Discouraging Hike

I tried a hike this weekend. Hubby is getting ready to climb Mt Baker, so he and I drove down (a few hours) to check it out and hike the Heliotrope Ridge Trail. Let me preface this by saying I should NEVER agree to a hike without checking out the specs first, because hubby can hike anything. I swear he could gain 100 lbs, sit on the sofa for a year and pop up and hike up Mt Rainier if he felt like it.This comes from a childhood of backpacking, it's as if he learned from a young age how to get into a rhythm of hiking/stepping and breathing so he can efficiently go uphill.

I, on the other hand, grew up doing sprinty sort of sports. Primarily sprinting to be exact- we were a track family. This means if we had to sprint to save our lives, he'd get eaten by the bear. However, if the bear was a distance runner of any sort, I'm screwed.

I was ready, though- I had no idea the trail was rated 'Difficult', and I had my Zune, my water bottle belt (I hate carrying a pack so hubby carries a day pack and I wear a fanny pack or water belt) and my hiking boots and layered socks. We headed out and the bridge was washed out- so you have to go across some logs. Not nearly as scary as I expected. But as we got across and scrambled up the other side, I realized "hey, we're at a high altitude and I'm not getting much air".

We hiked about 30 minutes total, including our bridge scramble. Hubby was WAY ahead, and I was honestly wondering if my heart would explode or maybe I'd trip over a root and die first. I was willing to accept either, so long as I didn't have to wait too long.

That didn't happen. I didn't die, even though I was ready. What did happen was that sweet hubby recognized that I was not going to be able to make it. He was really sweet about it but I felt like a big-fat-loser. I hated it. We turned around and went back to the trail head, I was fueled by my embarrassment and frustration.

But we had a long talk- our family vacation is just 4 weeks away to Mt St Helens, where we had hoped to climb the mountain and do Ape Caves. We both committed to extra healthy eating to get some pounds off fast and also to really kick up our workouts. I think for me, I may choose Ape Caves and let hubby and son charge up Mt St Helens, it's considered very strenuous and takes 8 hours. Even in peak condition I'm not sure that sounds fun at all!

So it was discouraging, this practice hike, to see that I am not in the shape I was and should be but hopefully I can keep that failure to fuel my eating and workouts as I continue to improve.

With the regular bridge washed out, this log is the way you get across.

Panama

I had a work trip to Panama this week, and I maintained my weight. Actually, I may be down a pound or two- I got in at 2 am and weighed myself this morning. I imagine I have some airplane bload.

I met my goal of getting in 10,000 steps a day even on travel days- I walked in the airports, took the stairs and just about wore my feet right off. By rotating shoes and icing my feet at night I seemed to help them recover- no blisters anyhow.

What's that? How did I eat? You *would* ask that, wouldn't you? :)

I did okay. I give myself a B. (I decided grading myself is kinder than just "pass fail". I tried to make good choices (dodging fried stuff when possible) but I did indulge in the local fare. I didn't let myself bring my usual bodybag full of almonds and other airplane snacks, and I left mayo and cheese off my airport sandwiches.

Last summer on vacation I was a rock- really strict and no bread, etc. I hope that by family vacation time in Aug this year I can be that successful, but for this trip my goal was simply get those 10,000 steps (requested by Woodstock) and not gain. And I didn't.

Tomorrow I have a hike with my daughter and a group of girls from church, so that's good- gotta keep on moving.... then back to M-W workouts with Woodstock on Monday, can't wait!

Did I speak too soon?

About the Fitbit, that is...

FB is tracking well, and my computer recognizes it and links it to my Fitbit account, but it won't synch and show the MANY steps I have been getting in, so I may have to do it manually. Did it's wee "synch-er" get destroyed when I washed it? Who cares, it tracks my steps and stays attached better than any pedometer AND it has the cool flower thing where the more steps you do the taller it gets.

AND this morning my scale showed me down 3 pounds. Oh yeah!

FitBitinstein

I just might have the best news in the universe. MY FITBIT IS ALIVE! And yes, I meant to shout that.
You see, I killed a Fitbit. Okay, two. First I had Blue Fitbit (BF, like Best Friend Blue Fitbit) that I put through the washer, and it would no longer charge or show numbers or anything. I placed it in the Robot Box (where all cords go to die in my kitchen) and hoped it would come back to life.

It's successor, Pink Fitbit got lost. Literally must have snapped off my bra or pants and disappeared. I cried. I offered my kids $20 each to find her. She is still missing in action.

Every so often I would look in the Robot box and pull out BF. And I'd charge him, and I'd wait. But he would only occasionally flash a number or bit of light.

But this past weekend the planets aligned and when I went through my dismal ritual of checking to signs of BF life it happened- he came to LIFE. And he worked all weekend. And he is STILL working and I am wearing him RIGHT NOW.

So for those of you who have washed your Fitbits do NOT discard. I don't know whether putting them into a bag of rice will help (I have friends who have) but I do know that mine is alive again and I am ever so happy, so much so that I made this to celebrate:

I need to synch him up tonight, but if you want to be FitBit friends, here's a link to my profile so you can request to "friend" me: http://www.fitbit.com/user/22BFFW

Waking Up Strong

I don't think I've lost an ounce yet. Okay, maybe one.

Getting back onto eating right has been more challenging than I expected, mostly because of budget and planning. Planning is effort but when your budget is tight it's hard- no grabbing $2 a piece bars or shakes at the club. And I admit feeling like a chubby harbor seal as I work out hasn't exactly helped. I remember this, it's the part where I don't feel good but I know I am doing the right thing.

But this morning I got up after about 5 hours of bad sleep and WHAT IS THIS, I thought to myself. I felt STRONG.

Now there's a difference between sore and strong.
Sore= "hey fatty, glad you got up"
Strong = "Well hellooooo muscles, I see you're still in there!"

And I felt strong! Oh sure, my undies are still too small and I can hardly wait to fit back into the rest of my clothes, but I FELT STRONG and IT FELT GOOD and I remembered why I want to feel like that every single day.

"Welcome Home!"

That's what SkinnyBuns said to me from her stairclimber this morning. How fitting, because going back to the Pro Club after time off for injury (then more time off for bad decisions).

It was like homecoming- I saw SkinnyBuns working out, and the Eagle Guru glided past and said hello, I almost jumped off my stairclimber!

And of course, there was Woodstock. Is there anything better than exiting the locker room and seeing Woodstock there, ready to work out? Nope.

I had been really nervous- here she had put so much work into re crafting me, would she be mad that I had regained some weight and lost some of my diligence in working out? I had asked via email the day before and got a resounding NO, so I felt better.

She was regular Woodstock, and we went right to work- elliptical, stairclimber, then weights and a weigh in (I get points for that for the Alumni Challenge). Then I watched the Lapse/Relapse video, a really good one from the 20/20 educational videos.

Good things about the workout:

1. Seeing 3 of my favorite folks
2. I was able to do most exercises on the same weight as last workout, so I haven't lost as much strength as I feared (I even planked for a full 60 seconds)
3. My cardio wasn't bad either

I can do this, I am not that far off, I can get back to where I like to be.

What a great start to the day. Woodstock and I are on for next week on Monday and Wednesday, I have a couple gift certificates that are allowing me to buy some trainer sessions- HOORAY!

One day down, 43 years to go...

If I only live to be 85.

Seriously, though, it's amazing how hard it is to get that first day going. Woodstock always says if you can hang in there for 3 days exercising and eating right you get past the grouchies and a couple pounds usually drops off (even if it is salty water) and you feel BETTER.

But it's not about a few days, or finishing a program. It's forever.

Now of course there will be days that aren't good but I think the goal is to stick with it every day during the losing phase then to make the days when you slip the exception, not the rule.

Hmmm, that is NOT the easy answer.

So I am taking this one day at a time- no, one DECISION at a time.

• It's morning, will I skip breakfast (a bad habit of mine)
• Should I drink some water (SkinnyBuns is such a good reminder on this)
• It's time to eat, what do I choose
• Have I worked out today
• How can I get more steps?
• Have I been sitting for hours at work without getting up?
• I'm upset, do I eat my feelings? (if yes can I eat them in the form of a baby carrot instead of a Twinkie?)
• How can I help others on their journey (it's surprising how this blog and my weight- losing friends pull me along and inspire me)

So here I am on day two of the next 43 years (or more!) of living in a way that makes me feel good. Come along, it's going to be worth it.

Where am I ?

That sounds like a simple question, with an easy answer. But it's not. It's a question I've been asking myself for a couple months as weight has crept back on, my workouts have gone from regular to less regular to a couple a week.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night worrying. About myself. How can I spend so much time worrying about my weight and my health and so little time doing anything? And I've done this before, I've shown myself I know how. There is NO  easy way but I am feeling the weight (pun intended, I guess) of not doing what is right for my body.

Do you know what is fun? Losing weight and making a list of things that are going better- painting toenails without feeling like you can't reach your feet, going for a walk with a friend without feeling like the chubby fat one covered in sweat, having your purse stay on your shoulder instead of sliding down because you're 'round'.

What is NOT fun is having the things you hated about being overweight come back. But this is entirely within my control and it's time to turn this ship around, starting now.

Okay, kinda starting last week.

ProClub  does a really neat Alumni Challenge where you 20/20 alumni can win prizes and earn points (for more entries) for a 12 week period, to help motivate people to get back on track no matter how far they've strayed.

And I am in it- I love a contest! And I love prizes, even the idea of winning prizes. Now don't get me wrong I am NOT in this for the "most lbs lost" contest, they do have a trip at stake for the person who loses the most. That is a recipe for disaster for me.

What I need to do is get back to my little "crawl along, doing my best, enjoying seeing my body and health improve" state. The scale will go down and I will return to my low weight, but last November when I was challenged to hit a certain weight for a prize I thought I could handle it. I'll discuss this in another post but that turned out to be super far from the truth, I crumbled and I think that launched the decline in health that I have had.

But what is more important than falling off the horse is getting back on. Oh yeah, dust yourself off a bit, but really just climbing back aboard is what matters.

So I've been wearing my pedometer which has shown me the past 6 days that I get NOWHERE NEAR my required steps. Seriously- I get like 1500-2500 a day. How did that happen? It's a slippery slope, folks.

So I was a success story, then I guess I was kind of a failure story because I didn't just lose and gallop off into the sunset. I got bucked off and I sat on the ground crying for myself.  I'm all cried out, the Alumni Challenge is here and I am going to use it to pull myself back into better habits.

So we'll be talking more again, because I intend to blog my way back.

Raising eyebrows

Today I am working from home, so I ran to get my eyebrows
waxed at Queen Nails. The gal there is SO good, and it’s like $8. Sweet. I
should mention that I’ve neglected this task so long that my eyebrows are
trying to connect not only to each other, but to my hairline. But I digress.

So I go in, and they make me wait. I wait and read trashy
magazines, finally it’s my turn. I can almost feel those ugly mid-life hairs
being ripped out of my face. I lay on the table and she applies the wax above
one eyebrow when someone knocks on the waxing room door. She leaves me there
dying to touch the wax now cooling over my eyebrow. No matter, in about 10 minutes I’ll leave
with just two eyebrows and no longer a candidate to play the part of Sasquatch
in a made for TV movie.

But when she returns she looks right at me and says, “I can’t
wax your eybrows”. Her accent is thick, surely she is wrong. She CAN wax my
eyebrows, in fact she’s already started.

"Nooooo" she says, "I can't. Can you come back later?"

Later? And shall I wear this strip of yellow wax over one eyebrow until then? It is a windy day, perhaps my WFH baseball cap will stay on better with the wax. Wait! NO. She is not doing this to me.

She pulls off the wax (and hair) and shuffles me to the main room. Now I'm mad. She has some excuse about an inspection of some sort, but it doesn't matter- she's removed about 1/8th of the fur and I am ticked.

I told her I won't have time to come back, not to mention I already waited a long time. She apologetically tells me I can come back another day.

I walk out absolutely befuddled. Has anyone ever had such a thing happen? I guess you get what you pay for...

Confessions of a Struggler

Hey, this is hard. Nobody said it would be hard. Okay, wait- the Lord of the Diet did say it would be hard, and he also said it would be worth it. He even said we'd all go through a resistance phase and that even he has trouble sometimes. Darn, if only there was someone to blame.

But maybe there is no one to blame, not even me.

Now this isn't to say I am not accountable for the yoyo-weight gain and loss I've experienced since December, I am absolutely accountable for every morsel I've tucked into my mouth, every day I haven't tracked my food, and so on. But blaming myself seems to be something I am good at (not to mention it does not seem to help, in fact it makes me struggle even more) so this week I have decided to look at the reason I am here in the first place.

I have a metabolic disorder. I need to change my lifestyle. Changing my lifestyle isn't easy, and it's not something I've ever done successfully on my own so I am in 20/20 to get the support I need to make those changes and learn to overcome pitfalls.

Oh, I've fallen in a pit all right.


I know it started when I had to take a break from working out back in December because of that cold. That sucked, and was a gateway to laziness, too many sneaks of good food, and general laziness (not even getting in my 5,000 non workout steps).

I returned from New Year’s 10 lbs up. That SUCKED, but I lost like 4 of it the first week. The following week I struggled like crazy- and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I tried eating cleaner and cleaner (which seemed to result in me feeling more and more
smothered) and instead of looking where I had been and where I was going I kept trying to force myself back to perfection in dieting. Another mistake.

I've never been perfect, not before this program and certainly not in it. But earlier in the program, when I was consistently losing weight, I did make sure to only speak nicely to myself and to celebrate every little victory. Lately, I've been counting every mistake and focusing on those.

Meeting with my Lifestyles Coach/Counselor (Cassie) through 20/20 has really helped. Yesterday she reminded me that it's always forward, not to try to go backward and do something again but to look at where I am now and what my goals are. That hadn't occurred to me- I was so busy trying to get "back to doing well" that I was chasing my own (growing) tail.

It snowed here last week, which meant I couldn't get in to the ProClub to work out. I did great Monday, stomping through the snow and Tuesday I danced around the house to keep my heart rate up. But my left hip has been hurting, and suddenly Wed, Thurs, and Friday slipped away without workouts. I left for San Diego for my Grandmother's funeral feeling like I could work out there but my hip ached and I drowned myself in almonds before the plane even took off.

I arrived in San Diego with a sore hip, constipated as a barn owl from all those almonds and feeling huge. Uh oh, do you see that light at the end of my tunnel? You got it- it was an oncoming train.

I ate like a maniac all weekend, and hated myself. I hated how I looked and the swelling that is a gift with purchase when you eat crappy food (all the extra sodium). I knew I had to weigh in on Tuesday when I returned but I didn't stop.

I got on the scale Tuesday to weigh in (since i was gone Friday I had agreed to weigh in as soon as I returned) and the scale said 192. Are you KIDDING me? I wanted to scream. Normally the morning of a weigh in I don't eat or drink before the scale but I didn't care, I drank my shake and a bottle of water. I felt doomed.

This was up like 15 pounds from when I was ALREADY up after Christmas. I was in shock- I knew it would be bad, but I had no idea I'd done that much damage.

I won't beat myself up here, because I spent the rest of Tuesday doing just that. After my Tuesday morning workout I saw a physical therapist to find out why my hip was hurting (for about 10 days straight) and it seems I have bursitis and need to take it easy.

The fatty inside me considered throwing in the towel- I am almost as fat as I was when I got here, I'm all sweaty and miserable. Booooooo.

But my team won't let me just disappear, and despite my howling how lame I am for gaining weight and struggling during the program they remind me that now is the time to struggle because I have my support system in place. Woodstock asked me yesterday "when you started, did you ever think you could lose weight? Did you think you'd ever run a 5k?" and I had to answer "no, I didn't think I could lose and heck no, I never thought I could run for 35+ minutes straight."

So here I am... right where I am. I think I have about 4 weeks left in the program but a lifetime to live the right way. There's no finish line here. So instead of kicking myself for losing progress and being further behind (on weight loss) than I wanted to be, I am remembering how lucky I am to be here in the first place. I am focusing on wins, tracking and eating right, and talking nicely to myself, because in the end I will get past this wall if I have to tear it down brick by brick.