Month: November 2017

If I look smug it’s because I’m feeling kinda proud of myself. A week and a half ago I decided to start bringing my best again and could hardly walk after one session of bodypump. Since then, I ran a bunch of miles, I lifted a bunch of weights, I took a bunch of Alleve and kept on going through the misery of being so sore I could hardly walk or get off of a chair! But today? I’m not sore. I added weight to my bar today and finally pushed beyond just showing up. Today felt so good and, yeah, I’m proud I pushed through the last 11ish days to get back to me! Woohoo!! Now things get really fun!

I also added Diet root beer back into my diet.  Guess what?  I walk around feeling full all of the time. That’s nice for me, yes really.  Suddenly I’m not shoving calorie filled carbs in my face and I appreciate that more than the lack of fake sugars.  It’s like I have a trade I can make and that crutch helps so much.  What’s next?

• Keep getting 10,000 steps per day
• Body pump twice this week and run twice
• Add journaling food into the habits
• Stay off the scale.  I hopped on to see I was down to 224 and hopped on the next day to see 229.  Just.  Stop.  
• My doctor offered to send me to a nutritionist again.  Ha ha ha!  She said it’s not the meds.  I think I problemsolved it and don’t need to return to that place.  What a waste of time, energy and money.

Well, well, well.  So many things.  My mind is whirling with the what to do about the weight gain.  This is kind of a post I don’t want to write because I don’t want to deal with what is happening right now.  Even more than that, though, I don’t want o have to lose the whole 150 again, so I approach this post with trepidation.  It’s forcing me into a corner of responsibility and who wants to deal with that??  Anyhow…   

First, I realized that I needed to make a plan.  Not a plan for the version of me that was fairly healthy and much smaller one year ago at this time.  I need to go back to square two or three.  By that I mean meaning small shifts in behavior.  As I took inventory, I realized that over the past year, my health habits have deteriorated.  I let the 10,000 steps go, the clean eating, the five-day-per-week workouts, to watching of health shows, the researching of healthy choices, the diet soda- I let the myth of myself assume my body and got lazy.  I run, therefore I’m healthy.  I lost 150 pounds, therefore I’m healthy.  But if I don’t maintain that, I’m not so healthy!

So these are the things I’m tackling this week:

• 10,000 steps per day
• 5 workouts this week
• 7 -10 miles
• I’m not tracking food this week because it’s Thanksgiving and I don’t want to start on a week when I’m destined to struggle.  That said, my plan is to make smart choices all week and allow a celebration feast on Thursday.  I’m worried that if I track, I’ll go ahead and do it Thursday, too, then get upset that I’m eating over calories even though that’s expected.  Does that make sense?
• No weigh ins until I figure out the medication situation.

I did pretty good this week in the working out arena.  I started getting my 10,000 steps in per day on Tuesday.  I ran last Sunday and Wednesday, I went to body pump on Saturday followed by a walk later that day and a 5k today, Sunday!  I like the way my body feels when I’m getting good workouts, but I’m hurting right now!  Yesterday’s class was tough on me and made me realize how much I’ve lost since working out so regularly last summer.  I’m looking forward to all of the time off so I can tone up over Thanksgiving and Winter breaks!

On another note, I received most of the stuff on my reward list for my birthday last month.  I need to make a new cash and prizes list!  LOL!  I also think that with my medication throwing me for a loop I need to be less focused on a number right now and more on figuring out how to balance the medication so after I figure that out I’ll re-engage in fatloss again.  Until then, my goal is just to eat and exercise to be as healthy as possible so we know what is the medication and what is me.

I’m in some alternate reality right now and I feel like I’m captured!  I can’t seem to stop gaining weight. As of last weekend, I weigh in at an astonishing 230.  I don’t even want to see what has transpired in the last week…  a few theories:

• I’m in the 1% of the population that gains weight from my particular medication.  Yeah, it’s rare, but then again, not so much.  For every thousand people there are ten left, gaining weight on this particular drug.  It could be that I’m one of them.  Sucks, but that makes sense as my weight issue stems from a hormone imbalance that throws off my insulin and makes me into an excellent fat making machine.  This medication may be the switch that turns all of that back on.
• This medication makes me nauseous when it first hits my system, so I take it with food and don’t feel that so often.  But just in case I might get sick, I know I eat more around the times I need to take my meds.  More food, more calories, more fat.
• I’m hungry around the clock so I eat more without knowing it.  I don’t think this is an issue during the day, but Bradley confessed to me that he’s noticed an uptick in the size and frequency of my night snacking.  On top of that, I’m a midnight snacker now, too.  I often wake up in the morning, realizing that I actually went downstairs in the middle of the night at ate a muffin or banana or pudding or all of them.
• Or it’s a combination of some or all of them.

What’s a girl to do who is in a panic about gaining weight faster than a pregnant woman?  Well, if said girl is on a medication she is suspicious might be the cause, she stops taking the medication.  Within 24 hours, all the rage she thinks she felt before she went on prescribed medication returns like thunder, making her realize she didn’t imagine these feelings, at all.  This is real.  By 28 hours she found herself full of the aforementioned rage AND all of the nausea, dizziness, nervousness and exhaustion that accompanies a drug addict who is trying to come clean because it turns out that the meds are addictive and she’s hooked like a fish on the line.  Research online confirms this and a discovery is made that this one isn’t a cold turkey drug.  This one makes you sick like coming down for a month unless a slow weaning process has been underway.  So she goes back to taking the pills and, in four hours, feels much, much better.

I kinda freaked out about all that this weekend.  I’ve felt out of control before, but never like this.  This is so uncomfortable.  I feel so chubby.  My belly bounces around like crazy now.  My boobs are getting all huge.  Things that were flat and empty are filling out and plumpin up like I’m attached to a hose.

I was expressing all of this to Bradley today and sharing how grateful I am that he’s a husband who doesn’t care how much I weigh or what size I am and he started shaking his head.  Then he said several important things that I needed to hear:

1. Yes.  I’m chubbier.  But it’s mostly my perception and isn’t terribly obvious to everyone who sees me.  I’m still wearing the same clothes, I’m still out and about.  It’s mostly in my head.
2. When I was slender (my perception) I was also running and zumbaing like crazy.  I worked out 5-6 days a week and watched what I ate and was consistently consistent.  These days I’m very forgiving in both areanas and regularly work out only on the weekends.
3. I’m lifting weights now and seem to be focused on that but I lost all my weight by being a runner and stepper.  I was focused and kept it simple.  Maybe a return to that would be smart.
4. Diet Coke called to me like other food used to.  With Diet Coke, I was a superhero.  I didn’t need a snack, just a Coke.  Crutches help.  Maybe I need to lean on the Diet Coke crutch again. 

It was so good to hear all of that!  Sometimes you just need someone else’s calm, common sense eyes to see you, and their calm, common sense voice to say the things you need to hear.  He’s right.  I’m good at losing weight when I get back to basics.  I have fun when I mix up my workouts and go to Zumba.  I love to run because it’s so accessible and freeing!  I’m getting bogged down in math and nutrition and specific plans and bulking and and and and….  I’ve decided bulking up isn’t anything important to me now.  I need to maintain a healthy weight.  I’ll still do workout classes, weightlifting and everything else, but it’s for health, not bulk.  I do need to work on my food more.  I need to figure it how to healthfully eat for my medication AND me.  And maybe a Coke will make me smile.

I’ve got communication lines open with my doctor, but it feels good to snatch back a little control by making a plan.

One week ago today we ran the perfect race: cool but not cold weather, no rain, nice misty fog, birthday, 5 miles, just right…  An awesome race!  I e decided that this will be my new birthday tradition.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate again next year and it will be just as fun, next time around!

Intellectually, I know I have gained weight but have been commenting to Bradley that I can’t see where it is.  I’ve gone from a 12-14 to a 14-16, I’m still wearing the same clothes….  where did the gain go?  I was thankful to these pictures.  Yes, I look fine.  I’m not saying I look bad, but these pictures finally showed me my own weight gain.  I see it as a gift as I now see the job in front of me, aside from the number, and really want to get rolling.  These pictures are helping provide the motivation to do exactly that.

I’m feeling all kinds of sassy right now.  Like, if I were a rapper I’d be throwing down all these sick rhymes that MEAN something.  Alas, I’m mild mannered Tamara the teacher who is not versed in the way of rapper rhyme expression, so I’ll just do my usual and over use slang words.  On a side note?  I’ve been thinking a lot about slang lately and how people think it’s a sign of being an uneducated ignoramous, but I think people who adopt current slang are just people who love new vocab.  I loooove slang, but I also like to curse AND use interesting words.  I like to mix it all up and throw it on the table in an unexpected kind of pot pie, all mashed together but oddly interesting and fitting.  I like that.

Anyhow, where this sass comes from, I don’t know.  Well, maybe I do.  I feel GOOD lately.  Like, I say to Bradley all the time how level and normal I am now.  I feel like my old self who was always even and happy.  Chill.  There are times, lately, when something happens and I’m like, hmmm…  that would have ticked me off before I got on my anti anxiety meds, but now?  No biggie.  As it should be.  

What I’m not happy about is this huge weight gain I’ve made.  I’m having a tough time sticking to my guns/determination.  I’m getting the exercise part down, but I’m having difficulty in stopping eating and eating.  Then eating some more.  Like, in the middle of the night I’m getting a banana.  I’m starving all day long even though I’m eating plenty…  Then at night I’m like a ravenous monster and I have a hard time turning it off.  Today I ate a huge pan of roasted carrots because I really wanted to binge on some ice cream and Halloween candy.  I had to very actively make that choice, then, even after I made the smarter choice, I ate a couple of sour patch kids and a piece of chocolate.  I told myself I ate less of it, having eaten the carrots, but really.  I wasn’t hungry.  Why do I even give in like that?  I don’t always have to have every craving met and I need to relearn how to say no to myself.  Seriously.  And I need to stop eating my caloric burn from working out.  What’s the point of trying to lose weight when I eat all of my advantage??!!

On the note of working out, I have to say that taking over the feed for Orca is, indeed, productive for me.  I’ve decided to use it as motivation to run more often and, so far, it is working beautifully.  The takeover is making me a bit slower, as I keep stopping to take the best picture, but I’m ok with that.  I’m dialing back my distance and concerns about speed and I’m just enjoying running for the sake of running again.  Today Jude confessed to me how much he enjoys running once he gets going.  I couldn’t have been more proud or happy.  

My sass has been replaced by a craving for that cozy feeling that involves a fire, a mug of tea, my fuzzy blanket and a cute schnauzer puppy called Fred.  😌

Some months are like that.  It seems like we just picked our garden pumpkins, school started and all of the sudden we are staring Thanksgiving in the eye?  What??  I remember when I was a kid, talking to this really neat elderly fellow in my neighborhood.  He wondered aloud about how, when you’re closing in on 90, the days are linked minutes, months like a week and years fly by like months. I was alarmed.  Life already whipped by when I was 13.  How much faster could it go?  Well, I’m learning because October flew.  I was just celebrating finishing my reading assessments when it was suddenly the eve of Guinevere’s birthday then conference week was here and my birthday, Captain Jack and Halloween…  Holy cow.  My neighbor Chuck was sure right.  But like my favorite poet wrote once, not so long ago, “Time truly flies, and if you’re lucky, you can fly right along with it.”— Tyler Knott.  So, let’s fly, shall we?

I fell off the wagon a bit as I celebrated my birthday and Guinevere’s birthday this weekend.  I was expecting it and was happy to be celebrating my birthday with the 8k, so health was built in.  Even still, the sugar addict was reawakened and I’m battling that bitch.  Again.  Again.  Again.  When will that leave me??  I suppose when I turn down the fun size.  And really.  The fun only lasts as long as the candy, then it’s hell to either deny myself or eat more and I’m not at a place where I can be eating more, so denial is my method right now.  Sigh.  Rebuilding those habits and flipping my switch again.  AGAIN!  

In more motivating news, I have been invited by Orca Running to take over their Instagram feed.  I’ve decided to use it as motivation to build some good exercise habits as I follow November’s lead in to winter.  Unbeknownst to our kids, we have a trip to Disneyland planned in December and Bradley and I decided to try to lose five pounds before the trip.  My clothes will certainly fit better and I’ll sure feel better, as well.  So, project Orca to Disney in place!  LOL!  With any luck, November will fly by and I’ll be a few pounds lighter and many degrees fitter when we get there!