So…

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So please excuse any typos, here I sit blogging from the latest addition to m6y fitness routine the recumbent elliptical, and yes I should be using my arms. No I’m not gonna use them right now.
Where have I been lately some of you might have been asking, ok no one is really asking I’m not so famous as to think anyone notices when I go quiet. I have been around… in likely one of 3 places. Work, home, or… the gym. I am on a many-day streak of hitting the gym getting me sweat on for 30-45 mins a day.
I don’t have to like it, infact I have even adopted what I call the Minnesota Ann rule which I am yet to use where I can go and just sit in the sauna, but I have to go. I missed one workout due to a slip and fall, I’m doing pretty good.
I don’t want to be here, but even more… I don’t want to be there.
Where is there? There is the 400+ pounder that I was that was lonely and isolated and miserable. There is the person that has no drive no desire and no feelings. There is that place where I left the old me to die. So here I am. Not watching. Living.

I am struggling right now with work, my coworker, who has terminal cancer had an accident last week, a slip and fall.  Things for me feel very different now.  I feel like I lost my partner, my backup because in a way I did. And I know I need to stand on my own at work but the mornings get lonely. I long for my friend to laugh with.

I don’t know what else to share really, the days still don’t have enough hours in them for all that I want to do, but I don’t think they ever will.  I have resumed life in the water, sundays I get to take water aerobics which is nice. I miss my old work schedule but I’m adapting to life as a surface dwelling daywalker-sorta.
Be well my friends

Choices

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Do you ever feel trapped?  Like you will forever be fat? Destined to live the eternal life as the fat friend in the photos, the big one in your family, the one that never truly keeps the weight off? 

Do you ever feel like it doesn’t matter what you do it always remains the same?  Yep, that s where I have been lately.  Playing mini pity-party.  Looking at the picture, and thinking I have no choices it is be fat or be fat.  Truly we always have a choice.  Be fat and happy or be fat and miserable. Be fat and work to change things you don’t like, or be fat and work to make things worse. 

As I sat last night on the recumbent bike riding, being miserable, I thought about change.  I thought about the passion I used to have for working out.  I thought about my love for water aerobics, and my desire to outlast everyone in the gym on the elliptical.  Where had it gone.  My new job had killed the old me, or rather, the new me that came with this job had become complacent when I changed gyms. 

See the SNAP fitness I joined turned out to not be right for me.  It was more of a weight lifting gym, and I STILL don’t know how to use machines, not to mention it was more free weights than machines.  The arc trainer, which I tried so hard to enjoy, turned out to be more of an enduring thing.  The pain it caused in my hip was just not worth the price of admission.  I never built a community there, and I found myself doing things like taking walks around the lake for exercise to avoid going to the gym. Not that that’s a bad alternative but it isn’t truly exercise in the same way.

So as I said a few days ago on twitter, don’t mess with what works.  I have gone back to the YWCA in Minneapolis.  Just off Lake Street.  I have been everyday since I joined.  My schedule, with as many hours as I work, doesn’t allow me to workout like I once did, so burnout shouldn’t creep in as fast, but I know it will… because I have been complacent in my workout. 

Those choices I talked about not having, I had, and I made them… I made the choice to go home right after work, get in my jammies, cook dinner and be a lazy ass.  I admit I made bad choices and they have led me to gain some weight back.  I am not happy about it but I am the first to admit it.  My pants are tight, and it is uncomfortable.  I don’t like it.  Everyday after work I am heading to the gym.  45 mins is my compromise, I don’t have to like it I just have to do it.  I can spend those 45 mins however I like, on a bike, on an elliptical on the treadmill… sitting in the sauna if I really want to waste my own time. but I have to go. 

I thought about making Saturday morning optional, and it might be, after a while, bodies need a rest day, but breaking routine isn’t a good thing, but I get to go in the morning.  I think I might try Zumba Saturdays there is a class that looks like it might work with my schedule, and it might be fun, but I am totally uncoordinated, and if not I still should get in and do something.  This past weekend I got in.  Then Sundays are my Water Aerobics class!!! YAY!!! Back in the water again… where I belong, with my cohorts.  I went this Sunday and it was like being home.  The water caressed my skin and eased my pain. 

I was sorrowful for the time I had been away from it, but not for long, I jumped right back to my old self in class, enjoying banter with the other ladies, and catching up with the teacher.  It was a nice time, it was good to be back, and that Sunday Morning ritual should be an easy one to keep.

So I made the choice, to go back to something that worked, even if it isn’t quite in the same manner that it was.  I had to remind myself that there is always a choice, even if you don’t like the choices that are there.  Once you make that choice, you get new choices, and deciding not to decide is indeed a decision on its own, and not really a good decision. 

So back at it I go… again.

And Really Bad Eggs, or Not!

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So I have been bringing my food to work for a while, and not too long ago I had a disastrous experience with some eggs at work.  I made eggcups, where you prebake the eggs in muffin tins and just reheat them.  I filled the eggs with spinach and ham and all kinds of good things that I love in my eggs.  I was excited to have something great for breakfast at work… The first day I brought them… was the last day I brought them.  I spent the day nauseated.  I didn’t want to think about eating for days after.  I was indeed sick.  There was a myriad of things that contributed to my sicknedd I am sure, but the entire batch went into the garbage faster than I could imagine.

The past few weeks I have been wanting eggs for breakfast, I bought a few of those frozen breakfast bowl things from Jimmy Dean.  I had coupons from the paper, but Oh My they are waaay too expensive to make that any kind of realistic option to sustain.  I tried the turkey sausage one, which was really *meh* at best and the Ham Bowl.  *insert ham dance*  Now we all know how happy ham makes me… for some ungodly reason ham is like a food of the gods to me… it sings a happy song… (no muppets were harmed in the making of my breakfast, or my infamous pink fuzzy hat)

So this morning I decided to take my hand back at making an eggmug again.  I filled my Pyrex bowl with eggbeaters and a slice of ham (ham ham ham ham ham ham!!!!!) and a smattering of pepper and spices before I left the house and once things here at work settled down I got my bowl out and nuked it.

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While I am not going to win any awards for creativity with my breakfast today, no veggies in it lunch is just lettuce and asorted veggies, I get my hammy eggs for breakfast packed full of protein, and it was a whole lot cheaper than the near $3.00 that Jimmy Dean wanted to sock me for yesterday, and I know what is in my breakfast.  So far it is sitting just fine in my tummy and that makes me a happy camper.  Maybe my eggy mornings can make a return afterall!

Live Big, Dream Bigger

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So yesterday I met my friend Liz for coffee.  Despite me being sick and battling losing my voice, My outcry for help on twitter earlier this week went answered.  Liz got up before 8am, and out of the house to meet me for coffee and try to help me figure out why I am stuck.

We sat at a local coffee shop for nearly two hours talking about where I am, in lots of aspects of my life.  We talked about everything from the eating and exercise component, which I have mostly nailed at this point, but can always stand to use some tweaking, to my job and relationships and the dreaded future.

Yesterday I set two mini-goals with Liz’s help, stop enabling those around me to eat badly by purchasing cookies and doughnuts etc. (which I do for the office, and others around me).  I also intend to get off my diet soda habit again.  Last year at this time I gave up my diet coke habit and it has been finding its way back into my diet now that I am in the office.  On Friday I found that I consumed 3 or 4 cans of caffeine free diet coke.  This is not acceptable!  How much water did I have in that same amount of time that day? NONE!

Another thing we talked about was my job, and how unfulfilled I am.  It is no secret to anyone that sees me at the end of my day that this job is taking its toll on me.  It doesn’t give back, it doesn’t build me up or give my life meaning, it is a job. The tough part of the equation here is that I feel tuck, I need the money from the job, and I don’t know that I am qualified to do much else.  I lack the self-esteem and the knowledge of what else is out there.

Liz gave me some homework of researching 3 potential jobs of my choosing and how to get there, meaning what schooling is required, how much time would it take etc.  Trouble is I am unsure of what jobs I want, or would be good at.  If I suddenly won the lottery and didn’t have to work, would I walk away from my job?  Honestly, yes, but not until they had someone to replace me that was competent.  What would I do after that?  I don’t know, and that is the honest answer.  I know I would want to be somewhere that I could help people who were in the situation I was in.  Overweight, giving up hope, or struggling wanting to change their lives, wanting to get better these are the people I want to build up.  If I could do anything I would love to just be able to talk to these people, tell them not to give up, be a professional cheerleader to them.  I want to inspire people I want to keep them focused on what they want for themselves.  I want them to want success for them as much as I want it for them because in all honesty, I want success for each of my friends quite possibly more than some of them want it for themselves.  I just don’t know how to go about doing that.

I do know that I am not doing that at my job.  The closest I get to doing something that give back at my job is when we do some sort of transport of medical equipment, or transplant type stuff.  When I was young I had such clear goals I was going to be a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon… and then I started college, and realized that due to the lack of preparation I had from my highschool years and previous that I was basically going to have to start over from scratch in remedial classes, I switched majors, continued to work on my weaknesses and explored other options.  It was a slap in the face. I struggled so much at Penn State, and as my health faded, so did my grades and eventually I just stopped going to classes.

I let my failure be the bar by which I measure my worth.  I don’t have a college degree.  I have taken shit for it from people in my life who call themselves my friends.  I have taken shit for it from my family, why don’t you just go back to school.  Well, I still have to work, I still have weight to lose, there are hundreds of reasons.  I also, don’t know what I want to do.

I don’t know what I would be good at.  English isn’t my strong suit and the idea of having to write a paper terrifies me.  So what is a girl to do? Keep plugging along telling myself I can’t change my situation.  I have a resume together for a temp agency, but I feel like that i going to put me in the same situation I am in now, where it is still just going to be a job.  A job where I am unfulfilled a job where I give, and don’t feel.

Liz told me I need to learn to dream bigger for myself, and figure out what I want from my life.  I don’t know what I want from life… how does anyone go about figuring out what they want.  I mean I am 30, and clearly after this long I should have an idea right?  Knowing I was struggling with this we decided that perhaps the better place to start is knowing what I don’t want.  So that is where I am starting from right now.  What do I know I don’t want… Heck, most nights I can’t decide what I do and don’t want for dinner, how am I supposed to decide what I want for the rest of my life?!

I thought this was a weight loss blog.

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So if you look back through my blog lately there is just a bunch of bullshit. Really honest to god bullshit. Have you noticed? I certainly have and I don’t like it!

I know that this blog is a place for ME to write about all the struggles and changes that have occurred during the changes of my weight loss but oh my goodness, there has been no weight loss, there has been no weight loss in about a year… I am coming clean. I feel like a fraud. I am living healthy, and the only measure I ever had was the progress of the scale. I never had inches measured, I never had anything other than the scale, and the scale is no longer my friend.

Yes I can use other measures of success like how clothes fit, but those changes have slowed to a stop as well. My fear is that my body has reached that dreaded “stasis point” I have done all kinds of things at this weight to try and get it to shed some more pounds. I have tried eating more, eating less, working out more, working out less, and there I sit fluxing in the same window of weight.
I am endlessly frustrated, to the point of tears. I want to give up so much of the time. I just want to curl up and eat until I can’t move. I want to eat until I am uncomfortable. I want to be reminded of how horrible that time in my life was. That is not the answer. I am not going to do that. However I don’t know what the answer is.
I am not loving my new gym, while the owner is OMG smokin hot, it just isn’t working for me going after work. After I put in 10+ hours in the stress filled, emotional environment that I am in, I find that I just need to decompress, and when I go to the gym I am not getting a release, I am getting more stress. Stress that my hard work is all for nothing. I know losing weight is easy, okay well not easy, but calories in vs calories out, so perhaps scientific is a better way to phrase it. Why can’t I seem to re-crack my own code?
Making the choice to eat healthy is easy for me, I went to the Seward Co-Op lat night and made a HUGE salad, and didn’t bat an eye picking red peppers and cucumbers and onions and skipping all the old pitfalls like croutons and ranch dressing. I don’t miss those things. When I got home I measured out my 2 Tablespoons of dressing for 80 calories, shook my salad and ate it with a piece of chicken. It was great! However temptation lurks around every corner.
My freezer is currently loaded with things like Haagen Dazs Caramel Biscuit Ice Cream and southern style biscuits, and frozen cheese tortellini. The Baking rack in my place, along with pots and pans is home to Oreo cookies (Happy 100th birthday Oreo, thanks for making me hear about you nonstop for an entire day!), and pretzels, and Cheetos, and all kinds of other things. It is like temptation island. One cookie wont kill me, but one before work, then one after work adds up.
I am meeting with a friend today in hopes of getting inspired again, I know I am not going to throw in the towel, but it just seems like such a good idea some days. In light of how sick I have been in the last week or so it just seems like an easy answer. No worrying about how many calories are in the cough drops I am downing to try and get my voice to last through jut one more phone call at work. I know that this is going to be a lifelong struggle, but I guess I had hopes that I wouldn’t have this much of a problem until I was a little closer to my goal.
I need to succeed, this journey wasn’t about weight loss in the beginning it was about living a healthier life, well, I think it is time to change my mindset and really focus on that.
Lean cuisines, salads, and fruit-cups may just have to be a way of life for me again for a while. Also eating the same food everyday for each meal as much as I detest that may also become a staple. It will not be fun but it may have to happen.
I am unsure what it is going to take to get me back out of the slow lane and on the fast track, but I sure as shit cant sit here letting my friends pass me by and life start to do the same. So please, reach out to me, sent me a tweet a text a Facebook message, leave me a comment, bug the crap out of me. As I adjust to the time-change I will also be adjusting to trying to workout before work. May as well make that adjustment at the same time right?
Nothing changes if nothing changes… and something has to change.
This is a weight loss blog… not a weight watcher blog. I am tired of watching my weight do what it wants to, time to grab the power seat again!