of whom I thought looked really sleek), the lifeguard told me that I'm obviously the serious swimmer. Nice.