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.

Curse of the Cliff Bars

I actually had to take them to the outside trash and throw them out. Those cursed Cliff Bars haunted me the night before weigh in last week. I ate 5. I know, and I just got done telling you all how I was so over the bar addiction. GAH!

5 CLIFF BARS!!

Do not make me calculate the sodium, sugar, etc in those things. I felt so disgusted that I threw them out. Never mind the cost of a case of Cliff Bars (which had been residing in a closet, untouched except when we go hiking, etc).

Needless to say I showed up at weigh in today still feeling like I had a food baby. (Urban Dictionary defines a food baby as: "when you eat so much, that your stomach looks pregnant", and notes that " generally cause discomfort and possible gas or embarrassment" and also states that these generally happen "after committing gluttony").

Committing? It sounds so sinful.

It was.

Honestly, poor sweet Woodstock. I staggered in for my weigh in and told her of my crime- Cliff Bar overdose. (I should note that Skinny Buns and I have since declared that Cliff Bars do not taste - or look- even halfway decent so clearly gorging on them was motivated by emotions, not taste. You can say that again).

Determined to have a good workout, I came up with some new terms which could prove useful for anyone else out there prone to bar abuse:

• Clifftuplets- not just a food baby, but a food baby caused by eating 5 Cliff Bars
• Cliff Notes- when you blog about overindulgence in Cliff Bars
• Cliff Hanger- the feeling at weigh in when you would rather hang than see what Cliff has done to your weight.
• Cliff Diving- the moments before you make the big Cliff mistake by opening the first wrapper

And so with a bit of humor and a lot of abdominal cramping, I survived a good strong workout.

All joking aside it really sucked to have to go to weigh in. I elected not to look at the scale, so I did a blind weigh in. But you know what- I have a home scale, and I know how I feel and let me say that I've set myself up for a long week of 'clean up' (that's what I call having to eat extra careful and perfect, on the low end of my calorie range, just to make up for a few dumb choices.

Dangerous Game

First of all, I have been bad about writing, which usually means I write like 4 posts in a day. So expect more.

Second, I had a rough week. I mean ROUGH. You see, I've been playing a dangerous game with eating (and no, I don't mean swallowing watermelon seeds).

On weekends I started this sorta bad habit of eating too much on Friday nights. But Fridays are weigh in day, so I recovered pretty well. Then I started eating more on Saturdays also, which required a lot more discipline to recover. At first it was just extra food that was good for me- like extra cheese sticks or an extra Greek yogurt. Sounds harmless, right?

WRONG!!

Because then I started eating Naughty Foods (sugar, etc) during those times, and recovering became even harder. But last week I did it- I still lost like 2.2 pounds.

And then it happened, I really messed up my eating and I couldn't stop. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. WHAT!? It was Wednesday before I could get my eating under control. Dang. And do you want to know who I blame? Cliff, who makes Cliff Bars, because that was what I could not stop eating. But nah, I blame myself (and Cliff a little bit. And Piggy).

I always knew this was a risky game, but it was only this week that I discovered how you slowly begin to think you can cheat and then it catches up with you.

Admittedly I did not think of it as cheating at first, it was just a little extra here and there but it grew. And this is pretty much exactly how I lost control of my eating when I gained all this weight. The reality is, taking and keeping weight off is work and requires diligence. No time for lazy, no space for wiggling in extra food. It all counts.

So here I am, night before a weigh in I am dreading more than ANY other weigh in since I started 20/20. But I have learned something, and it feels kinda good to know I have identified what has been happening and taken control of it.

And yep, I'll pay the piper tomorrow, but not next week, or the week after, because I am learning. And that's what its all about...

How to Cook Pumpkin

After a modicum of success making chicken pumpkin black bean chili, I decided I was ready to hit the big time. I was not only going to make this fantastic chili, I was going to cook the pumpkin for it, instead of using canned. I thought that someone out there might find my instructions helpful, so I am posting them.

Steps:

1. Go to PCC or Whole Foods and get organic cooking pumpkins. Not the kind you carve faces into, these are smaller. You might be unsure of how many to get, so do like me and get 5 of them, then choke on your own tongue when you realize you've just spent $14 to make your own pumpkin (for sale at Safeway, 2 cans for $4).
2. Take pumpkins home. Fret about where to store them. (House is too warm, porch might freeze- can they freeze? Is that bad? No space in fridge, etc.)
3. Threaten your children within an inch of their lives if they color on/mess with/are seen gazing for too long at cooking pumpkins.
4. Tell everyone you know that you are going to cook your own pumpkin, tell a few people you don't know. Really commit.
5. Think about looking up instructions, but don't actually print any or even decide which method you are going to use.
6. Get advice from superchef friend about how to boil it.
7. Spend 45 minutes looking up ways to cook it, with frequent side trips to Facebook and Etsy.
8. Decide to boil it.
9. Forget that your last soup debacle ended up with you in tears throwing your giant (cheap, crappy) soup kettle into the garbage can outside because after the exhaustion of making (then burning) the soup you just couldn't face cleaning the pan.
10. Dig out your great grandmother's old dutch oven style pot, which is always half as big as you need it to be. Remind self to buy a new large pot.
11. Cut pumpkins in half, remind self to buy Miracle Blade Knife set for Christmas.
12. Scoop out seeds and stringy crap, both of which you will find remnants of for the next 2 weeks in places you never dreamed of.
13. Begin wiping hands on pants and shirt, curse self for not having an apron.
14. Drop pieces of cut pumpkin into boiling water. Forget about them until sizzling sound of pot boiling over reminds you.
15. Set timer for 30 minutes. Go into living room and immediately begin fighting off the deepest sleep that has ever come over you.
16. When timer goes off, stab pumpkin with fork to see if it is tender. Accidentally break off several pieces of pumpkin, mumble under breath about needing a new pot, and check cupboard for canned pumpkin (just in case).
17. remove pumpkin from hot water, forgetting to put on a hot pad so Great Granny's metal pot handle is sure to sear your hand. You'll need something to remember this by when all the dried slime and seeds finally disappear.
18. let pumpkin cool on counter.
19. Begin second batch (I *said* the pot was too small) and chuckle to self about how easy this is. Begin picturing self making large batches and freezing this to use until next summer. Decide what color label will go on jars of your Homemade Pumpkin that your friends will surely want to try.
20. When pumpkin is cool, scrape meat out of skin. Drop several pieces, immediately wasting good pumpkin and about 800 paper towels to clean it up.
21. Say quick thanks to the Tupperware Gods that you somehow acquired a giant, wonderful Tupperware just the right size for all this pumpkin.
22. Curse whoever left 'giant' Tupperware at your house for not getting one size up, because it turns out that you suddenly have a buttload of pumpkin.
23. Remove second batch of pumpkin from stove when stray seed catches fire on burner, filling house with smoke and testing fire alarms.
24. Continue scraping pumpkin out. Drop large chunk down front of dishwasher, and onto the floor. Consider kicking air in disgust but think twice because you know this will land you in the ER with a bruised coccyx.
25. Burn hand on piece of pumpkin from most recent batch, nowhere near cool enough to touch.
26. Begin throwing pumpkin-y dishtowels into the wash, realize you have now only 1 dishtowel clean and tomorrow is Thanksgiving.
27. Start load of laundry.
28. Finish scraping out pumpkin meat, grin cleverly at bag of pumpkin guts, seeds and skin as you realize you have FINALLY remembered some food waste to put in the yard waste bin, and the trash company has only been begging you for 2 years.
29. Place Tupperware containers into refrigerator, wonder where you'll get the energy to make the soup you cooked this for.
30. Grab shopping list, add "Canned Pumpkin" to it, so next time you get an idea like this you may save you from yourself.
31. Look down, realize clothing is covered in pumpkin. Consider going to bed fully dressed in pumpkiny clothing and contemplate how hard you'll clobber your husband if he comments.
32. Pick pumpkin out of hair, change into jammies and hit the hay. After all, tomorrow you've got to mash all that pumpkin and get started on the real recipe.

The chili turned out great (again) but I am going to be honest, I do not think I preferred the fresh over the canned. It tasted great, but so did the canned, and it's worth saving the time because who knows, I might find another great recipe one of these days.