Saturday: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
The Good
This could also be titled “The Great“, but that’s not the name of the movie. 
Got up at 5:05 AM Saturday morning, so excited and nervous about the race I could barely concentrate. I started getting ready rather groggily, but since I’d miraculously gone to sleep at about 10:20 I woke up pretty fast. I got ready, packed up the last few things I wanted to take and loaded the stroller into the back of the truck. Then I started waking the kids, P first and then K2. It was harder to wake P than it was to wake K2, but they were both sleepy and lacking energy for a while. Mom arrived and we loaded up and headed out to downtown.
Parking was a breeze since the street meters don’t start their hours until 9 AM and we got there at 6:20. We were able to park just across the street from the park with the starting and finish lines. We loaded the kids into the stroller and wrapped sweaters and blankets around them; it wasn’t really cold, but it was overcast and early and they weren’t moving around to keep warm. Then we walked over to the crowd where I tried to get some information about where to go and how to do this. Found out that I kept the tag on my number throughout the race and was supposed to rip it off and hand it to the volunteers at the finish line. No checking in necessary. An announcer got on a loudspeaker occasionally and told us all what time it was and where to gather for the 5K or 10K. We lapped the park a few times while I jogged a little, stretched, fixed my sock, checked my shoelaces, went to the bathroom at the Y across the street, and eventually split off from Mom and the kids to duck under the yellow tape and gather with the pack at the starting line in our green-cone lane for the 5K. I was in the back of the pack, but that didn’t bother me any.
And then a lady came over the loudspeaker to explain how she was going to say G-O, and we were not to trample each other. And then she said it, “GO!” It took a few second before the back even started to move, though we all started to kind of jog in place. Slowly the congestion moved forward and as we went about 1/2 a block we were able to move freely and everyone spread out over the street.
I had my Zune cranked high and tried to pace myself a little faster than I’d normally run on my own but not so fast that I would have to walk. Up the street, over a street, down the street, up the street on the other side, down, up. I settled toward the back of the runners of the 5K and in front of the walkers. A few people kept running, walking, running, walking, right near me so I’d pass them, then they’d pass me, etc. It was kind of annoying, but I tried to ignore them and just keep my pace steady. The course was almost entirely flat, so hills weren’t a factor. It was nice and cool since it was completely cloudy. And I ran. There was a clock on a building sign for a business, and since I ran past it and then past it again on the way up the street, I could tell I was making pretty good time – better than I’d anticipated. As I turned the last corner and went down the straight stretch to the finish line, Kid Rock came on my Zune and I decided to kick it up a bit since I could see the finish. But I underanticipated how far 3 blocks are and slowed back down to just a little faster than my whole-race pace about a block from the end. As I ran into the cones, the guy called my name out and I heard some cheering. I saw Mom with the kids, she was trying to snap pictures. And I ran it in! I was feeling quite euphoric, proud of myself for running the whole thing and sticking with a good pace, and I saw that the clock said 35:59! Four minutes faster than I’d made my goal! I knew that wasn’t the official time, since that was just the last time I looked at the clock. I looked up my time today, and it was 36:20. Still, my goal was 40 minutes so I was very pleased.
I jogged down the cone pathway, ripped off my tag and gave it to the volunteers, and then got a water and stood in line for the free stuff table. Mom and the kids came and found me. I eventually got through the line to take some of the free samples and load my pockets (looking back I wish I’d taken more:), and then get some bagels & cream cheese from the Bruegger’s bagel table. We let the kids play at the slide park for a few minutes while I stretched half-heartedly and then we walked to the truck to load up.
Driving home, we passed Memorial Park and saw the set-up for Spring Spree, a carnival kind of like gathering with no rides (some bouncy castles, though). We decided to stop; it was only 8:30 at this point. Parking was simple, we found out that was because it hadn’t officially started yet. So we walked around and looked the wares, tried a sample, got some coupons. The kids got some balloons contorted into shapes by a cloud named Q-Ball. And it started to rain, so we hightailed it out of there. We were home from all this adventure by about 10.
After a shower and some lunch and putting K2 down for a nap, P and I decided to run some errands since K2 came home to sleep anyway. We went to Vitamin Cottage, Borders, and Famous Footwear. We didn’t buy much, but it was enjoyable to just look.
At about 3 we headed home……..
The Bad
Turning into our housing area on a left hand turn. Was in the intersection waiting for a gap in traffic. The light turned yellow, waited for a few cars to go through, and I THOUGHT the last two vehicles were stopping for the about-to-be-red. One did. One did not. I’m taking my left-hand turn when there’s a huge crashing sound, and all of the sudden the steering wheel is jerked from my grasp as the truck is somehow spinning to face the opposite direction from how we were. I might have screamed, P might have screamed. I don’t know. We came to a shuddering halt….. I’m thinking, this isn’t happening. What is happening. How did this HAPPEN? I reversed two times before I got us away from the curb in front of us so I could pull out of the intersection. I’ve already started to shake. P is wailing, “are they going to get rid of us?? are they going to shoot us??” Oh my gosh, what is she talking about, why would that be her reaction??? I still don’t know.
I stopped the truck, turned it off, and got out – my door didn’t want to open from the whole front of the frame of the truck being bent so badly. But I got out and went around the truck to open P’s door and give her a hug and make sure she was ok. And then I ran down the street a little ways to where the other car had pulled out of the street into an elementary school parking lot to make sure the other driver was ok. My leg had already started to hurt, but I jogged anyway.
Honestly, I don’t want to go into any more details than that. After that things just got worse, more surreal and awful. Police, I got a ticket, the attitude of the other driver, but more importantly the attitude of her family as they showed up. The nice, nice witnesses, one of whom actually went and fetched K since he wasn’t answering his phone. A blow by blow isn’t necessary I don’t think. Suffice it to say, insurance has been called. We don’t know what will happen but the truck isn’t driveable. Not even registered yet. We had it towed the .2 mile home. We walked. Me limping. I have a vicious bruise on my leg and invisible bruises from my seatbelt across my chest. But no one else was hurt – not the other driver and most importantly, not my daughter. I cried for almost the whole hour and a half that everything went down.
This is what insurance is for, and no one was seriously hurt. Those are the important things. But man, does it suck. And it especially sucked as a cap to a previously GREAT day.
The Ugly
And then that night I reacted to all this by ruining my wonderful race day of triumph with a binge. Don’t want to say anything more about that. Sunday was also pretty bad as far as food intake. Today will be better.
Saturday Sleep and still in onederland
Yesterday, every time I wanted to mindlessly snack more than I should, I repeated the number in my head. 199, 199, 199. I didn’t want to mess it up and was just hoping that today I would weigh in at the same. 198.5 this morning, baby. Yeeha. So now I need to mantra that today, since it is a Saturday and there is always more potential for going off-plan on weekends.
Today I slept in until about 9:30. I woke up at 6:20 to go to the bathroom, and then didn’t hear another peep until 9:18, when I woke up surprised and startled. I didn’t hear K’s alarm, I didn’t hear him get up, I didn’t hear him get dressed or leave the room. Nothing. At 9:30 after dozing a bit more, P came into the room and we lounged for a few minutes before I got up to get dressed and we heard K2 start talking in his room. A few minutes after that there was a knock on the door, a pretty insistent one since it takes a bit for us to hear knocks upstairs. It was my SIL dropping off her little girl to play with P while she and my other SIL went to the commissary on Fort Carson. SIL gave me the choice of her borrowing a car seat for A or having A stay here and play. I opted for play, since I knew that’s what she really wanted. Now we’ll see if she lives up to her end by being her by about noon – she said she’d be gone for no more than a couple hours. We shall see.
K just got home, and it looks like I have less time than I thought I did before he has to leave for work this afternoon. So I’m going to cut this post short. Well, I guess I didn’t have much else to say anyway. 198.5!!
199!!!!!!
This morning I had a lovely incident with a bowl of oatmeal and berries. As I was pulling the bowl from the microwave, it slipped from my fingers, hit the counter and splashed the purple concoction over the front of the microwave, counter, and wall behind the microwave, and then it hit the counter with the other edge of the bowl and flipped toward the floor where it splattered all over the front of the oven, the floor, and projectiled UNDER the oven. Then the bowl came to a rest upside down and empty. Lovely. On the bright side, I guess it never hurts to be forced to pull out the oven and clean underneath, right? It took me 15 minutes to get all the goo cleaned up and the stickiness eradicated. And I probably missed a couple spots of purple. Ugh.
I just got finished eating the replacement bowl I had to make. Too bad a full cup of frozen berries was wasted on splattering my kitchen.
This next section is going to have to be in all caps, so prepare yourself.
I WEIGHED IN AT 199 THIS MORNING!!!!!! I was so surprised! I expected about 200.5 or something, since I’d previously not weighed in below 201. But 199!! Officially lost 31 pounds and am in ONEDERLAND! The last two days, I’ve eaten around 1450 calories a day and worked out hard. And here I am in onederland! Yeeha!!
Funny, since just yesterday I wrote how this would energize and motivate me even more and it does! I’m so excited to have a day of healthy, yummy eating within proper proportions. And work out hard tonight. It is Friday, which means we’re heading into the days when K’s working schedule isn’t quite as bad (by a small margin, but it makes a difference). It is entirely possible that over the next few days I’ll bounce back up into the 200’s, but this is a downward trend that I’m very excited about!
Next week I start working two afternoons a week instead of just one. I’m not looking forward to it, but I’m just going to have to plan and take my food with me and dedicate myself to keeping myself in check while I’m out of my home environment. This also means I need to be more productive on M-W-F so that the housework doesn’t fall behind.
I really don’t have much else to say except …. 199!!
Hope you had a Happy 4th!
I did, in most ways. Let’s see. Thursday passed by without too much more damage. K didn’t pick me up from work until almost 6. I took some of the offending leftovers from the cheating lunch home and we had that for dinner. I didn’t have much of it, because it wasn’t as good warmed up and I was also kind of sick of it. After that, I don’t remember what kind of nonsense I got into in the kitchen.
But, I DID finish my 4-day bootcamp! My first one ever successfully finished!! I’ve never made it past 3 days before, so I was pretty proud of myself. It was hard – all four were really good workouts. All week, I’ve been looking forward to today so that I could measure myself and see if my inch progress is coming along faster than my weight loss. More on that in a minute.
Friday, I got some exercise by walking in the sun transporting all our lawn chairs and the kids to get in place to see the Monument 4th of July parade. I think both P and K2 really enjoyed it. He went to town on a fruit snack packet for most of the time, and we gave him so water in a bottle to keep him hydrated in the heat. My sister, A, brought a big umbrella so for part of the parade K2 and I got to sit in the shade. P and her cousin Z had a blast collecting the candy that the parade people threw out to the kids – as good a score as on Halloween for both of them. I didn’t have any breakfast since we were in a hurry to get out the door, and I went a little crazy when we got back to Mom and Dad’s house after the parade. Had a little leftover chicken enchilada and a biscuit with jam. Had bunch of P’s candy, peanut M&Ms. Then we had our BBQ and I had a lot of the wonderful fruit salad A made (strawberries, raspberries, mango, peaches, pears, pineapple, w/ lime juice a little sugar as the ’sauce’). A hamburger, hotdog, more fruit salad. Corn on the cob. More fruit salad. More candy, more M&Ms. Piece of A’s apple pie.
K didn’t make it up, since his golfing expedition that started at 10 went until after 4:30, and he sunburned himself so bad he can still barely walk 2 days later. I was bummed he wasn’t able to be with us, but I’ll get over it. P and I watched the neigborhood’s illegal fireworks from the dark in my bathroom. Quite a good display for sitting in our culdesac in a dark bathroom, on a toilet. She was thrilled, and I have committed to msyelf to get her to a real display next year.
Yesterday, we were supposed to go the movies with K’s family in the afternoon and then BBQ at his sister’s house. When they found out K wasn’t going to go since he could hardly move, they canceled. I was ticked, and P and I went anyway. We saw Hancock. The plot was not what I had imagined it to be, darker more intense. It was good, I guess, but it was too much for P and she didn’t like it. She stuck it out like a good girl, sleeping in my lap for part of it. I’ll take her to Kung Fu Panda sometime next week to try and make up for it. We ate her parade candy for treats. When we got home, we went to K’s sister’s house and had a yummy dinner of fruit salad, baked potatoes, grilled chicken and brats (it was BYOM), coleslaw, and then strawberry cream pie. It was very good and I got nice and full. And now I’m fasting again until tonight.
I need to go get ready for church, but before I go, about my measurements. So, it was good and bad at the same time. I did lose inches in places, but I gained or stayed the same in other places. But it still amounted to a 4 and 3/8 inch loss. And today’s weight put me in at a 3 and a half pound loss since June 6th. I’m still debating if I want to take another picture for progress pictures, or if I only want to do that every other month. I’m leaning toward every other month because I think if I try to see changes in a picture right now I’ll only be discouraged. But I was excited to see that an inch from one place on my middle, and over an inch on another place on my middle are gone, so I’m not imagining it that I feel slimmer. My arms also showed a loss, so that is exciting since I wasn’t sure I was working them hard enough.
I’m going to continue with my plan. But I am going to try to get back to doing better with 3 meals a day and only snacking on something healthy when I’m actually hungry. Also, I need to be stricter with my AN days. I haven’t had a full AN day in over a week. They just take a little more preparation, and I have to stay out of the bucket of licorice or cheese puffs. I can do it. I’m committing to 4 workouts a week instead of just 3 and I think that will help, too.
So, here’s to living and learning, and adjusting accordingly.
I’m off to get ready for church – which will be a nice distraction because I’m hungry!!
Success Story (futuristic)
Okay, now that I’ve gotten my fitness history documented, I’m going to give my futuristic success story a go. Its going to be pretty simple because I’m not going to put the little synopsis of my health struggles in the beginning like most success stories have.
“It is now January 2009. Over the course of the last 7 months, I have lost 80 pounds and even more inches by making some simple, but important, changes to my life. Having decided that counting calories, points, or macronutrients was just not something I was ever going to be willing to do, I decided to go a more laid-back, long-term route. So I incorporated three different lifestyle changes that made sense to me and that I thought I could live with in the long run.
First, I worked on re-establishing my work out habit. To do this, I committed with myself to go to the gym three times a week. I tried out a few different workout routines, and settled on doing T-Tapp using a little portable DVD player, plugging it into an outlet in whatever empty workout room was available. Doing this at the gym instead of at home gave me the advantage of not having any distractions (kids, husband, dogs) and also having mirrors to monitor my form (since T-Tapp is all about proper form). I could do other workouts, like treadmill or weights, if I got bored or wanted to mix it up. Which I did a few times during the last 7 months. I still go (and will continue to) to the gym three times a week. A key point to this was not beating myself up if life got in the way and I missed a day. On my off-gym days, I walked my dogs, took runs by myself, and occassionally did a workout video at home, like one of my dance videos. Again, not beating myself up if I didn’t get anything physical done. The goal was 5 days a week to get some form of physical activity for at least 30 minutes, and I did pretty well. Not letting guilt override my efforts and minimize what I’d accomplished was key for me, since depression has been something I’ve struggled with overcoming.
Second, as soon as I stopped nursinng my son in June, I started intermittent fasting twice a week. Usually, I would fast from Tuesday night after dinner to Wednesday night, and again on Saturday night after dinner to Sunday night dinner. This was an easy, unstressful way to create a weekly caloric deficit without counting calories, points or someting like that. Since I’ve fasted monthly for religious reasons for most of my life, I was familiar with going from dinner on Saturday to dinner on Sunday. But it had never occurred to me to use this method for controlling my weight. I did a lot of research on this to make sure it wouldn’t endanger my health or send my metabolism running for the fat-wand. It worked marvelously – on fasting days I didn’t have to think about food at all. I was energized and had to make sure I had a lot to do on those days since I had so much energy and the extra time of not having to worry about food (except for the food I fed my kids). When I wasn’t fasting, I ate normally, trying to make good decisions about eating healthily. If life got in the way of those days being my fasting days, I would switch them to a different day. No biggie.
Third, I established 2 days a week when I wasn’t fasting to eat only all-natural foods. Usually, I chose Mondays and Thursdays for this, to make sure to fill my body back up with the nutrition it needed on the days after I fasted and to make sure that I didn’t over-do it as I came off the fast. I allowed some dairy products on all-natural days, but mostly it was natural protein sources such as lean meats and eggs, and fruits and vegetables. This left 3 days a week when I was eating as wisely as I could without obsessing about it, allowing snacks and treats in moderation.
These three changes made a huge difference and allowed me to lose weight in a method that I could both live with and enjoy. I definitely wasn’t perfect at it, but I tried to keep in mind that it was a progression, not a race. I made plenty of mistakes, but I just got back on the plan afterwards instead of letting it derail me for weeks, months, or years like I had in the past.”
Okay, this is kind of lame. Its not very inspirational – reads like a plan more than a success story. But since I’ve never had a success story to write, I don’t have a lot of practice. So I’m going to go forward with this one and revise it if I have to after a few months. In this success story, I’ve basically set a huge goal for the next 7 months. I’m going to try not to think about that and just take it one day at a time while doing what I’ve said I did.
Okay, it is Memorial Day and I gotta exercise before we go to my parents’ for BBQ this afternoon. Since K could get up at any time and decide to go buy a car, I decided to work out at home today and do Instructional #1 and #2 to refresh myself on form tips for the T-Tapp Total Workout (TWO) at the gym on Wednesday.
