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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Almost There!

I'm almost there! Almost six months and 65+ pounds (and God knows how much blood, sweat and tears), as of last Friday I was 20.8 pounds away from my WW goal weight.

That's not to say the work is done, not by a long shot. In a literal sense, my Weight Watchers goal weight is slightly higher than I'd like, but seeing as I can allocate the $10 a week I'm currently paying them to other avenues, I'm taking the highest goal weight I can at this point. Realistically, at 5' 3" (ok, 5' 2 1/2") 141 is a tad heavy, but I have a good feeling that it's sustainable (more on that later). For a sense of record setting-ness, I'd like to get down to just under 129 so I can say I've lost 100 pounds.

Numbers aside, I know that the real work is really just beginning.

I'm good at losing weight, REALLY good at gaining weight, but crap at maintaining it.

The last time I got down to "skinny for me", I freaked out. I couldn't shake the mentality of constantly losing, and I certainly couldn't get my head around maintaining, occasionally splurging, and gaining a rogue pound or two.

I make no secret of the fact that I abused my body. I ran 3.2 miles a day, and Curves 3 times a week, rain or shine, sick or healthy. I had surgery to repair a hernia and stubbornly stuck to Plan and three days post surgery humped a very heavy recumbent bike into the exercise area of the house so I could knock a few miles out.

When the doctor cleared me to run again, I did so immediately. I made excuses to avoid social situations, ran daily, and when I did splurge, I panicked. Let me clarify, my definition of a splurge then was an extra 100 calorie pack, or some extra fat free chips.

I treated it like a full-blown binge. I rammed my fingers down my throat, took some laxatives. Those mini-binges grew into bull blown binges. They included whatever I could find in the freezer - pizza rolls, ice cream, casserole. One shameful night, went from store to store looking for syrup of ipecac because I couldn't make myself barf, and I was terrified of seeing a gain on the scale. I realized I was out of control when I was "caught". I had gone out around 10:00 pm searching for the substance and in that time, my mother came downstairs for one reason or another. I wasn't in bed, wasn't in the kitchen and my car was gone. I came home and found mom sitting in the kitchen asking me where I was. I came up with some excuse, but I knew I was on borrowed time.

It went on for a few more days when I finally cracked. I called my sister...sitting on the floor of the kitchen after another binge, sobbing. I went to the doctor the next day who scolded me like the child I was acting like, and told me that if I didn't tell my family she would. My sister actually did the deed. I went into therapy where I remained for two years.

I've never actually talked about it with my parents, and it hasn't come up with my sister since, except in vague terms. Now that my goal weight in pending, I'm concerned.

I've made some progress. I have had days, hell, weeks, off program and I've trained myself not to get on the scale. I know it will go up, and I know how I will react. But soon I'll need to learn how to not be on lose mode. I'll need to accept that some days the scale will be up, others it will be down. I'll need to develop a healthy relationship with the treadmill.

How do you do it? Maintain a healthy weight, work out in moderation and stay sane? That's where the hard work begins for me. Screw losing. Maintaining is the real (and boring work). Give me the Biggest Maintainer NBC. There's your next big hit.

That is when I'll really need your support.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Before Deadline, Under Budget

I broke the 4 mile barrier today. Yes, it was on a treadmill, and the incline was set to zero, but I'm going to take it.

I said in a prior blog my goal was to get to four miles by February. This week I really tried to work on it despite a cold. Yesterday I was able to do 3.85 (pre breakfast) and today I ran 4.05 miles. What I'm even happier about was I didn't plan to run today.

I went to a dinner party last night where I blew my Points allowance for the day away (lasagna, bread, brie, and wine, glorious wine). I had planned for it, working out just under two hours on Friday, and running for 40 minutes earlier in the day. Mentally, I had planned a gentler workout, walking (on the treadmill...it's 32 degrees here in PA - outdoors is not an option for this asthmatic wuss). I put a DVR'd episode of Desperate Housewives on, and decided to run for 15 minutes to kick start my workout.

After I got to 15 minutes, I decided to go for 5 more, then another 5 and so on. The show was almost over, and I was at the same distance as yesterday, 3.84. What the hell, I thought, let's go for 4, then I ran until the full minute had passed.

When I was done I had run for 42 minutes and had clocked a little over 4 miles. A half marathon, which I plan to run in November, is 13.1, so I obviously have a ways to go, and I need to translate that into self propelled (i.e. outdoor) running, but all of that said, I wasn't able to go further than a little over 3 miles and for longer than 35 minutes over 3 years ago, weighing 30 pounds less. So all in all, I'm pretty happy with today. Now I need to keep increasing, both the length and duration of my runs, and add in some inclines.

I'm not there yet, but I'm on my way.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Faith

I don’t talk about religion much, at all actually. Some of that has to do with my education (K though 12 at a Catholic school). We had religion/theology daily, so what was there to talk about? There is also the matter of “turn about is fair play” in my mind. If I talk to you about my faith, than you have a fair shot to talk to me about yours. There is too much of a chance of evangelization, which frankly makes me uncomfortable. Also, believe it or not, there are some things that I feel are private. Religion is one (sex is the other, in case you’re wondering).

That said, I was re-reading my “100 Things About Me” post (http://bethina74.blogspot.com/p/moi.html), and noticed a few things that need updating, not that I’ve actually updated them, but at least I’ve noticed it. One of those things was number 18 - I try to pray every night even though I don’t consider myself to be especially religious. That has changed since I originally wrote it. Somewhere along the line, I stopped praying. Life seemed to be sucking, despite how much I prayed for it not to. I asked God nightly to give me strength to change – my weight, my life, my personal finances, even my love life. I also asked God to keep my family healthy and safe.

Then I got rejected by someone (He Who Shall Not Be Named, formerly known as BATS) who I thought liked me.

My finances got worse, not better.

My grandmother got Alzheimer’s, and it didn’t get better, in fact, it seemed to get worse.

My grandfather died.

Somewhere along the line, I began to believe that God stopped listening, so I stopped talking to him.

I’m beginning to question this line of thinking now.

I’m not ready to go into the details (and full and fair disclosure, not sure if I ever, in this forum, ever will), but last Friday/Saturday I think I hit rock bottom, for me. For the first time in a long time, I prayed last Saturday night. Things didn’t change, but when I woke up on Sunday, life seemed a bit better.

I started thinking about this last night, when I ordered a t-shirt with the following slogan: Love Jesus? Hate Bigotry?, thinking it was (a) pretty awesome and (b) a nice advertisement for a blog that I think has a great message. After I hit the “Buy Now” button, I got to thinking, this shirt could initiate some conversations at the gym (where I intend to wear it), which I’m not sure I’m 100% comfortable with. But I still want to wear the shirt. I do love Jesus (I don’t think I have ever expressed that since, like, 2nd grade), but I’m not ready to discuss Jesus. Because that means you get to talk to me (and therefore evangelize) about your religion. I’m not an advertisement for Catholicism, my particular “flavor” of Christianity. I have a number of problems with the practices and politics of the Catholic Church, which I won’t go into here. I’ve explored other denominations, but Catholicism feels comfortable to me, like my favorite sweat pants (which I want to be buried in, FYI).

So where is this going? Nowhere particularly meaningful most likely for those of you who have read the past 500+ words. It’s just something I needed to “put pen to paper to”.

Do I pray nightly now? No. Do I think God listens? Perhaps. I’m still trying to keep the faith. It’s a process.

FYI, if you are intrigued by the shirt I mentioned, the blog it’s connected to is here: http://johnshore.com

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

What Have I Just Done?

Back in the dark ages when I was in grammar school, we had PE (or "Gym" as it we called it them) somewhere around once a week. I seem to recall it going in fits and starts, and we had a rotating cast of teachers, much like the position of Defence Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts. No single teacher seemed to last more than a year, or at least that's how I remember it.

We had one instructor who had each grade perform a choreographed routine in front of the whole school. Another who had us play basketball during our appointed time, and yet another who had us do some stupid chicken dance like routine set to a song called "Chicken Fat" (which has forever been imprinted on my brain, and the reason why I only buy skinless chicken).

I, like many, despised Gym, coming up with excuses that would make Tommy Flanagan (SNL) proud. I'd "forget" my gym clothes, have my period (once I was of age of course, and fortunately they never cottoned on to the fact that I either had the world's longest menstrual period, or got it every 7 days), schedule an orthodontist appointment (parental cooperation was needed), be called for Jury Duty, get caught in a natural disaster. You get the point.

One task that I specifically recall was the 12 minute mile (bear with me, it may have been 10, but for some reason 12 is the number sticking with me). I hated this one. On the one hand, we had to run, unsupervised, around the block that our school/church was situated on (ahhh, the 80s) and as long as you took off at a fairly decent trot in front of the Gym teacher, you could slack off and practically crawl the rest of the way. However, at some point down the line, a stop watch came into play. It was decreed that all of us had to be able to run a mile in the determined time, 12 minutes.

This was torture on so many levels.

First of all, I hated running. I'm still not entirely fond of it, but I do it fairly regularly now and voluntarily run specific distances (more on that later). But then? Ugh. Admittedly, I have asthma which was undiagnosed at this point. Plus, until I was 17, I was fairly well developed, and didn't discover sports bras until I was in my teens. I also was a sprinter. I'd take off and run hell bent for leather until I either puked or got a stitch in my side.

I know there were kids in my class that were more out of shape than I was, and I was barely able to make it in the perscribed time. I'm not sure what the penalty was if you couldn't finish the mile under the time limit. To my knowledge, nobody dropped dead, so they lucked out there.

What's my point in this? The point is that I've just committed to my friends, Weight Watchers and Facebook that I, Beth Adams, am going to run a Half Marathon in November. Of this year.

Stop laughing.

I've been running off at the mouth (pardon the pun) for about two months about wanting to do a half. I'm not sure why I have this fixated in my head. As you may recall, one of my New Years Resolutions was to run a longer race than my normal 5k. A 10k would make more sense. But no, idiot girl goes ahead and says I'm going to run 13.1 miles in roughly 11 months. I'm not all that fond of driving 13 consecutive miles, so I'm pretty sure running it is going to be an effort.

On one hand, I have 11 months to train. On the other, I have 11 months to procrastinate. I'm fairly certain I'm going to wake up on one cold, fall morning and realize that the race is weeks, if not days, away.

So, I need a plan and since I rarely actually do something unless I've put it on paper or out in cyberspace, I'm sharing it with you.

My goal is to increase the distance I run, which I try to do 3 times a week (or more). I'm currently clocking 3 and change (small change), so my goal is to increase that to 4 by February. Then there are training plans I can follow once I get my distance up.

Stay tuned (and seriously, stop laughing).