mighty mighty

Bet you didn't think you'd find me here again quite so soon....

2007-07-11T20:57:00.001-03:00

...and yet, here I am.

There are challenges ahead, I know. Things are tough...Taco and I are both super busy right now, me with work and writing, he with a music workshop and with gigs. And good god, we are broke broke broke, oh, so broke. And busy, did I mention busy? And so the house is a mess, and the bills need paying, and I keep making these to-do lists on scraps of paper, folding them a frillion times and cramming them in my pockets and then, you know, forgetting about them, and the things on them. Oh, Sisyphus, you had nothing on me. Nothing, I say! No one is better than me at rolling the same stupid rock up the same stupid hill a zillion stupid times.

No one.

Taco very kindly tonight pointed out that things are tough because we've let them get that way, but now that we're aware of just how tough things are, now we'll look at things head on, and deal with them, and not look away and pretend there's nothing wrong. We stood in the garden in the fog and had this chat and though the sky was getting darker and the fog thicker, all I could see was the light going on. Because this is what I've done: I've looked to the side, pretended that what's in front of me isn't as bad as it actually is. That if I just ignore it long enough, it'll go away.

What do you know, turns out I was wrong. It doesn't go away...whether it's a power bill or twenty or thirty pounds (not to put too fine a point on it, you see). Whether it's the result of a new water heater and just not looking at the bill for two months, or the result of chocolate and bread and oh-i'll-exercise-tomorrow/next week/next month. It doesn't go away. In fact, it gets worse. And then you get hit with a number you'd rather not see, whether on the bill's bottom line or the scale's.

The trick, though, is to catch it. To catch it, to look it in the eye, to do something--whatever it takes--to stop it, to fix it, to turn it around. In the case of the bills, it's a new tenant, starting in August, and a new austerity starting right now. In the case of the scale, it's water and walking and yoga.

And vigilance. Vigilance all round.

Bet you didn't think you

2007-07-11T20:56:00.000-03:00

Your command, my wish, as it turns out

2007-07-10T22:50:00.001-03:00

So there I am, surfing over to Body of Work, as is my pretty-much-daily habit these days, because I am addicted to the writing of Anne. And there, on the front page at Elastic Waist is a little yoo-hoo to yours truly.

Funny, that. I was just thinking, as I waited a microsecond for the page to load, it's time to head over to Mighty Mighty, blow the dust off, see if anyone's still around. Heh.

I mean, here's the kind of day it's been: Late to bed, early to crank off the alarm, reluctantly up, 40-minute walk. Come home, make breakfast, absent-mindedly undercook Taco's boiled eggs by five minutes, yecch. Drive him to his music workshop, come home, pack lunch, ride bike to work, workity work work work all day, race home on bike, make healthy supper with husbandly help, dash off to writers' group meeting, come home, begin to think about blogging, suddenly cat sits up, coughs in a horrifying portentous way and pukes in the wicker chair. Minutes later, husband frantically demanding towels and terrible burnt sugar smell fills house as home-made beer boils over and courses down stove and across kitchen floor like horrible, inevitable lava. Sacrifice old but still good (well, not any more) bath towel and two tea towels to the cause, retreat from kitchen, sticky-footed and sighing.

And I hate to tell you, but that's actually kind of a normal day.

All of which is to say that my main issue continues...which is that I am a creature of habit, which is great when my habits are good and my routine can continue unmarred. But the last year...has been a trial, frankly. So much good stuff...the renovation stopped the house from sliding into the backyard. Marrying Taco was the smartest thing I've ever done. Seeing my novel actually get published was pretty frigging awesome also. The new job, and then the other new job, have also rocked. And the French lessons, don't forget those. It's all great and positive stuff.

But it railroaded my routine. First to go was exercise, quickly followed by healthful eating.

I am making overtures to my old healthy habits, trying to win them back. Setting small goals...daily walks. Two litres of water. Three pilates or yoga sessions a week. Two days in, I'm hitting it out of the park on walks, am batting about five hundred on the water, and am considering a pinch hitter for the yoga/pilates...whoa, my metaphor fell apart. I mean, I'm planning for those sessions over the next five days.

Meanwhile, I am diligently packing a lunch and eating healthful snacks.

Right now, it feels like all I can do. So I do it. And we'll see, you know? We'll just see.

Recommitted and it feels so...good, I guess

2007-02-13T22:30:00.000-04:00

I started tracking again yesterday. It takes forever. But I do love the numbers.

Except for the number on the scale, and worse, the ones on the tape measure. Those, I do not love. I am working to never see those particular numbers again. And this time I mean it.

Today was good. Ate well and copiously, then hit the gym and worked out for nearly two hours, which felt great. I had all kinds of energy due, no doubt, to the good food I ate all day.

Walked home in the freezing cold. Was too beat to make the curried greens I'd been dreaming of all day, so instead I ate the last of the sweet potato peanut soup I made on Sunday (damn good) and a big salad. We got our first organic food box delivery last night, and now the fridge is stuffed with gorgeous food. I'll make those curried greens tomorrow night.

So, at the gym...it turns out I can "run" on the elliptical. I pushed myself and got up to a pretty reasonable speed, and it doesn't hurt my knee, and the endorphins feel pretty damn good. So THAT'S what everyone's talking about. Huh.

Hello?

2007-02-01T19:15:00.000-04:00

I could have sworn I was here more recently than November, but apparently not.

I can't say I have much to report. I am slowly trying to get a grip on things. I have gained back...um...about 20 pounds. It kills me to have to tell you this. There are reasons/excuses. That whole renovating/planning a wedding/finishing my novel thing I had going on all fall. A change in my job brought along a change in routine that made getting to the gym difficult and all but blew our daily morning walk out of the water.

And holy smokes, that morning walk was effective. Even on the weeks when I could do no other exercise, that morning walk helped me maintain. The walk is coming back. We start Monday. If it's cold, if we're tired, doesn't matter. Monday morning, we walk.

What else? I need to start tracking again. I logged in at Weightloss Resources the other day out of curiousity and was surprised to find my account still active. I thought I'd cancelled it. Apparently not.

I want to get back to it. I feel much better when I weigh less. My knees are starting to get a bit achy again, and I don't have the energy and verve I remember having this time last year.

I can tell you that I've been back to the gym twice this week and it has felt amazing both times. Tomorrow I have an 8am French class, but I will aim to get up early and do a half hour yoga abs dvd. And tomorrow night, Taco has an out-of-town gig, so no Friday night date for us. Instead, I will go to the gym after work.

All I can do is keep doing the best I can, until it becomes natural again.

In which our heroine gamely admits that she has lost the plot

2006-11-16T19:24:00.001-04:00

But sadly, not the weight.

No friends, quite the opposite. The grim fact is, some of the weight (not all!) has come back. I have allowed it to come back. I am not happy about this. I am not proud of this. It is what it is, which is...not great.

I can feel it, too, this fat suit I thought I'd left behind (for a slightly smaller fat-suit, that is, but still). My clothes are a little tighter and less flattering, my right knee feels all hinky again, my muscles feel...non-existant.

Part of it was wedding and renovation stress (oh yeah! I'm totally married now! It's wicked. Here, to distract you, are some photos), part of it is my stupid work schedule that eats up all my time every day and renders me a bump on a log of a chair with wheels. Part of it is...I don't know. A feeling that everything else was out of control for a while, which always makes me anxious and when I'm anxious like that, I eat.

And then I just plain old didn't get to the gym very much, and started eating chocolate and bread every day, and you know, that way madness lies. And I stopped weighing myself, and headed back to that happy town called Denial.

Well, baby, I am back. Tentatively. I am working hard to be back, let's put it that way. I know I need to start tracking. I need to figure out the exercise thing, and just stop being so frigging busy all the time, or maybe prioritize the exercise thing on the weekends, instead of trying to fit it in around my stupid work schedule (which will be changing in January, thank god). I need to get my head straight about this whole enterprise, again. Because I liked the way I was feeling, and I don't like the way I'm feeling now.

Writing here is a massive first step.

And I lost about a pound this week, just by being a bit more conscientious.

So that's positive. And the rest, I will keep working on.

Third verse, same as the first

2006-08-15T22:16:00.000-03:00

"June 22," Taco said last night. "Do you know what you did on June 22?"
"Hmm," I said. "Second day of summer. Two days after our anniversary. I...um...oh. Updated my blog. That's the last time I updated my blog, yeah."

Yeah.

Hi! So, um, where have I been all this time?

Well, we went on vacation. And then we came back. And then we started dealing with the back of the house, which is kind of sliding off the front of the house. And I went back to work, and worked on refinancing the mortgage (see above re: sliding house parts), and addressed our wedding invitations, and a hundred thousand other things/excuses.

And, ok, I guess I'm having a hard time lately. Vacation kicked it off, of course. I'd been doing so well before that. Boot camp twice a week on Citadel Hill early in the morning had me pretty trim, with great muscle tone. Then, um, vacation. There was a bridal shower for me, with crustless sandwiches and frillions of small desserts. Those small desserts reappeared frequently during our three-week vacation. And so did my love of beer. And all my glorious plans to walk every morning? Yeah, not so much.

So then we came home, and I kept eating as if we were still on vacation. And not so much, again, with the working out.

Still, I did walk a lot while we were away, because that's what you do. And I've been eating mostly pretty well since we got back, I'm just eating too much of it. I've gained around 5 pounds I think. Which isn't the end of the world, but is definitely the wrong direction in which to be heading, especially since, you know, the lovely green dress that is being made for me in another city, that I won't be able to try on till the week before the wedding, and that won't fit if I don't carve off at least those five pounds in the next month and a half.

The good news it is certainly do-able. The good news is I have been spumping twice a week (Spumping = half hour of spin, half hour of body bar, a whole lotta awesome), and walking at least twice a week, and busting out random toning exercises many evenings if I'm watching tv. The good news is I want to turn the ship around.

Sigh. Here we go again...

Old dog, meet new trick

2006-06-22T21:30:00.000-03:00

Alright, alright, I’ll post already, in the hopes it will quiet the nagging voice in my head.

Here’s the thing. Or one of them, anyhow. There may be a few things. Ahem.

Thing The First
I completed an awesome three-week, twice-a-week outdoor bootcamp, led by…oh, god, it’s been so long, I forget what clever name I gave her…right, right: The Asskicker. And indeed, she was. She kicked my ass up and down Citadel Hill, Tuesday and Thursday mornings for an hour. It was phenomenal. Way, way better than any class I’ve taken at any gym, and brother, I’ve taken lots of those. It was super challenging, we worked out even in the pouring rain, and I noticed results FAST. Which is great because…

Thing The Second
I am having a little…ummm…trouble with food. Some weeks, terrifically hungry, other weeks, not hungry at all. So, some days, I weigh 206 and other days, 211. I do not go below 206 no matter what. Could I go above 211? I’d prefer not to find out. Why am I doing this? Good question…

Thing The Third
It all comes down to routine. Every. Goddamn. Time. So, I hosted the morning show, had two days off, then started producing the afternoon show. Totally different schedule, totally different set of pressures and challenges…totally turned my eating upside down. In a couple different ways. My old job was so easy and therefore boring that I snacked ALL DAY to alleviate the boredom. Usually, I’d snack on healthy stuff, but still, snacking. This job, I don’t have a spare second for snacking. The pace is nuts, and I’m still learning the ropes, and it’s LIVE RADIO which frankly terrifies me and so, you know, not so much with the snacking. But then, when I get home from work at 6:15, I am RAVENOUS and also so relieved that I’ve successfully (or, heh, not) put another show on the air. And so I eat mindlessly. A little frantically, in fact. As if I’d learned nothing over the last almost two years. Cripes. The other thing that’s going on is that Taco’s schedule has been all over the place, so he’s hardly home for supper. I usually can’t be bothered to make supper if it’s just me eating, so I graze. A LOT.

So that’s all kind of stupid. Can’t be bothered to make supper for myself? What the holy hell? It is so easy for me to forget to esteem myself at least as highly as I do those I care for. So frigging easy. Why is it so easy, internet, why? Why must I keep attempting to learn the same basic lesson? What will it take for me to finally get it, and keep it? Start living it? If you know, by all means, pipe up.

It’s complicated because I keep receiving positive feedback, even though my performance has not been where it should be. I purchased, and am currently wearing, knee-length shorts in a size 14 regular. Fourteen! What the? And all day, every day, people are telling me I look great. Most days, I can even see that for myself. I see my hands are thinner. My butt is more toned. I look normalish when I catch myself in the mirror. Not thin, by any standards, but not the kind of fat the lizard part of my brain still believes I am.

I am conflicted about this, though. It feels like denial, a subject about which I simply must write more, because to a large extent it is part of my problem.

I will write about it this weekend. I am recommitting to myself. I actually signed up for Nicole’s challenge, over at AFW (would love to include a nifty link here, but the mac laptop and the blogger website are not really on great terms, so…you can find the link in my sidebar). I registered at Spark People, and goddamn it, I’m going to get on top of this. My yoga summer pass kicks in on Monday. And in the meantime, there’s walking, weight training and pilates to do.

Arf!

Baby got back, is back

2006-05-15T16:30:00.000-03:00

There's so much going on in the blogosphere right now. Favourite writers taking a break*, maybe forever. Other favourite writers cropping up* again. And still other favourite writers writing some of my favourite things* lately.

And then there's me. Not much for writing these days, for the usual variety of reasons.

The exercise, it continues. I'm averaging three days a week at the gym, and four days a week worth of walks. The weather is getting progressively nicer, and my morning schedule has gone all to hell (more on that in a sec), so the morning walks are becoming afternoon or evening walks, and are getting a little longer, which is great. It's still my favourite (that word again!) form of exercise. I mean, I love a good body bar class, and no one could separate me from cardio strip for long, but walking, oh, walking. You get to check out your neighbours' gardens and paint jobs and pets, and get a little cardio at the same time. Big fan, big big fan.

The eating is...so-so. I've been tracking, and then not tracking. The tracking made me realise that I was definitely over-eating when I wasn't tracking. Occasionally I love tracking, the numbers and the stats, watching the exercise minutes stack up, seeing how many grams of protein I'm managing. But ultimately, the tracking is tedious. I know it's what I have to do if I want to succeed at this, but lordy, how I fight against it.

So I am trying, mainly, to listen to my body, and to listen to my mind. A tall order, I assure you. It works about 80 percent of the time. Eighty percent of the time, I have some edible item in my hand, about to mindlessly insert it into my mouth and I stop and say to myself, "hey, dude, you don't really need that food. Nor do you really want it. Put it back, yo." And 80 percent of the time I do just that. The other 20 percent I either don't wake up in time, or I reply to myself, "put it back? Uhhh, no." Still, since we tend not to keep crap around the house, it's more often than not a piece of fruit. Once in a while it's baked corn chips and salsa. Maybe once a week it's something less healthful. Over all, it's ok. Not perfect, but ok.

In other food news: salad. I believe my love of salad is well-documented here. I eat it most every night, alongside whatever else we're having, unless we're having something Asian or Indian. It's just the way I grew up. A big green salad, every night, eaten at the end of the meal. Like a green dessert. But savoury. ANYHOW. We've been buying these largish tubs of organic spring mix, and just haven't been able to get through them before they start to go off. Till Taco had a brilliant idea, one that frankly has revolutionised my supper-making. Why not just HAVE SALAD FOR DINNER. Not with dinner. FOR DINNER.

Genius.

I'm not even kidding. Though I love salad, I have a somewhat complicated relationship with it. I am picky about it. I won't eat day-old salad. I prefer, above all others, a simple green salad--lettuce, tomato-cucumber, avocado, olive oil, vinegar, a few herbs. I usually don't order it in restaurants because theirs isn't as good as mine. And JUST salad for supper? Hmmm. And yet, and yet. The goodness! Especially since I stopped being so precious about my green salad and starting expanding my boundaries.

We've had Nicoise, made with tilapia instead of tuna, because Taco prefers it that way. We've had a killer black bean and corn and greens salad with a spicy lime dressing. We've had an insanely good cabbage salad with seared tofu and a peanutty yogurty gingery dressing. And it's love. Love, I say.

What's the moral? It's either eat more salad, or try something you've previously only scoffed at. Or maybe it's both.

Oh yeah, and my routine going to hell: I'm co-hosting the local morning radio show for a couple weeks. Which means getting up at 4am to be at work by 5:10 or so. Dude, that is EARLY. But it's fun and it means I have the afternoons free. Which rocks. Starting in June, the schedule changes again, and I'll be producing the local afternoon show. Which means being at work from 9am to 6pm and hardly ever getting away for lunch. It won't be the best schedule ever, but the job is fun and the money is good, and the Ass Kicker is running a four-days-a-week bootcamp all summer, and it sounds like I'll be able to fit it in around the job, so that should work.

Because it is 148 days till the wedding, and frankly, that is not very many. And it would be excellent to be feeling at the top of my game for that particular party.

* I keep forgetting, my laptop doesn't let me add links in these posts. So, the blogs I'm thinking of are all accessible through my sidebar and they are, in order: The Fatslayer, Anonymous Fit Woman, hello i am fat and Someday is Now.

Spin doctor

2006-04-11T17:10:00.000-03:00

Ok. I don’t know how it happened, but I am embarking on a torrid love affair with spin.

I know!

It’s early days yet. I’ve done probably no more than 90 minutes of it, all together, over two Sundays. But I can say with certainty that I have, at least, a crush on spin. Which is good, because I’ve been looking for a shake-up to my exercise routine. I'm planning to add in at least one spin class a week. Shouldn't be hard...they teach it three times a day at my gym.

Oh, and before I forget, thanks for dropping by. I know I am a lazy blogger, but it warms my heart that you keep stopping round to see what I’m up to—and I always love to hear from you in the comments. I must say that every day I think of things to tell you, but see above re: lazy, and also, by the time I get home and get to the laptop, I’ve kind of forgotten my earlier insights, or am just too beat to type them out for you.

That said, here is a short list of things from the last few weeks (I’m stealing a few minutes at work…but I ate lunch at my desk, so it all evens out):

I went to an awesome boutique across the harbour on Saturday as part of my early shopping for a suitable party dress to wear to the wedding of the century. I was discussing my dream dress with the proprietor (green, halter neck, a-line, fancy but not too poofy) and she said, “hmmm, I just ordered something like that, but…” And I thought, yeah, but. Too small, probably. But! She said, “I don’t think the line would fit you…their sizes START at 14 and go up.” Can I tell you how lovely that felt? The truth is, the 14 would probably be fine for me, though hopefully would not be by October, when the big day dawns. But how lovely to stand in a regular, if not a little upscale dress shop, and be told by the woman whose job it is all day to dress women’s bodies, that I look like a 14 would be too big. Lovely. Lovely.

And it’s the kind of thing that ties right in to Taco’s observation that I am not fat. I still can’t quite get comfortable with that one. I am definitely overweight. Decidedly. Unquestionably. And I know, Taco has this whole thing about fat being a state of mind, which is a lovely philosophy, but a little ethereal when it comes right down to it. And there is still the evidence—the incontrovertible evidence—of my hips, butt, thighs, upper arms…you name it, it’s evident. Shopping for clothing (the yardstick I use most often, because it is the most tangible to me, and also the most fun) is still very hit and miss.

However! I am hitting fitness milestones all over the place. I can now do the full set of tricep dips the Asskicker demands in Body Bar class. This is a MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENT. My arms, though meaty, are piteously weak. I no longer feel ab exercises in my groins and upper thighs…instead, I feel them in my abs, where I’m meant to. I prefer to walk pretty much everywhere. Walking used to seem like such a trial to me. Honestly. Walking half-an-hour to get somewhere just seemed like such a hardship. Now, I’ll happily walk for an hour or more, for any reason, or for no reason at all.

On Saturday, Taco and I bought matching bicycles. So cute!

And now, all I want to do is ride everywhere on it, all day long, oh my god it is so AWESOME. We rode to the mall yesterday, where I purchased four new bras (because I have gone from a 42 D to a 38 D and was falling out of my bras, always a great look) and a pile of new underwear (because baggy underwear…yeah, not so much), a swingy new spring skirt, a fitted jean jacket and a great shirt. None of my spring and summer clothes from last year fit this year. They are giant and have been given away. Which is great, yay me, but also frightening, sorry bank account!

The scale frustration continues, but I have decided, I think, to ignore it for now. I am working out almost every day, getting lots of incidental exercise as well, and exercise is now just part of my life, a part I love, love, love. Astonishing, but true. I am mostly keeping a grip on the eating. I am working on fueling my body properly before and after my workouts, and just relaxing a little about the rest, and seeing how that goes. I know I could go hardcore on the food and get down below 200 pounds and feel great, but so many other things (money, the house, the wedding, work, writing, the fitness routine, general health) require my rapt attention and need to be kept in check, that food…I just can’t, right now. I can be healthy. That much I know. And right now, that’s enough. I may end up being the world’s densest woman, size 10 and still 200 pounds.

It doesn’t matter. It’s all numbers. And I will admit to being more than a little obsessed with numbers, but it doesn’t get to me…I comment daily on the ridiculous ping-ponging of the scale: “Taco! I lost four pounds while we slept! Which is hilarious, because two days ago, I gained five overnight!” but it doesn’t affect my day one way or the other. It, like a fat state of mind, is ethereal. What affects my day these days is the quality of my workout, the lengthening hours of daylight and ever-warmer temperatures, and the opportunities to ride the hell out of my Schwinn. Everything else, scale included, can go pound sand.

Except, of course, you, dear reader.

Oh where does the time go?

2006-03-27T16:54:00.000-04:00

Bad blogger, bad bad! My slack-ass approach to this space is certainly representative of my life lately though, happily, not of my fitness efforts. I’m still hitting the gym more often than not, and watching my food intake (though once again, actual tracking has fallen by the wayside. I blame the wedding and my mounting obsession with it. Boy, is that a time-suck), and I’m still fitting in to smaller clothes…though the scale continues its sad, lying ways. According to it, I gained five pounds this week. Oh ha ha.

Anyhow. I went to Toronto in early March for meetings (infused with croissants, as usual), a surprise party to celebrate my baby sister’s 30th birthday (yipe!) and the awesome wedding of Mean and Crazy, who, I am convinced, needs another nickname here.

Arrived back in Halifax and was promptly struck down with a flu so virulent it can only be described as avian. It was awful, but at the end of it, the scale showed me at 203, so at least I know the frigger isn’t actually broken. At least, it’s not so broken that it can’t register numbers below 205. Though it has, as noted above, gone right back to only registering numbers above. Considerably above, lately. What is that about? I have no idea, but thanks for asking.*

Resurfaced a week later in time to go to Winnipeg for…more meetings. Fewer croissants, though. But lots of being thrown off my routine.

And now I’m back. And spring is tentatively here…I spotted a grove of yellow crocuses on the morning walk today, but a winter’s-last-laugh blizzard is not out of the question. Still, I am enjoying the longer days, and have been doing a bit more walking…which I still find to be one of the best workouts. It’s low on the sweat metre, but high on the satisfaction-ometre. I’ve also committed to thrice-weekly body bar classes at the gym, a weekly yoga session, and an awesome class Mean and Crazy has put together (ok, new nickname…oh, let’s just call her the Asskicker. She’d like that). It’s three 90-minute classes, over successive Sundays, in which she teaches 10 or 11 of us how to get more out of classes we either already do, or are too scared to do. Yesterday, it was kickboxing…a class I have both loved and hated in the past. Next week: Spin.

!!

I must get to Canadian Tire to buy a gel seat. I have been assured my bits will hurt. I can take it. But if a gel seat can help, well, I’ll spend the 18 bucks.

This morning, on our walk, Professor Taco put forth the provocative idea that I’m not fat. Not sure how he figures that, given that I’m about 70 pounds overweight. But he claims that I’m not, by his understanding of the term, or by anyone’s. I have so little perspective on my body these days that I frankly don’t know what to say or think about that. Some days, I look at myself in the mirror at the gym, and I just see a regular girl, one with a sizable ass, to be sure, but not the incredible hulk, you know? Other days, I see the fat hanging off me as if it were an ill-fitting jumpsuit, and I just think off, off, get it off me! I still don’t know which of these is accurate. I suspect they both are, at any given time. It is exhausting, a little, this up-and-down, I’m-ok, oh-I-am-so-not-ok merry-go-round I’ve been riding lately. Next Sunday, at the gym, The Asskicker is going to make each of us say why we go to the gym. I have been thinking long and hard about that. Ostensibly, it is to get smaller, but since I don’t feel like I’ve had that result much since September, and yet I keep going, obviously, there’s something else at play there.

So what is it? To look good in my wedding dress? Uh, no. I clean up nice, regardless of my size. And anyhow, I started all this long before I knew there’d be a wedding. And I intend to keep up with it for my whole life, way beyond the wedding day. So, what then? This morning, on the walk (apparently it was quite momentous), I told Taco that I think I go to the gym to do the things I am afraid of, the things I think I cannot do. I go there to stop being afraid, and to just live.

So. That’s not nothing.

In fact, it’s something I’m going to have to chew on for a while. Because it seems to be true, and if it is, it’s way more profound than the size of my butt, you know?

* Hey, I probably know the answer to this, but…it’s not possible to gain five pounds of muscle in three days…is it?

Happy Happy To Be Alive Day!

2006-02-20T19:01:00.000-04:00

A year ago today, Professor Taco and I were in a catastrophic car crash. We spun out on some black ice, headed into oncoming traffic, headed back into our own lane, but pointed backward, hit the guardrail, were flung into the air and rolled several times before the car finally came to a rest on its back in the snow. Catastrophic. The car was a write-off.

Except that not so catastrophic, because the professor and I? Alive. Very much so. And mostly unhurt. And as Valentine’s Day and its stupid overpriced roses and less-than-premium chocolate and impossible-to-get restaurant reservations approached this year I said, hey, let’s screw Valentine’s Day forever, and instead celebrate Happy to Be Alive Day.

And so we will. Taco will be home from work soon, and then we’ll figure out where we’d really like to eat supper (last year, we ate at Chuggles in Antigonish while we waited for Johnny Parker to come get us…bar steaks, fries, cheesecake and several Bloody Caesars since, hey, it’s not like we’d be driving home or anything). I’ll give him his presents (a few guitar gizmos; he already gave me mine, a shiny new waffle iron), we’ll gaze at each other across the table and laugh and laugh at how alive we are.

And it doesn’t matter tonight what I eat or don’t eat, what I drink or don’t drink. Because it’s all fuel for this glorious body which, despite being rather overweight, can dance, walk, kickbox, hug, swim, cook, clean the house, hold my nieces and thrill my fiancé. Sometimes I fight with my body, it’s true. Sometimes I think, knees, why are you so doughy? But I never, ever think things would be better if I didn’t have this body. As long as I’m in it, I’m alive, and that is a-ok by me.

So here’s to steak and cheesecake and vodka, and here’s to hitting the gym tomorrow and making this body sweat, and here’s to all of that making me feel so alive.

All of me, why not take all of me?

2006-02-13T23:05:00.000-04:00

Parts of me that are getting noticeably thinner:
Lower legs, especially ankles
Feet
Lower arms
Hands
Clavicle
Groins
Underarms

Parts of me that are not:
Hips
Belly
Butt
Boobs

Ah, it’s so weird. It is so weird to be typing and suddenly to notice the bones in my hand, bones I’ve never, literally NEVER seen before. It’s so weird to lie in bed and realize I can feel more space at the intersection of my leg and my torso. Weird to realize that I have had not only fat hands and fat feet, but fat armpits. Fat armpits! Who has those?

And while I am glad to note shrinkage in these peripheral parts, I would frigging love it if my waist measurement would just go down already. It’s 33 inches and change, depending on the time of the month. It has been bouncing around between 33 and 34 inches for SO FREAKING LONG. And I am ready to see another number there.

Other places I would like to see a different number:
The scale
My bank account

The scale…perhaps it is broken? It refuses to show me anything lower than 206.4. Every day, I weigh in somewhere between that number and 208.6. The scale also never measures in odd numbers after the decimal. Yes, it was cheap. No, I am not buying another. Yes, I will continue to curse it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

As for my bank account, well. What with the wedding*, the house renovations, the starving artist fiancé* and the new (size 14!) lovely tweedy winter coat I bought (on sale, but still) I am feeling the pinch. Obviously, the solution to both these problems is to sell my fat. Any takers? Anyone? Maybe on eBay…

Anyhow. I am keeping the faith. Lifting weights, sweating it out on the elliptical, walking most mornings, stretching daily. I try to stay conscious of the need to work harder, to push myself. I have not yet dipped my toe into spinning. (But thanks for the encouragement, Ms Ess!) I will, though. I will. Because those numbers? Are getting old.

*Here you must imagine links. Links I would embed, but my web browser and Blogger apparently are not on speaking terms when it comes to links. I will edit this at work tomorrow if I get a chance. Otherwise...oh! I will put links in the sidebar. Fun times!

Challenging

2006-02-02T20:54:00.000-04:00

So…I didn’t meet my goal for the month. I decided somewhat late in the month that I should aim to lose five pounds each month this year. Seems reasonable – it’s just a pound and a quarter a week. But it is the kind of loss that has eluded me since September. Ah, September, you held such promise.

But then I got all distracted by my life and stopped givin’ ‘er.

Now, it’s not a total write-off. I did recommit to the gym, to drinking water (to the point of buying a watercooler for the house and getting two 18 litre water jugs delivered every two weeks) and especially to tallying my food and exercise at wlr. And the result of that has been somewhat ethereal – I feel smaller than I was four weeks ago. And in fact, I am smaller – I shed a few inches, and four pounds. Not five, but four. Pretty close.

But no, as they say, cigar.

I ate French fries last night for the first time in ages, and they were pretty good, but I can’t say I really miss them all that much. Good once in a while, but not my favourite food anymore. I ate meat three times this week, and that feels extraordinary, and like way too much. I crave all kinds of exercise these days including, today, the dreaded plank and yoga pushup. I acknowledge these things as victories. They are not what my stats-obsessed mind craves, necessarily, but still, they are metrics.

The thing is, I’m sure I could push myself harder. As it is, I don’t push myself hardly at all. I like eating the foods I’m eating, I leave room for treats, I like, mostly, my work out time, I prefer drinking water above all other liquids. I am doing things that are generally easy for me to do. I do not, however, push myself beyond that. I will eat mostly vegetarian, but won’t fully commit to it. I will work out five or six days a week, but I won’t step outside my comfort zone with it…I do the same workouts over and over. The same classes, the same cardio machines, the same stretches. I eat roughly 1600-1800 calories a day, depending on how much exercise I’m racking up. It is comfortable. It keeps me mindful, but it doesn’t make me sweat very hard, you know?

Two things I am pretty frightened of: spin class and running. They seem really hard. I’ve done spin once and it almost killed me. That was about a year ago. I am much more fit now. Running…I’ve done a bit of it, and it hurts and is hard. I’m sure that appeals to some people, and I expect it hurts less and gets less hard as you progress. But right now, my knees and my ankles feel too delicate.

So…spin it is, I suppose. It’s time to quit fucking around. Time to quit learning the same lesson over and over. Time to challenge myself.

So. Spin classes. And five pounds in February.

Grey matter

2006-01-30T16:54:00.000-04:00

It is fascinating to me (though probably not to you, but hey, my blog and all that) that the smallest little change in routine can often be enough to push me off course. I am like an overgrown toddler in this way.

Last week came straight from hell and wouldn’t go back. I was like a hunted dog at work on Thursday. Didn’t get around to eating lunch till 3pm. Friday was worse. I ate at 4:30. After I got back from the eye doctor, who diagnosed me with conjunctivitis in my left eye and prescribed 80 dollars’ worth of drops (which, by the way, taste nasty. Because they’re eyedrops, which ostensibly you shouldn’t eat, but because my eyes and my tongue are both in my head, sadly I have tasted the eyedrops. They go in my eye and down my throat and I might as well eat nail polish. Except that nail polish would, in no way, cure my conjunctivitis. Anyhow. I digress. Obviously.). I bagged the gym that night, too, because I could barely move my head thanks to a pinched nerve in my shoulder. So, no gym, erratic eating. And tracking? Oh, please.

And then we had pizza for dinner on Friday night. Because Professor Taco thought I should have some comfort food. Not supportive, exactly, but certainly sweet. And not exactly unsupportive really, because I don’t have comfort foods. I don’t eat for comfort. If I’m going to overeat, I do it because I’m bored. And by Friday night I was longing for a little boredom, you know?

In any event. We had pizza and salad and it was extremely delicious. And then Taco went to work and I managed to relax on the couch and not eat the one remaining slice. Good job, me.

Still, the weekend continued to be scattered, at best. Saturday, didn’t eat lunch till almost supper time. Sunday, same deal. And between having to wear my glasses and barely being able to move my head, there wasn’t a whole lot of working out going on. Still, I managed a walk on Sunday afternoon. I’m sure, had I tracked, I’d have been well over on my calories for most of last week and right through the weekend.

But. I didn’t go crazy. I didn’t think, oh well, fuck it. I did get a walk in, and I made an effort to knock back lots of water. We got a walk in this morning, plus I walked to work for once, and I have gym time planned for this evening.

And I was down a pound on the scale this morning. Always a pleasure.

And my bloodshot eye has cleared up (though I have to sport the glasses till Friday), and mobility is returning to my shoulder and neck.

Balance. Balance, balance, balance.

What do you do when your routine goes to hell? There must be a way to surf those unpredictable work freak outs without totally losing sight of your purpose. Is it just a matter of thinking? Of deciding, ok, things are a bit mental right now, but I still have to track, I still have to drink water? I am such an all-or-nothing person, still. Even though I’m always nagging I mean encouraging Taco to see the shades of grey that exist, instead of just the black and white.

So. Grey. How do I find it?

Having an average weekend

2006-01-23T13:55:00.000-04:00

Clearly, I have a sickness.

I’m sitting here at my desk, swigging water and wishing it were 6:15 and time for Cardio Salsa. Because? I long to do squats.

See? Sick.

The weekend didn’t go off exactly as planned—though it was quite good in the relaxation and restoration department, and I was going to say not so good in the eating and moving department, but now that I think about it, that’s not really true. It was…normal. Like a normal person’s weekend, you know? Taco and I got up very early on Saturday and made it down to the farmers’ market, and then he dropped me off at Cardio Strip. The class was excellent as usual, and led to feelings of great wiggliness all day, which was fine by me, and from which Professor Taco later benefited. Afterward, he ran me the most perfect bath ever, quite hot water, Epsom salts and the Sex Bomb from Lush. I soaked for awhile, then emerged, sweaty and glassy-eyed. And then it was off to M&C’s house. She’s getting married this year, too—in March, actually, so the wedding presents have already started arriving. Including a panini press and an espresso machine. She called me last week, delirious, to invite me over after Strip “to eat a lot of paninis and drink too many cappuccinos.” We ended up making do with one of each, plus maybe some chocolate, and spent the entire afternoon discussing the impending weddings, house renovations and the like. Good god but I am so bourgeois. Anyhow.

Saturday night we went to see the excellent In Flight Safety. The bar was packed and we could barely see or hear the band. It was kind of nice to be out and about, but once in a while I get tremendously crowd averse, and Saturday night was one of those nights. So I was ok for most of it, and then I just started to freak out whenever anyone banged into me, which was every 30 seconds, so we got the hell out of there, ate two skewers of barbecued meat each at Rocky’s Philipino BBQ stand (the best street meat ever anywhere) and raced home to crawl into our warm bed.

Sunday, Taco suggested going out for breakfast to use up a gift certificate to a local diner he’d been given for Christmas from one of his students. The place is actually better for lunch or supper…it’s a better Greek restaurant than it is a diner. But anyhow. We went, we ate, it was ok, but not outstanding, and I left a piece of bacon on the plate because it was too fat. Unprecedented, I assure you. I am a champion bacon-eater, or at least I was. Then we walked to our favourite bakery to buy multigrain bread, then dropped in on some friends for a cup of tea. Then I went to knit in public. Then home to cook and clean and cook and clean. Then a friend dropped by. Then two more came over for supper. Then finally I collapsed in a tired but happy heap in bed, while Taco gave me a massage. Because he is perfect.

So. Even though I ate some things that strictly speaking are not on plan, and even though I kind of didn’t track that eating even a little, and even though I drank less water than was called for, I did inherently practise restraint, and I definitely moved my body. It was, as I say, a nice, normal weekend. It is occurring to me that if I am planful, and tracky 80 percent of the time, and mindful and motivated the other 20 percent of the time, I will do alright. This feels totally ok to me, totally do-able, as a way of life.

I am aiming at dropping five pounds a month this year. That’s the hope, anyhow. It’s a pound and a quarter a week, which is completely within my grasp. The next challenge will be going to classes for the next two weeks, even though M&C won’t be teaching them because she’ll be in Toronto submitting to pre-wedding parties and events. I tend to want to go only to her classes…it’s like some gym-shyness or something. Which I should totally shake off, because the people at my new gym are quite friendly, way friendlier than at my old gym, and as a consequence, I have made, if not actual friends, then at least gym class acquaintances. People at whom I can nod and smile before, during and after class. I seem to need this, for some reason. So…I should realize I have it, and just go. To. Class!

Ok, well, that’s the end of that long, rambly post. Sheesh. Seven hundred and ninety one words, and counting, to tell you I had an average weekend.

Frabjous!

2006-01-20T16:04:00.000-04:00

Oh joy, oh bliss, oh wonderful day. So, I’m out for lunch and a bit of shopping with Kravitz. We stop into La Cache, a store I go weak for, because they’re having a big sale. I find a couple of super-cute kids’ shirts on the rack out front, and figure they’ll make great Valentine’s Day gifts for my adorable nieces. As I’m paying for them, Kravitz continues to browse. She finds this. Which I love. And which is on sale. I try on the extra-large, because that’s the way I roll. She kind of screws up her face. “It’s not great, to tell you the truth,” she says. “And anyway, you’re going to need a smaller size soon.” It is a little large in the shoulders, I allow. So just for kicks, I try on the large. And? It! Fits! And looks FANTASTIC. And is on sale, did I mention? And it’s completely unlike anything else I own, it’s so pretty and cool and so I buy it, and now it’s mine, and also? I had to put the extra-large back because it was TOO BIG.

Very. Awesome.

Also awesome: Taco and I had a great half-hour walk this morning, then I went to the gym for a punishing body bar class. I forgot how great it feels to start the day with a good hard workout. Tomorrow is cardio strip, right after the farmers’ market, and Sunday marks my return to yoga, and then a little knitting in public. While wearing my new jacket.

Shaping up to be an excellent weekend, I’d say. How about you?

Regular exercise

2006-01-17T16:04:00.000-04:00

I made it to seven fitness classes last week—including two a day on Monday and Tuesday, plus a Saturday morning class. And I went for hour-long walks on four out of five days—on the fifth day, it rained.

I also ate a lot of cheese, a flotilla of pickles, and fair amount of chocolate (what, I wonder, would be an unfair amount?).

It all balanced out…I’m down another pound this week. Despite the pre-time of the month snacking and subsequent possible water retension.

I’m still not crazy about the sight of myself in the mirrors at the gym, but as I walk today, I can feel my ab muscles moving my legs, and that always gets me high. I don’t feel as doughy as I felt two weeks ago, and I’m definitely crazy about that.

I want to write about the beyond-morbidly-obese woman I saw at the drugstore today, and also about the clearly anorexic woman who works out at my gym, but I haven’t quite figured out what it is I want to say about them, and about myself as I relate to them. I find myself taking what could be a clinical view of bodies these days…I see such extremes as exactly that—extremes on the spectrum, and as extremes, evidence that something has gone terribly wrong. On the other hand, I may just be really judgemental. Because I stare furtively at the super-skinny woman in the change room, and I look away quickly from the morbidly obese one at the drug store.

The struggle, as always, is to fit myself in on this spectrum and not get too hung up on it all. They’re just bodies, after all, but being as I am such a fervent believer in the mind-body connection, I can’t just see them as bodies, or better yet, not see them at all. For me, those bodies, and mine as well, are manifestations of what goes on inside.

I do wonder, though, at the strange calculus of bodies, the way that I (we as a culture, or am I the only morbidly curious one?) am compelled to stare at a body the smaller it gets, and look away from one so large. The smaller the amount of space a body takes up, the more it disappears into thin (heh) air, the harder I want to look at it. The more space it takes up, the more visual landscape it chews (someone stop me), the harder I will pretend it doesn’t exist. Perhaps it’s different for people who aren’t newly obsessed with bodies and body image. Perhaps my slender friends don’t notice and don’t care. I don’t know, I’ve never asked them.

As for me, I think I always notice what size people are. It’s part of how I experience the world. I evaluate them—and myself compared to them. I would like to think I don’t make value judgements about their human worth. But when it comes right down to it, I’m probably fairly shallow.

The body part of this weightloss thing is relatively easy. Eat healthy food and go to the gym every day. It’s the mind part that’s freaking me out. Who knew I'd have to work my mind at least as hard as my body?

Balancing act

2006-01-11T23:38:00.000-04:00

Why the hell did I ever stop tracking, working out and drinking lots of water? I don’t find it particularly hard (...right now, anyhow...) and goddamn but it makes me feel good.

Especially the part where I lost two pounds. That part, in particular, rocks.

I guess the answer is probably that at some point, I did find it hard. I guess that’s the part where life gets complicated. Some house guests, some travel, a couple major holidays, a temporary job change, a little family related stress, and the whole thing goes to hell. Because, as I say, that’s life.

If I could, I would dedicate the next twelve months to my health regimen. Ninety-minute workouts every day, three litres of water, perfectly balanced, fresh and delicious meals. But there’s the little matter of my need to work for a living, plus look after the house, have a relationship, see my friends and family, knit, read magazines and look out the window.

And what with me letting go of the idea of perfection, it would seem I don’t need to dedicate every moment of the next twelve months to my health regimen. In fact, the smart money would be on finding the middle ground. Getting in as many of those 90-minute workout days as I can, making sure I move my body in some way, even if it’s just a half hour walk and a few minutes of yoga on the other days. Having and executing a plan for my meals 80 percent of the time, making smart choices on the fly the rest of the time. And working in regular treats, because who am I kidding otherwise. Continuing to put “drink water” on my to-do list every day, so that when I consult it to see what’s next, I see that notation, and it pushes me to the water bottle.

It’s still an incredible amount of stuff to manage. The house, the job, the health, the window-staring, plus the novel, the podcast (stay tuned for more details on that, and a link to the site), the relationship and oh yeah, the wedding. Do nothing by halves has always been my motto. Perhaps I should be looking for a different motto.

One thing I am actively looking for is balance. I have terrible balance, in yoga and in life. All the time I’m encouraging other people to see all the lovely shades of grey that exist, and yet when I check my own responses to the world around me, boy howdy I am one black-and-white mofo. Time, I think, to go back to those heady successful days when all I had to do was look myself in the eye in the mirror each morning, say out loud, let it go, just let it go, and off it went — my stress and the weight.

It’s all about staying present. Well, about staying present and about the freakishly good fake meat product I just ate for supper. Jesus gay, now that’s some delicious naughameat. Seriously, I love me some steak, and I could happily forgo it (nine times out of ten, anyhow, especially if the tenth time involves a barbecue, in which case, make mine real, please) in favour of these [http://schneiders.ca/new/index.html] lower fat, lower calorie, cholesterol free faux beef tips. Tonight, we had them in a stirfry with broccoli and other veg, with brown rice and an orange ginger sauce. If the present always included such a meal, it would not be such a trial to stay in it all the time, you know?

Almost as good as fake beef tips? This recipe from Dr. Andrew Weil, bless his boots: 1/2 cup ricotta or cottage cheese, 2 tbsp cocoa, 2 tbsp honey, 1/2 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Combine food processor and blend till smooth. Or, in my case, combine in bowl and attack with wand mixer till wand mixer starts to make high pitched whirring sound. Cease mixing, though mixture is far from smooth. Spoon into two dessert dishes. Devour happily, as you have just found a better-than-good substitute for chocolate cheesecake, that sets you back about a hundred and fifty calories. Oh, and I may have added a wee shot of amaretto. It’s not required, but is certainly recommended.

Use it to find balance, friends. That’s how I plan to use it.

The realm of the possible

2006-01-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

I used to go to the vending machine all the time. As if it were a perfectly appropriate place to go every single day to buy food. Today, someone mentioned the vending machine, and I had to think hard about whether the building I work in even has one. That, my friends, is progress.

Or, more properly, it’s regression. There was a time I wouldn’t have been caught dead at a vending machine. i am so simple sometimes, it drives me nuts. Because it’s not like I wouldn’t have been caught dead at a vending machine because I would have been embarrassed to be seen there or something like that. I wouldn’t have dreamed of eating vending machine food because it was clearly bad for me. i was tremendously overweight, mind you, but at least I knew vending machine food was not a good choice. But then I’d see other people eating it with abandon—skinny people—and I’d think, well, they’re doing it, it must be alright.

No, literally, that is what I’d think. Seriously, honestly, no irony.

Well, the irony, I guess, is that many many people mistake me for smart. I still can’t get over how absurdly stupid I was. Or maybe not stupid. Maybe I just lacked the ability to make connections. Strange also, because I would say that’s one of my strengths—I am uncannily good at making connections, figuring out people’s motivations, deducing and analysing and the like. But where food and I are concerned? Not so much.

For a few years I’ve been punting around an idea for a book of nonfiction that would be about food and how we relate to it. Personal essays of a sort, which I started writing when my brother was sick, when the stomach cancer that eventually killed him first took away his ability to eat. Like, for the last six months of his life. I started thinking about how elemental food is, how it’s something we supposedly all have in common, except some of us don’t. And if you are what you eat, what are you if you eat nothing? Eventually, the idea broadened to include more than just my personal experience and theories and ideas. I started interviewing people who had interesting relationships with food. And I remember talking to a friend, another writer, about the project, and she said something like, “and have you figured out what your deal is with food?” And I was actually confused. Couldn’t figure out what the hell she meant. My deal with food? I don’t have a deal with food.

Riiiight. I just happen to be a hundred pounds overweight. My deal with food? Uh....

Thing is, I still couldn’t tell you. What exactly is my deal with food? I can tell you that I think that a lot of my eating in the past was typical middle-child stuff—eat it fast before someone takes it away, and make sure you get a taste of everything anyone else might be getting. I can tell you I’ve never, ever, ever eaten an entire pint of ice cream or big bag of chips or family sized anything. I can eat a lot of pizza, but not a whole one. I’d feel sick, for starters, and just like with the vending machine, I know it’s bad for me, so there’s no way I’d do it. I can’t stand pop...maybe once a year I’ll have a few sips of rootbeer, enough to remember that I really don’t like it.

And yet here I am in this particular body. With a history of gently disordered eating. Certainly I have eaten to the point of discomfort. That was the norm for me rather than an exception. I have eaten when I was not hungry. I have eaten when I have just eaten. I have done these things with a kind of wilfull blindness. Sometimes now, if I eat too quickly and mindlessly, when I come out the other side, I realise that I’ve had a kind of roaring in my head while eating. A storm of white noise. These days, despite that white noise, I mostly don’t overeat. Mainly, I think, because it hurts physically to do it. And also because I’ve recognised that it, like the vending machine, like the pizza, it’s bad for me. Unhealthy.

Maybe I’ll never know what my deal with food is, and maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe all that matters is that I keep in mind what’s good for me and what’s bad for me. What’s healthy and what’s not. What causes the white noise, and what lets me stay mindful.

Take exercise for instance. Oh, sweat, how I missed you. Kravitz and I went and joined the gym after work today, and then got right down to business on the treadmill and elliptical and sweet jesus how good it felt to do what’s healthy. Just those 40 little minutes, so easily passed, have made a world of difference if not actually to my body (though I’d argue they have), then certainly to my state of mind. I’ve reminded myself it’s possible. Possible to forget where the vending machine is. Possible to not even care to know. Possible to reach for sneakers after work instead of Snickers.

Possible to keep chipping away at whatever my deal with food is. And possible to keep chipping away at this avoirdupois. Possible to succeed.

Once more, with feeling

2006-01-03T18:31:00.000-04:00

And a very happy new year to you.

I have emerged, blinking and somewhat confused, from the holiday fog. A fog that involved chocolates and bread and cheese oh my, and hardly any walking or other physical activity. So, that whole coming-out-the-other-side-of-Christmas-weighing-what-I-did-going-in thing…uh, not so much.

As far as I can tell, I’m about four, maybe five pounds up. Not fantastic, but not as bad as it could be. I can feel it though, oh lordy, can I feel it. I can feel the extra pounds jiggling when I walk around naked, which is often. I can feel them at day’s end when I take off my pants (as a prelude to walking around naked) and notice a red ring around my waist. I can feel them making me sluggish. It’s time to put the boots to those stupid bachelors*.

(* bachelors = my new favourite slang, after my middle niece mistook the word bachelor for bastard during a bed-time reading of Anne of Green Gables. Hee!)

I started today. I tracked my food for the first time in…oh god, the first time in months. Since August, maybe? And I’ve managed to drink an entire litre of water so far today, which isn’t enough, but is more than I’ve been drinking for…again, for months. Taco and I got up this morning and went for a quick walk, which I’ve decided does not count as exercise. It’s extra. Gravy, as they say, though healthier than that, to be sure. I will do some yoga this evening, because I can feel my muscles shortening by the minute.

And tomorrow, I will get out of bed, walk with Taco, eat a good breakfast and do it all over again. The tracking and the water…those are key for me. Keys that have been lost lo these many months. And the sweating, that’s key too. I look forward to sweating again. I’m about to switch gyms, something I should probably make official tomorrow, as it helps to have a place to sweat. Mean and Crazy is away right now, but they second she’s back, I will deliver myself into her hands so she can brutalise the fat right off me.

It is too easy to fall back into mindless eating. It is too easy to stop making time to work out. On the other hand, today it was perfectly easy to track my food and remember to drink water. If both are easy, then it’s a matter of which one I choose. It always comes back to that, it seems.

Well then, I choose health.

I choose whole foods, well prepared.

And I choose occasional high quality treats.

I choose at least 45 minutes worth of exercise six days a week.

I choose sweating and stretching.

I choose deep breathing.

I choose fresh water.

I choose keeping track of how much I’ve eaten and how much I’ve moved, and I choose to balance those with each other.

I choose to esteem myself at least as highly as I esteem all those I take care of.

I choose to approach it all with rather a lot more humour than is evidenced here!

I know I can do this. I’ve done it before and I am hella stubborn. And while New Year’s resolutions don’t totally resonate with me, today seems like a great day to recommit.

I’m off to hit the yoga mat. Namaste.

And the dreams in which I'm running are the best I've ever had

2005-11-29T21:32:00.000-04:00

I keep having these dreams. These dreams, in which I’m running. Far and fast and with great ease, I am running. Sometimes, I’m running away from someone, up stairs and leaping from building to building, and at some point I manage to parse my terror and the urgency involved in getting away and I’m able to realize, hey, man, I am really fit, and this running feels goddamn good. Other times, I’m just running, just flying along, my feet barely touching the ground, simply running for the joy of it.

Which is frankly hilarious, because there isn’t much I find as joyless as running. I have tried it, though never for very long, and never very seriously, but I do not enjoy it at all when I do it. It hurts my knees, it hurts my lungs, it hurts my head and it hurts my pride a little to be flopping about and gasping and just generally falling apart. And yet, the dreams.

I am choosing to take the dreams as evidence that there are things I think I cannot do, but which I actually can. Not only can I do them, I can love them. Which things? Er, I haven’t quite sorted that out yet. But I can tell you that right now, I love getting out of bed early in the morning, and persuading Taco up out of bed (more difficult than you might think, what with him being a nocturnal musician type and all) and getting both of us out the door for what has quickly become the best part of every day…our morning walk. We go to the café near our house first, and get a coffee, and then we pick a neighbourhood and walk it and talk about paint colours, and front porches, and wedding plans and road trips and any number of matters, of great consequence and of no consequence at all. And it is awesome, that part of the day, when everything’s fresh and my legs are moving, and the coffee is strong, and Taco’s holding my hand. That feels in real life how the running feels in the dreams.

What else? I’m making it to the gym fairly regularly, and staying for two classes instead of just one. Ninety minutes worth. Which feels great. Though lately I’m noticing my body, in a not good way. I am having trouble seeing it as just another body on the continuum of bodies. I spent a lot of years never really looking my body in the eye, so to speak, and that worked…well, not that well, really. I mean, it was great for my self esteem, of which I have always had a surfeit. But it wasn’t so great for actually looking after myself, you know? I couldn’t fix what I didn’t notice, and I didn’t notice much where my body was concerned. Now, all I do is notice. And it kind of sucks. I was happier, I think, not noticing my batwing arms. Not noticing that while my torso is kind of neat and tidy, my ass and thighs are massive, like the ass and thighs of some other person all together. Today’s unhappy discovery in the gym’s mirror? Gigantic boobs. I mean, really frigging big. Where did those things come from? How have a I managed to avoid giving myself a black eye when I’m doing jumping jacks? No wonder I don’t enjoy running.

Anyhow. Things aren’t as bleak as all that. It’s just that I’m noticing now what I never noticed before and it is kind of shocking. I’ve been told ad nauseum in the past that I don’t carry myself like a fat person, which is probably because up until last fall, I was really good at pretending I wasn’t one.

However. I am. Less fat than I was, to be sure. And dreaming of running, and spending a fair bit of money and time on working out. But still. I am fat, and it’s like 30 years of denial are finally catching up with me. I guess I’m getting in all my adolescent self-loathing now. Lucky me.

I feel better when I exercise, and I’m exercising plenty, which means I actually feel good most of the time. Except for when I see myself exercising in the mirror. It’s so stupid—I feel so stupid having these defeatist thoughts. Though I guess they’re only defeatist if they actually defeat me, which so far, they haven’t.

Which brings me to the plan for the next month, a month that will be fraught with travel and busy-ness. Here’s the schedule: leave Thursday for three nights in Toronto. Then back to Halifax on Sunday, then back to Toronto the Sunday after that for five nights, then back to Halifax for about 15 hours, then into the car to drive to…yep, Toronto. For Christmas. Not the most perfect schedule ever. But I’ve grown to like hotel workouts, and Taco and I have our walking routine, which we’ll keep up while we’re on vacation. I will avoid, as best I can, the meeting danishes and muffins, which are basically sugared poison to me. I will drink water and I will walk wherever I can. Right now, as closely as I can determine, I weigh 205.4. My goal is to weigh 205.4 on January 2 when I return from all this meeting and merry-making. Just maintain, that’s all I’m aiming for.

And then, in January, bridal bootcamp begins, and I will sweat at the bony hands of Mean and Crazy. And yea, verily, I will rejoice.

Numbers game

2005-11-15T17:09:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, the professor and I went to Mountain Equipment Co-op and spent $610. Yes, in case you’re wondering, it is one of my goals to single-handedly keep the economy going. It’s also one of my goals to hate winter less. It’s a tough one, to be sure. Usually, I get through it by watching a lot of TV, reading magazines by the plow load, and making things like banana bread and soup. But when you’re trying to get a calorie deficit going, suddenly, those don’t seem like great coping mechanisms any more.

And so, to MEC we went. The professor wanted a high performance fleece and a puffy vest; he ended up with those, plus a knapsack to carry his laptop around in. I wanted a fleece, high performance or otherwise, a jacket that would keep me warm while doing sportif things like hiking and city walking, and boots that would let me clamber over Nova Scotian rocks like a mountain goat. I got all those, plus a nifty little wool hat.

And now that I’ve spent all the money in the world on outdoor gear, I have to actually, you know, use it. So on Sunday, the Professor and I and a few of our friends piled in the car and drove out to a place called Dover, which is a rocky moonscape kind of place right on the Atlantic Ocean. We hiked over the rocks and through the scrub for about an hour, and it was magnificient. Coldish and clear and so, so beautiful. And made all the better by proper outdoor gear, which, it turns out, makes a huge difference. It seems to me it’s all part of that looking after myself thing that I’m still learning how to do.

And I’m so glad of it. It was fantastic to scamper around on the rocks and feel like my shoes had my back, you know? Amazing to feel like the place I belonged on Sunday afternoon was on the rocks at Dover.

I’ve actually been on a real tear lately, exercise wise, which is great, because I crave it the way I used to crave french fries. I’ve been walking most mornings, and hitting cardio salsa, cardio strip and body bar classes at night. My muscles are pleasantly sore most of the time, and I feel tall, which is a real challenge for someone who stands no more than five foot three in shoes. However. The fucking scale is convinced that I weigh somewhere between 206 and 208 pounds, and have for several weeks. The fucking scale, of course, is a notorious liar. I am inclined to believe it when, once a week, it shows me at 202.3, though why it should be honest then and not any other time is frankly beyond me. I should probably stop weighing, or at least throw a five-pound weight on the damn thing to see if it shows it weighing five pounds, but I haven’t gotten any farther than stepping on the fucker each morning and then cursing it roundly. I will admit that most days I step on it two or three times, not in a row, but in the course of getting ready for the day, and most days it shows me a range of weights between 205 and 208 and THOSE ARE NOT THE WEIGHTS I AM LOOKING FOR.

Perhaps I will purchase an analogue scale, instead. I know I shouldn’t rely on it for all my feedback, and I don’t. I’ve bought new clothes lately at non-plus-size shops, and I am, as I say, enjoying the hell out of exercising. But the scale is part of the progress picture, and mine is really behaving like a bastard these days. It will give me great pleasure to consign it to the trash one day real soon.

Meantime, Basic Training and Kickboxing classes await.

Another month bites the dust

2005-10-30T20:49:00.000-04:00

It seems I have become a once a month blogger. Unacceptable, as Super Nanny might say. I think about writing here all the time, but sadly, in blogging, as in eating well and exercising, it is actually NOT the thought that counts.

As for that eating well and exercising, I have been not exactly diligent but not exactly slack-assed. I am putting some form of chocolate in my mouth pretty regularly, but I also exercised four out of five days last week while I was away in a hotel room, and that’s pretty incredible for me. I also ate French fries in the middle of the night after going out with Taco to see some live music. At the bar, however, I had soda water instead of booze. So I’m in a kind of holding pattern, I guess.

The weight is not what you would call pouring off me. It is not doing much of anything, besides sitting there in its weighty way. I would very much like to change this state of affairs. I am having a hard time, for a variety of reasons, I guess, or maybe just one reason that seems to have lots of different sides (though I must admit it seems like a pretty shitty reason, and may more properly be classified as an excuse).

In short, I am feeling an uncharacteristic degree of self-loathing where my body is concerned. This is so unlike me I find myself quite startled by it. In some ways, it feels completely real: I feel like for the first time in my life, I can actually see my body as it is. And that, my friends, is not a pretty sight. I see my thighs, and they look massive to me. I catch sight of myself in the mirror or reflected in a shop window, and instead of feeling proud of what I see, I feel sad. I feel like I can see what other people see when they look at me and it is entirely dejecting. I’m not sure where this came from, and why it has come so quickly and so insistently. Worse yet, I’m not sure why it seems to bring with it an inertia where positive change is concerned.

Taco think it’s a lack of sticktoitiveness, and he may well be right. I don’t know what flipped that switch for me in the first place last fall, but I do recall getting high every day on revelations about personal choice, how every morsel I put in my mouth, every sip of water, every time I moved my body was a choice. The realization that I could make those choices all day every day and see some positive result from them was heady. That much I recall. I sure would like to feel that headiness again.

I am not sure whether this feeling of the scales falling from my eyes, so to speak, allowing me to see myself as I probably am (I’m skeptical enough about reality as a concept to leave room in the equation for the possibility that nothing is as I think it is, let alone as anyone else thinks it is) is a positive development or a negative one. I mean, I suppose if I were finding the feeling motivating, it would be positive. I am not sure I’m finding it de-motivating, but so far, it’s not making me eat less or move more. It’s just making me eat ok and move a bit, but with a base coat of self-loathing. It’s certainly uncomfortable. I’m used to having if anything a little too much self-esteem, so this feeling is new and deeply awkward.

Thing is, I know what I have to do. Why I’m not doing it is the more pertinent question. I guess I’ll have lots of time to figure that out while I walk the treadmill, right?

Right.

Here we go again

2005-09-30T19:39:00.000-03:00

Every day, I think about exercising. I think about how good it feels to exercise hard. The sweat, the endorphin rush, the feeling of accomplishment, the knowledge I've done something so good for myself.

And every day, I neglect to exercise.

Perhaps it is Start-of-Year-Two malaise. That could be it. I have been within striking distance of 199 pounds for what feels like months now. I would very much like to land that particular plane, and yet, and yet, I do nothing to bring it safely to ground.

And boy, do I feel bad when I don't work out. Not just emotionally, though that too. I feel like I've let myself down, like I could so easily slip back into my old ways. But physically, as well, I just feel crummy. Kind of flabby, less energetic. And it's true, what Newton said: a body at rest remains at rest until and unless acted upon by an outside force. He sure was smart, that Newton.

At least I'm eating apples and the like. Mostly. And bacon, and this week croissants because I was stuck for three days in a crappy hotel that seems to think that croissants and jam make a healthy breakfast. Smartly, though, at last, I remembered to pack my own fruit cups and yogurt. So there was that, at least. But also the croissants.

Now, back to Newton. I also packed my sneakers and workout clothes, but I might as well have left them at home. I couldn't get it together at all this week to exercise, the way I usually can when I'm in a hotel. I seem to be suffering from some inertia. And I would very much like to kick its ass. Perhaps that will be the outside force Newton spoke of.

I feel the need, deeply, to get back on track. To quit fucking around already and get back down to it. I was in a good place over the summer, with the eating and the yoga three times a week, and the long walks and all the rest of it. It felt good, and it was paying off. But for the last seven weeks, I've forgotten all about being in the moment. I've forgotten all about honouring myself, taking time for myself, treating myself right. I've forgotten all about just being, all about breathing out, all about letting go. How'd that happen? I guess I got a little stressed out, what with not being allowed to go to work and all.

But no more. It's ridiculous, now. Yes, I liked my old routine. But life is change, and I have got to be able to keep up with it, to come around to it a little sooner than seven weeks in.

I can't wait to get a good sweat going. I welcome the agony of ashtanga on Monday. And kickboxing. And oh god yes, cardio striptease. I'm back, baby, I am back.

Belated

2005-09-23T10:29:00.000-03:00

Well, I missed my own blogiversary (September 13). How lame is that? Well, a year after I woke up one morning and thought, holy god, I am fat and it’s time to do something about it, I find myself thirty-ish pounds down and some days so committed I don’t even recognise myself. Other days, I recognise myself all too well.

Since the lockout began 40 days ago, I haven’t had any routine to speak of. In some ways, that’s been amazing. Not getting a paycheque is a little less amazing, but I’m freelancing like crazy, picking up odd jobs here and there and generally getting by. Taco’s work has really picked up as well, so we’ve been just fine, financially. Being mostly liberated from sitting at a desk 40 hours a week has meant that I’m burning more calories every day just being me. Whether that’s walking the picket line or standing for four hours a day in the guild office answering phones and whatnot, or just puttering around at home. It has been…well, it’s been great. Even though I haven’t tracked my food in, oh, 40 days, and even though planned exercise has been mostly hit and miss for, you know, the same 40 days, I’m still down a handful of pounds since mid-August.

I have to say, my body really likes not being chained to a desk. And my mind does too. I have about ten good ideas a day, which is up from my usual ten a year. It’s looking like this whole stupid thing will be resolved in a week or two, and I have to say I have mixed feelings about that. The good thing about having been locked out is that it’s given me a chance to imagine a different life for myself, work-wise. The bad thing, of course, is that I’ve poured my heart and soul into that place for three years, any my colleagues have logged plenty more time than that, and it’s really, really depressing to have the doors shut on you when you care so much about the future of public broadcasting.

However, this blog isn’t about that.

It’s about fat. Of which I still have plenty left.

I went to the gym last night for the first time since the beginning of the summer. The weather has taken a definitive autumnal turn, and it gets dark around 7:30 now, so my usual hour-long walk was out. Plus, my schedule has been so wacked lately that carving out a whole hour for myself seems pretty impossible. I’m sure it isn’t actually impossible. But it sure does seem that way. So I was sitting on the couch post-supper, pre-picking up Taco from work, and I thought, you know, if I hustle, I can get in 30 minutes at the gym.

And my next thought was, no, I really should do 60, but I don’t have time, so I won’t bother.

Oh for chrissakes. You’d think I’d learned nothing over the past year and ten days.

But indeed, I have learned something. I’ve learned that perfection is not necessary, but effort is. And that ultimately, effort is much more valuable than perfection. So I strapped on my sneaks and headed out the door, and got in some good time on the elliptical and the treadmill, came home sweaty and happy and determined to really get back on track.

Because I’d love it if my wedding dress could be somewhat smaller than size 16.

I’ve got about a year, and a bunch of new skills and attitudes. Plus, of course, my personal trainer, M&C. Keep your hands and feet inside the car at all times, kids, here we go!

Nine hundred and seventy six

2005-08-20T23:33:00.000-03:00

There’s good news, and there’s bad news.

The good news is I seem to be down a couple of pounds this week, to a new low, though I’ll have to wait till I weigh in on Monday to see if it’s real, if it sticks around.

The bad news is I haven’t done much to earn such a loss this week. Haven’t been tracking my food, haven’t been getting planned exercise.

The good news is I’ve been getting plenty of incidental exercise. Three to four hours of walking Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, plus plenty of standing and other activity Thursday and Friday.

The bad news is I’ve had the opportunity for all this exercise because the public broadcaster I work for has locked out the union I’m in. Me and 5,499 other journalists and technicians, all locked out across Canada. Turns out you can burn around 976 calories in three hours of walking the picket line.

I am trying hard not to freak out. And some days, that’s ok. Taco is playing many many gigs this month, and will make rather a lot of money. I’m doing some freelancing, plus there’s my strike pay, plus a bit of an inheritance that’s coming my way this month, plus some money one of our friends borrowed earlier this summer and is able to pay back in a couple of weeks. Financially, we’ll be fine, so long as the lock out doesn’t go much beyond, say, mid-October. Either way, I’m going to look at the picket duty as the crappy part-time job I have to do while I launch my freelance career. That way, when the lock out ends, I can choose. Will I go back to work, or will I simply freelance? If I can build enough of a career, with enough opportunities for income, I might just be picking door number two.

But it’s not perfect, that’s for sure. One of the ways in which it’s least perfect is that suddenly, I have no routine. And oh god, me without a routine? Not a good scene, man. I haven’t made it to yoga once this week. I haven’t been getting enough water in the course of a day. I haven’t been logging my food, or taking time for myself, making time to exercise.

This can’t continue, obviously. It makes me feel very squirrelly, and when the scale insists on going down every couple of days, well, that doesn’t help, strangely. I feel like I’m getting away with something I’ve no business getting away with. And beyond that, I start to get a little depressed when I don’t exercise. I kind of thought I learned this from being on vacation, but the sad truth is that being locked out by one’s employer can really throw a spanner in the works.

I will have to be extra vigilant. Our renovations have progressed to the point that we have new floors now, and the TV is hooked up again, and it will be a pleasure to do pilates and yoga now. So tomorrow, one or both. And a walk. My picket duty tomorrow will amount to a one-hour meeting, and maybe a bit of committee work out of it, but I should be able to set aside some time for myself, as well. Taco is in France right now, so I only need to worry about myself.

Somehow, though, when he’s home, I’m better at making time to take care of myself. It’s like I need to know I’m being observed in order to actually get cracking and look out for myself. That is ridiculous, isn’t it? Yes, yes, it is.

So, ok, tomorrow, exercise. Food I’m actually doing pretty well at. Eating whatever vegetables are on my plate first, and staying away from picket line doughnuts, except for the gourmet ones that were dropped off to us earlier this week. I think the one I had was made with whole wheat flour, so I’m not sweating it, you know? But today Tombag took me out for lunch, and I ordered veggies on the side of my roast beef sandwich instead of fries, and I didn’t even feel sad about that. I think that’s a really good thing. Also, it has come to my attention that I am horrible deficient in vitamin B, and when I checked out http://www.whfoods.com it told me I should eat more meat. So, roast beef for lunch today, and turkey burgers barbecued for supper tonight. I also bought an organic t-bone steak at the farmers’ market this morning, and I think that’ll be tomorrow night’s supper.

Bit by bit, I will turn this ship around. At least I’m still losing, but ultimately, that’s meaningless if I’m not doing it healthily. And picket duty may burn calories, but it’s not exercise. Must remember that.

Oh yeah, and solidarity forever.

Half in the saddle

2005-08-11T12:40:00.000-03:00

Vacation. Now that’s something that can throw a girl right off her plan. I was doing ok with the eating and the exercising, and then for a while, I wasn’t. Nothing too terrible, but enough of it that it made a difference in the wrong direction. I was at 205 when we left Halifax and am now at 208. It’s not a perfect set of circumstances, but in my pollyanna way, I have decided things could be much much worse. For instance, I could have gained the three pounds and learned nothing.

Instead, here are some things I learned on my summer vacation:
· Five days without exercise now feels like five months. I love exercise, even just my simple one-hour evening walks. I cannot go five days without at least one of those.
· When I eat poorly, I feel bad. Not emotionally bad, though I feel a bit of that, but full-on physically bad. Tired, unmotivated, bloated, foggy, b-a-d bad. Bad! But when I eat well, I feel great. This is very simple, old dog, so get on learning this one new trick.
· There will always be a lot of borderline-healthy food at the ancestral palace, as well as stuff that is actually good for me. In other news, there are several grocery stores five minutes away by car, and I am a grown adult with a driver’s license, an ABM card and a positively astonishing ability to cook.
· The good news is that in restaurants, nine times out of ten, I will choose the healthiest thing I can find on the menu.
· The single most important thing I learned? I must make myself a priority, even on vacation. Maybe especially on vacation, particularly those spent at the ancestral palace.

This one is huge. My time at home, especially over the last…what…seven years? has mostly been focused around the sick, the dying and the grieving. Ah, good times. Chris got sick about seven years ago, and died five years ago, and then Dad got sick(er) right after that and died in December. And so those visits have been about spending time Chris or Dad, attending memorials for them, hanging out with my family and, well, grieving, basically. It hasn’t been all tears. But some of it has. A lot of it has. And I’m the fixer in my family. The one who talks sense to those who need sense talked to them. The one who mediates, the one who is the voice of reason. It’s ok, I’m good at it. But being the fixer so often means I don’t take the time to fix myself. I don’t make my own needs and desires a priority. I see to everyone else first, and then, if there’s any energy left for myself, I see to myself. Rarely, however, does this involve 90 minutes of exercise, or a nice bowl of quinoa and brown rice.

And of course I don’t resent it, any of it. And if I could change anything (besides, you know, not having so many dead people in my family) I would change it so I could have spent more time with Chris, more time with Dad, more time helping out my mother.

But I’m no good to anyone if I’m not good to myself. If I feel like I can’t keep my eyes open past 8pm. If my mind is too foggy to concentrate on even a board game.

Also, of course, fixing is my role, but not my job. I don’t have to take it on. They won’t fire me. No one’s going to call me selfish if I go for a walk. And they love it when I cook, actually, as do I.

And now it’s back to normal. Made it to yoga yesterday morning, where it felt so, so good to sweat for 90 minutes. Today, my muscles feel pleasantly worked. Last night’s supper involved quinoa and brown rice and chickpeas, and tomatoes and zucchini from Mom’s garden, plus fresh mint from mine. Tonight there will be a big walk, and today there will be lots of incidental exercise. And water, so much water.

The vacation was good. But in some ways, coming home is even better.

(And, of course, there’s the engagement: Still exciting! Thanks for all your congratulations. We’re very pleased. Thinking about a wedding next fall…September or October. Maybe a green dress. Don’t care what Taco wears, so long as he’s clothed. The rest remains to be decided, but so far, so good.)

Otherwise engaged

2005-08-01T11:09:00.000-03:00

A quick update, my fine feathered friends.

I am at the ancestral palace, on vacation. There are lot of chips here, people! But I'm not eating many of them. I am getting plenty of exercise (both planned and incidental...lots of shopping to do, and chasing my nieces around the swimming pool), and it looks like I'm at least maintaining. Actually, it looks like I've lost, but I know that the ancestral palace scale weighs about two pounds lighter than the official home scale. Yes, I am weighing myself often and blissing out on those smaller, though admittedly fake, numbers. Whee, vacation,

Oh, and also? I am engaged. Whee, engagement!

I popped the question in room 448 of the Quality Inn in Edmundston, New Brunswick. If you've never been, rest assured, the proposal and subsequent acceptance? Probably the most interesting, exciting thing ever to happen there. Sorry if you're from Edmundston. But admit it, it's true.

Anyhow, no dates set yet or details worked out, except the obvious important ones: right person, right time.

Whee!

And so it begins

2005-07-22T21:58:00.000-03:00

To be truthful, it started beginning a few weeks ago. Taco and I were out on the town one night, and we ran into a friend we haven’t seen for awhile. We chatted about this and that and then she turned to me and said the words I’ve dreaded my entire life:

You look fantastic! Have you lost weight?

This pair of sentences in the past would have unleashed an unholy bout of scowling, foot shuffling and denial. All of which, I can only imagine, would have sent a message loud and clear that my body? Is not something I wish to discuss. Yes, even if you meant to compliment me.

Good lord, the energy I poured into living in my head and denying the existence of my body. Sometimes, it is hard to be smart. Harder still? Being the stupidest smart person I’ve ever met or even heard about.

These days, though? BRING IT.

Rose asked, and I answered, loud and proud: as a matter of fact, I have! Well, you look great, she said. Thanks! I replied. I feel great, too.

And it keeps happening. The neighbour stopped me on the street, I tell Taco, to say how great she thinks I look.

Oh, lots of people tell me that, Taco replies breezily.

Like who? I demand to know who has been talking about me, and more importantly, what exactly they’ve said. Not so I can scowl at them in my head, but so that I can feel proud, Me, proud that people are noticing and talking about my body. Lots of people! Not only have I become a person who thinks and speaks in exclamation points, I also seem to be not only welcoming attention paid to my body, but actually relishing it. Reveling in it, as a mattter of fact. (May I just, as a word nerd, point out here to anyone who’s ever wondered that grammatically speaking, you relish things, rather than relishing in them? If you want to get right into enjoying something, you may certainly revel in it. But please, please Internet, please stop relishing in experiences. Thank you, lecture over,)

I love that this is happening. I love that I am able to accept praise for what has been occasionally quite hard work at the worst of times, and nothing short of challenging at the best of times. I love that I am out of the closet now, as a fat person.

Ok, and this is a weird phenomenon. It’s the thing where you think that because no one mentions it, you must not be very fat. I mean, come on, when I was a size 20, people would ask me where I got a particular piece of clothing. Small people would ask me this question. I never knew what to say. It would be embarrassing to both of us, I reckoned, if I said I got it at the fat store. Usually, I’d just say I got it at the Bay. After all, you can get most everything there, including, sometimes, cute clothes in a range of sizes. But seriously, when people asked me that it made me think they must not know how fat I was because if they did, they would realise that even if I told them where that cute skirt came from, there was no way they’d find one in their size because hello, fat store. Sheesh.

It was a lot of work, before, to pretend that what I wouldn’t acknowledge and you wouldn’t mention simply didn’t exist. Now? Yes, I am fat. But that’s a temporary thing. If you want to point out that my body looks different—that is to say, it looks good—I am fully supportive of that.

If you want to hang out the window of a moving car, and say, as some stranger once did, “another burger couldn’t hurt,” I will continue my policy of coming up with a really scathing retort approximately three point five hours later.

Perfection and Punishment

2005-07-21T12:18:00.000-03:00

Firstly, all y’all who called me an inspiration? You people are nice.

Since last we spoke, there have been some high calorie days. And I mean high. Taco has taken it in mind to perfect the perfect lamb burger. He’s pretty good at it. Problem is, those suckers are not low-cal. They just aren’t. He puts cashews in there and chevre and a bit of olive oil, and anything else made of fat. They taste fantastic. And two of them, in pitas, with a bit of plain yogurt, clock in around 1200 calories.

Not an everyday food, that’s for sure. But once in a very great while. Yeah. Oh yeah. We had them twice in one week though. Which means we won’t be eating them again till maybe winter ’06.

The Lambony Snicket festival was followed by a strange weekend in the Valley. Strange in that it was entirely relaxing and entirely stressful, all at the same time. (Long story short: Kravitz and I went to visit her sis-in-law and niece, and, by extension, her sis-in-law’s mom, at the home of some friends of said sil’s mom. Friends who run a corporate retreat—which is an extremely beautiful place, hence the extreme relaxation—and who are self-styled self-help experts—hence the extreme stress. There’s something so…aggravating about the sanctimony of the self-righteous self-helper. An assumption that everyone but them is broken, and also stumbling around looking for the answer, the answer only the self-helper has. But let’s not get into it, because then I will get VERY ANGRY and it’s too hot for that kind of emotion.) There was eating, though not an excess of it. But, you know, some apple pie, some ice cream, some crackers (crackers are the anti-christ. So greasy and delicious), some steak, some lobster (which, as a matter of fact, besides being delicious, is also very low in fat. Until you dip it in drawn butter, that is. Which I managed not to do), a bagel. You get the idea. A lot of stuff I wouldn’t normally have around.

But, to escape the craziness of our hosts, Kravitz and I went for long walks, so things mostly evened out. I didn’t lose this week, but I did hold steady, and that’s a good thing, what with my period and all. I feel ok about the way things are going. Still working out in some fashion every day, which balances the chocolate I have been eating to make the experience of having my period during the hottest days of the summer somewhat less hateful. Going off the Pill has meant less general crazy PMS feelings, but a less comfortable period. I’ll take the latter over the former any day, and I’m pretty sure Taco would rather rub my lower back for me a couple days a month than deal with my irrational hormonal rage on and off for ten days a month. Right, Taco? Right.

Ok, so finally, here’s what I really want to talk about. Perfection and punishment. It seems to me that so many of us feel the need to do this thing perfectly. That if we can’t be perfect, we just won’t do it, because what’s the point?

That’s a tough one, hey?

It’s possible that perfectionism is what brought me to this place—or to the place I was in before I woke up and starting treating myself a little better. I would have it in mind to eat healthfully, but come mealtime I would ALWAYS forget (an interesting response, to be sure, and one that probably bears some investigation, some other time), and eat a cheeseburger. And then I’d remember afterward that I wasn’t going to eat cheeseburgers any more, but that since I had, I might as well have a Mars bar. Logic has never been my strong suit.

The thing is, life is not perfect. It just isn’t. There is no perfect set of circumstances, no perfect time, no perfect behaviour. It’s an unreasonable expectation. I make all kinds of allowances for the people in my life: for co-workers, siblings, friends, Taco. But what kind of allowances am I prepared to make for myself? Not very many. I am great at cutting slack for other people. Great at figuring out why they might not behave like perfect paragons all the time, and forgiving them. But when it comes to my expectations for myself, I am unforgiving. I have a higher standard for myself, and I’m going to go ahead and say it: THAT’S FUCKED.

It is! It’s not healthy. It’s not compassionate. I would never treat one of my friends that way, ever, ever. In fact, I have shown more understanding to strangers than I show to myself sometimes.

And then there’s punishment. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I’m pretty good about not punishing myself for not eating perfectly or not working out (there may be a little chatter in my head about it, or some general fretting, but it’s never hateful). I know I make good choices most of the time food-wise, and I’m actually really into exercising (imagine!), and I’ve been able, so far, to take the long view about all this. But I think it’s easy to get into punishment mode. And I feel sad when I read a blog where someone is castigating herself for her “weakness” for eating ice cream or not going for a walk.

Because yes, individual decisions and actions matter, but what matters much more, I think, is the accumulation of decisions and actions. It wasn’t one ice cream bar or one missed walk that got us this way. It was the way we lived. And the way we live now has to leave room for sweet treats. It has to leave room for lazy Sundays. It has to leave room for compassion.

It has to, because we are our bodies, like it or not. Our bodies are not all we are, but they are part of us. And we should be as kind to them as we are to others.

So that’s it. I’m letting myself off the hook for perfection. I’m going to continue eschewing punishment as a response to my perceived lack of perfection. It’s all compassion up in here, all the time.

My loss is my gain

2005-07-14T15:47:00.000-03:00

It comes as no small surprise to me that each week, the scale shows me a weight that is exactly one pound less than it was the week before. This trend has been continuing for several weeks, and no one is more surprised than me. There are a number of issues that begin swirling in my head when I think about this.

Firstly, it has come to my attention that I never thought I could do this. Not that I didn’t think I was good enough or strong enough. I quit biting my fingernails cold turkey when I was twelve. I quit a pack-a-day cigarette habit even colder turkey fifteen years later. So it’s not that I doubt my ability to do the difficult stuff. But when I think about body image and the body dysmorphia I have—well, I’ve never hesitated (at least, never in my adult life) to flaunt what I’ve got. I haven’t let my fatness stop me from having a great relationship, a great job, buying a house, being a person. I have looked at myself in the mirror and thought, yep, you look good, considering the circumstances.

Those circumstances though? Literally, it never occurred to me before last September that I could change those. In fact, I have spent my entire life thinking, well, this is the hand I have been dealt, this fatness. I will simply make the best of it. And to a large extent, I’ve done just that. I have always thought of myself (and been thought of by others) as super confident. My line is that I have, if anything, a little too much self esteem. And yet, and yet, I have walked through this life in a body that would seem to broadcast the exact opposite. And more than that, I have done nothing to prove that billboard wrong.

Until now, that is. More on this in a moment.

I guess what I’m wondering is, that body dysmorphia, that…well, we’ll call it an ability…to look in the mirror, see a woman who was somewhere in the neighbourhood of a hundred pounds overweight (and is now 70-some pounds over the line) and feel ok about the reflection: is that good or bad? Healthy or not? I don’t know. I think the lack of self-loathing is good. I think the lack of motivation to change was very, very bad indeed.

How did I get here? I guess I woke up from a long, long dream. Felt a pain in my knee, finally, finally realised it was from carrying around that extra hundred pounds and thought: right, this ends now.

Even then, I was a little unfocused, for months and months. Yes, there were extenuating circumstances (relentless work-related travel, my dad died, Taco and I were in a monumentally frightening car crash), but still, it took me from last September until the first week of May to figure out that half-assing it was not going to result in a smaller behind, so to speak.

And now? Now I feel unstoppable. On Sunday, I worked out THREE TIMES because it felt so good the first and second times, I didn’t want to stop. Weights with M&C at my house, a 60-minute walk outside, and a yoga DVD. On Saturday, I bought new cross trainers. Walked right into Aerobics First like I belong there (which of course I do, though that would NEVER have occurred to me a year ago) and dropped a hundred and fifteen bucks on some New Balance sneaks without blinking an eye. Because, as the ad says, I am worth it. Yes I am.

I am eating cherries and carrots and quinoa (not all together, that’s just weird) and loving it, but that’s no surprise. My problem was never not eating well. I mean, I am the only person I know who eats salad every day. I always have. Italian and all, you know. But I’ve figured out that if I don’t cram the food in, I don’t need as much of it. And if I forget, and I do cram the food in, I tend to realise that I’ve done so as I eat the last bite. And instead of going for more because I feel ripped off that I spaced out and didn’t enjoy eating it, I say, oh well, self. You’ve eaten your fuel, you forgot to enjoy it, maybe you’ll pay more attention next time. Or, I figure out some exercise to do so I can make room to eat more should I still desire it when the workout is done.

And this, I think, is how the thin world lives. Oh my god, I get it. I get that if you look at your food log (ok, the thin world doesn’t keep food logs, but in their head they do, for sure they do, that’s HOW THEY’RE THIN) and you see that calorically speaking, you’re right on track for the day, but percentage wise, wow, that’s a lot of fat you’ve eaten, well you can figure out something with complex carbs to eat to balance it.

I realise, additionally, that all my life I have felt, in general, that there was a piece of information that everyone except me seemed to have about how to be in the world and be happy. Do I think that I have now found it? Yes. Do I think it is related to food and exercise? Well, no. But somehow, that September day last year, a lock in my head tumbled, and out fell this new way to live, and here I am, and I no longer feel like I’m not in on the secret, and oh boy, oh mister, what a goddamn relief that is!

It’s not so much about the eating and exercising. But it’s not NOT about that, either. It is, I think, about living in the world right now. Not scheming and planning for the future (a future in which magically I am no longer fat, because I schemed and planned though never actually DID anything, because, see above: I didn’t know I could, or was entitled to, or some other equally absurd idea, and yet somehow, I got thin simply by wanting it. Oh, that’s a good one!), not analysing and regretting the past. I don’t hit the mark all the time, of course. But it seems I’m hitting it often enough. Staying mostly mindful when I eat (and most other times, too, come to think of it), or at least realising that I should have and working harder at it the next time. Realising that it makes me feel good to exercise. That I have never, ever regretted working out. That I am perfectly happy to exercise for 60 to 90 minutes a day, every day, especially if it means I can sometimes eat pineapple upside down cake, as I did last night.

I realise there’s a chance that someday, this easy pound-a-week pace will dry up and I’ll have hit a plateau. I will probably feel frustrated when that happens. But I hope I’ll also feel that what I’ve gained thus far is so much more important than what I’ve lost.

My ass? It's hers. And IT HURTS.

2005-07-06T17:41:00.000-03:00

So on Sunday, M&C and I met up for a little one-on-one action. There was running…very slow, disorderly running. There were lunges, and squats, and there was a medicine ball, which we tossed at each other, and which I totally managed not to throw directly at M&C’s face…mainly because my abs are so weak I did not have the physical wherewithal to do so. I did, however, curse at her A LOT.

This went on—the slow running, the medicine ball tossing and especially the swearing—for just over an hour. At the end of it, I felt sweaty. And also happy. But mostly sweaty.

The hard truth of the matter is that I am not fit. Whooo BOY am I not fit. Not by a long shot, kickboxing and yoga and cardio strip classes notwithstanding. I have not much in the way of cardiovascular capacity and, as it happens, lo these long months of working out I have been CHEATING without even trying to cheat. That is to say, I don’t do the exercises properly. So, sure, I’ve been moving around and burning calories. But have I been becoming more fit? A little. I don’t huff and puff near as much as I used to. But I also get very panty, apparently, from running a measly little quarter of a kilometre. I know, I know, it will get better. But patience has never really been my strong suit, you dig?

Anyhow, we’re going to meet once a week to continue this torture-I-mean-training. Truly though? It is awesome. I am so lucky, and I’m not even saying that because I know M&C reads my site and I want her to go easy on me next time. Really, I’m fortunate. She’s a great instructor, she cares about what happens to me, and in no way does she intend to ever let me off the hook, ever. For anything. To wit, her latest email to me:

So you gave me a written summary of your goals. Meanwhile, my goals with you
are right on par - I must now just maintain...... I know I am on goal as
long as you continue to write IT HURTS in capitals when referring to your
ass. New goal.....I want bold, italics and capitals.
No problem.
Yo ass is mine.

I assured her that before long, she will reach her typographic goal. Like, probably next week.

In other fitness news, I am also taking a 90-minute Ashtanga yoga class three times a week at a yoga studio near my house. It is AWESOME. Unbelievably sweaty, ridiculously early in the day (7am, good thing it’s right around the corner), and totally, completely, utterly awesome.

I have to admit I love that I am becoming a person who looks forward to working out.

Except for last night when I had to force myself to at least go for a 60-minute walk. Every step was torture. I’ve never felt so reluctant all the way through a workout, especially such a mild one. And walking, I love walking. But last night, I felt as reluctant to do it by minute fifty as I had at minute five. I’ve been pretty sore this week, so it’s possible I need a break. I’m skipping cardio strip and kickbox tonight, mainly because I have to work late, and then I’m reading downtown again and so there’s no time. But if I wasn’t feeling so burned out, I probably would have tried harder to fit it in. Anyhow, I got my ninety minutes this morning, and the goal lately is 540 exercise minutes a week, which averages out to ninety minutes six days a week (possibly a too-ambitious goal, but we’ll see). All of which is to say, I am on track.

Eating has also been just fine, though last night I overate a tad…two No Pudge brownies and some bread and cheese when I wasn’t genuinely hungry, just felt like eating. But it all fell within my calorie budget for the day. So, not perfect, but far, far from a crisis. Most days I have trouble eating all my calories (another good reason to skip tonight’s workout…I already have 1400 calories to eat tonight. NOT going to happen! Adding more exercise would mean more calories I really should eat and I just can’t see doing it.)

But those calories will come in handy if I need a small glass of liquid courage before taking the stage tonight. I generally get just a little keyed up right before I go on. A little vodka and soda will go down nicely. Mmm, vodka and soda.

Strip for me

2005-06-30T16:11:00.000-03:00

Last night was my regular appointment with Cardio Strip. It is quickly becoming one of my favourite workouts (not least because I have to wear a stupid stack splint on my finger for SIX! WEEKS! in an effort to persuade my poor snipped tendon that it should straighten the hell out and stop being deformed. Yes, the plastic surgeon said I was deformed. Anyhow, said deformity and its treatment mean kickboxing=not so fun when you can’t make a fist with your left hand. Here’s a tip for you: if you’re going to smoke and snack, for chrissakes, use a good knife to slice the sourdough bread, lest you end up DEFORMED AND IN A SPLINT FOR SIX WEEKS DURING THE SUMMER. Ahem. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programme.)

Where was I? Ah yes, I love Cardio Strip. One, it does not require me to make a fist and hit a bag really hard. Two, the music totally rocks (High School Confidential, You Can Leave Your Hat On, Sexual Healing and, of course, Brick House).Third, the class is taught by Mean and Crazy, who comes off more Fun and Sexy in this particular 45-minute period.

But most importantly, Cardio Strip is a class in which having tits and hips and an ass? All assets. The class is just about always full…which at my gym means 20 or 25 women, and usually one guy, gay, also an instructor at the gym. Besides Jamie, the class is full of women with different kinds of bodies. Tall and gangly, short and trim, skinny, round, middle-aged, young. Doesn’t matter. What matters is a willingness to shake it. And a lack of propriety helps, too. It’s an incredibly playful class, with plenty of admonitions to “cover it up, ladies, you’ll never make any money if you show them everything at once.” Yes, at first you feel completely ridiculous covering your tank-top clad boobs with your hands, but after a bit it’s hilariously fun. You stick your butt out, you swing your hips, you wave your towel in the air like you just don’t care, and along the way you get one hell of a lower body workout. Plus, if you’re shy, it’s probably a great, safe way to feel at home in your body in public. Being not that shy, I couldn’t say for sure. Maybe it would be excruciating. But I guess if you thought that touching your own spandex-wrapped ass in front of other people (who are also, it must be noted, touching their own gym-clothed butts) would be tantamount to casually sitting on a restaurant patio sipping a latte in the all-together, Cardio Strip probably isn’t for you. And that is truly too bad, because oh my god the good time you are missing.

It’s not a brutal workout the way kickboxing is. You’re going to sweat, but you’re probably never going to feel like barfing. And have I mentioned that the people who do look a little silly in this particular class are the skinny atheletic ones? Because they kind of don’t really have any hips to swing. That said, it’s probably still best to avoid eye contact with yourself in the mirror for the first few classes because…well, it can make you feel absurd. But once you get into the swing of things, so to speak, it’s kind of awesome to check yourself out and realise, hot damn, I look sexy.

Honestly, I usually think that when I see myself in the mirror at home, but almost never do I think that when I see myself in the mirror at the gym.

And you know, we spend our lives in these bodies, maybe hating them, maybe ignoring them, certainly mistreating them—repeatedly—to the point that we have serious weight to lose. And it can feel like such a battle sometimes, you against your body; it’s such a struggle to figure it out, how many calories a day, how much exercise, what is the magic combination that will unlock the weightloss vault for me today. What a relief to spend 45 minutes a week revelling in the simple joy of some good old fashioned bump and grind. I should probably feel like a bad feminist for loving this class, but the thing of it is, any class that makes that many women caress their own buttocks with a huge smile on their face—not for the money they’re making doing it, not for the benefit of any audience, just for the sheer joy of being in their body and doing something good for it—well, frankly, if that’s wrong, sister, I don’t want to be right.

2005-06-29T15:05:00.000-03:00

You wouldn't happen to have any pie in your pocket, would you?

2005-06-22T15:11:00.000-03:00

Because I could really, really go for a snack right now.

I mean a snack besides the plum I ate a while back.

And something other than the cottage cheese and fruit salad I had not ten minutes ago.

And not quite the ounce of almonds I just snacked on.

The world, please, with salt and vinegar. Or brown sugar and cinnamon. Warm, cold or indifferent, put it on a plate and I will eat it.

Or not. So far, I haven’t eaten the cookies that are ten feet away, as usual. I thought I’d get an oatcake from the canteen because first of all, oats, and second, hello, cake! But there were no oatcakes to be had. So I got five jellybeans from the little candy machine, which reminded me how much I dislike refined sugar. And while that may be true, and in fact IS true, apparently I don’t dislike it enough to stop wishing I had a snack made of it in my hand right now. A better snack than five jellybeans.

What to do? Continue to resist, I guess. I have many more calories coming to me today, because I’m hitting the gym at 5:15 for cardio strip, a 15-minute ab class that will no doubt leave me begging for my life, and then cardio kickbox at 6:15. And I’ve already logged a half-hour yoga session today. That, my dudes, is a pantload of exercise.

But even I can see that eating all the sugar I can get my grubby paws on will not be the way to make it through that much exercise. The cottage cheese and fruit was a good start. I’ll follow it up with some almond butter toast with fresh sliced strawberries on it and some soymilk when I get home.

Which should be in…what?…a hundred minutes? Surely I can tough it out for a measly hundred minutes.

Right?

Renovations in progress

2005-06-21T16:11:00.000-03:00

I met up with M&C today in the Public Gardens to discuss my personal renovation project. We discussed my goals (the obvious ones, like lose fat and build muscle; the functional ones, like learn to run and feel comfortable in a kayak; and the vanity ones, like fit into high boots and be able to shop exclusively and easily in regular stores) and how best to meet them. The words “boot camp” “early mornings” and “your ass is mine” were bandied around with insouciance (on her part) and terror (on mine).

That said, oh my god I cannot wait to start. Her kickboxing class on Saturday was, as expected, brutal, but in the best, sweatiest, most satisfying way. She screamed at us, but it was, strangely, quite motivating and invigorating. I hit that punching bag, and believe you me, it stayed hit.

I am feeling, more each day, that making these changes permanent is within my grasp. Mostly, lately anyhow, I don’t crave junk, and that is a really good thing. I’ve started to see some reluctant movement on the scale, which is heartening (not the reluctance, of course. The movement), though still excruciatingly slow. I’ve made a few tinkering changes to the calories-in part of my equation. Using the criteria at WLR, I’ve been calling myself sedentary (since I sit at my desk for eight-ish hours a day), but every other source I’ve checked would peg me as lightly to moderately active. So I’ve decided to adjust my status to moderately active, and stop counting my walks to and from work (and other random non-planned-exercise walking I might do) as exercise. I’m thinking this will all even out. The thing is, most days, I don’t find it hard to stay under 1,590 calories, but I’m kind of thinking that perhaps the reason I haven’t been losing a pound a week (as the science equation says I should) is that my calories-in are actually a bit too low. So I’m telling the computer I’m moderately active, and I’m further telling it that I want to lose a pound and a half a week, rather than a pound a week. It ups my calories by a small amount only, but I’m going to check it out for a while, see if it makes a difference. By no means do I expect to lose that much a week. Hell, I’ve learned not to expect anything. That way, when I get something, it’s an awesome surprise. This is probably sad and sick and twisted in some way, but it’s working for me just at the moment.

I’m also flirting with the idea of a weekly free day. I don’t feel the need, at all, to binge or splurge or whatever. But I do recognise in myself a need, about once a week, to be liberated from counting. Usually because there’s a social event I’d like to attend that will include consumption of food I can’t account for. And right now, I find I get stressed out about not being able to tot it all up and plug it into WLR. Which is, frankly, stupid. I’m in a good rhythm of thinking before I eat, making good or excellent choices pretty much all the time, and getting a reasonable (though not fantastic) amount of exercise. I need this process to be as much like real life as possible, because, hello, it IS real life. It has to be, or I won’t be able to sustain it. I also find, that on the weeks that I do have an unofficial free day, the scale actually moves. I know I am, like, the frillionth weightloss blogger to have figured this out, but that’s me. Late bloomer.

I am delighted with all these renos. Now, if only I could make similar progress with my house renos…

Abs-olutely horrifying

2005-06-17T11:38:00.000-03:00

It’s possible that my love affair with Leisa Hart may be on the wane. I mean, yes, I’ve been neglecting her lately, given my current fascination with Yoga and Pilates, plus the classes at the gym. But I can’t see that that’s any reason for her to treat me the way she did last night.

I’d gone to the eye doctor’s for some arcane procedure in which they anesthetised my eyeball and then super-dilated my pupils, possibly just for kicks. The combination left me big-eyed and unable to see much. So, a visit to the gym was certainly out. On the other hand, a hearty Lebanese lunch at a restaurant and my desire to stay in bed yesterday morning, rather than haul my ass to the Pilates mat, had left me with a mere 333 calories for supper. Not enough. Especially since Taco was making pizza. Mmmmpizza. But I digress.

So, bleary-eyed but not blind enough to NOT be able to exercise, I hooked up with Leisa for what I thought would be a joyous reunion. And oh yeah, it was…all through the sweaty cardio, even into buns and thighs. My devotion to her wavered a little during the upper body workout, but that’s really my fault for not lifting weights for weeks except to move them out of my way in the morning while I’m pulling out my mat for Yoga. But Leisa really got her revenge for weeks of neglect with the abs workout. A workout I’ve never done before on that DVD. And holy shit, now I know why.

I was lying on the floor practically crying, trying to crunch and twist and oh my god, I thought Pilates was giving me a nice set of abs but who the hell have I been kidding? Taco came into the room at one point and asked how it was going. “I hate her,” I seethed, through gritted teeth as I “worked” my “obliques.” “She loves you,” Taco replied. I grunted. “She thinks you look bad!” “Yeah, but only in the bad way now,” I gasped. “The kickboxing love is gone, replaced with this fucking torture.” And then I fell back on the mat, panting and cursing.

Leisa Hart. Screw you. On the other hand, I bet if I did that abs workout a few times a week, it wouldn’t fill me with hate and pain so much. It is HARD to be a pollyanna, people, but it seems I have no choice.

In other news, this fragment of an email from Mean and Crazy this morning:
“Also, let’s make some definite plans to get you started. Maybe we should just have a short meeting so I can get a grasp of what your goals are and then
tell you what I can do for you, and to come up with a schedule that will
work for you.
You put it out there.....now your ass is mine.
Was that too tough...or tough enough?
Have a great day and I will see you later...”

That “I will see you later…” could be a threat, could be a promise. We start tomorrow, with a kickboxing class. I have thus far avoided her kickboxing class, because everyone at the gym says it’s superhard. “Who says that?” she demanded to know the other day. I cowered a little, “I dunno. People in the change room.” Please don’t hit me, I added silently. Ha ha, just kidding. Heh.

I’ll let you know how it goes. If I can still move my arms to type.

Train this

2005-06-16T16:06:00.000-03:00

Well, it looks like I’ve got me a personal trainer.

For god’s sake.

I went to the gym last night. Hooo boy. Thirty minutes of vigorous walking on the treadmill and then a full-on insane Latin cardio class. My face was that always-enchanting shade of call-the-ambulance red, but oh my it felt good to sweat. Yoga and Pilates definitely dial my area code, in that they make me feel very happy and tall (which is really something given my five-foot-one-and-three-quarters “height”), but there is nothing like a good 45-minute cardio class led by Mean and Crazy.

Who is, of course, my friend and not that mean or crazy at all. Maybe a little crazy. Anyhow, get her in a fitness situation and she comes on all mean and crazy and sometimes, that’s exactly what I need to get those good exercise endorphins racing through my system.

Which is why, as my face “glowed” post-class, I thought it would be a good idea to ask M&C if she’d be my personal trainer.

She said, “I would love to.” Then she looked at me for a beat and said, “I’ll kick your ass.”

“I’m counting on that,” I said.

And so, this summer, she’ll be kicking my ass all over Point Pleasant Park, in intervals. And putting me through my paces in kickboxing, cardio strip and Latin cardio classes. And she told me she has big balls, which came as no surprise to me, but apparently she means stability balls, and that’s good to know. And she has one of those weighted balls, those BOSU balls, and I am so ready to flail around on and ultimately fall spectacularly off of one of those.

It’ll push me to the next level. I am ready to go there. Remind me I said this when I’m cursing her name in a week or two, wouldja?

Meanwhile, there’s a great deal on at a local yoga studio. Kravitz and I are going to take advantage of their two-fer deal. You can get two unlimited passes for summer use for 200 bucks. If I can find one other person interested in such economical beauty, Taco could get a pass, too. They have early morning yoga classes, and outdoor yoga on Wednesday evenings and meditation and all kinds of goodness. It’s probably time to shake it up a little…my morning yoga and pilates routines are getting a little easy.

Now if it would just stop raining round the clock, my plans for an excellent summer would be complete.

Whither my workout?

2005-06-14T16:54:00.000-03:00

A quick note from a busy-so-far week. I am worried, this week, about losing last week's great momentum (even though I was on the road, eating hotdogs and high tea, I still lost a pound). My eating has been fine since I got back to town (which was actually less than 48 hours ago, now that I think about it), and I did yoga yesterday and pilates today. But no cardio yesterday, and none so far today.

Tonight I see my shrink right after work, and then right after that, I'm reading from my novel-in-progress at a bar downtown. So no cardio today, either, except for the walk to Dr. Take No Guff's office, which will probably take me around 15 minutes. Because this is Halifax and everything is a 15-minute walk.

Not really enough cardio, I'm sure you'll agree.

However, there's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. And there's also living in the moment and not getting too hung up on the things I can't boss around.

Of course, there are the things I can boss around -- like my ass, to the gym, tomorrow night.

I've lost 22 pounds altogether. I must stop sometimes and just feel proud of that, you know? There are miles to go, yes. But already, I've come so far.

Blinded me with science

2005-06-10T01:24:00.000-03:00

I remain fascinated with the simplicity of calories in-calories out. I am so freed by the tangible evidence, the tally at the end of the day of calories eaten and expended. Having that concrete information is making it so much easier for me to do the right thing just about every day. Or at least to make informed decisions instead of thinking, in my previously typical way, oh, it’s not that bad. It’s just a day of junk food and no exercise, or it’s just a piece of cheese, or it’s just whatever. I don’t know what I was basing that dismissiveness on, but it certainly wasn’t actual, scientific information.

Today, for instance. I took a day off work to prepare for my trip to Toronto (read: spend the day with Taco because neither of us can stand the idea of three days apart otherwise. We are sickening, I do realise this). Days off usually mean my healthy routine goes to hell. I don’t get out of bed and do yoga or pilates, I eat breakfast late, I forget to take my vitamins and supplements. I eat weird things I can’t account for, and I rarely get enough fruits and vegetables (at work, I easily down three or four fruit and veg servings out of boredom. Is it still ok to eat from boredom if it means you’re getting your fibre for the day? Discuss!).

Today could easily have headed in that direction. I got up late, but put on my workout clothes. But then did a few things (I don’t even remember what) instead of doing yoga, and then Taco made breakfast (eggs in an egg cup with toast soldiers, oh happy happy day, to which I added some kiwi and half an orange). So, breakfast was fine, but then once it was eaten, I realised I’d need to wait a few hours before doing yoga. And I forgot my vitamins. And a few hours later, it was time for lunch. Instead of just chowing on some cheese and crackers, the way I might on a weekend when driven mad from hunger because the day slipped by without me noticing, I took the time to make a veggie stirfry with vermicelli before we got too starved to think. And then I remembered to take my vitamins, because I realised that the weekend would probably get crazy, and I might miss a few opportunities and it would be stupid to miss too many of them, especially out of sheer lazy forgetfulness. And then Taco went to work and I did pilates, mainly because I was thinking about logging my food for the day, and how I was going to Toronto in a few hours and would probably eat some things that weren’t…you know, strictly on plan and all. And how it was sure going to feel a lot better at the end of the day to have a little exercise to put up against all that.

And I finally get it. I get that there are consequences…good and bad…to my behaviour. I get that if I do pilates, it makes a little room for me to eat a Reese’s peanut butter cup at the airport, if I want (and oh, believe you me, I did). I get that if I tally up what I’ve taken in and what I’ve put out for the day before I go out at night to see some music, I can see if there’s room to have a hotdog (don’t judge me! It’s Toronto, the street veggie dogs are goddamn good, it’s a frizzillion degrees here even at midnight. The hotdog seemed like the right thing—scratch that—the hotdog was entirely the right thing to do. As a matter of fact, eating it brought my daily total to the exact right proportion of protein, carbs and fat. I realise these results are not typical, yes). And if there is, if it looks like I can have it with 14 calories to spare, I’ve figured out that if I walk from the hotel to the bar and back (easily 15 minutes, maybe 20, each way), it gives me a little bit of a buffer. In fact, I’ve figured out that any opportunity I can get to move my body and burn a few calories here, a few there, is utterly worth taking. And what’s more, I have the energy now to actually, you know, take those opportunities. Go figure.

That’s not to say there’ll be peanut butter cups and hotdogs every day. Oh god no. Even before I started my little science experiment, chocolate and hotdogs were not part of the daily repertoire.

But how great is it that you can plan to eat street meat? Like, really plan. I feel like such a dink for not figuring this out sooner. For spending all that time feeling the dread and getting fatter. However, given that I’m working on staying in the moment, rather than dwelling in the past, we’ll just call it AFLE* and move on, shall we?

Good heavens, Ms Yakimoto, you're beautiful. Bee boop boo.

*another fucking learning experience

Cookie fairy

2005-06-07T14:49:00.000-03:00

Obviously, there is some supernatural element at play in my life. Here’s the thing. I work in an office that offers a very lively cookie culture. That is to say, someone is always bringing in a box or bag of cookies, homemade, store bought, doesn’t matter, there are ALWAYS cookies on a table about ten feet away from my desk.

When I first started here, it was a massive problem. I was eating two or three cookies a day, just because they were close at hand. Then a few months ago I just stopped, and I haven’t really even looked in the direction of the cookie cabal at all. It certainly helps that in that time I’ve realised that I actually don’t have much of a sweet tooth, unless the sweets are really REALLY good. But run of the mill grocery store chocolate chip cookies? Meh. Not that interested. Even home-baked stuff doesn’t excite me too much these days, unless it’s really complicated. Or unless I made it and I know what’s in it. Or unless my mother made it and I can rest assured that it will be entirely worth however many frillions of calories it will cost to eat it.

But all that said, every once in a while, I think, yeah, a cookie is just what I need. This usually happens if the cookies on offer are coated in chocolate. So I do my thing where I eat some of my healthy snacks, fruits or vegetables or whatever I’m packin’ on the day in question. And when I’ve done that and I still want a cookie, I have a few almonds from a bag I keep in my desk drawer. And when I’ve done that and I still want a cookie, I tell myself I can have one in a few minutes, soon as I finish reading a news story or writing a script or sitting in on a phone meeting or whatever banal task I’m “engaged” in.

And lately, by the time I’ve done THAT, and I STILL want a cookie and I decide, ok, well, it must be real, guess we’ll indulge after all, I turn around, and the cookies in question are gone. And this has happened, like, half a dozen times in the last month. Thank you, Cookie Fairy.

And you know what? I see they’re gone and I just think, oh well, ok, no cookies, then. I do not go on autopilot, grab my coins and head to the vending machine for a Mars bar. It doesn’t flip that sugar switch inside me. It just falls by the wayside.

And I kind of can’t believe that this is me. That I am calmly able to just let it go. That’s what it’s all coming down to lately, though. In the morning, I look at myself in the mirror, and quietly, I say, just let go. Let go. Let go.

I never thought I’d become the kind of girl who whispers to herself in the mirror, but hey, the world is full of surprises, many of them much nastier than this one.

And anyhow, this is my work lately. My work is letting go. As much as I laughed and laughed when the naturopath said, with some degree of solemnity, “I think your body has trouble letting go of things,” obviously, she’s right. And it’s not just my body, hell no. My mind, too, is tenacious to a fault. And the two of them work together to keep me hanging on to every thing that’s ever happened to me, everything I’ve ever put my hands on, every emotion that’s ever flitted across my heart. Every bad experience is tucked up under my right shoulder blade. At yoga in the mornings, I work on releasing it, bit by bit. I drink water and eat good food in an effort to persuade my body to let go a little, it’s alright, we won’t starve, we won’t die thirsting, we are ok here, just let go of what we don’t need anymore. I breathe deeply and walk and listen to tunes on my iPod and I realise that the moment is an ok place to be, and I don’t need to linger in the past or rush toward the future. I can let go of regrets and expectations. Let go, let go, let go.

And yeah, it’s all led to the first loss I’ve seen in a few weeks (down a pound and a half this morning), and that’s great. But better than that? Better than that by far is the way I feel. Strong and healthy and so fucking happy. Better than I’ve felt in years and years. I feel the realm of the possible expanding in the nicest way for the first time in so long, and I am standing right there, right on the edge of it, and I am moving forward.

Just to, you know, clarify

2005-06-06T12:24:00.000-03:00

It's not that I'm anti-encouragement.

Because I am not.

In fact, you can go right ahead and encourage me, and I will not take it the wrong way, I promise.

And I am going to try to stop seeing patronising behaviour where it may not be.

I mean, it may be there, but just in case I'm wrong, I'm going to take encouragement at face value.

Because I have to spend my energy on other things, like cardio striptease and grocery shopping and ripping out a wall in my house.

Oh, the things I have to tell you, about keeping myself honest in my efforts, about my need for concrete evidence about the relative healthiness or unhealthiness of my choices and about how health insurance plans should totally cover the cost of iPods, because listening to music while walking is the best thing I've found yet for staying in the moment.

Speaking of the moment, the one I'm in right now is owed to my employer. But I promise I'll be back tonight.

Don't encourage me

2005-06-01T22:18:00.001-03:00

Taco and I were lying around discussing the Internet, when I mentioned that I wanted to write a post about people who are kind of encouraging in a way, but then mostly they’re annoying.

Taco hesitated for a moment, and then he said, "I think that’s a really unhealthy thought.”

We were a little high, but trust me, it was hilarious.

But in fact, it’s not unhealthy. It’s not that I find encouragement annoying. Far from it. As a matter of fact, I had found great encouragement just hours before, in the gym when I looked in the mirror and recognised that my body has changed subtly and for the better after several weeks of pilates and yoga. I was encouraged when Taco sat with me for an hour after supper and helped me input all the ingredients for said amazing supper into Weight Loss Resources so that I could do the tally for the day. It was terrifically encouraging to answer Taco’s questions, and show him what I’m dealing with.

What I find less encouraging, though?

The other night, we were out and we ran into a mutual acquaintance. Said acquaintance happens to frequent the same gym I do. He is a super nice guy, but he’s…well, he’s very fit. He’s always been very fit. And he said to me, "It’s so good to see you at the gym. You’re really doing great. I think it’s so great that you’re going.”

Oh boy am I churlish. When I type it out, it looks…nothing but encouraging. But you know…I know you know how so often it can feel patronising, not encouraging.

Good for you, fat girl. Good for you for going to the gym. I always hear the subtext…what took you so long?

Actually, this kind of remark used to confuse me desperately. Back when I thought that since no one ever really treated me like I was fat, I must not be. Hee hee, those were funny times. The joke was on me, man. Anyhow. I remember doing a 21-day yoga sadhana in Winnipeg. Near the end of the 21 days, this woman from class said to me, "I’ve been meaning to tell you how glad I am that you’re doing the sadhana. I just think it’s so great. And you have really nice energy in your poses."

Truth be told, I kind of thought she had a crush on me. Maybe two hours later, I figured it out and I was mortified.

She’d singled me out to tell me she was so glad to see me exercising, and she didn’t even KNOW ME. It was so…strange and hot-face-making. I’m sure every person in that class had an excellent reason for taking the sadhana—they’re kind of intense, actually, you don’t do them without some good reason. But I was the only one she spoke to like that. Because my reason—or what she thought was my reason—was visible, she felt within her right to point it out. It feels like such an invasion, it does.

I don’t know if this is reasonable, or if it’s part of my left-over indignation at any notice anyone takes of my shape. I just realised that it wasn’t just everyone else who pretended I wasn’t fat. It was me, it started with me.

In some ways, I realise this is the way the world should be. It sounds like a Free To Be, You and Me kind of philosophy: you know, it’s what’s inside that counts, and all that.

Instead, what it did, what I did, was ignore my body to the point of making myself sick. And I silently, somehow, persuaded almost everyone I came in contact with to do the same thing. To never mention my body in any way that singled it out. To never acknowledge what was frankly impossible to ignore. My size.

Talk about the elephant in the room no one talks about. I mean that as kindly to myself as possible; it’s an unfortunate, but irresistable pun.

I’m not sure what the intelligence is here. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to take away from this realisation. I thought this post was going one way, and here it is veering off in totally another.

I guess the intelligence is this: it’s time to really pay attention to this body. It’s time to be accountable to it. It’s time to realise that indeed, I am my body, and my body is me. I’ve spent more than three decades living almost exclusively in my head. And it’s been a lovely place to live, really. But I know there’s more to life than what’s in there. I know there’s a whole world, a world of fresh cut grass, and learning to canoe, and sharing the couch with Taco, and fixing the house and being in love and cooking amazing food and becoming a runner and a million frillion other experiences. And I know I’m going to need to really live in my body, before I can really live in the world.

The long way

2005-05-30T18:47:00.000-03:00

I walked home from work today, which I don’t usually do. I am so lazy, desire for incidental exercise aside, that I will often ask Taco to come get me. Unbelievable. You’d think I was happy at this weight with that kind of behaviour.

Helping me reform is my shiny new iPod Shuffle, which is making me want to walk everywhere, all over town, all day long. To start, though, I walked home from work. Listening to a curious blend of Beastie Boys, Kelly Clarkson, some stuff I don’t even know what it is, I just bought it in a frenzy the other day at the iTunes store, and Taco’s record (which you can download for yourself, if you like, here. I highly recommend it, of course…)

The Goodness Plan has not exactly been flawlessly executed yet, but elements of it are coming together. That is to say, I did do yoga this morning, and Taco started supper before he went to work. I came home as he was going out, and he asked me to go pick up his new glasses. I grabbed a ride with him as far as the music school he teaches at, then hiked the rest of the way. The place was closed, no new glasses for Taco today. Instead, I bought a loaf of kamut bread at Great O and hoofed home.

I took the long way home, consciously eschewing short cuts.

You know? It was very awesome. All together, I ended up with 50 minutes of brisk walking, which will more than sub in for what I was going to do at the gym tonight. Plus, I got to feel the damp air on my skin (the sun is supposed to come out tomorrow, and it’s about time. It’s been 25 days since last it shone here). And I got to smell the incredible fresh-cut grass on Citadel Hill. And I got to hear a lot of really good music on my iPod.

I loved the feeling of being in motion. The sensation of walking, of feeling my legs move back and forth. It was absolutely intoxicating. I cannot account for this. I’m not generally the type to get all worked up about simple movement. Maybe I am becoming this type? Hard to say.

I can tell you this. Lately, I’ve been working on breathing. And trying to stay in the moment. Two things I’m pretty bad at, all things considered. But when I manage to do either, let alone both, I feel fantastic. Light headed and happy, like I have some tremendous secret, some amazing new toy. Somewhere in here, somewhere in all the brain work I’ve been doing lately, somewhere in here lies the key.

If it’s been all about fear in the past, and I believe it has been, then this is where I begin to conquer it. This is where I start to find myself. Finally.

And all this time, I didn’t even know I was lost.

This is just me, I guess, taking the long way home.

The new deal

2005-05-27T12:55:00.000-03:00

I am having trouble with balance. I am tending to look after others before — way before — looking after myself. There are things I want: to exercise daily, to eat well, to rewrite my novel, to spend time with Taco, to have a nice house, to deal with my grief and assorted other issues. But so far, I haven’t been able to balance all those desires, all those needs. Or maybe, I haven’t been trying particularly hard to do so.

In fact, it’s possible I’ve been paddling pretty furiously in the exact opposite direction.

Why would I do this? Who the hell knows?

Am I worth the trouble it would be to balance all these sometimes-competing desires? The intellectual part of me says hell yeah. The other part? The part that lately makes a lot of my decisions? That part is not as sure. In fact, that part, quite possibly, says no, probably not.

It pains me to even write those words. It pains me to admit that there’s a part of me that is small and fucked up and spends its time finding ways to sabotage the efforts the rest of me makes. I used to think I’d made friends with that fucked up part, that I’d found a way for us to live together and all. I thought I’d found a way to acknowledge that part, but also to wrest the power away from it, to put it in its place. A very small, insignificant place.

But then, I guess it’s been a while since I tried to do something so…difficult, yes, but also so demanding of change. Of honesty. Of self-searching. Not that it took much self-searching to bring my old nemesis, the Nay-sayer, to the surface. Apparently, she was lurking there all the while. Waiting for an opportunity to gain the upper hand again.

And the opportunity is definitely there. I am feeling weak, in many, many ways. Emotionally, I’m tired. Grieving is hard work, especially when you pretend it’s not happening. Physically, I feel like my body is falling apart. I cut myself definitively on the weekend, sawed into my flesh as if it were the loaf of sourdough I was cutting. And now my left index finger is bent and sore and swollen, and maybe I should have gone for stitches after all because I cannot straighten the top third of it. The battle with the yeast beast continues. I feel like I am always on the verge of a yeast infection, plus I have cystic-acne-like eruptions in a couple of places…boy, aren’t you glad you stopped by Mighty Mighty today? My hair is still thinning, which I find extremely distressing, even though no one can tell but me because my hair is so thick to begin with.

It would be very easy, right now, to just lay all these burdens down.

Except what would that prove? And who would that help? Physically, it will not make me feel better to stop working out, and to start eating crap. Emotionally, it will not serve me to accept defeat.

And so, I have gone the other way. I have flipped into planning mode, my happiest mode of all. There is a plan, people. Which is not unusual. I almost always have a plan. But the best thing about this plan (which I realise needs some kind of snappy name. I am working on that) is that Taco, the least planningest person I’ve ever known, is the mastermind. Taco! It is to laugh! And yet, behold the goodness of this plan:

· Continue with yoga/pilates every work day morning
· Taco will prepare suppers of my choosing each afternoon so that I don’t have to a) cook when I get home and b) freak out that I can’t eat what he’s made
· Not having to cook supper means I can get to the gym at least four evenings a week…
· Where I will do a combination of classes I enjoy, and nice mindless treadmill walking, because walking helps me think
· On Saturdays, we will go for walks by the water, which will serve two purposes: one, exercise for the day; and two, grief-management homework assigned by shrink and not yet touched or even thought about constructively by me
· On Sundays, I will write. Or edit. Whichever seems most pressing, book-wise. Meanwhile, Taco will attend to the housecleaning etc.
· And finally, on Sunday afternoons, there will be a treat outing. Like, to a matinee. But no movie popcorn, because movie popcorn is the devil in a bag. Because you might as well eat SIX BIG MACS as eat a bag of movie popcorn, and that’s without the golden topping, and if you didn’t know that, now you do. So we will take our own excellent snacks like cherries, which can kick the ass of movie popcorn all around the snackbar any day of the week anyhow.

If that’s not a plan that’s bursting with goodness, well, I guess I don’t know what goodness is. As Taco pointed out this morning while devising this plan, he is basically a house-husband, except that I’ve been taking on most of the cooking and house chores. Why? Because I am OBSESSED that’s why. And because being obsessed with the house and looking after it and him means I don’t have to think about things I’d rather not, like why I’m shying away from dealing with my grief, and my weight, and my writing, and my SELF.

Ha-ha! Well, there’ll be no more of that! Seriously, though, I’ve been putting it off, putting it all off, for probably fairly goodish emotional reasons, but those emotions kind of aren’t helping me go forward in…well, in ANY way. So. The Goodness Plan. It goes into motion today.

Define this

2005-05-25T16:21:00.000-03:00

I have just spent the last ten minutes feeling up my own leg. I cannot get enough of myself right now and I will tell you why: Pilates or yoga, five times a week, that’s why.

My god, people, the definition. In my calves. My knees. My forearms, for the love of Mike. Even my thighs offer, in some small way, their own form of definition. This morning, as I rolled up into yet another pilates-induced crunch, the sight of my own bicep filled me with glee.

A very nice feeling indeed.

Certainly, the need to blast off rather a lot of fat remains. But when it begins to abate in earnest? Muscles. Muscles, muscles, muscles.

So it’s been…what? Three weeks since I made it a goal to do pilates or yoga every workday morning? I haven’t missed a day since. And that’s been good. But it has meant that my slavish loyalty to the gym every evening has fallen by the wayside.

It is time to bring them back together. Yes, time to preside over the unholy marriage of meditative morning toning exercises with sweaty evening gym machinations.

I know it’s necessary. I know I can do it. But I worry, a little, about getting overwhelmed by it all. Because: I have a full time job. And we’re renovating the house. And I have this novel hanging over me that I’m supposed to rewrite. And there’s the morning toning stuff, which I love. And counting calories, which I am totally getting the hang of. And what if I try to add this other thing and I totally flip my wig?

I guess the answer is so what if I do? So what? So I’ll just get up, dust off and start again in a different way. What’s a little wig-flipping, to the likes of me, champeen wig-flipper from way back? Has there ever been a truly negative, lasting effect to the flipping of the wig? No, now that I think about it, there kind of has not been. There’s been plenty of needless fretting before I do something that I think MIGHT lead to wig-flipping. But no actual stopping-of-the-turning-of-the-world once my wig is up in the air doing somersaults.

So. So so so.

Guess what I’m doing tonight? Me, my sportsbra and the treadmill. Yes, boy.

(Because, I’ll tell you a secret. Lately, I’ve started to think that people who run for fun or exercise or both are not as stupid/insane as I once thought they were. Now that’s just between you and me. Don’t go telling everyone.)

All that you can be

2005-05-19T10:32:00.000-03:00

Is it enough, in this weight loss game, to do the best you can do? I guess that depends on what your best is, and what the situation is, and what kind of changes you’re willing to make to that situation.

For myself, the last week has been a revelation. Actually, numerically tracking my food intake every day has been enlightening to say the least. On the days on which I also exercise, I have no problem either hitting the target directly, or even coming under by anywhere from a handful to a few hundred calories. The days I don’t exercise? Well, that’s proven much more difficult. And it’s not just that I have fewer calories to eat on those days. There are two factors at play there.

One is that if I exercise, especially if I do so in the morning, I have already made a commitment to myself that day, as absurd and flaky as that sounds, and it seems kind of foolish to seel it down the river by eating cookies or excess cheese or whatever it is I want that day. The other is that, if things are nomal and good an droutine, I will have worked out. That’s it. If things are not: If I’m grappling with too much work, if I’m on the road, if I’m a little depressed, I will not work out. And all those things being equal, quite apart from exercising or not, I will have trouble with food. Either I can’t get what I need—healthy, low-calorie food—or I don’t want what I need. I want chips or chocolate or cheese instead. The unholy trinity.

Take this trip to Toronto, for example. I packed my workout stuff, but the hotel gym was packed to the rafters the first morning, and I decided to sleep in the second morning. Add to that the continental breakfast (croissant, cheese, fruit, espresso, yogurt) that left me hungry all morning and led to snacks during the meetings (half danish, half scone). Oh, and of course all-day meetings with a bad facilitator meant I sat on my ass for eight hours. Bored enough to be burning fewer calories than I normally would just sitting around.

Day two was a little better, but really? Not much. I adjusted, based on what I’d learned the day before, but still. When I don’t exercise, I feel sluggish, I feel like there’s something missing. This, to me, is a great, great thing. It suggests that making exercise a life-long habit will be relatively easy. Or, hey, at least much more likely. Which I will take in a pinch.

There were certainly points in those two days, and indeed the rest of the weekend, during which I thought, ok, this is the best I can do about this right now. And I can either freak out about not doing better, or I can look to the future and see how I can adjust there. I chose the latter. And sure, it might look like a cop-out at first blush. Except that the best I could do didn’t mean giving up and eating as much as whatever I wanted. Instead, it meant eating food that admittedly wasn’t my first choice, but eating it in a mindful way. And it meant looking up food on weight loss resources BEFORE going out for breakfast, so that I could order in an informed way. And the same at supper.

It’s not easy this stuff. It sure is not easy. But it is, at least, simple. Simple enough that even I can get the hang of it. I’m excited about this. Excited about going forward with these tools in hand. Excited about the rest of my life.

Oh.

2005-05-09T14:58:00.000-03:00

I am a process nerd. I love systems, charts, graphs. I like to calculate amounts, distances, dates. I am addicted to counting down and counting up.

Or I thought I liked that stuff.

Then I started using Weight Loss Resources to track my food, and oh sweet jesus, I knew bacon was bad for me, but 322 calories in three slices? Son of a bitch.

Even though it feels like harsh tokes just at the moment (I grabbed the wrong tupperware from the fridge today, and ended up lunch-less, and Taco was out doing errands and I foolishly thought I could get an OK lunch at the canteen downstairs which, hey, I probably could have, without the bacon), it’s actually the best kind of sobering. I have been cruising along, in a slightly more enlightened version of my old state. I know what healthy foods are, and I usually eat them. And I’ve added exercise to the menu, so now I’m good, right?

Not so fast there, pardner. Avocadoes. Which I love. Which I eat every day. Are shockingly high calorie. Good fat, whatever. Two hundred and thirty nine calories in those little friggers. That’s rather a lot.

This kind of tracking, which I’ve never done before, has a way of bringing everything into sharp focus. Yes, I love seeing a calculation on fruit and veggie servings and how many grams of fibre and protein I’m getting in a given day (if only it showed calcium intake at a glance…). But it’s also making me think even more about what to have for supper. I can see, OK, I’ve put away X number of calories so far today, and I have 634 left, and that includes the ones I earned doing yoga this morning. Which means I need to find something I can make for supper that’s going to be pretty well fat-free and crammed with good carbs in the form of vegetables. I have some haddock in the fridge, which I’d been planning to dredge in cornmeal and panfry. Um, not so much, any more. Instead, I think that haddock is bound for glory in a modified bouilliabase. Heads up, Taco, supper plans have changed!

Yes, sure, the accountability part of it is great. If it’s all there on my computer screen, it’s hard to ignore that I’ve been just a little over my calorie allotment every day for the last three (that is to say, every day since I started tracking in earnest). But it’s also hard to carry on regardless, the way I would have say, last Thursday (the day before I signed up). I’d have eaten the bacon at lunch and made the haddock for supper and I’d have walked around with that vague sense of doom, which I would have pushed insistently to the back of my head.

I realise now, writing that, that I’ve been walking around with that sense of doom for years. Literally, for years. And I’ve been pushing it to the back of my head for exactly the same amount of time. What a sad waste of energy I’d have been better served using to kickbox or walk or paint a bedroom yellow or dance in the kitchen with Taco. Well, I won’t throw good energy after bad. I won’t lament that other state. I’ll simply be thankful I found that calorie-tracking tool now, rather than a year from now. I’ll put my energy (efficiently and accurately tracked as it’ll be) to good use from here on in.

And again

2005-05-06T14:40:00.000-03:00

Another planful day yesterday. Pilates in the morning, water all day. Didn’t get supper till around 9:30, which is decidedly not perfect. But it consisted of a big salad, carrots and yogurt dip, some cheese and crackers, hummus and pita and some pineapple (still eating appetizers, after the Professor’s birthday party last weekend. That’s the last of them, though, thank god.) Again, not perfect, but far from a crisis.

And this morning, though I slept it till NINE O’CLOCK, I still managed to get the yoga tape done (as well as the dishes, and I remembered to take my vitamins, too), and walk to work.

And now, after a light sushi lunch and some fresh fruit, I’m working on the water thing. Bit by bit, I’m going to get this bitch done.

One way or another.

Goal tender

2005-05-05T11:35:00.000-03:00

All that wallowing yesterday certainly paid off. I’m funny with the wallowing. I like to do it, almost need to do it, but not for too long. I get tired of the sound of my own voice wailing "I don't know, I don't know!" Once I’ve done it publicly, and it’s out there, then I straighten up and fly right. Works every time.

So yesterday, I polished off two litres of water at work, went home, worked out for a second time yesterday, cardio this time, and then drained another litre of water. I made a rare untasty supper, though it was at least healthy. Dessert was a strawberry-mango-grapefruit-pineapple salad. Post-dinner snacking amounted to a spelt crispbread with some goat gouda, and then I packed myself away in bed by 11pm, managed to get in some snuggle time with the Professor, and then slept the sleep of the righteous.

And this morning, Pilates. Walked to work in the soft sunshine and am now drinking water like a hero.

I think it’s going to be a good day.

Half-assed

2005-05-04T15:35:00.000-03:00

That would be the tidiest way to sum up my “efforts” lately. I don’t know what it is, this malaise that has me eating sugar and bread as if they’re health foods. I don’t know how a person could feel so ready to change, and yet, not really go through with it. I mean, sure, I’m hopping…er, dragging myself out of bed every morning (this week, anyhow) to do either yoga or pilates before work. But then, well, take last night. Please. I came home from work and had a little sourdough baguette. Then made barbecued jerk tofu and veggie skewers and basmati rice, and salad. It was a great supper. And a little while after eating it, I was back in the kitchen for a bowl of cereal with soymilk and blackberries. And then I ate some chips. Not very many, but still. And a Lindt truffle. And then another one of those. And then I got the hell in bed because I couldn’t see where it would end, you know?

I was so HUNGRY yesterday. But not the kind where you feel that tingle in your stomach, the kind where you’re actually, physiologically hungry. Instead, the kind that had me eating all day and never feeling full.

I feel like I have a tremendous capacity for happiness, and an equally tremendous capacity for sadness. And yesterday, that hungry feeling was a similar one. One of simple (yet so complex) capacity. I didn’t feel full-to-bursting, so I kept eating.

It’s not a crisis, yet. My clothes are still fitting better than ever, I’m still in a size 16, my measurements are still holding steady or falling a little. But that’s not what I want. I don’t want to be a size 16. I don’t want these clothes to fit, I want them to be so loose they’re falling off. Yet, when I’m eating mindlessly, eating only because I can, I have to question just how much I want what I say I want.

It is so easy to do nothing. So easy, except for the constant chatter about it in my head, the scheming and planning and imagining. That part isn’t easy at all.

On the other hand, many times in the past nine months (nine months already?) I have found it just as easy to do the right thing. To make healthy food choices, to exercise, to drink water. So why is it so difficult now?

I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t know why I can’t just make sure I get three litres of water a day. It’s not like I’m not thirsty. Quite the contrary. But can I get up twice a day to refill my water bottle at work? I cannot. Can I, either during breakfast or throughout the evening, knock back another at home? No sir.

I forget sometimes that it’s all choice. All of it. I can choose to give my body the water it needs. I can choose to prioritise exercise. I can choose to not bring trigger foods into the house. I have made these choices before. I can choose to recommit.

It seems my two settings, though, are whole hog and half-assed. Heh. So let’s jiggle that around a little and actually try baby-stepping through it, shall we?
This week’s goals:

Drink three litres of water a day

And

Do yoga or pilates tape each morning.

They’re small steps, but they’re steps I can do. No point in big steps I won’t take, right? So, small steps it is.

Your break is over

2005-04-28T12:31:00.000-03:00

Where have I been? Well, that’s an excellent question. I’ve been right here, mostly, except for the week I was away. And the two weeks I spent doing a slightly different, somewhat more demanding job. Other than that, though, I’ve been right here, kickboxing and doing yoga (because I love that opposite-ends-of-the-spectrum thing) and trying to figure out why I’m eating sugar EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

The main reason is that it tastes good. Which is too bad. There was a brief shining moment there during which I craved it, but when I actually ate it, it didn’t taste that good to me. I was going to say that moment has passed, but maybe that’s not entirely true. It depends on the sugar in question. Really good chocolate still turns me on. But last night, a dozen M&Ms tasted kind of acidic. Last week, in a hotel room in Toronto, a Caramilk bar tasted unremarkable enough that I ate only half and saved the rest for another day.

Which, I would just like to say, is completely unheard of till now.

So I guess that’s a kind of progress. I didn’t need, last week, to gulp the whole bar down lest someone snatch it away from me. Same with the Ms last night. I ate a few, decided not to go back for more, moved on with my life. It would be nice to be able to stop trying the highly refined sugar, time after time, only to discover that yep, it still doesn’t thrill me the way it used to. But all things in moderation, I guess, including change.

And boy howdy, there’s plenty of that to be had lately. Things are bubbling at work. There is change, there will be more change, no one can say for sure what effect it will have. I don’t love that situation, but I’m working on just worrying about the stuff I can actually effect, so, and this one I can’t. So I don’t fret about it, but it is background noise, to be sure. And Professor Taco and I are making it official…he’s moving in for real. Which is super-exciting, we’re both totally tickled, but it’s still change, and change is always stressful, even if it’s the very best kind of change you can imagine.

And then there are the renovations we’re about to undertake. They at times seem so massive to me I kind of can’t believe I’m willingly going ahead. Because it’s going to mean a lot of work and a lot of mess and a lot of money and a lot of uncertainty. But then, when it’s all done: A beautiful new kitchen. Lovely new floors. A cosy sitting room at the back of the house. Main floor laundry. A music room for the professor, and a nice new bedroom for us. And a baby grand piano.

It’s kind of like the renovations I’m working on with myself. The changes and fixes I’m making to my way of thinking. The tinkering I’m doing with my body. Taking everything apart while trusting that when it’s all put back together, it’ll be better than ever. The way I want it. Fully functional, extremely beautiful.

Sure is a lot of mess and trouble in the doing, though. And I think my contractor is kind of lazy. I did not work out yesterday and meant to get up this morning for an hour’s worth of yoga but…the bed was warm and Taco was snuggly and somehow, three and a half hours passed from the time the alarm went off to the time I managed to pull myself away. Bad contractor. You will never get this project done on time at the rate you’re going!

I can make it up tonight, and work overtime on the weekend. Yoga or pilates tonight. And kickboxing tomorrow night. And maybe tear down a few walls on the weekend. That oughta be a good workout. For me, and the house.

Incidentally speaking

2005-04-01T08:31:00.000-04:00

For the first couple months of this body project, I rode the elevator. Up three floors every day at work. Though I’d take the stairs going down.

I’d make time in my day to work out, almost every day, at home or at the gym. But I’d ride the elevator instead of taking advantage of the opportunity for a little incidental exercise.

About a month ago, I started making myself take the stairs. Every day, several times a day, up or down, I take the stairs. It adds exactly no time to my day, and though I’d love to report that I notice a huge difference, I don’t.

Well, not in my body, anyhow. But it’s not all about the body, as it turns out. You’d be forgiven for thinking it is, of course. But no, there’s a mind there, too, however reluctantly it behaves sometimes, it’s still a vital piece of the puzzle.

I really noticed this in Winnipeg two weeks ago. I thought back to last year and how diligently I went to the gym each morning for Aquafit classes, and yet how one of the main motivators was that I could take the bus and end up a block away from work, instead of actually having to walk to work.

Worse than that, I remember the days my roommate would drive us to the office and I would have more than a moment of laziness, where I would consider asking her to drop me off at the side door before she went to park the car in the lot…less than a block away.

I think about that person now, that person who would much rather have mortified herself with that kind of laziness (though, to be fair to myself, I never actually did ask her to drop me off. I do have some dignity, it turns out), than put one foot in front of the other and maybe do herself some good.

I’m not that person anymore, somehow. I don’t know how. But I know for certain that I am prone to that person’s bad habits. Take my eating lately…please. It has been out of whack for three weeks now. The first week was kind of ok, because I worked out every day and at the end of the week, saw my lowest number in recent memory on the scale. The next week was pretty bad. Restaurant eating at least once a day, and zero workouts. It was “okay” because we were on vacation. But, of course, I sprained my ankle and had a cold that just kept on giving and that put paid to me hitting the gym hard when we got back from Winnipeg. I should have stopped eating like I was on vacation the minute I no longer was (and also, can I say, who in their right mind goes to Winnipeg in March on vacation? And works while there? Obviously I have some trouble treating myself right, but that’s another entry all together…). But I didn’t stop. I kept it up all week. And you know what? I can feel the difference.

The same way I could in the beginning when it was all simple revelations over here at Mighty Mighty all the time. Eat less, move more, you will lose weight, I crowed. Hey, dude: the same applies in reverse. Eat more, move not at all, and guess what? You’ll gain.

I haven’t officially weighed myself this week, because I just don’t need to to know that I’m headed in the wrong direction at the moment. I can feel myself softer, flabbier, just bigger. Probably not by a lot, but by enough.

That’s all it is. It’s enough. Time to get past it.

Walking, wounded

2005-03-16T17:56:00.000-04:00

That’s me. In a fit of white-wine-and-impending-wedding-of-friends-induced glee the other night, I took what could kindly be described as a flying leap off the bottom step of said friends’ porch and landed…badly. The kind of landing in which you twist your ankle and end up in a crumpled heap. The kind in which, so forcefully do you fall, snow is propelled up your sleeves. The kind of landing that has you whimpering with pain all the way home in the cab.

So that’s me then. I’ve been hobbling around Winnipeg with an ankle that just won’t bend, after having bent entirely the wrong way the other night. Add to that the cold that seems to be rampaging its way around the internet. Oh, wait, and add to that the ear-plugging that happened as a result of 1) said cold and 2) bad decompression on the flight from Toronto to Winnipeg.

To recap: I am limpy, snotty and deaf in one ear. And so, I am decidedly not working out this week.

This pains me, truly it does (possibly not as much as said combination pains Taco, in an entirely different way). I was a paragon of exercise virtue on the weekend, diligently using the treadmill at the Ancestral Palace and performing my wee strength workout. Couldn’t do much cardio though, as it kind of hurt my chest. The strength workout seemed to help loosen stuff up in there, which boded well for the week ahead. But then, Winnipeg, wine and wedding, and well, you know the rest.

Speaking of rest, that’s what I’m doing this week. Just resting. I walked to work today (about 25 minutes, I think) and walked again at lunch for about the same. Taco and I are staying with friends till Friday afternoon, when we move to a fancy hotel for two nights. Fancy Hotel has a gym. If I can tear myself away from Fancy Hotel’s well appointed bed and lush bathrobe, I will investigate and probably even use its gym. And then, of course, there will be dancing at the wedding on Saturday, and then road hockey in Toronto on Sunday.

So the week is not a complete write-off. So long as the twisted ankle doesn’t interfere with my plans to wear my nice new big-girl shoes to the wedding.

Sweet Sixteen

2005-03-15T16:21:00.000-04:00

A week that involved less-than-perfect eating (stupid Toronto meetings meant pastry breakfasts three days in a row and room service twice), but plenty of working out (every day but Tuesday, a travel day! Cardio, strength, the whole pierogi), ended with victories of all kinds, scale and non-scale.

First, the scale. I am less concerned about this kind, as I still don’t have an accurate, regular, old-stand-by scale for weigh-ins. On Saturday, I weighed myself at the Ancestral Palace. The scale there showed me 23 pounds down from where I was in October on the same scale, and four pounds down from my weigh-in two weeks ago on the scale at the New Gym. How does New Gym’s scale compare with Ancestral Palace’s scale? Who the hell knows! Which brings us to the much more important and meaningful Non-Scale Victories.

To wit: an excellent shopping day on Saturday, during which I purchased a number of super-cute items of clothing at H&M (how I love thee, let me count the garments…), all in size 16. Size! Six! Teen! When was the last time I shopped with impunity in a “regular” store? This is an excellent question. Suffice to say that it was some time ago. Long enough ago that the rough date, in fact, escapes me. And this wasn’t any kind of flukey, this-one-size-16-item-fits-but-everything-else-looks-like-hell kind of shopping trip either. (I’m looking at you, pants from The Gap). Rather, I fit nicely into a dress, a wrap sweater (size 12 on that, if you want to know, though I consider that flukey in the extreme), a lovely semi-structured shirt, a jacket (size 14 in that one, though the 16 woulc probably have been better, it had sold out. The 14 will do for now, and will last me a few months, at least), and a bunch of other stuff, some of which I didn’t even buy. In fact, I tried on an extremely lovely mocha coloured skirt with a blue lace overlay that fit like a dream, maybe even a slightly loose dream. But my very smart sister pointed out that by the time the weather warrants wearing it, it probably will not fit. Such a smart sister. And what a novel feeling, to leave behind something that fit. That is, to not simply buy clothes because they fit, but to actually make choices. A revelation, to be sure.

Also in this category: I am beginning to experience ease when crossing my legs. I think this rocks. Also, working out is beginning to become second-nature. I think this rocks, too.

I can feel it in my bones

2005-03-10T16:23:00.000-04:00

So, before I got all distracted by the car smashing into the guardrail, sailing through the air and rolling onto the roof, I had it in mind to talk skeleton with you.

I was leaning against a wall in a hotel suite, watching Taco lose his voice while filling in as host when the extremely erratic fiddle player (and though Cape Breton may well be full of such people, this one was an American import, no less) quit in a fit of pique in the middle of the night, when it occurred to me that I could feel my shoulder.

Like, feel the bone, as it leaned against the wall.

Please don’t get me wrong. My bones are not particularly prominent these days. But they are more so than they have been in many years. And I am at last living a bit in my body instead of entirely in my head, enough so that I actually notice things like being able to feel my bones.

With each centimetre of padding I shed, I get a little closer to the surface. In many ways, this scares the holy hell out of me, having arranged my life lo these many years in such a manner as to be protected from things like the surface. So there I was, leaning against the wall, feeling my bones. I remarked on it to Taco, and said, you skinny people, you must just get hurt all the time.

We looked at each other for that kind of split second when you realise you’ve penetrated right to the heart of your particular matter. No, he said, no more than anyone else does. And then he went back to losing his voice on stage, and I stood there, confronting the possible reality that I have made myself fat to avoid injury. Ihave surrounded myself with layers that I thought would keep me safe.

Which is funny, for a couple of reasons. I probably sustain more physical injuries because of my size. Creaky knees, weak ankles, back pain. All brought upon myself by my negligence.

And funny too because, as it turns out, carrying extra weight has in no way kept me safe. My brother died, no matter how fat I got, and while he was dying I was reaching my all-time high weight. I was trying to remember this morning if it was a size 22 or size 24 dress I wore to his funeral. The former, I think, but I can’t be sure. In any event, the flesh I’d accumulated around me, the flesh that required such a large dress in no way protected me from the pain of his death. Nor did it do anything to soften the blow of my father’s passing. Nor has it assuaged any number of hits to the heart I’ve sustained over the years. It hasn’t kept me from feeling stressed out, offended, aggrieved, broken, alone, tired, fed up, annoyed, depressed or exhausted. As a coping mechanism, in fact, it has been a complete and total bust.

Thanks for nothing, fat.

And so I welcome the still-too-rare feeling of bone against wall. More of that, I say. Naturally there’ll be days marked by pain, emotional or physical. Of course there will be. The human condition and all that. But at least it won’t be self-inflicted. At least I’ll feel that pain and know I’m strong and safe on my own merits.

2005-03-01T12:19:00.000-04:00

Jab left, right hook, huh!

Oh, the things I have to tell you, Internet. I’ve been thinking lately about lofty topics, like the security blanket of fat I’ve been wearing lo these many years and my stunning revelation this morning, in the shower (which is where I have all my stunning relevations. Something to do with positive ions. Or negative ones. I can never remember which. Doesn’t matter), my truly astonishing relevation that I just don’t need to be fat anymore. Nope, don’t need it!

Ah, if only it were that easy to take off. But still, that’s a pretty big idea, as far as I’m concerned. And a little bit, it simplifies my purpose. This fat, I needed it before. But now? I’m all done. That feels pretty good.

What also feels pretty good, and what is precluding me from giving you a more philosophical post (also my laziness is precluding that, but that’s a whole other topic all together) is KICKBOXING.

I love it. Love, love it. I kickboxed for 45 minutes last night at the new gym and oh my god, love. First of all, I have a lot of rage inside, so it’s perfect for me. Death, take that. Crashed car, fuck you. Working for the man, whammo. Very satisfying. Also, it is an incredible workout. Like, as I type this, I can feel my back muscles working my arms. That’s how good a workout. I will be doing this again. And again and again! They teach it four times a week at the new gym. I think I’ll aim to take it at least twice.

Other things that I will tell you about before too long, I swear it:
Incidental exercise
Feeling my skeleton
Security blanket of fat

But that’s for the future, kittens. For now? Sushi.

2005-02-23T15:20:00.000-04:00

So Alive

Things I ate for dinner at Chuggles in Antigonish on Sunday night: steak, french fries with vinegar, coleslaw, garlic bread, two spicy caesars, mudpie with hot fudge sauce

Estimated calories for same: approximately a frillion

How much I care about that: Not at all.

Reason being: Taco and I miraculously walked out alive and mostly unhurt after flipping poor Gladiola on an ice covered highway.

We were driving home from Sydney on Sunday afternoon. What had started as a beautiful day turned into snow squalls and, apparently, a would-be killer patch of black ice on the TransCan. (This after Taco’s sudden bout of laryngitis put the boots to him singing his sweet smart songs for anyone in the middle of the night. Long drive for not much, you know? Anyhow.) We hit the black ice. Started travelling inexorably toward the oncoming traffic, swerved wildly, spun a hundred and eighty degrees and smashed into the guardrail on the driver’s side. Driver: that’d be me. The guardrail lifted us up into the air, where, according to witnesses, we sailed for a while before thumping down, again on the driver’s side, then rolling on to our roof. I hung there from my seat belt, upside down, and watched the windshield crack into a billion pieces. And I thought, well, that’s going to cost me some coin to fix. And then I said: Holy shit, Taco, I totally fucked up the car. Never for a minute did I think Taco wouldn’t be alive and ok, even though I saw him go sailing up toward the ceiling, heading for points unknown. He ended up in the backseat, I guess.

Anyhow. The car is totalled. We are not.

The RCMP drove us to Antigonish, to the aforementioned Chuggles, where we ate the aforementioned meal which, can I tell you, was the best food I’ve ever tasted. Because I was alive, alive, damn it, that’s why.

So far, it’s been a really interesting year. Heh.

Meant to go to the new gym yesterday, but all my muscles and fibres and bones and joints were achy. They are less so today. So soon as the rental car company calls me about our replacement vehicle, I’ll head out to do errands with a big finish at the gym. I can hardly wait. It will feel so sweet to move these limbs, to sweat, to breathe deep, to feel my muscles work and stretch. Because it’s a miracle they can. I don’t generally fall for miracle talk, myself. But clearly, someone is looking out for me these days.

Thanks, dad.

Only In My Dreams

2005-02-18T14:58:00.000-04:00

Woke up this morning feeling guilty and sore, and a little scared. I dreamt that I was eating everything in sight. Crackers with butter spread thickly on them. Cubes of cheese. Chocolate. I don’t know what else. When I woke up and told Taco what I’d been dreaming, he said, Did it feel good?

The answer is no. No, it sure did not. It felt like the dreams I had when I first quit smoking. The dreams in which suddenly I would realise I had a lit cigarette in my hand. The dreams in which I would think, oh well, I’m smoking, I might as well smoke the whole pack.

That’s what this dream was like. I watched myself smear every possible kind of food with butter, and I thought, I shouldn’t eat this, but oh well, the damage is done, we’ll just consider this a high calorie day.

Uh, yeah. High calorie. Rocky mountain high.

I must give myself a shake.

I have a few ideas, regarding the genesis of this dream and its attendant feelings.

One night this week, I ate to the point of feeling a little bit stuffed. Not stuffed the way I used to, but the beginning of that kind of stuffed. I am stressed out this week…well, I think I’m stressed out in a kind of long term way, actually. Work is kind of…intense lately. And then there’s the whole grief thing, which is kind of…intense lately. And then there’s money, which, I mean, come ON. Intense. And trying to figure out a way to not work for the man anymore…yeah, I’m a little stressed. Add to that the care that’s required to plan a life in which there is no wheat, yeast, sugar, dairy or fermented foods and frankly, it’s remarkable I haven’t landed face down in a giant chocolate peanut butter cup by now.

I mean, really.

OK, though. The thing is, I noted the feeling of stuffed-ness. I noted not really liking the feeling. I further noted that I recall very clearly ALWAYS feeling that way. How awful. (I must tell you more about this, the way I was for years and years, feeling like I was getting away with something. Feeling like if I didn’t mention it and if no one I knew mentioned it, then I probably wasn’t that fat, and I could probably still continue to eat way past the point of satiety, especially if the food was mostly healthy. And that somehow eating french fries EVERY. SINGLE. DAY some weeks was an ok way to be. Alright if I tell you later? I’m on to something else just at the moment.) And so I’ve had to be a little parental with myself this week. Because the stress and the intensity are making me want to take something off my plate…which is really a funny phrase, because instead, it’s having the opposite effect. It makes me want to put seconds on my plate. Which is also funny, because I had no idea that I ate when stressed, except now I’m remembering that last winter when I was really unhappy in Winnipeg, I was eating about a Mars bar a day. Damn, Mars bars are good. But jesus, every day? Yeah, every day.

Sorry, this is a little bit all over the place. But what I mean to say is this: last night, I made an extremely delicious dinner of eggplant parmesan with homemade sauce, kamut pasta with parsley and goat parmesan, and a whopping green salad. I had eggplant and pasta and totally enjoyed it. And then I said to Taco, that was really good. I’d like to have more, but I think I’m getting full, and I want salad too. I can have more eggplant tomorrow, right? I can take it for lunch. I don’t need to eat it now. And he nodded, not that he needed to. I wasn’t talking to him. I was talking to myself. And it makes me a little sad, frankly, that at the advanced age of 34 I must sometimes treat myself like a child.

But if that’s what’s required, that’s what I’ll do.

Because here are some good things:
* I went and joined that new gym near my house and promptly took Mean and Crazy’s latin cardio class, and it was HARD, but I was able to keep up, which means I’m fitter than I was last time I took one of those classes, a month or two ago.
* Last week, in Winnipeg, I started running. On the treadmill. Not very fast and not for very long, but still, running. Without stopping. For 15 minutes.
* Though the search for jeans at the Gap was unsuccessful (turns out their jeans fit a little smaller than their pants, so I’m projecting another month, maybe six weeks till I can get a pair of those), I ended up with an amazing dress for the wedding, and looked and felt fantastic.
* When my mom and sister came to pick me up at the airport, my sister’s face lit up when she saw me. “You look so good!” she practically shouted. She seemed really proud, and that was pretty cool.
* Pants I bought in October 2003 in New York, and which were a little snug then, and which I probably haven’t worn more than once since because of that, are rather loose now. I wore them yesterday and felt strange, in a good way.

We’re off to Sydney tonight, where everything is made of meat and potatoes and then deepfried. Needless to say, we’re taking a cooler full of fruits and veggies. And it’s only for two days. There’s a big music festival up there, and Taco’s got a showcase in the middle of the night. I must go play the easy part of the extremely proud girlfriend while he wows the 3am crowd with his smart, sweet songs. Can’t wait.

How it went

2005-02-04T17:00:00.000-04:00

Well, I didn’t eat the chips. At the grocery store, after work, I found some pistachios and put them in my basket, because mmmmmmsalty. Then I wandered around in one of those fugue states that sometimes come upon me when I’m doing something routine like grocery shopping. I happened across some fat-reduced potato chips. They had only three ingredients: potatoes, canola oil and salt. Check, check and check. I put them in the basket and continued on my way, gathering healthy groceries unto my bosom.

I was about to check-out when I finally checked back in and discovered the chips in my basket. Wait, that’s not quite right. It’s more like I knew they were there all along, but was pretending they weren’t, and that if they were, it didn’t mean anything. Like that I would eat them or anything.

As if.

I gave myself a thunderous shake and returned them to their shelf. Checked out, went home, made kamut pasta with tomatoes, artichokes, celery, garlic, sugar snap peas and, for that salty fix, anchovies. Oh, anchovies, I forgot all about your fishy salty little selves. For good measure, I had a big green salad. Also yum. Felt totally satisfied. Chips, bah!

And then a few hours later, I smoked a joint with my hosts and wandered back to my bedroom to discover the chocolates they’d thoughtfully left on my pillow the first night, and which have stayed in my room without any bother since Sunday night. Unmolested.

Heh.

You can see where this is going.

That’s right, I molested the chocolates. Both of them. And they were goddamn good and je ne regrette rien.

This morning, after spending an inordinate amount of time feeling myself up, because I can really feel, with my hands, where I’ve lost weight, I applied the tape measure to my various parts. And they are smaller. And there was much rejoicing.

And just now, I had to take off my rings because they’re so loose they shimmy around on my fingers while I type and it’s totally annoying. For the obvious reason, but also because I love the rings and now they don’t fit.

Which is good, I know, and they can be made smaller.

Hee!

Tonight, I will go purchase new clothes. I need a dress for the wedding next weekend. And I may need some jeans from the Gap. Because I can. For the first time ever.

Go me!

The vending machine can kiss my ass

2005-02-03T20:06:00.000-04:00

Bolstered by the awesome and sensible advice of my first-ever for-real commenter, I have just declined an invitation to the vending machine.

Sure, I would have taken the stairs to get there, but still.

Thanks, Anne!

Carrots

2005-02-03T19:53:00.000-04:00

...are not chips.

They are, however, what I'm snacking on.

So far.

I am making no promises about the remainder of this afternoon.

Chips

2005-02-03T18:49:00.000-04:00

I want to eat them.

Will I?

Stay tuned.

Factors in favour:
1. medium-stressful day at work
2. that gd time of the month is approaching
3. it's not chocolate

Factors against:
1. well, duh.

Splitting the difference

2005-02-01T19:18:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, you just gotta eat what there is to eat.

I am trying to keep this in mind so I can not go crazy.

I’m in Winnipeg. I’ve been here for five meals. Two of them have been off-plan, with another one on the horizon. But it will be sushi, so if I order well, I should be ok.

So it’s too bad that what I want is tempura everything and lots of spicy mayo.

But chances are, I will resist. Because I want to continue losing weight, yes. But also because my body these days is kind enough to provide an immediate backlash against any kind of food slip-up. Sugar makes my nose itch. Wheat makes my belly blow up like a balloon. Dairy hurts my stomach, mould makes my ears itch and yeast makes my lady parts uncomfortable. So though the idea of, say, a chicken parmesan sandwich on lush Italian bread makes me feel happy for a moment, the inventory of pain it would provide pretty much keeps me from hunting one down and throwing myself upon it ravenously.

So, there’s that.

On the other hand, you gotta eat. And sometimes—like, say, when you’re on the road for two weeks and not entirely in charge of your food options—sometimes, you gotta eat stuff you wouldn’t normally go for. Because otherwise? Crazy, in the form of french fries and chocolate bars. I haven’t gone this kind of crazy yet. In fact, I’ve kind of surprised myself with my most un-Virgoan laid-back que sera sera approach. I ate lunch at an Asian vegetarian buffet yesterday and chose mainly on the side of brown rice and steamed broccoli and cauliflower, but also had some fried tofu in some kind of sauce. And sushi last night (yes, two nights in a row. What?) was miso soup and an insanely good tuna-salmon-avocado-cucumber roll with hot sauce holy smokes. And some edamame. And goma ae. There’s more fermentation and sugar there than there should be, but less tempura than I wanted. Sometimes, you have to split the difference.

Which is what I’m hoping to do the next two weeks. I bought a few groceries last night so I’d have good breakfast and lunch choices. I figure if I eat no more than one sort-of off-plan meal a day, I should be ok. And I won’t eat out every night. But there are lots of friends to catch up with, and lots of restaurants I love here and so I will attempt to conduct myself in a sensible manner. And we shall see how that goes.

In other news, I did hit the gym yesterday, for some time on the cross-trainer and some flutterboard laps in the pool. Tonight, I will return to my beloved aquafit. And then, sushi. And on the weekend, I will shop for clothes for the first time since starting this little bagatelle.

Yipes!

The Beet Goes On

2005-01-28T15:58:00.000-04:00

Latest fixation: fresh squeezed carrot, beet and ginger juice. When we can get it together enough in the mornings, Taco and I push vegetables into our juicer and then sit back with glistening-jewel glasses of juice. Aaaaahhhhh.

Lately, we’ve also been eating grilled goat brie and pear sandwiches on kamut bread. Look, I’m sure those are higher calorie than I should be eating. But then again, I’m eating no sugar, no dairy, no wheat, no yeast, no fermented food and no mould. So most of my diet is whole foods. And that feels pretty good.

And it wears well, too. I’m losing a pound or two a week, as far as I can tell. Scale troubles continue. If I stand on one part of the scale at the gym, I’ve lost a really fantastic amount of weight. If I shift over a little, it looks more realistic. Still, I’m not sure what is real, when it comes to that, and I get the sense that that’s somehow a good thing. Keeps me from obsessing about it, anyhow. And the true measure: my clothes continue to be delightfully loose.

Oh yeah, and I fit into size 16 pants at The Gap.

!!

Which means that my days of speciality shopping will soon be entirely behind me, and thank god for that. Not a moment too soon.

I’m thinking of switching gyms. The Y, while I love it for socio-political reasons, is only ok as a place to work out. It’s crowded and dingy and it costs me around 54 bucks a month. Which maybe isn’t that much, relatively speaking, but there’s this very appealing new place that opened right around the corner from my house. I ran into Mean and Crazy at the gym last night, after I decidedly did NOT go to her spinning class (was lifting weights, instead). She’s teaching Cardio Striptease at this new place, starting tonight. Yes, I’m going. What? Why are you looking at me like that? It’ll be hilarious. I hope. Good christ. There are going to be TV cameras there, apparently. Because it’s a big story. Because this is Halifax, that’s why.

Anyhow. I’m going to the class as her guest. And I have a funny feeling I’ll be switching my membership. They teach real kickboxing there and I have to admit that I long for that. How did this happen? I have no idea. Maybe I have a lot of pent-up angst. I won’t do anything drastic right away (unless of course you count the cardio striptease…) because I’ll need my Y membership while I’m in Winnipeg. But once I’m back from there? Oh yeah, baby, I’m moving over.

In other news, last night Taco ate trout and liked it, so now I’m all like, yay, yay, trout once a week. We go back and forth on this fish thing. Does he like it, doesn’t he? Will he eat it, won’t he? Turns out he will, especially if you roast it with ginger and chile peppers.

What else? I measured myself yesterday for the first time since the end of November. No, that’s not right. I measured myself and wrote down the results yesterday for the first time since November. Heh. Because the results were ok enough to write down. I’m up a little here, down a little there, the same a few other places. My neck is becoming downright skinny. Last night, while I was lifting weights, I noticed that my collarbone is quite defined now. And whatever other bones are there, in my neck, were also visible. First. Time. Ever. I guess that’s good, though I thought I looked a little like a stringy old hen. Better’n a fat old hen, I suppose. I imagine as long as I remember not to make that “I’m lifting weights and it’s an incredible strain on my system” look in mixed company, I should be able to maintain my façade as a cute young thing.

Hahahahahaha! Haha! Hee. Snork.

Auld Lang Syne

2005-01-19T21:04:00.000-04:00

Blogger needs to stop eating my posts. Alternatively, I need to remember to write it elsewhere first, then PASTE it into Blogger. Old dog.

This old dog, however, learned a few new tricks. Christmas was merry and involved eating that while not quite on plan was not exactly a free for all either. So that was great. Also great was being home and seeing my family, my friends, the awesome presents Taco and I received from both of the above, and the really fun round trip drive we did together.

Not as fun? New Year’s Eve.

Which was when my dad died.

About which I will say very little because it is too absurd to type about, let alone think about, and because I am sad, and because…this just isn’t the place for that.

What I can tell you is that the ensuing days included exactly as much mindless eating as you might expect. People brought a lot of ground beef to our house and we ate it. I ate garlic bread, shortbreads, breads of all kinds, really. Chocolates, cheesecake, pretty much whatever came around. On autopilot. Because sadly, that’s what I did. Some people don’t eat when they’re sad. Can’t eat. I? Ate. Whatever. And sat on the couch. Also whatever. And watched many, many hours of What Not to Wear (thank you, BBC Canada.).

And then I came back to Halifax and sat some more, but ate a lot less crap. It’s all candida protocol all the time over here, which, if you’ve forgotten or are somehow blissfully unaware, means no sugar, no yeast, no dairy, no wheat, no fermented foods, no caffeine and a whole bunch of other nos. In addition, I’m laying off the meat, after all that ground beef. You would too. Trust me.

What do I eat? A lot of brown rice and kamut pasta. And greens. Oh the greens. Dandelion, kale, chard, collards…you name it, if it’s green it’s in my fridge. Or my stomach. Depending on when you name it.

Anyhow. Do I feel better? Who the hell can tell? I’ve been getting the bare minimum of exercise, and I think once I can get my head around a routine again, one that includes the gym, yes, I will feel better. In so far as feeling better is a thing I can achieve right now.

To that end, tonight, I go to the gym. Then I go home and eat greens and a tuna steak. And a lot of acidophilus.

Mmm.

Move that body

2004-12-16T19:55:00.000-04:00

Yes, well, while I’m still not eating everything, I am, perhaps, eating more than is strictly called for.

No, not more. Just stuff I wouldn’t eat if it weren’t December and all around me. Last night, I ate chips. Real potato chips, grease and all. Though they were reduced fat chips. They were very good, and I’m not sorry I ate them.

I’ve also eaten some dark chocolate lately.

And I won’t apologise.

Because life is good. I am getting smaller (the other morning, I sat up in bed and stretched, and Taco was all, Oh my god! What, what? I said. He said, you’re melting. You’re melting away. Hardly accurate, but nice nonetheless. And last night, Mean and Crazy Tracey said, just exactly how much weight have you lost? A couple sizes at least?

Truth is I have no idea how much I’ve lost. Can’t seem to get a regular weigh in on the same scale. I may have lost nine pounds, or it may be more like 15. Depends on who you ask, on which day. I’m not too worried about that. And I don’t know about a couple of sizes. I haven’t bought clothes since I started this project. And my clothes are too big for me, for sure, but they’re not actually falling off me yet, so I likely won’t buy any for a bit.

But Taco and I have two weddings to hit in the new year. My not-cousin is getting hitched to his awesome girlfriend. And my great boss and is marrying his awesome girlfriend, who also happens to be an awesome friend of mine, and it’s all very awesome, this unbridled, er, bridal stuff. So there will be new clothes for the weddings, and both are in other cities. Toronto and Winnipeg. With people I won’t have seen for some time. So it’ll be nice to be smaller and healthier and altogether happier than I’ve been in who knows how long.

I’ve been off the workout wagon this week, because I’m sick as a pike. Did some yoga earlier this week, and meant to do more, but then the water heater, as Taco so elegantly puts it, shit the bed, and so this week has been lost to trying to figure it out and get it fixed so I can do laundry before we take off on Saturday on our amazing cross-country Christmas adventure. Plus I’ve had to do a lot of crying, because I am a big baby. And because I’m sick. And I have my period. And did I mention no hot water? Because god hates me!

I’ve been a little worried, to tell you the truth, about losing my momentum. I loved, loved lifting weights with Westy last week, and meant to go again three times this week, but then the sickness, so no lifting for me. And now I’m going away for almost two weeks. And while I will go to Robot Exercise Church while I’m at the ancestral palace, I’ve been worried it won’t be the same. And of course, it won’t be. But it will be something. Which is more than it’s been in years past. And so, I think, I will come out the other side ok. Hoping to come out the other side ok isn’t enough, I know that. I have to exercise some agency in the matter, as well as, you know, just exercising. But I think Taco and I will go on long walks while in Mississauga (the better to smoke dope secretly, I should think), and that will help, as will Curves, in its perverse, knee-hurting way. And I think I’ll take my old friend Gym in A Box with me, too. Might as well have all the help I can muster.

My osteopath said a funny thing to me today. “Your body really wants to move,” he said. And you know? For the first time in my life, I can see that that’s true. That that’s why I have these joints, these fully articulated limbs. They do want to move. It’s what they were made for.

So move they shall. Even if it’s just into a few good yoga poses for now.

Eating everything

2004-12-07T20:41:00.000-04:00

Don't worry, I'm not eating everything. But Blogger is. I had a nice big post ready yesterday about how baggy my pants are getting, with a cautionary tale about how ignorant, willfully or otherwise, I was in the past about the size of my pants and, by extension, my ass.

However, Blogger binged on it and has not yet chosen to puke it up. I tried to save it as a draft, but something went horribly, horribly wrong, I was confronted with a page of code and, well, I gave up.

What I have not given up on, however, is this thing I've been doing, with the smart eating and the working out and the like.

Was in Mississauga for a few days last week, so I went to Curves with my mom and sister. Ah, robot church, I kind of didn't miss you that much. The camaraderie is great, familially speaking. The wear and tear on my knees and assorted other joints? Not as great. I will be cancelling that membership after Christmas, I think. It's not a rigorous enough workout for me, and, at the same time, it totally wrecks my body.

And wrecking my body is not part of the plan here.

Other fast things: got nice comments from assorted family members on current appearance. Am also feeling quite skinny, relatively speaking. Though less so at this very moment, because I haven't actually worked out for eeep! four days. Will rectify this oversight in about twenty minutes.

Am making plans to begin weightlifting, which I fully expect will change my life. Stand by for update when appropriate.

Genuinely, pants are very baggy. This makes me very happy. Will be much happier when I can buy some new ones.

What else? Am hitting it hard with the naturopath. Turns out...get this...that there might actually be something amiss with my thyroid function. Not that I think I got this way totally because of my thyroid, but it may be a factor. Anyhow. There will be many months of naturopathic treatment in my future. Good times. Put the quinoa on to boil, baby, I'm a comin home!

(No quinoa tonight, though. Going to take Professor Taco out for supper. May--may eat a lamb-burger. May be very happy about that indeed. Oh, remind me to tell you about the oven "fried" fish and chips I've been experimenting with lately. Oh god, the good eating we've been doing. All of it on-plan and mostly candida-protocol-appropriate. Whee!)

Spun

2004-11-19T20:41:00.000-04:00

Oh good god, spinning.

Spinning.

That's some crazy shit, right there.

It didn't help that the cycling studio is this teeny tiny little room -- seriously, I've seen bigger broom closets -- crammed with bikes and quite fit people in biking gear. Oh, and me. And Kravitz, who is fitter than me, but had spent the day eating strawberry creams and watching television and contemplating her belly, so really, yesterday, we were equal.

The class is taught by Kravitz's mean and crazy cousin Tracey. I didn't used to think of Tracey as mean and crazy, but then I went to one of her classes, and got schooled. Now I know.

First of all, I thought the fucker was only 45 minutes long. I got lied to. It was an hour, which really fucked with my head as I stared at the clock while my legs went round and round, round and round, and the bottoms of my feet plus all my toes went numb. That seems wrong, somehow. Must get that sorted.

ANYhow, Tracey's up at the front of the class screaming at us to go faster, ride harder, use our heels, get up, get down, get all around the town and goddamn it, didn't anyone tell her these are stationary bikes? For the love of all that's good and holy, stop this bike I want to get off.

Meanwhile, every time I turn around to peer ruefully at Kravitz, she points, even more ruefully, at her crotch. The thing no one tells you about spinning is that it is murder on the petunia. Murder, I say!

And then, because an hour of spinning wasn't enough, I trotted along to Mean and Crazy's Muscle Express class. Where I got shouted at some more, something about using my abs, lifting weights, I don't know what else, I was too delirious to really make sense of it.

Thirty minutes of that and we hit the shower, steam room, sauna and shower. After which I fell directly into a gibbering puddle of demented exhaustion.

Can't fucking wait to do it again next Thursday.

Oh-whoa Candida! We can make it together!

2004-11-18T19:33:00.000-04:00

I canNOT get this Tony Orlando and Dawn song out of my head lately.

Boy, you don't hear that every day, do you?

It's been on repeat in my brain since last Tuesday when I left the naturopath's office. At the time, I was thinking I could cruise along till January, not really fully embracing the Candida protocol.

Of course, one weekend of unmitigated bread eating has screwed my head on straight about THAT.

I lost two days of work to sickness this week. Yesterday, in fact, I woke up crying because I felt so bad. Poor Professor Taco had his work cut out for him. Anyhow. He talked me down, made me a GREAT Candida-protocol-friendly breakfast (oh, sweet potato pancakes, you and I will be seeing a LOT more of each other), and generally looked after me.

So from here on in, with a few likely exceptions as we get closer to Christmas, I'm living sugar-free, dairy-free, yeast-free and wheat-free. And, sadly, mostly fruit-free. That will make me crazy insane in the membrane, but then the itching at the centre of my head hasn't exactly made me feel calm and orderly, so if the choice is give up fruit or go nuts, I'd chuck the fruit every time.

In future, my shopping list will include such luminaries as kale, quinoa, apples by the pantload, almond butter, brown rice cakes and stevia. I'm praying the goat cheese hasn't become off-limits. I think it's still ok, but we'll have to see. I'm much more sensitive and sick this time around.

As of now, I'm abandoning Weight Watchers. I haven't really been to the website in weeks...once I got the basics down, I didn't really feel compelled to check in there too often. But I've no fear that the Candida protocol will be an exceptionally healthy way to eat. And now that I'm being more mindful about eating, I think it will be fine. It's kind of hard to mindlessly snack on kale, you know? That shit's bitter. But good. But...not for snacking. I won't be able to do much damage on the no sugar, low white carbs, low fat regimen I'm about to embark on.

The five workouts a week don't hurt, either. (am I still on track, you wonder? The answer is yes. Mindful eating, check, check, check and check for the week. Workouts? Three and counting. Tonight is spinning at the Y, followed by Muscle Express. Good times.)

Candida! Just take my hand and I'll lead ya! I promise life will be sweeter! 'Cause it said so in my dreams! Oh, Tony Orlando. Where are you now?

Control freak

2004-11-16T20:30:00.000-04:00

I must get control of myself.

Seriously, though. I seem to have it in my head that what goes on weekends, stays on weekends. That somehow, eating biscuits, muffins, chocolate (albeit 70 percent cocoa chocolate and letting it melt slowly mmmmm), bacon, pie...what else did I eat?...apple crumble, somehow, eating in this unconscionably off-plan manner doesn't count because it occurs on the weekend.

Internet, why am I crazy?

Also: Cherry Blasters. I didn't think I even liked them. But yesterday? Because they were in the kitchen, I ate them. A lot of them. Too many of them, for a person who is hypersensitive to sugar and teetering on the verge of Yeast Blowout 2004. Seriously, with each one I ate, I could practically hear the evil yeast chortling and cheering.

Of course, that could simply be a factor of my craziness.

The Professor and I went to his mother's house in Amherst. Linda is lovely, there's no question about it. Part of her loveliness, of course, is that she whips up things like blender apple muffins and fresh biscuits when people come to visit. Which would be fine, if I didn't feel compelled to eat them. But I do. Not by her, of course. Linda is lovely, as I said, and hospitable, but not pushy. No, I feel compelled by...oh let's see. A short list of things I feel compelled by?

Well, there's sheer force of habit. Food is here. I am here. I should eat the food!
Then there's butter. I am drawn to butter like the tide to the moon. The butter in the biscuits wants to mate with me. How can I turn it away?
And then there's sugar. Which is sweet. Which, hello? Makes it delicious. And therefore makes me want to eat it.
Bread has yeast. My belly has yeast. The yeast in my belly want to make the acquaintance of all the yeast everywhere else in the world, and they can be very forceful about this desire.
Don't forget the dope. Which is also sweet, but which, sadly, makes me want to eat the world, and then have a blender apple muffin for dessert.

Truthfully though? There's not much of an excuse.

Just remembered I also had chicken strips and fries on Friday night. But you know what? They were tasty and worth it, if not exactly planned for.

The amounts and kinds of foods consumed would not be so bad had I at least taken in the right amount of water, or maybe exercised a little. But this is proving to be the eternal conundrum of weekends. The whole routine goes to hell.

Time to get a little serious about this, I think. Time to make the routine a little more, well, routine. You know? It's Saturday, not Christmas. Saturday is not a good enough reason to throw the preceding five days good work out the door.

So this week's challenge:
Exercise every day (one down!)
Eat attentively (one down for that one, too!)
Make weekends count.

So simple, but far from easy.

Of course, it doesn't help that the professor and I measured me today, and I persist in being smaller than I was a week ago. I'm too smart, however, to take this as proof that I can eat biscuits all weekend long and still feel good about myself on Monday. Thank god. Smaller is not necessarily better. Healthier is, and that's body AND mind, by the way.

Glad we got that sorted.

Bits and bites

2004-11-11T19:25:00.000-04:00

Yes, it's been a little while. Doesn't mean I've fallen off the rails, though. Just been busy. Busy working out (I'm averaging about four times a week, I guess. I'd like to make that five or six, but weekends continue to be a challenge), busy making very nutritious meals, and busy dealing with the all-systems-failure that is continuing to happen in slow-motion.

Went to my amazing naturopath on Tuesday. Step one in stopping the free-fall into ill-health. She actually listened to me. For, like, an hour and a half. She made diagrams, and drew arrows and circled things and generally made me feel like I'm not crazy for thinking that my splitting fingernails, thinning hair, bouts of cystic acne, unbearably itchy ears etc etc must somehow be connected.

So, there will be changes. For now, some supplements. Some capsules full of oregano and I don't know what else to kill the bad yeast in my gut. Ah, that's a lovely sentence, isn't it? Some calcium-magnesium to see about those fingernails. Morning temperature taking to investigate the inner workings of my thyroid. I must also paint an iodine circle on my belly to test same. And in January? Full-on war against yeast. Candida protocol, which means the supplements, yes, plus strict dietary guidelines: no sugar, no yeast, no dairy, no mould. So, goodbye again to bread and cheese, wine, beer, most booze, in fact, cantaloupe, most fruit, really...and hello again my old friends kale and brown rice. Ah, good times. Thank god the professor and I are actually quite used to eating like hippies. Because we will live to eat yeast-free kamut bread again!

Actually, I'm getting into the idea of the Candida purge. I liked eating that way before. I found it quite easy to make the switch, once I found out it would make me feel better. Not sure why I'm so reluctant this time. Why I feel like I need the naturopath to tell me to do it. I know the ropes, but somehow, I need that external ass-kicking. Glad to have it, though.

So, it'll take me a little off the Core plan, likely, but last time I did this, I dropped about 20 pounds without really trying. Just by cutting out the foods that were making me sick. And now, with the working out and the actual really trying, it should be a boon to my efforts here. Plus, I can hardly wait to sleep through the night without my 4am pawing at my ears to try to stop the itching. Oh god, the itching. Won't be sad to see that stuff go.

Though I will miss that goddamn cheese croissant at the market on Saturdays. Must find candida-friendly substitute before January!

Also, I must make a confession. I totally have a girl-crush on Lesia Hart...I think that's her name. She of the Gym in a Box dvd. She's perky and spunky and you'd think that would really get to your nerve while working out, but I find the very opposite. She's so supercute and enthusiastic. And when we're kickboxing, and she tells me I'm looking tough? Rrrrrowr, I just want to go get her!

Oh god, Internet. What have I become?

Halloween, you devil, you

2004-11-01T18:13:00.000-04:00

Of course, it's not just Halloween and the cursed mini chocolate bars that accompany it, though that really didn't help. I think I ate six, maybe seven of those little bastards last night.

I think it's weekends in general that kick my ass. Not that it's a hard target to find, mind you. Weekdays are excellent in their predictability. Eat Red River, go to the office, eat lunch brought from home, including many pieces of fruit, drink water all the live long day, work out, go home, eat excellent supper, sleep and so it goes.

Weekends are trickier. Firstly, there's the non-negotiable cheese croissant from Julien's at the market on Saturdays. I am flexible in most other regards, but not this one. Which would be fine, if I could make the rest of the weekend conform to the excellent, healthy plan in my head. But: no workout, erratic eating, rampant dope-smoking and its attendant rampant desire to eat the world with salt all put paid to my best intentions.

Good choices this particular weekend included a massive fruit salad that more than scratched the munchy itch on Saturday night. Plus fat-free brownies. Not to mention letting other people eat most of said brownies, leaving just one gooey one for my snack today. I also opted NOT to have the eggs benedict at brunch on Sunday, this after rationalising and thinking about it all week. VERY pleased with myself. So pleased, I had two caesars. Yes, at breakfast. If you're waiting for me to feel some kind of shame, you'd best pack a lunch. You'll be here a while.

However, in the not-so-good-choices department: a three-day holiday from working out. Fried rice twice on Saturday (though it was homemade, with brown rice and cooking spray rather than oil. But still.), plus noodles. Homefries at breakfast on Sunday AND toast. And then, at supper, sourdough bread. And brown rice. And a bit more sourdough bread. With butter. I mean, really.

And so, today. I actually hauled myself out of bed, away from warm and potentially snuggly Prof. Taco, wandered downstairs and did 40 mins with Gym in a Box. Must get three-pound weights today. Five-pounders are killing me. Made Red River and coffee and took it upstairs to have breakfast with the Prof. (Additional workout ensued. Heh!) Am at work, where so far I have not eaten muffins brought in by "thoughtful" (read: very slender, because she never keeps baked goods in her house, preferring instead to bring them to work and put them practically on my desk) co-worker. Rather, I have had my delicious and very filling lunch, and am 32+ ounces of water to the good. After work, I'll head down to Curves (I worry a bit about Curves. Because I've been working out there regularly, and have lost inches galore, but actual pounds? Not so much. Also? You'd think my cardio ability would have improved after a month of steady workouts, but again, not really. Latin Cardio on Thursday damn near killed me, as did Gym in a Box last week when I did it. This morning's was easier...but why hasn't Curves helped in this regard? I do not know. In any event, I am mixing it up, work-out-wise. Curves, Gym in a Box, circuit, aquafit and Latin cardio. That should help.) and work out again. Then walk home up Citadel Hill, then to Taco's for supper.

Whew. A long day of planful goodness. Ah virtue. Weekdays are thy name.

Equilibrium

2004-10-26T22:09:00.000-03:00

Seen mine anywhere? Because I have misplaced it. Must have lost it somewhere on the road between Toronto and here.

That is to say, re-entry has not been entirely smooth. Oh, it hasn't been terrible, it's just that at the ancestral palace I was in such a nice groove. Work out every morning, without even thinking about it. Eat a good breakfast, take a homemade good lunch, eat a lovely mom-made supper, drink an ocean of water during the two-hour commute. Easy peasy.

Now that I'm home? Not as easy peasy.

First of all, there was the 19-hour roadtrip. We packed a good cooler, with lots of healthy snacks, but I got super dehydrated, and I'm still recovering from that. Then I got averse to water again for a while over the weekend. Then I ate a cheese croissant at the market. And damn, it was good, and worth it. But then after that, the weekend eating was downhill. Mostly because I didn't have any groceries in the house, and was too busy and broke to go get some. Donna and I had falafel for lunch on Saturday, which is undoubtedly not Core, but on the other hand, it's pretty healthful. I can't remember what we had for supper that day...Oh yeah, Professor Taco made an outrageously good scallop curry. So, coconut milk, not Core. But again, not a crisis. But these things add up, you know?

And then there was Sunday. A day in which Taco and I were so glad to be in each other's company again that, um, we kind of didn't get around to eating. Well, I ate a veggie burger around sundown, but it wasn't enough, and by then my stomach was hurting and I felt insane and dehydrated and...bleh. Not good.

And then yesterday the not-having-groceries continued. So breakfast was...well, you don't care about every single thing I ate. Suffice to say it wasn't bad, but neither was it exactly good.

Positives: I bought groceries last night. And I went to Curves. And I must say the Halifax version of Robot Exercise Church totally kicks the Mississauga version's ass. Two extra machines, lots of high powered fans, a scrolling LED screen with exercise tips and ads to read to pass the time, lots of space...and weirdly, it's set up in the building that used to house the newspaper I used to work at. It was weird to get changed into my workout gear in my old boardroom, and to work out in my old office, but...well...I kind of liked it. So I'll be there Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Negatives: No workout tonight so far, because I am still at work, even though it's 6pm. Got a freelancer here working on something and I can't leave till she's done. So I've missed Circuit, and I'm currently missing Aquafit.

But positive: I can go home and do my Gym in a Box dvd finally. And make an excellent, Core-y supper. With enough left over for an outrageously good lunch. And Taco will be off doing record-related things, which means that I can get some things about the house in order without the considerable distraction of his adorable presence. Which means that I can stop feeling like everything is chaotic. Which means that I can head off any suggestion of self-sabotage.

So. I'd be surprised to find I'd lost this week. But I doubt I've gained. And in any event, I've managed to stay aware and nip a potential landslide in the bud. If I may just shamelessly mix some metaphors there.

Heh.

I'm a loser

2004-10-19T14:10:00.000-03:00

Yes, I am, and at long last. According to the scale at Curves, and the one at the ancestral palace, I lost almost six pounds last week.

I know that sounds crazy.

But since it's the first time since I started that the scales have actually shown me down at all, somehow, some part of it must be right.

Could be all the water I started drinking last week, or the week before, or whenever that was. The days blur together: up early, work out, make breakfast, spend a frillion hours in traffic, work, spend a frillion hours in traffic, miss Professor Taco, lather, rinse repeat. The days go by in a haze of not-in-Halifax-yet longing, tamped down with daily workouts and lots and lots of fresh cut fruit.

Anyhow, the inches have continued to come off, so it was only a matter of time before the scale coughed up some change.

I'm not getting too wound about it -- well, about the mystery of how the hell it's possible to lose six pounds in a week after losing nothing for a month I'm wound, for sure, but not about the actual number -- because I feel fantastic. And my clothes are getting looser.

I feel strong, and capable, and I love that.

I also am pretty keen on the rampant fantasising I'm doing about buying new clothes. The ones I have should be falling off me just in time for the post-Christmas sales. Good timing, me!

The hang of it

2004-10-15T19:53:00.000-03:00

I seem to be getting it. Yesterday, there was pasta at lunch, and brown rice and whole wheat pita at supper. And then I went to meet AJ for a drink, and ended up sharing a half-litre of red, plus eating some unbearably delicious roasted eggplant and tomato dip with really, really good warmed Persian flatbread.

It was all super good eating, but more bread products than I'd planned on. So today? Red River for breakfast, salad the size of my head, plus fruit, plus veggie soup for lunch. And supper tonight is a seafood soup, so no starches there.

Apparently, this is how it's supposed to go. You know, when you stop and think about it, that just isn't that hard to comprehend.

Oh, this is so going to bite me on the ass when winter descends and I'm back in my own house, and the Professor is out rocking out with his bad self and it's just me and the french fries from Randy's around the corner crying to me to come get them. Heh. I should remember this entry so I can reread it and curse myself for being such a relentless pollyanna up-with-people know-it-all.

Can someone please explain...

2004-10-13T02:53:00.000-03:00

How I could have gained eight pounds since this little experiment began? Even assuming the three scales I've been weighed on might all measure as if they are on different planets with wildly different atmospheres, I've weighed in at least three times at Curves, and have seen a steady progression of a couple of pounds per weigh in. IN THE WRONG DIRECTION, PEOPLE.

Yet still, the inches fall away. And obviously, that's what the smart money's staked on, but truly, am I doing something wrong? Could I honestly have gained EIGHT POUNDS OF MUSCLE? And lost exactly no fat, though? I mean, I'm no fancy scientist or nuthin', but that just does not compute.

Anyhow, I FEEL different. Smaller, yes. At last I know the "skinny feeling" I've read so much about. I definitely have it. And I like it. I plan on having it lots more. Like, every day for the rest of forever. So there's that. But then there's also the astonishing way in which I've been conducting myself. I'm not going to tell you Thanksgiving wasn't a giant challenge stuffed with delicious stuffing. It was. But I made it through in a mostly mindful way. Except that there were mini eggrolls. And about those, the less said the better.

But take today, just as a for instance. This afternoon found me craving something -- anything -- made of bread. I settled in my mind on a toasted bagel with thin slices of cheddar from the deli downstairs. I knew I should just get some of their great fresh fruit, but the bagel was singing in that sweet siren voice toasted bagels have (funny. I never thought I was that committed to bagels. Apparently absence DOES make the heart grow fonder. Imagine). Anyhow. Down I went. Got the fresh fruit, eyed up the salad bar, thought yeah, ok, salad. Looked over to the bagel station, and wouldn't you know, the deli part was closed anyhow. No bagels to be had for me or anyone. Thank you, universe, for that. So fruit and salad it was. And, not surprisingly, it was utterly, utterly satisfying.

Then, tonight. Went to meet up with The Neck. Haven't seen him in easily a year, maybe two. We went for Thai food. We were talking and not looking at the menu, and I impulse ordered a beer and a plate of pad Thai, no peanuts. It came, the beer was cold and delicious and I drank it happily. The noodles were only whatever, and as I ate I actually realised I was getting full, and so I just stopped. Just put my chopsticks down and stopped. So easy. Then, at the booklaunch, there were trays and trays of appealing looking snacks going around. Coconut shrimp, and chicken satay, and springrolls. And I said no to every tray. Not because I'm being good, but simply because I'm being mindful, and I'd just eaten, and I wasn't hungry. Now, that wouldn't have stopped me six weeks ago. I'd have found room, somewhere, crammed them in. I would have felt a quiet frenzy, a drive to try them all. Twice.

But tonight? Nope, just not interested. Thanks, though.

This is easily the hardest goddamn thing I've ever done. After this, the second draft of the novel will be an afternoon's entertainment.

I say bring it on. And about time, too.

My definition

2004-10-08T16:30:00.000-03:00

I know, I know, it's getting a little tired, my Forrest Gump routine, but seriously, ok, turns out, if you work out for like half an hour a day five days in a row, you can see your muscles.

No, really, you can!

It's really cool!

God, I hope no one who thinks I'm smart finds this blog, or I am so screwed.

Ok, next thing: water. I think I should be drinking around 96 ounces of the stuff. Which is fine, I like water. But sometimes, I'll sit at my desk, feeling kind of thirsty, and even though the water's right there, I won't drink it. That's fucked. So today, I'm off to buy myself a nice shiny Nalgene bottle. Maybe two, one for work and one for the gym. Because I think I sometimes get the wig from my grubby old water bottle, the one I keep refilling. I know it's crawling with bacteria, and leeching extra estrogen into my system, and like that, and maybe that's why sometimes, thirsty though I may be, I decline to drink.

In other news, yesterday afternoon was a big challenge. I think I was too bored with the roasted tofu and veg wrap idea...I've had that for lunch every day. So I wisely chucked the one I'd brought, and went down to the salad bar in heaven to forage for my lunch. Did ok down there. My usual whack of fruit, plus a giant salad, full of all good things. And also, a toasted sesame seed bagel with butter, cucumber and tomato. It was all I could do to get it without cheese, but I managed. Before I settled on the bagel, I had passing, insanely strong desires for things like fried chicken (which I eat maybe twice a year, if that), grilled cheese sandwiches, mounds of white rice, Thai food, spring rolls, onion buns...yeah, it was tough times. So the bagel, though large and though possibly costing me somewhere in the range of five everlovin' points, was a pretty not bad choice. Also, it made me happy. But then, so did the salad and the fruit.

All in all, pretty damn good.

And this morning marked a full work-week of workouts, which was the goal. So, yay me!

Next up: Thanksgiving.

Heh.

Ensmalleration sequence in progress

2004-10-06T15:43:00.000-03:00

Ah, life is good. There is a foodcourt in the basement of the Broadcast Centre, where I'm working for a few weeks, that is a thing of beauty. Most notably, it includes a fantastic deli, with a giant salad bar, including a whole section of fresh fruit. Brothers and sisters, I am merrily spending five or six bucks a day down there getting my fill of strawberries, mangoes, grapefruit sections, pineapple, grapes...damn, that's some good eating, right there. The money I'm spending may become an issue at some point, but I'm too jacked up on fruit to care right now.

And Robot Exercise Church is still working for me. Three days down this week, two to go. It was tough this morning. Felt tired almost right away. Mom was reporting the same thing. But we pushed through, and so have already fulfilled our contractual obligation to work out three times a week. We could stop if we wanted to. But we don't want to. We can't stop. We're crazy for it! Crazy, I say!

Felt an insane urge to snack last night. I wasn't hungry, exactly, but I did feel like I could eat the world and everything in it. Instead, I made guacamole with two avocados that were on their last legs--good guacamole, too. And then I toasted some pita bread in the oven, broke it into chips, and snacked on that. It was super-satisfying, and didn't break the points bank.

I'm not going to tell you it was easy to decide to eat that. What I wanted was chips, actual, greasy potato chips. But I've got some positive peer pressure built into my living situation at the moment, and by spending a bit of extra time thinking before I started rummaging for snacks, I came up with something that was actually nutritious. And that didn't taste like a booby prize. Homemade pita chips are definitely joining my repertoire.

Ok, now, it's not like I never understood the calories in-calories out connection before. I mean, eat less exercise more is not exactly grad school material. Then again, I dropped out of a polytechnic, so maybe that's what's going on here because I feel as if I've invented the wheel over here. Because you know? If you eat less, and exercise more, inches will come off your body (even if the scale at Curves now says I've gained an additional two pounds. Is it possible I don't know how to operate the scale? I guess, since calories in calories out feels like a minor epiphany, yes, I guess it's possible)! Imagine! It's not like I didn't know that before, but maybe I didn't believe it or something because otherwise, what the hell have I been doing all my life? It turns out that once you start, it's actually kind of simple. I'm not saying it won't get challenging. It's just that it makes all kinds of sense, I can already see the results of it, and it makes me wonder just exactly how far up my ass my head was prior to three weeks ago.

Pretty far, I'd say. Things are much better now that I've pried it out of there.

The scales have fallen from my eyes

2004-10-04T15:03:00.000-03:00

I promised a quick statistical update, and here it is. Without getting into actual numbers, suffice to say, I have dropped some inches this week, friends! Or, at least, parts of inches. I'm down an inch around the upper thigh, an inch around the bust, three quarters of an inch around the waist, and an inch around the hips. Plus my neck is shrinking, upper arms coming down a bit, calves still stubbornly same as they ever were, but everywhere else, we have movement, people, movement!

Holy crow, this stuff works!

As for scales, I don't feel I've ever had a trustworthy weigh-in. So I think we'll stick to inches for now.

In other news, I ate Red River cereal for the first time ever last night, and that's a snack I could get very used to. I cooked it in vanilla soymilk instead of water, and ate it with some cooked peaches and damn, that was a nice ride. Tonight, I'm off to see some friends and have an early thanksgiving dinner with them. So I'll be taking care all day. Lunch is already prepped: roasted tofu and veg with lettuce in a whole wheat wrap, plus a few pieces of fruit. Should be ok. May need to find some other veggies to eat, or maybe buy some soup if I can find a good veggie one somewhere.

And a great workout this morning. My goal for this week is five workouts at Curves, and actually not going over my flex points for the week. There's a novel concept. It would be nice to see another drop next Monday. Professor Taco is reporting he's made the move to his pre-quitting brand of cigarettes. Good for him, good for me, good for us. Looks like we're both on target for our November 1 deadline.

Getting the point

2004-10-03T16:20:00.000-03:00

Oh, the learning.

A very challenging week, foodwise. Being at the ancestral palace is fine. I mostly control my food here. But then tack on a two-and-a-half-day board meeting, a little get together at my brother and sister-in-law's, dinner with friends and my niece's upcoming birthday party, and oh boy, oh mister, there's some challenge right there.

How did I do? Ummm, I get to reset my points tomorrow and I'm already overdrawn by eleven. Which is not perfect. However: There was learning. And learning is what it's all about, right? Well, learning and of course, losing. More on that later.

First, the learning. Eleven points in the hole notwithstanding, I am proud of myself. I ate like a regular person this weekend. Perhaps the choices weren't what they should have been for a person who's trying to lose, but I didn't feel that panicky gotta-try-this, gotta-have-some-of-that feeling I think I've felt my whole life around food. One small piece of lasagna at creator caucus on Thursday night, and salad, and no bread. A butter tart when the tray was being passed around, but as my colleagues sat and crammed in pieces of chocolate, I declined, and didn't feel deprived. I'd had real cheese, and pasta, and delicious salad and a lovely butter tart, and that was fine, thanks. And later, at the hotel, I looked at the Pringles in the minibar and thought, nah, don't want 'em. It was a good, and strange feeling.

Same thing the rest of the weekend. I ate what there was to eat, but not all of it, and not seconds. I made good choices where I could, and let myself have bread when I wanted it. Not normal life behaviour, but I looked around at the skinny people in the room and thought, they're eating more than me, desserts and croissants and all the rest. But I bet they'll take care later, or tomorrow. So when I got home, I had some brown rice, a left over pork chop, some Chinese eggplant and tomatoes, and an avocado salad. Satisfying, and delicious, and pretty good for me.

And today I've the birthday party to get through. A small piece of cake, I think, and then a walk this afternoon. And tomorrow morning, back to Curves with Mom. We go every weekday and do our workout, and though I still find it like Robot Exercise Church, I see the value in it. I sweat and my heartrate goes up and I can feel my arms and legs getting muscle-y and there ain't nothing wrong with that.

So. I think I will turn out to be a person who willingly exercises every day in order to be able to occasionally eat Italian bread. That seems like a pretty good deal to me. It's three days since I last worked out and I feel a bit insane for the lack of it. So I'll bust out a little yoga this afternoon and then get in a good walk before it gets dark.

Oh yeah, the losing. No idea if I have. My body feels different, more defined, more shapely. But the scale here is completely unreliable, and the one at Curves has me up six pounds since my first weigh in three weeks ago or whenever that was. And that just doesn't seem right, since I've been eating better and exercising more. So it's about time to take measurements again, which I will do, and I think those will have to be my guide.

Please stand by for an important statistical announcement, to come sometime in the very near future.

Whatever

2004-09-27T23:43:00.000-03:00

And the revelations continue. On our epic, 20-hour roadtrip, Professor Taco and I had occasion to discuss many things, among them, my current project. Right up there with the myriad other ways the professor is the best goddamn thing that ever happened to me is the way he helps prod me along toward revelations. The way he somehow knows what's in my mind just a second before I do.

Most recently, in Gladiola (our little red station wagon), somewhere in, I think, Quebec, or maybe it was just outside Toronto, that part of the trip is a blur (though let me digress here to say that I packed the healthiest cooler ever taken on a roadtrip. Baby carrots, sugar snap peas, homemade hummus, whole wheat pita, plain organic yogurt with ground flax and frozen fruit, roasted tofu and peppers in whole wheat wraps. We didn't stop once for road food, and we were delighted with ourselves for that). Anyhow, where was I? Somewhere in Upper Canada. Discussing the project with the professor. And he said, the thing with you is that if you want a burger, or you feel you've been good and you can afford to eat what you want, you just say, whatever. Thing is, he said, you say it all the time.

And it's true. He's right. I do. I say, whatever, it's just a burger, whatever, it's just french fries. It's just cheese, it's just white bread, it's just pie, it's just pistachios, it's just chips, it's just whatever. Whatever, whatever, I'll make it up somewhere else. Problem is, I never do. I don't keep track of the whatevers, and before I know it, all I've eaten all week are whatevers. I don't compensate with salad, or extra workouts, or more water, or grilled fish, or a day without starches or...well, whatever.

It's like living in a casino these days, being inside my head. Lights and bells going off all the time. My name is Stephanie, and I am a Whatever-Eater.

And this would be why it looks like I don't have a problem with food. I mean, maybe I don't. Maybe I have a problem with math. Or history. Or some other high school subject. Say, gym. I'm not a binge eater, not usually. Oh, I can eat a lot of pistachios in a mindless way, but not every day, and not enough that those alone constitute this avoirdupois. It's more that I eat each meal as if it is totally unconnected to every other meal. As if there is no narrative thread to my eating. No storyline, no consequences, no cause and effect. So though I don't eat a lot each day, I don't necessarily run a tab in my head, right at the front of my mind, of what I've eaten, and what that means I should eat next. It seems to me that perhaps this is something healthy people do.

Well, how do you like that? That one's pretty obvious, probably. To me, though? An epiphany of Joycean proportions.

Christ, for a smart person, I sure am dumb.

In other news, the scale here at the ancestral palace would seem to suggest I've gained four pounds since I started working out, then went down half a pound overnight, then back up two and a half the next day. Yes, I know I shouldn't be weighing myself every two minutes. But after, what, 15 years spent rarely stepping on a scale, I guess I feel like I have lost time to make up for. Or something. Truth is, I just need a new place to start from. So I'll take the number I saw on the scale here the first time I stepped on it, the one that has me four pounds up. I'll take that as my new starting point, and measure myself against it.

Speaking of measuring myself, I did that again this week and recorded some changes, in the bust, calf and upper arm. Slight ones, but changes nonetheless. And I'll lay off the scale for a week, checking in again next Monday.

Anyhow, I'm here for a month, hanging with the parental unit (god, I remember when saying that was cool. Now, I fear, it marks me as old and dull. Damn! Well, I may not be able to do anything about being old and dull, but I'm fucked if I'll be old, dull and overweight.). It'll be challenging...I'll have to be sure to cook a lot so I can make sure I'm eating the way I want to. There's an awful lot of stuff in this house I would never have around my own, like jellybeans and ice cream and chips and things that come in boxes. There is also, however, a treadmill. So instead of eating chips, I'll walk for half an hour. Should be ok.

Meanwhile, the professor is heading to France and China, finishing up his time with the band. We'll be apart for a month, each with our own challenges. Mine, to lose ten pounds by November 1, his to get ready to quit smoking by the same deadline. Before long, we'll be not just an art-powerhouse couple (hee!), but also a lean, mean, clean air breathing machine.

Sorry, again with the rhyming. I'm sentencing myself to 35 minutes on the treadmill for that.

The weighting is the hardest part

2004-09-22T14:22:00.000-03:00

Total. Systems. Failure.

Last night was a big old meltdown. Fortunately, not the kind I've read about, where the subject in question freaks her beak and eats everything in sight. That's rarely been my M.O. No, I just had a complete freak-out about how much I have to do. I'm leaving town tonight for a month. And I just got home on Sunday. I feel like I haven't spent more than ten minutes in my house since I got home in April. I can't settle in to a routine, because the routine keeps changing. Because I'm always on the road.

And did I mention that I have so much to do? I have to call Ikea customer service, and Aliant customer service (and I use the words customer service very, very loosely, you understand). I have to call my bad contractor about how bad he is, how he still hasn't come to finish the job on the bathroom. I have to clean the house, and pack to be away for a month, which means hauling my winter clothes out of the basement. Plus, I have to show my new roommate how to use the furnace, and the VCR and how the recycling system works. And I have to do the dishes. And clean my room. And vaccuum out the vents so that when my new roommate turns the furnace on, he doesn't drown in drywall dust. And I should have the furnace clean. And I need to buy kitty litter. And I have to make healthy snacks for our roadtrip, which we leave on TONIGHT. And I have to figure out what programs they have at the Y in Mississauga, and what my new workout schedule will be, because by the way, did I mention I have to lose a hundred pounds?

I mean, jesus wept, how am I supposed to get all that done? Before 6pm tonight? It's JUST NOT POSSIBLE.

So I did the only thing that seemed productive. I had a major freaking tear filled cryfest. Sobbing, sobbing on Professor Taco's shoulder in the car. Weeping, weeping when he fell asleep in his clothes with his contacts in spread across the bed. Weeping! As if it were a tragedy! Crying, crying and saying, I'm so tired, I'm so tired.

And the truth is, I am so tired. I am so tired of my old ways, whatever those are. I told Kravitz last night about my new project and she, like the professor, immediately said, but you don't have a problem with food. This is how well I've hidden it. That the people who know me best don't know, don't see it.

Because I know how and what to eat. I know that with my brain. But the lizard part of my mind wants and wants and wants. And while I've never mindlessly eaten a tub of ice cream, or woken up with chocolate drool drying on my face, I will mechanically eat nuts or chips, without even really savouring the saltiness that draws me there in the first place. I will take seconds, too many seconds, till I feel uncomfortably stuffed. Not because I'm still hungry, but because I want that taste, that mouthfeel again.

And though I worked out last week, I also went to Banff and ate many, many desserts. I ate bread on Sunday at Mom's, and pie. Ice cream last night at Johnny and Julie's, though not much of it, and it was light, apparently. And one tiny square of chocolate, though the dish of them was in front of me. There, at least, I worked hard and succeeded. I could have eaten all of them. I had one, really tasted it, and was happy with that.

I don't want food to be the enemy. I don't want my body to be the enemy. I think if I get on a scale today I will discover that I haven't lost a thing. Well, that I haven't lost any weight. But I think I've lost my ignorance about the situation. I've lost my ability to pretend I'm not fat, to pretend that the reason I can't do things is because I have weak ankles or I'm afraid of heights. Both those things are true, but not as true as I make them out to be. I've lost my desire to maintain the status quo.

And maybe that's the most important loss of all.

Cheese is the enemy

2004-09-20T17:03:00.000-03:00

This is not news to me. This I've known for some time. Not just because cheese is loaded up with fat. Mainly because I'm allergic to it, and it really screws with my head. Case in point: At the airport on Saturday, in the Maple Leaf Lounge (thanks, Guenther!), what there was to eat was cheese and melba toast. And because I was very hungry, and that's what there was to eat, I ate it. Rather more cow's cheese than I've had in years. And because I've actually been quite diligently lately about NOT eating cow cheese, by the next morning, I was all stuffy in the head. Just like the bad old days of unabashed cheese-eating.

These days, my cheese-eating is considerably more abashed. And with good reason. I got on the plane with my stuffy head and dripping eyes, and when we came in for a landing, one of my ears refused to clear. Which meant that I walked around for most of a day feeling like I had an ear full of cotton candy. An ear which just two minutes ago, just as I started typing this, became mostly unblocked with the mother of all sneezes.

Anyhow, cheese. I love it, it does not love me. Once and for all, cheese is the enemy, lay off it. The cheese of goats, however, is still a lovely alternative, and well worth the points once or twice a week.

Ah yes, points. Well, I didn't do too well with those bastards this week. If I hadn't had to learn my valuable burger lesson, I might have come out of it ok. But that cost me 19 points, and despite the incredible number of activity points I racked up last week, I came out with a deficit. Why? Because Banff. Well, because of choices I made in Banff.

Because in Banff, baby, there was great food. I mean, these people had soymilk available at the breakfast buffet. Breakfast, in fact, was no problem, and it is usually the meal that stymies me on the road. But in Banff, I ate the same as I would at home. Fruit and yogurt, cornflakes and soymilk. Scrambled egg (no toast! no potatoes! didn't miss them!). Even lunch was ok, the first day. Chicken breast, vegetables, plain rice, salad. But then came dessert. Lots and lots of dessert. And plenty of peer pressure too. One of my colleagues there said she lives each day as if it's her last, and that includes eating dessert. It's a nice philosophy, but frankly, if I'm to live each day as if it's my last, then I'd best get on this getting strong and capable. Because I'd hate to die and not be at my best. Because even though I haven't been admitting it, I know that the way I'm living is probably going to kill me if it doesn't change. So for me, from now on, living each day as if it's my last has to include eating food that's good for me, drinking lots of water, and working out, every day.

That was one thing I managed to do this weekend. And it surprised me. I went for a big walk on Saturday morning in Banff. Just hauled myself out of bed, into my sneakers and out into the cold mountain air. Totally worth it. I had a great walk and felt invigorated from head to toe afterward. Yesterday, in Mississauga, same deal. Hopped out of bed soon as I woke and headed out on a 35-minute walk. As long as I can do that every day that I don't go to the gym, I'll be ok.

And I told Mom about my new project, and she wants in. Jeff, too. This is good, considering I'm going to be living there for a month. Nice to have them onside. Mom will check out weight watchers while I'm in town. And I'll keep up with the walks, plus investigate the local branch of the y. Because though my first week was rocky -- I'm not expecting to see a loss, frankly. It'd be a freaking miracle -- I am committed to these changes.

Next challenge: Road trip to Toronto with the Professor. Should be ok. He's supportive, and I can pack a whack of healthy snacks.

Heh. That all rhymed. Sorry about that.

In which I learn a valuable lesson about hamburgers and french fries

2004-09-16T17:04:00.000-03:00

There were tears this morning. Before that, there was an itchy nose. That's where it started. Actually, where it started was at a soulless chain restaurant in the soulless big box planet just outside of town last night. That's where I thought, hey, I'm good. I earned, like, a brillion activity points, I would like a hamburger and french fries, and that's what I will order.

Duly ordered, duly eaten. No big whoop.

This morning, with the itchy nose. A symptom I get from foods I'm sensitive too. Including, once and for all, puffy white bread. Hello, Steph? You can't eat that shit. It makes your nose itch!

So I tell the professor about the itchy nose. He doesn't get it at first. I tell him that I ate a burger and fries for supper, and that it wasn't, actually, very good. And now that I have the itchy nose, in the cool light of morning, it's easy for me to see that the burger and fries weren't very good. And he's all, well of course they weren't very good. Geez. You ate at Montana's for the love of Mike.

Which made me cry.

Why? Oh, because I'm a crybaby. And probably premenstrual. And because it's so simple for him, and so not that simple for me. And because all my revelations now make me feel like an idiot. Because the thin world knew them all along. But anyhow, I sobbed. I expressed dismay that he wasn't trying to hear me. He sat down, I started talking, I figured it out as I went.

See, the thing is, I'd been thinking about that burger all day. About the fun experience of going shopping with a friend, and then stopping for a burger and fries. The thing I realised, though, is that in the past, I have eaten all burgers and all fries as if they are good. I have thought of them as abstract foods-that-I-enjoy eating. Whether or not the actual, concrete experience of eating them THAT TIME were really pleasurable. In the past, I have eaten many a mediocre burger in a mindless way, thinking, yup, burger, good. When really? The burger at Montana's -- and so many other places, so many other times -- was exactly what you'd expect. Merely whatever. Merely ok, inoffensive. But if I'm going to eat a puffy bun that makes my nose itch, it had better be a beautiful puffy bun. If I'm going to eat french fries, they had better be handcut, skin still on, piping hot so the vinegar tastes sharp and the salt sticks to them. Because otherwise, what is the point? Last night, I ate an only-ok burger and fries and it turns out I would have been happier with salad.

Talk about a revelation.

Not because I don't love salad. I do love salad, actually. I do not serve supper without salad, as a generally rule. But I never think of it when I'm out. When I'm out, I think of treat foods. Like burgers and fries. But you know, maybe if I ate those at home, where I could make really great burgers and really great fries, maybe if I scratched that particular itch in a way that I control, then maybe when I'm out, food could just be food. Just something you eat when you're hungry. Instead of some iconic meal I eat whether I want it or not.

Obviously I'm going to need to eat more fish. Because as it stands, I am just not smart enough to understand myself right now.

The fervour of the recent convert

2004-09-15T19:11:00.000-03:00

Is there anything that burns so bright? Possibly my face after yesterday's exertions. I left the office before five, as per my plan. Hit the Y and, after some confusion finding the actual gym (yeah, ok, I've never set foot in there. I've always been more interested in the pool, myself), submitted to my very first ever organised gym class.

It's a little like religion, isn't it? But with more sweating.

This particular class was Circuit, which I LOVED. Yup, loved it. Forty-five second intervals of cardio and weights. More of that, please. I felt strong and invincible after, and had many ridiculous revelations throughout, like, "Hey, the more I do this, the easier it gets!" and "exercise makes me feel good!" I'm like that talking Barbie, the one that said mainly stupid or self-evident things, like "math class is hard." Doy-oy, Barbie.

And then after Circuit, I changed into my bright red swimsuit and slid into the pool for Deep Water Aquafit. Which is taught by my neighbour. Which is so, so Halifax. The class was challenging and though I've done it before and loved it, coming after a brisk 45-minute workout in Circuit, um, it just didn't feel as fun, somehow. But I pushed through it. And it got easier. Ah, the revelations. It's not so much that they keep coming. More it's that that particular one comes again and again (harder!) (sorry.). Anyhow, by the end of it I was glad I'd stuck with it. My limbs felt noodly, but invigorated, if those aren't diametrically opposed.

Getting on my bike and riding home was something of a challenge. Like slow-motion girl I pedalled the slight incline all the way from the Y to my house. Whew. Then, though I'd been fantasising that Professor Taco might be home from practise making me supper, sadly, he was not. And for the second night in a row, instead of falling hungrily upon whatever snacks I could lay my grimy paws on, I sliced and chopped and cooked and stirred, and before too long I had a pot of outrageously good curry and some soba noodles to go with. Sometimes, I love my own cooking so much I think, heck, we've legalised gay marriage...I should just go ahead and marry myself! But then I'd have to cheat on myself with Taco, and I respect myself too much for that. ANYHOW, I digress. Surprisingly.

So, curry and soba, yum. World Cup Hockey Game, in which Team Canada wins the cup, double yum. Professor Taco coming home exhausted and falling asleep on my lap as the hockey game winds down, triple yum, except it meant I had to yell very quietly at the tv during the final minutes of the third period which was difficult, but hey, one must make sacrifices for those one loves. And then, too tired from a double workout day to stay up for the Amazing Race, I popped a tape in and slept the very satisfied sleep of the extremely on-plan.

Ahhhh.

And today, again, so good so far. Which is good. Because tomorrow afternoon I fly to Banff for meetings. Meetings that will be catered. Meetings that will not be catered in any kind of healthful way. And then a day at the ancestral palace, a day that will doubtless include some kind of cake or pie or squares or, god help me, all three. Cake I can take or leave. But pies and squares? Oh god pies and squares. Do I love myself more than I love them? Yeah, I probably do. I'm pretty big on myself, ask anyone.

Tonight, I meet my personal trainer. Hee!

Twenty four little hours

2004-09-14T15:02:00.000-03:00

When Taco came home last night, I said, do you want to hear about how I did today? And he said, with what? And I said, hello, dummy, with what we talked about yesterday morning? And he said, oh, you started changing already? And I said, Oh yeah, I do not fuck around.

Ok, maybe I fucked around for most of my life, but now that I've made a decision -- a conscious decision, a vocalised decision, and this is very important, this part of it -- now that I've made a decision, I'm all, like, decisive. Ah, that rings with authority, doesn't it? There was the Weight Watchers, for starters. Weird and churchy though it feels to me -- and that's without going to meetings, even -- joining was a bold, decisive move. My own devices haven't been very helpful to me over the past few decades, so I'm ready to try someone else's devices, even if they scare me a little. Maybe especially if they scare me a little.

So anyhow, I had a perfect day. A day of perfect, clean eating. Here are the things I did not eat yesterday:
Chocolate chip cookies provided by the MN Cookie Cabal, a media organisation that has its headquarters RIGHT BESIDE MY DESK. The cookies aren't particularly tempting, and salt has always been more my game, but the cookies are THERE, and lately, that's been enough to have me eating at least a cookie or two a day.
Speaking of salt: A Quarter Pounder With Cheese. This is something I eat approximately four times a year. Yes, my quarterly Quarter Pounder. And because there is nothing Core about it, I longed for it yesterday. But not too terribly. Not badly enough that I went on automatic and footed it over to the grease factory to get one. Though I did walk by. But that was on my way to the Y to get the class schedule. Mwhahah.
French fries from Randy's Pizza on the way home. I was hungry, it was late, I hadn't made a supper plan, and there was Randy's, with its neon siren song, right at the corner of my street. But that would be foolish, I thought, as I cruised by on my bike. I don't really want those fries. What I really want is to make myself proud. And some whole wheat pasta. With veggie sauce. And a big salad. With two teaspoons of olive oil, which, it turns out, is exactly enough! Well, slap my ass and call me rosy.
Several handfuls of lime nacho chips. My previous MO would be to scoff some of these while cooking supper. Thought about it tonight. That's the thing -- I THOUGHT about it. It's nice to be thoughtful. I am everywhere else in my life. It's my thing. The goal, the true goal, is to become thoughtful about food, as well. And not in some abstract way, but in a very, very concrete way indeed.

So here I am, a day in. I measured myself this morning. Taco came into the room while I was doing so, and it was so marvellous to feel unashamed. To acknowledge my body. To have it spoken between us, rather than unspoken. To say he doesn't care what my body looks like is not quite accurate. He loves me regardless, that is true. He loves the package I come in, he says. But we both want me strong and capable. And in my case, that's going to mean smaller as well. We're both excited by this. I'm not doing it for him. But maybe I'm able to do it because of him, somehow. Not that he'll be the one not eating ice cream. Not that he'll be the one going to the gym. Not that he'll be the one rearranging patterns of thought and habit. But he makes me feel safe. Safe enough to change.

I am indeed a lucky happy girl.

Well, this is awkward

2004-09-13T20:37:00.000-03:00

After, oh, 25 years spent not discussing my weight with anyone, I've suddenly discussed it in detailed terms with Professor Taco, the most perfect boyfriend ever - and now, with you, the World Wide Web. Go figure.

So what the hell happened? I don't know. It's not like I've never thought about it before. Of course I've thought about it. Like, every day. All day. I've thought things like, I'd like to be a size smaller by my birthday, or by that wedding, or by Christmas. And then...well, then I've done not a whole lot to make that happen. A bit of half-hearted exercise here and there. Yoga, aquafit, hip-hop dancing. But never enough to make a difference, and never for very long.

And so yesterday, when I woke up and Professor Taco was still snoozing, I laid in bed and thought: I have to do something about this. Now. And the first thing I have to do is talk to Taco about it.

And so, when he woke up, I did just that.

Why now? I don't know. Why not now? I mean, why not a frillion years ago, sure, but really, now's as good a time as any. But as to why I think I can now, why I've said it out loud for the first time...a lot of it has to do with my relationship with the Professor, I think. Knowing that he loves me no matter what has somehow made a little space for me to love myself a bit more. Enough to want to work out and feel better and be more fit.

This is a very, very simple answer. There's more to it, of course. But hey, it's not like this is going to be over soon. Plenty of time to examine my head. Won't that be fun?

Anyhow, here's the plan: I signed up for Weight Watchers today. Extremely out of character, but staying in character hasn't really helped my health, so might as well buck a trend. I'm all Core all the time now.

And tonight, I'll go to yoga at the Y. Normally, I'd go to my yoga studio. I'm a yoga snob. But I'm not getting around to finding out when the classes are these days, and I have to be out of town a bunch and so it's not worth buying an eight week pass or whatever...and the excuses mound up. So, snobbery aside, it's YMCA yoga for me tonight.

Tuesdays will be circuit training at the Y and deep water aquafit.

Wednesdays I will meet with my personal trainer. My personal trainer? Who the hell am I?

Thursdays will be Latin cardio and aquafit, at, of course, the Y. My new home away from home.

Fridays will be yoga, again at the Y.

And then of course, there's riding my bike to work. And later this fall, bellydancing classes.

My goal weight? To be determined. I have a vague idea how much I weigh right now. Will find out for sure at the Y Wednesday night, which will become my weekly weigh-in. I'm not so interested in pounds as I am in sizes and ability. I want to be able to comfortably climb into the backseat of a two-door car. Run with no knee pain. Buy a bra that doesn't come in a box. Never worry about fitting airplane seats. Lie comfortably on the couch with Taco. Buy tall boots. Learn to kayak. Shop wherever I want.

You know. The usual stuff.