Sunday, June 22, 2008

I'm afraid to post...afraid for the backlash.

What's wrong with me? Why are all these other women able to commit to this unbelievably stringent way of life, and for me, food always comes out on top? Always triumphs?

I was doing okay - I got through Friday and Saturday, and then today (normally "free" day) hit me like a ton of bricks. I woke up hungry, and had an apple before running 4 miles (I was asked to sing the national anthem for the Philadelphia Triathlon, and had to run to and from the start because the roads were closed off.)

I felt weird the rest of the day. Craving carbs, but also just weird and out of sorts. After the race, I had a huge egg white omelet with broccoli, turkey meat and soy cheese, a veggie sausage patty and my oatmeal with brown rice syrup. Then, I took a nap ... UNTIL NOON. Wild and decadent.

The demons (and the Fat Monkey) were still all over me. I ate three vegetarian chicken patties, then gave the girls reading lessons and ate steamed squash. At about 3 pm, I decided to take the girls to the pool and was still feeling squirrely, so gave in and ate 2/3 a banana. At the pool, I was dying to eat their peanut butters and crackers. Finally, at about 5:15, I couldn't take it any more. I ate the knot from my daughter's soft pretzel. And from there, it was off to the races - not like before. Not like back in the day. But definitely no longer super clean:

- three Ritz peanut butter crackers
- 6 grapes
- multigrain pasta w/ff mozzarella cheese, lo-sugar tomato sauce and grilled chicken
- ww hamburger bun toasted, w/margarine and parmesan cheese
- Cocoa Bumpers cereal, unsweetened almond milk, banana

Nowhere near what a Sunday would have looked like even a week ago, but I still am beating myself up, wondering why I have failed where so many others have been able to press on past the temptation and stay clean.

Anyway, I knew it would be best for me to put it out there and be honest. I'm fully determined to get right back on the horse tomorrow.

I'm off to bed now.

Good night,

Lii

Friday, June 20, 2008

So, how'd I do, you ask?

Pretty well. Not perfect, but okay.

I was hungry - starving, even, by the time we got to the restaurant. I ordered soup (gazpacho with crabmeat), crabcake appetizer, and soft shell crabs with side of green beans and asparagus (no butter, sauce on the side). I didn't have any bread, didn't taste any of DH's calamari salad. I did have the crabcake and S.S. crab, despite the light breading (well, not as light on the crabcake), didn't finish the sauce because it was definitely loaded with mango and other unmentionables. Came home and tried the lava cake again. Better this time. I'll get it right, eventually. I actually think my Biotech whey protein works well with the recipe, but it does have a weird aftertaste.

I have to admit, though, I'm feeling a little discouraged. I weighed myself tonight and was back up to 187, which means it would take a small miracle for me to still see 183 tomorrow. I really, really, really want to see the other side of 180, which I know will only happen if I stay the course.

I welcome feedback and experience on the topic of patience. I know I shouldn't weigh myself every day. ASIDE from that, it would be helpful to hear what other people's experiences have been, or what has worked for them.

It's going to be a challenging weekend. My mom is here through Sunday and eating is just WHAT WE DO, even though she's constantly wanting to know "how my diet is going." I'm not sure how she will take it that I'm eating this clean, but she'll have to. And the kids, too. We're spending the day at the pool, which usually means PBJ or pizza. I am not supposed to have raw veggies post-colonic, so salad is out for me. I'll have to cook chicken and broccoli or something and bring it in a container just for me. *sigh*

OK - time to head to bed. Have to get up early for an AA meeting and then to the gym!

Take care,

Liimu

Shut UP, Fat Monkey!!


I am so SICK of hearing from the Fat Monkey on my back. I want him OFF of there!

So, I had an amazing day so far (workout rated 10, food rated 8, attitude rated 8). I went running with a friend this morning, then had a YUMMY breakfast (my fave meal of the day, I'm quickly realizing) of an egg white/turkey/cooked spinach omelet and steel cut oatmeal. Yummy yummy. Then off to the gym for an hour of boot camp. YEAH, baby. It kicked my butt.

Myoplex shake after my workout, fine. Good. Got some good work done. Even better. Yummy lunch of grilled salmon and more spinach. Then things start going downhill. I was so excited because my Syntrax Nectar arrived today. I could not wait to make the chocolate lava cake with the new powder. First mistake - I decided to estimate amounts. YUCKY YUCKY. I tried again, this time carefully following Melissa's recipe. Not as yucky, but yucky nonetheless.

Where are we now? I'm STARVING. The FAT MONKEY on my back is whispering to me that when I go out to dinner with my husband tonight, what harm is a little mashed potatoes? A piece of bread? BECAUSE IT OPENS UP THE WHOLE NASTY CAN OF WORMS, THAT'S WHAT! BECAUSE IT WAKES UP THE SLEEPING DRAGON! YOU'RE NOT FOOLING ME YOU NASTY, LYING, THIEVING FAT MONKEY. GET OFF MY BACK, OR I WILL RIP YOU OFF WITH MY BARE HANDS AND STUFF YOU DOWN THE TOILET MYSELF.

Phew, that felt good. Maybe tomorrow, Fat Monkey. No bread, no butter, no mashed potatoes tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

I am getting to size 8 jeans. I am getting to 150 pounds. I am getting my dreambody and no stupid fat friggin' monkey is going to keep me from it.

I will report back tomorrow.

Lii


PS Here's a current pic - not full body, but it gives you an idea and gives me something to compare against in a couple months:


Thursday, June 19, 2008

Who Would Have Thought??

That I would be all crunchy granola and naturopathic? I just came from getting colon hydrotherapy. For those of you who aren't familiar with that phrase, it's a fancy way of saying a "colonic." It's too soon to tell what the benefits will be, but I know there will be benefits. It was weird, though.

I am SO committed to this new way of eating and thinking about food. Today is day 3 and although I was instructed to have vegetable soup, which is not on the Tony D detox diet, I know I'm doing it for a good reason, and tomorrow I will be right back on track with my egg whites and oatmeal (steel cut, thanks to Theresa G, the colon queen).

Oh! And by the way, I was down to 183.6 this morning, down from 188.7 at the beginning of this week. I see 150. I will achieve it like this:

June 24 - 179
July 4 - Size 12 jeans
August 3 - 169
Labor Day - Size 10 jeans
October 9 - 155

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Super Clean!

Hi, everyone!

I'm on day 2 of really super clean eating. It was a hard day, I'm not going to lie. I was in a meeting all day today and although I did well this morning, bringing my 2nd meal to work with me, I was a mess for the rest of the day. (But I hung in there and was successful!) I begged my colleagues to order from Saladworks, but to no avail. They wanted Panera. I was diligent, and looked online at the nutrition info, and couldn't believe that the salads were close to 500 calories, before the dressing! I asked them for lettuce and chicken, lowest fat, lowest sugar dressing. No roll, no apple, no chips, thank you. Then, my colleagues got their food - paninis, potato soup, chips, UGH! Thank God for my friend, Melissa. I texted her all afternoon and she just texted me right back. Hang in there. Get over it. Get over yourself! It's just food and you're not goin to starve! (And I didn't.)

So, here's how I did today:

6 am - 3 mile run
7 am - Pseudo myoplex shake (I decided to do this before I had all the supplies. They're on the way.)
10 am - egg whites and oatmeal w/sugar-free syrup
1 pm - salad with chicken and lo-fat poppyseed dressing
3 pm - more salad with more chicken and fat-free raspberry dressing
6:30 pm - grilled chicken (overcooked and dry - YUCK) and steamed broccoli
8:15 pm - chocolate lava cake with about 1/4 c. sugar-free ff pudding with protein powder

Okay - I had a couple of moments where I did my own thing, but for the most part, I'm DAMN proud of how I did today. Tomorrow, we'll try to do it all over again! I'm determined to stick with this until it gets easy.

More tomorrow,

Lii

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

I'm back on track, at least for today

Ahh...I love having the freedom to reinvent myself on a daily basis.

So, thank goodness for willingness and prayer. After much of both, I am solidly back on track. I cleaned out my house and asked for help and am now following a super clean (super stringent) eating plan a friend of mine has been following since March. She has lost 22 pounds and gone down three or four sizes since then.

Now, me. I was hungry. I'm not going to lie. Today was a rest day from working out and so I had a lighter fare than usual, I guess. Just shy of 1200 calories. I was hungry. The food didn't taste so great. (Well, breakfast, lunch and dinner rocked, but the snacks SUCKED.) But one day under my belt. Let's see how tomorrow goes. Can't wait for that oatmeal. YUM.

Tomorrow, I'm following my tri training. Somewhere during the day I hope to get in a 15 minute swim. I'm starting the day with a run. A good day planned.

I'll check in again soon.

Take care,

Liimu

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Feeling so discouraged...

Every weekend it is the same thing. The stress of having the kids for hours on end takes its toll and I end up sabotaging all my good efforts from the week that passed. This week, it started with my first tri training workout, which kicked my ass entirely and left me feeling like I could eat anything (not to mention really hungry). I ended up having a pre-lunch lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. A normal person probably would have just eaten that and then not eaten another one an hour later at the pool with the girls. I don’t consider myself to be a normal person. Then, I took my eldest daughter to a dance recital in which my niece was performing. We got there a half hour late and still had to wait 45 minutes before we finally got to see her perform her dance number.



At 7 pm, I was finally sitting down to dinner with my daughter. Halfway through the recital, I had decided I would have a cheeseburger and fries. My “reward” for my hard workout and the stress of spending the day with the kids by myself because their father had a gig in East Bumblefuck, PA. Of course, I still had to have some chocolate when I got home. I started with a 100 calorie soy ice cream sandwich. That wasn’t enough, so I followed it up with the equivalent to organic cocoa puffs (Envirokidz Cocoa Bumpers).

Today wasn’t much better. I woke up still sore from the week, feeling sorry for myself for not having had a rest day in over a week (nor one in sight any time soon). To make matters worse, I hopped on the treadmill for my warmup cardio only to find that my iPod was completely dead. I ended up walking for 15 minutes, then following it up with 30 lame-ass minutes on the bike. Hadn’t eaten yet (I don’t tend to eat breakfast until 9:30 or so) so I was starving by the time we left the gym and in my mind was torn between going to Whole Foods for scones or just going home to what we had there (wheat toast, etc). I hear you now…please tell me you went home. You went home, right? Of course I didn’t go home. Not only did I get the scones, I ate one on the way home. Ate scrambled egg whites with soy and 2% cheese, veggie sausage (and another scone) at home, then didn’t eat much to speak of until dinner time. (Had a half a soft pretzel at the pool.) Dinner was grilled chicken parmigiana with spaghetti (I probably only ate ½ cup of the spaghetti, but ate all the chicken and most of the cheese, along with ¼ of the garlic bread that came with it. After that, I had a big cookie (1/2 cookie is a serving…but who can eat a half cookie?) and ½ chocolate chip muffin. I feel disgusting. I know – where is the fruit? Where are the vegetables? I did say I feel disgusting, right? For every step forward I make, I feel like I take three steps back.

I could really use some encouragement. I fear I will NEVER get anywhere at the rate I’m going.

Friday, June 13, 2008

I cannot do it. I just can't.

I just can’t do it. I’m starving. A couple of pretzels just ain’t gonna cut it. I’m going to have a bowl of cereal. Will try again tomorrow.

Entering the Weekend Wasteland

Why is it that I associate the onset of the weekend with the desire to eat nothing but crap? All week long, I crave and enjoy healthy food, fruit or egg whites for breakfast, salad with grilled chicken for lunch, seafood and rice with steamed zucchini for dinner. What did I have today?

  1. A banana for breakfast (good start), followed by a KILLER boot camp workout. (The teacher of the class was sweating like a pig...nuff said.)
  2. Then, at my sister's house, I just did not feel like making a salad or anything healthy. She had leftover bbq, so I had that. No veggies at all.
  3. Then, during my massage and facial (yay, me), I realized I was beginning my triathlon training tomorrow so probably should postpone the liver flush I'd been planning to do (see my Detox Blog for more info on that.)
  4. I get home and have a soy dreamer ice cream sandwich, knowing it's a better choice than the yummy 10-point organic chocolate bar waiting for me in the freezer. The little dreamer was just a preview...the chocolate bar called to me and called to me...I ate it all.
  5. While picking up the girls, I ate a few mini pretzels.
  6. At home, not even hungry, I cooked pasta and meatballs for the girls, and as the frenzy of their fighting and yelling escalated ("Can we watch "High School Musical" again, please?" and "More apple juice, mom!"), I broke down and ate a bowl of pasta, faintly realizing I still had not eaten any vegetables at all.
  7. Checking the clock, I noticed at 7:15 it was just a few minutes before the cut off of 7:30 my new nutritionist friend Chrissy recommended for me as the time to stop eating. "Well," I thought to myself, "maybe I ought to eat any last morsels, since it is cut off time." (Speaking of which - I have one minute. I think I'll get a banana.) See? This is what gets me in trouble. I eat like there's an impending nuclear war or tornado or something. Must stockpile. In my stomach.

So, all in all, I guess it was still a good day - from a Weight Watchers perspective, anyway. I get a daily allotment of 24 points and I was only up to 20, even with all these errant choices. (Although I can't help thinking it would be better for me to be getting 24 points of healthy food, rather than bbq and chocolate.) Thank goodness for boot camp and my continued willingness to have my ass kicked in the gym by various and sundry women at the gym. Thank you, gym women. Betsy, Kristen, Chrissy, Dorine - I love you all.

More tomorrow, folks.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Day 2 - I'm still here (and still sore)

So, Kristen gave me a workout to do on my own. I have to say - one thing that's great about working with a really good trainer is even when they're not there, you still hear their voice, pushing you to run just a little faster, push just a little harder, sweat just a little more. At least, that's what it's like for me.

Today, I was scheduled to do interval training on the treadmill and I ran 3 miles in just under 35 minutes. I started off slow - I was still so sore from yesterday's arm workout. My first interval was a slow 4.5 mph jog. Okay, it was actually a 3.0 mph walk for the first minute and a half. Fine. Anyway, suffice it to say that by the time I hit the 1-mile mark, I was doing my slow interval at 5.0 mph and was cranking it up to 7.0 mph for my 1 minute sprint. I heard Kristen's voice during my last set - push it! push it! push it! I ran my last mile at 8.0 mph! I thought I was gonna take off for 30,000 feet, my stumpy little legs were booking along so fast.

After I finished my run, I still had abs to do. Kristen wanted me to do three sets of three different ab exercises: plain crunches, Starfish crunches (where you touch your hand to your opposite foot), and then 25 second planks. I don't know where my inner strength came from. I was in so much pain, but I was determined to finish strong. It was weird (and continues to be weird) to look in the mirror. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see muscles that I know weren't there before. Other times, I just see pudge.

I have to believe. My body is changing. I will be a buff mama.

Later, all. I'm falling asleep at the keys.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Three weeks to form a habit

I'm two and a half weeks into working with a "real" personal trainer, so I figured now would be as good a time as any to start my official blog. Well, that and the fact that my trainer suggested it.

I started my own business three months ago (three months ago yesterday, in fact) after reading Rhonda Byrne's "The Secret" and applying it to my feverish desire to break free of the corporate prison in which I'd been living for nearly three years. (I was a training hack for a big pharmaceutical company.) Now, I consult to large, mid-size and small companies and make four times what I was making on the inside. Not only enough to pay my bills, I realized, but enough to throw some serious cash at the weight problem with which I had been struggling for nearly 30 years.

First, I joined a gym. (One of the drawbacks to leaving my pharma job was that I could no longer workout at the gym onsite. Well, I could, but would probably get kicked out before I made it through even a 20-minute BFL cardio session.) Part of joining the gym was that I got two free training sessions and I have to admit, I kinda hit it off with my trainer right from the start. She was a really good sport when I told her how unimpressed I'd been with virtually every trainer I'd ever met (except for the little ex-Marine who taught me how to do Roman Chair ab exercises with a weight between my ankles). Because I have struggled with my weight since before Michael left the Jackson 5, I have tried every diet including the 9-Day Diet, Atkins, Scarsdale Diet, the Master Cleanse, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, you name it. I have done Jazzercise, Pilates, Spinning, BFL, run a marathon, even been certified a personal trainer myself. Through it all, this has remained true: I have been (or even at my best, have felt) something ranging from slightly overweight to moderately obese every single minute.

So, here I am, trying again. Several huge milestones have passed during this time working with Kristen.

  1. This is the first year in I cannot remember how long that I did not gain weight in the period between Mother's Day and Father's Day. (My birthday and my husband's birthday are both in there, plus a trip to California for my niece's graduation from high school.) I don't think I've lost very much, either, but I'll take the small successes where they come.
  2. Speaking of said California vacation, I actually ate responsibly the entire time I was there and worked out four of the six days! It was a little intimidating to be at an L.A. Fitness in LA, where everyone wore perfectly coordinated yoga pants and sport bras to show off their chiseled abs and despite how hard it looked like they were working out, no one seemed to actually sweat. I, on the other hand, was covered in sweat by the time I finished dropping off my 21 month old at the kid camp before I even got started. By the end of my workouts, I was dripping wet and completely red-faced. Philly represents!
  3. I have not given up.

So, I know the value of blogging and sharing with others my successes and progress. I'm not sure who to share this with or if anyone will even read it (besides me and Kristen), but I'm going to be open and honest.

Tonight, I am sore. Kristen kicked my a** today in the gym, as usual. I never thought I would actually look forward to push ups, but everything else was so friggin' hard. And I was seeing some muscle definition in the mirror, so that made it more fun than the other exercises, too. I made the mistake of telling Kristen that I'd like to have a goal of doing one (just one!) unassisted pull up.

Kristen: "Well, you know what that means, right?"

Me: "I need to lose some weight so I'll have less to lift?"

Kristen: "No, it means you'll have to do more assisted pull ups to get your self stronger and ready to do one."

Shit.

Somehow, I still have tons of energy by the end of each day, though. I used to fall out by 8:30 pm. Not sure if this is still leftover jet lag from the West Coast trip, but I'll take it. I'm sore as hell, but a massage on Friday will take care of that. I still struggle with what to have for "dessert" at night. I know it would be good if I could just get out of the habit of wanting dessert, but I'm not there yet. May never be. I am going back off Splenda, though. My skin has started breaking out again in the last day or so, just since I re-introduced Splenda and diet soda.

When will I stop having to learn everything the hard way??

Okay - tomorrow is another day. I have my food planned out. Haven't decided what to do for a workout. I suppose I should e-mail Kristen and ask her. We haven't really talked about what to do on my off days - I do kickboxing on Tuesdays and boot camp on Fridays.

Okay, okay. Really. I'm off to bed now. Goodnight!