Losin’ It

I missed logging a couple weigh ins. One week I didn’t go because we had too much going on and then the next week, February 23, I gained 0.8#. This past week, March 1, I lost 0.4#. As you can see, I quit logging my food and, while I was logging my exercise, I never put it up here. (However, I have caught it up now.)

Mainly my reason for all this lack of attention to my diet and exercise and this blog is because of the deep depression I have been experiencing. It’s hard to concentrate on anything when all you want to do is cry or sleep. I am feeling much better now. I have had a change in meds and I have a plan to see my therapist.

I will be catching up the weight loss ticker in my sidebar as well as catching up the miles on the walk that FG and GTT and I are doing. Bear with me as I continue to screw my head on straight.

I went down again! Only 0.8, but it’s better than no loss or a gain. It’s taken me awhile to blog it because I have had a few stressful weeks. I’ll be okay. Just normal everyday life. I also haven’t been journaling my food or exercise. I have still been exercising and eating , I just haven’t been able to have time to write it all down. I will catch it up on my days off starting Wednesday. Well, not the eating journal because that is lost to me right now. But I will get back on track with journaling my food, too.

I finally have the last 2 weeks of walking plotted. This week, Fantastagirlbeat us again with 22.5 miles and Geeky Tai-Tai came in second with 21.25 miles. I sucked it big time with only 17.3 miles. Fantastagirl is on the Minnesota/Iowa border. She will be the first one to leave Minnesota. It’s so exciting. Well, you guys might not think so, but I do. Way to go Fantastagirl. We all rock. You can find a link to our walking path in my sidebar. Side note: I have no idea why some of our markers have changed to squares instead of the teardrop shape. I didn’t do anything different and I can’t figure out how to change them back. There is no significant meaning.

I have an awesome pedometer. It is spot on accurate. Trouble is, it doesn’t measure anything when it is laying on the ground somewhere. It has a really small clip and it doesn’t stay on my pants very well. Especially my scrubs. One day, I found it laying in the snow next to my truck when I came out of work. I thought I had just forgotten to put it on. It’s a good thing that it is bright orange or I might have missed it and ran it over when I left. Of course, then I would have a new one that would stay clipped to me. I am going to buy a new one. I just don’t know when.

Hooray! I lost a pound. Of course I would have liked to lose more, but I’ll take a pound. That makes me, overall, down 6/10 of a pound since starting this blog. I can only see things going downward from here. That’s what I want, I mean.

The walking is going well, too. Fantastagirl kicked it into high gear again this week and she has 23.30! Geeky Tai-Tai has 19 miles and I came in last at 17.71 miles. Although it felt like I did more. Who knows.

Today is going to be a challenge. Superbowl Sunday is something that is revered in our family and we are going to Jason’s sister’s house for a party. They are having tacos and whatever everyone else brings. I am nervous. I will just try to drink a lot of water and keep my portions small and choose wisely. I probably won’t be able to write it here. I will try to but it’s sometimes hard to track the points when you don’t know how someone else prepared the food, y’know?

Speaking of tracking…You will never see me track my foods on Saturdays. Why, you ask? Because it is my free day. By that, I mean that I eat wisely, but I don’t keep track as closely. There are many reasons why I do this. You can read about one of them here. Add that to my rewarding myself for keeping track all week and doing well and so on and that’s the reason I don’t log food on Saturday. I still make healthy choices, although I allow myself a treat like thing in moderation, and I still drink water and do my exercise, I just don’t track it all. If that makes sense.

Anyway, I have some stories that I need to write up for here. Look for those later in the week.

Fellow Web Walkers? I will try to get those miles plotted today. I have to go to the gym first, but then I will. Promise.

I have been keeping track of all my points. I got the 3 Ws of WW. Write it down, drink Water and Work out. You can now look at my food and exercise logs in the sidebar.

I was doing awesome until today. I had a PBBB breakdown. That’s a peanut butter, bread and banana breakdown. I was in an awful mood. I couldn’t stop the reel of self-loathing that was playing over and over in my brain. During this mood, it became time for me to eat lunch. Yesterday I was so good at NOT eating the peanut butter when I was making lunch for Isabelle, but today, the bananas were just ripe enough and I had to have a peanut butter and banana sandwich. Or two. Or more.

I learned something from my binging. I learned to stay away from the peanut butter when I am in a self-hating mood. I also learned that even though you have several peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, it still might be hard to get to your TPs if you didn’t have breakfast before your PBBB breakdown. Finally, I learned that I can get back on track and I don’t have to wait until tomorrow or the next day or February 15th or whatever. I can get right back on track. As soon as I admit my error, learn what I need to learn from it and forgive myself.

*sigh*

According to the WW scale, I am down 0.6#. Big whoop. I mean, I know it is better than what the scale at work said yesterday, but it still isn’t great. I went and looked back at all the weigh-ins and where I was at the beginning of this until now. Overall, I am up 0.4#. Yeah. Eleven weeks and this is what I have to show for it. Up 4/10. Of a pound.

I am going to start journaling my food and water and exercise here. I do that anyway, but I am going to put it up here. I won’t subject you all to it. If you want, you will be able to look at it. It will be under my pages heading along with my About page. Maybe that will make me more accountable and/or help me see what the problem is.

I brought my logs in to my meeting this week, to show them to my leader. She thinks I am not eating enough food. That with all the exercise that I am doing, my body is saying, “wait a minute, we’re starving in here! Hang on to some of those fat cells, we are going to need them for food later.” She also said with having the stomach flu this week, this week doesn’t count because when your body is sensing that you are sick, your metabolism slows down to conserve and use energy to help your body fight off whatever it is that is plaguing you. She said that everyone thinks that when you are sick, that you will lose weight because you aren’t eating as much and your drinking more and you are vomiting and/or having diarrhea, but it isn’t true. The opposite is usually true. You usually gain weight or maintain. She said that she thinks that next week I will see a huge difference.

I hope so. Because I am ready to do one of 2 things. Both of them pretty extreme. One is to quit altogether. Stop caring about what I am eating and drinking. Quit working out. Stop worrying about it. Buy a new wardrobe full of clothes that I can grow into. The other thing is to go to the other extreme. Work out as much as I possibly can with my work schedule and then stop eating. Only eat when I absolutely need to and then make myself puke it all up. I won’t do either of these things. If you know me at all, you know how much I hate to puke. Also, I couldn’t NOT eat. I am too weak. I don’t have that kind of willpower. I couldn’t do the first thing either because, some of you already know that, I have this bitch that lives inside my head, Chatterbox, who constantly tells me all the bad things about myself. She does get quieter when I am thinner. I wouldn’t be able to stand listening to her all the time.

I know, I sound like a nutjob. Really, Chatterbox isn’t a real person or another personality, it’s just the name I give to the negative self talk that I struggle with. It gets easier to manage when I am feeling better about my weight and looks, etc.

Alright, enough of me whining. On to the WebWalk. This week, I was the winner. Huh? How did that happen? Well, I worked 3 days this week. When I work, I walk about 2.5 miles a day, before I ever get to the gym. My total miles were 20.5 miles. Geeky Tai-Tai walked the second most amount of miles and really was just behind me at 19.74 miles. We are catching Fantastagirl a little bit! She did awesome this week, too and walked 13.8 miles. Way to go, guys. I will have them plotted a little later today. As you probably know, that website is kind of slow and especially so on Saturday mornings.

I am really crabby. I have been working my ass off at the gym. Although, figuratively and not literally, it seems. I am really discouraged. Our scale at work (I work at a clinic, remember) says I am up more that 4 pounds. I am pissed. Please don’t say the muscle versus fat thing. I don’t want to hear that because I don’t believe that it would happen this fast. Plus, I had the damn stomach flu this week and I still kept working out and I have been drinking about double the water (straight water, no additives, not coffee or pop) than I normally drink. I am really upset and angry.

I won’t do this, but I feel like completely quitting eating. Working out 2 times a day. If I have to eat, vomiting it back up. I really feel like there is no hope for me. It sucks. I am doing an hour on the treadmill tonight after work. I have to weigh in tomorrow and I am going to be completely humiliated. It sucks.

Remember that I worked out 6 of the last 7 days. I mixed it up with cardio and lifting weights. Let me tell you what I got out of that.

• I felt absolutely awesome.
• I was extremely proud of myself.
• I got some ME TIME.
• I got some time to come up with some awesome ideas for posting and/or writing in general.
• I got to listen to some awesome music.
• I didn’t have any heartburn. No need for Pepcid, Zantac, Tums.
• I didn’t have a headache after the 3rd day in a row of working out.
• Did I mention that I was extremely proud of myself?
• I walked more miles this week than last and I worked less days. That’s HUGE. I get most of my walking in at work. This means that I will have even more miles next week.

What didn’t I get out of this?

• I did not lose an ounce. Dammit.

But, looking at it this way (well, I have been telling myself all this stuff since I stepped off the scale), the positives far out weigh (punny) the negative. I will repete this mantra for as long as it takes me to accept it into my brain and believe it.

I think that I might have some of my friends from Weight Watchers stopping by. That will be exciting for me. So if you are from WW, welcome! I am happy you came. Let’s encourage each other and I will see you “lighter later”.

I will update with miles for our Minneapolis to Malibu walk later today. As soon as I hear from the other ladies.

**Update** Our miles for the week are Fantastagirl (the winner again!) with 20.63, me with 17.95 and Geeky Tai-Tai with 8.5 (awesome since she was ill this week). They are plotted on the map, so you can check out how far out of Minneapolis we are.

Yeah. I’m not. I promise. But I am so flipin’ proud of myself. So here it is, the amount that I have worked out and exactly what I have done since Saturday.

• 1/12/08: Cardio, treadmill, 60 minutes, 2.75 miles, 296 Calories (Go me!)
• 1/13/08: Cardio, treadmill, 37 minutes, 1.77 miles, 188 Calories (I had to cut it short so I could get home in time for someone’s radio show.
• 1/14/08: Strength:
  Seated leg press, 50#, 2 sets of 10
  Seated leg curl, 30#, 2 sets of 10
  Seated leg extension, 30#, 2 sets of 10
  Back extension, 40#, 2 sets of 10
  Row/rear deltoid, 30#, 2 sets of 10
  Chest press, 30#, 2 sets of 10
  Triceps press, 30#, 2 sets of 10
  Abdominal crunches, 40#, 2 sets of 10

No comments about how small the amount of weight I am lifting. I am a wimp. I will add more. I am just proud of the fact that I have been there working my ass off. In both the literal and the figurative sense of the word.

Go me, go me, lost some weight, lost some weight! Okay, it was only one pound, but that is 4 butter sticks, right Laura? I am excited. Down some more from here.

We logged our first miles on the Web Walk. Check it out. Fantastagirl was the big walker this week. Way to go, FG! I have already walked more than a quarter of what I walked last week and we are just 2 days into it. Jason and I made it to the gym both days this weekend. Very unusual for us. We are good motivators for each other. That and I have to think about catching Fantastagirl next week. lol

More water, more writing and more working out this week. I am feeling good.

I gained. Only a pound. I am not concerned. I am excited. I know. It’s weird.

I am excited because Fantastagirland I are going to be doing a virtual walk. You can read about it here, but, basically it is where you plot out a path and you keep track of the miles you walk per week and then you plot it out on your map to see how far you would be if you were actually walking on the path. We are walking from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Malibu, California. Minneapolis to Malibu. You can join us if you want. We are going to report our miles walked on Saturdays. I will plot them out on the map. I think it will be fun to see how far we can walk. Here is the map. It will be in the sidebar, too, and you can click on it from time to time to check our progress. I am really excited about this.

CommunityWalk Map - Web Walking With Us