Another one for the wl blogging world

My friend Lesley has decided to go public with her weight-loss challenge for herself, so please pop over to her blog and show her some support. In addition to her main blogging page, she has a separate page for her weight loss work. Lesley's a marvelous person, and if she embraces the baby steps that can bring on the health, I know she can do this!

Busy and RUNNING

I promise I'm not avoiding you! Really!

It's just that I feel like I've been working 90% of the time and trying to recover the other 10%. I felt the pricks of tears forming in my eyes as I told someone yesterday that I will be less busy by January--and then went on to say that what I mean is, if I am not less busy by January, something will have to give. I'm doing what I have to do at work to get things done right now, and some of those are exciting things that are my creations. (And I'm not really working 90% of the time--just feel like it.) But this is unsustainable in the long run.

However--however--I have been determined not to lose my focus on exercising during this period of stress. I ran 25 minutes straight this morning (plus stretching, a 10-min. walking warm-up, and a cool-down walking period), so I am definitely back on track with that! It makes me feel so much better all day when I have gone out and busted my ass with exercise by 7:30 a.m.

My weight has spiked this week with the early arrival of my period. EARLY, for the second month in a row! Not okay. I plan to go to the doctor when it ends, because with the symptoms I get, having a period every third week is unacceptable. I'm going to see if I can use Seasonale without getting depressed. (Most b.c. makes me depressed.) Anyway, my weight spike is not a big one--about 1.5 pounds. It will go away when my hormones calm down. And already my body fat percentage is decreasing again with my runs. I am going to see if I can get up at 6:15 not just to run but also 2-3 other days a week (nearly all 7, then) to work out in my living room before going to work. I want to do arm/chest/upper body stuff to work on more than my legs and core. (Honestly, though, I am surprised by how much I get changes all OVER from running.)

I hope you are all doing well. I need to go take a stroll through some of your blogs.

I'm running again!

Trying to give my life a sense of balance, I created a calendar of things I want to do over the next 16 months. I made the calendar several weeks ago and put "Start running again" under the first week of September. Today was my deadline to start.

Several days ago, I went through the Couch to 5k plan to see where I thought I should try to pick up. I decided to start with week 6--close to where it's running only, but still with intermittent walks in the runs. I wasn't sure how much stamina I had lost since I stopped running in the July heat. I set up my mp3 player with the music and beeps for Run 6A.

Yesterday, in anticipation of the run this morning, I set out my running clothes and shoes on my dresser. I put my mp3 player on top of them. Whenever I saw them, I mentally psyched myself up about going for a run today, and I could feel it working. I felt excited about getting back to that part of my life.

I woke up at 6:30 a.m. The room was dark, and I was disoriented about why the alarm was going off when it was still dark outside. Then I remembered the exercise, and I inwardly groaned. Luckily, my husband has decided he's going to work out at the gym when I run this fall, so as soon as I rolled out of bed, he did too. He turned on the lights and made the bed while I was in the bathroom, so when I got back to put my running clothes on, I felt less tempted to crawl back in bed.

I worked on pumping myself up with positive thoughts this morning. That might sound silly, but I find the frame of mind around exercise can be just as important as the physical elements. "I can do this." "I'm up this morning taking care of myself." Things like those statements were going through my head as I turned on my mp3 player and began stretching.

Ten minutes later, I went outside. I had been worried about the dark, but with streetlights, there was enough light, and there were other people exercising in the park. There was never a time when I couldn't see someone else exercising near me, which was good for safety reasons. A number of homeless people were also present in the park; living in Midtown Atlanta gets me hit up for money regularly, but people leave me alone when I'm running. And anyway, it was early enough that the homeless people were mostly (sadly) stretched out on benches sleeping.

I walked my 10-minute warm-up and then started a slow jog for my first run. After the 5 minutes of the first run were up and my mp3 player beeped for me to switch to a walk, I was amazed at how good I still felt. "I could run more!" I thought excitedly. But I stuck to the program. At the end of my exercise, I actually kept running for a couple of extra minutes and increased my speed a bit.

I'm definitely a bit sore now, but not painfully so. I'm very excited about getting back on track with my running! I am aiming for a 5k at the end of October now to give myself plenty of time to get ready.

For those of you who have been thinking about doing C25k, if you are in the US, you would be hard-pressed to find a better time to start than with the temperature drop of fall. (Atlanta is not cool right now--it's 90 degrees at the moment--and it's very humid. But it's much more comfy than it was even a week ago.) I walked daily for a couple of months before I started C25k, and that gave me a decent base level to start from. I'm excited about finishing the program this time, and with winter in GA being mild, I should be able to keep running through the year. (Until NEXT July, maybe--we'll see.) As I get more fit from running, I also have other fun stuff in my schedule for later, like hiking, weight lifting, rock-climbing, and kayaking. I plan to keep at this program--even if I have to take intermittent breaks for whatever reason--until I am comfortable in my body like I was as a child.

Zero sum game

Well, I haven't lost any weight this month--0 net loss for the month of August.

But.

0 net gain for the month of August.

And sometimes that's what we can hope for. My clothes are not tighter; in fact, it seems my smaller clothes fit me better even without an additional loss. I'm buying 12s in tops and dresses, 14s in pants.

I've been holding tight at 180-point-something.

I've been dealing with a lot adjusting to my food allergies, and now I'm being tested for celiac disease as well. And I have not been exercising, as I mentioned before.

So I'll take holding on to my current weight. This week is when I begin to run again, and even if that doesn't make my actual weight lower, it will make me feel better, be healthier, and look better. I'm pleased--if a little nervous--to get back on track with the running. I know I can do it, since I was doing it just a couple of months ago.

Yay for cooler weather!

What I'm hoping for is to average 5 pounds a month still. That's a much slower loss per month than most people are going for, but I'm finding slow and steady is what works for me. And to think about being 20 pounds smaller by Christmas is amazing.

However, seriously, I will take 5 pounds smaller by Christmas, or 10 pounds. Or 5 pounds with a 4% drop in body fat. (It's dropped 5-6% since January, after all.) Or if I have to, I'll take maintenance while my body and brain figure out better how to deal with these food allergies/intolerances.

It's been about three years since I was at my highest weight--almost exactly, actually. I tipped the scales at 223 at one point, and then I got bigger--but I refused to weigh myself past that point. I was miserable in so many ways, and it took breaking up with my first fiance for me to shake me up to start dealing honestly with my life. Financially, professionally, personally--I had a lot of work to do.

After I met my husband, I started eating healthier and working out regularly. I got my weight down to about 187. After we got married, though, I stopped working out and started eating lots of sweets. Seriously, lots of them. And eating until I didn't feel good on a pretty regular basis.

By last Christmas, I weighed in at 203. Since January 1, I've lost--and kept off--23 pounds, and this time I am not planning to let that weight start creeping back up. Barring something terrible like an illness that keeps me bedridden for months, I am going to keep this weight off, keep the level of health I have attained.

One of my friends was laughing recently about another friend of ours who gained 5 pounds and was dieting to get it off. This dieting girl is thin. I laughed too for a second but then grew quiet. "Well," I said, "I guess that's how you keep the weight gain from becoming a real problem." If you deal with it while it's 5 pounds, you're doing a whole lot better than if you wait until it's 20 or 40 or 100. So if I'm maintaining for a while, that's my goal. If I'm losing, even better. I just don't want to lose heart, period. I and my health are too important for that.

Stepping away

I've been absent three weeks! That is a long time.

This week has been better, but the two weeks before that were pretty awful. I'm not talking about my weight, though that did pop up a pound; I'm talking about my outlook on life in general.

I started sublingual allergy drop treatments for seasonal/environmental allergies, and they made me sick at first (as happens with a minority of patients). Trying to figure out how to avoid food allergens while still feeling the full effect of allergies (while not feeling any better from the effort) was extremely frustrating. Then I got my period; it came with bad cramps and a nearly unprecedented (for me) level of sudden despair. Simultaneously, I was working full-time and then staying until late at night 2-3 days a week while learning my new job and training my new employee. Let me tell you that all of that is a bad combination.

I wanted to hide from life. I was scared--as I get when I feel really down--that I was headed into a new bout of deep depression instead of just having a mini-phase.

Instead of entirely hiding from life, I backed away from the social part of my life and only accomplished what I needed to at first. Then I focused on what I could change to make my life feel more right again. That involved some compromises with how I normally try to live.

I am someone who seeks out local, whole foods whenever I can. I like to eat foods close to their natural state, knowing they are better for our bodies in the forms they take when they are closest to the earth. That's also better for the Earth because eating whole foods avoids packaging, shipment, waste from additives, etc.

But when I am adjusting to these food allergies, I can't suddenly make everything from scratch with my new restraints as easily as I could before them. I also can't eat your typical packaged food because, besides not being very tasty to me now, it almost all contains things I can't have.

What I realized I could do is find well-reviewed sources for allergen-free foods on the web and buy some mixes--cookie mixes, bread mixes, etc. A bad gluten-free, egg-free mix bakes up to be something you would only feed a significant other that you want to get rid of. But a good gluten-free, egg-free mix can make food that is tasty, sometimes very tasty. I read up on the internet to find ones that were well-rated, and then I ordered $100 worth of those mixes.

I decided that this week at work, I would leave by 5 p.m. each day--and I stuck to it.

I postponed a doctor's appt. that I was supposed to have this week that was making me feel overwhelmed with visits to doctors.

My period ended, of course, and that helped me get on a more even keel hormonally.

I cut back (just temporarily) on the amount of local foods I am buying to give me time to adjust to the allergen-free recipes I am starting to use. I am still serving 1-2 local foods per night for dinner, but I'm not, at this point, striving anymore to get as many local foods as I can. I'll pick that up again when I feel more adjusted to my food restrictions.

I made a schedule of things (only one thing per month and one other thing per season) that I want to do and try in the next sixteen months--to keep myself from trying to jump into too many things at once, but also to remind myself that the feeling like my life is in a bad place is only a temporary emotional locale that will pass. Now I'm excited about the various things I am going to try. I put them all in my Google calendar with reminders that will get emailed to me to keep me on track.

I increased how often someone is coming to clean our apartment. Having a housekeeper come for vacuuming, bathroom-cleaning, etc., is a splurge that my husband and I agreed to after our apartment got really dirty after my husband was hit by a car last year. We pay the housekeeper well (she makes more per hour than I do!), but we have the money, and it's well worth it right now for her to come in with her all-natural products and clean once a week instead of once every two weeks as we were having her do. That will continue until my husband finishes the two experiments/papers he is currently working on for his thesis at the end of next month.

I have also been trying to take the time to calm myself down emotionally, to talk myself down from the ledges that I can climb to when I begin to get worked up over how X is going in my life. It's so easy to think things are dire when really they just need a few adjustments.

I grew frustrated two weeks ago when I gained 1 1/2 pounds (at the start of my period) and then could not seem to get it off. Then I realized that I have been exercising very little (even incidental exercise, like parking far from a store) because of how hot it is outside. I also, due to the food allergy frustrating, have been eating more at a sitting than I was doing. I have been eating until I'm full, occasionally until I'm unpleasantly full, instead of stopping eating when I first feel the food hitting my stomach (which I find usually means I will be satisfied after a few minutes). That weight is gone now except for .2 pounds because I reminded myself to pay attention to how I feel when I'm eating. I am trying to remind myself, as I often say and mean when I say, that I am in this weight-loss thing for the long haul and not a short fix.

(Meanwhile, I realized two days ago that a pair of my size-16 dress pants are now certifiably too big. I saw my reflection in a mirror by chance and thought, These look horribly droopy on me! A bad realization when you can't change out of them at that moment, but a good realization overall.)

When you feel bad, it's not good to shrink away from your systems of accountability and care, and both of those are part of what this blog is to me. But I do think I needed a short break from doing anything beyond what I needed to do. I'm back to posting now, and while I am going to be taking it a bit easier, I will try to post at least once a week and get some of my new, allergen-free recipes up here. I still love reading your blogs and having you read mine.

14 pants!

My husband and I have been visiting his parents in VA for several days now. Today, we popped over to the mall, and I decided to try on a pair of size-14 pants to see if they fit me at all. They fit great--perfectly, in fact! I was so excited at how cute they were that I decided to buy them despite the $60 price tag that would normally make me say, "Um, no." They are dressy and they are a nice brand (Ann Taylor Loft), so I know they will be useful and last a long time. I'm so excited! I haven't worn a 14 in pants since my junior year of college, perhaps my sophomore year even. That's . . . 6-7 years ago now!

Usually these days, I weigh myself every couple of days. I don't write it down; I just like to keep a general check on what is happening. I haven't been able to do that since we've been here, and it will be interesting to see what my weight is when we get home. It could be down or stagnant--I really have no idea. I guess it could also be up a pound. One thing about never counting anything is that it works as long as I trust myself and keep the idea of taking care of myself in mind. But I can never be 100 percent certain that I'll have a drop at any time, so I do like to weigh myself often enough to keep in mind that I can't eat loads of potato chips or things like that that make me feel gross and make my weight pop up.

I'm in the 170's!

I've been terrible about posting lately, but I have NOT been terrible about being conscientious about what I'm eating. I am officially (just barely) in the 170s today! This is a land I have not visited for many years. I am soooooo excited!

In other happy weight news, when I was at a thrift store a few days ago (where they had crazy bargains on nice stuff--I haven't been in years), I fit into size 14 jeans. I wouldn't have bought them (they were too tight--I'm sure my husband would have loved them on me), but I could zip them without feeling like I was dying, and that's awesome! As you may remember, I mentioned that I wore a size 12 dress to a wedding recently; when things are A-line cut, I can wear a smaller size over my hips and thighs. But with pants, I am still a size or two up. Last night, I got inspired to try on my last remaining just-barely-too-small pants at home, and one pair now fits me well. The others just don't look great, but I ordered them off the internet, and they may just not be cut for me. We'll see how I'm feeling when I'm down five more pounds!

I met my goal of 5 pounds in July (slow and steady wins the race, right?), and I am just thrilled with how the weight loss is going lately. I think I am going to set another 4- or 5-lb. goal for August.

Some days when I weigh myself, my weight will suddenly show a brief upswing or will not be lower when I am expecting it to be lower. I just remind myself it's an off day and don't let it throw me off track. That's one major way this round of weight loss has been different from previous attempts. (Then, I would have gotten stressed and angry and given up; I was 'restricting myself' for nothing. But now that I have flipped the mental/emotional switch so that I am taking care of myself instead of restricting myself, it doesn't make sense to eat myself into misery if my weight happens to be up or flat.

Since I learned about my food allergies, I have been terrible about exercising. There is only so much energy to go around in a given day, and I have spent a lot of mine on figuring out what to eat. Now that I am beginning to get the hang of dealing with that issue, though, I am going to make it a priority to start back with regular exercise this month.