Tamara Shazam!

While I can’t blame her for everything, I think I may have solved part of the weight gain mystery: some people sleepwalk and some sleeptalk.  It’s been told to me by my husband that I do those (plus more) but now I can add sleep eat to this charming list of special features.  How do I know?  Apparently, Bradley has casually started keeping track.  It started a few months back, soon after I started on my medication.  I was startled awake with crackers in my mouth by Bradley, asking if I meant to be eating at 3:00 in the morning.  I retorted something defensively about being hungry, but really didn’t know what was up.  The night before last, I was startled awake when I dropped a box of crackers that went everywhere and made a big sound.  Last night I was awakened, in the pantry again, by Freddie who came downstairs to check on me.  Two nights in a row!

When I shared my findings with Bradley, he responded that it’s no wonder I’m so tired lately: he hears me getting up 4-5 times per night, banging around, opening doors, wreaking all kinds of havoc.  I know I get up once or twice, but 4-5 times?!  Then he admitted that he’s been survailing me a bit, watching me.  He agrees that there’s no way my food input should result in this kind of weight gain and my nocturnal binge eating is undoing all the hard work he sees me putting in.  Then he said, “Your inner fat girl figured out how to play after all these years,” which is both funny and sad.

I know how much I weigh now.  I’m not ready to post it here.  I’ve lost 2.25 since 1/1.  Gigi and I ran today.  I’m doing the work, eating right, working out.  But damn my inner fat girl.  I hope finding out her secret is enough to banish her for a while again.  She can come party every once in a while, but this has to stop.  

I remembered, however, when Katie from Runs for Cookies fell off the wagon and went from her 130ish to over 150.  She had a moment of realization hit her, too, and she had to get back to basics.  She got back to weightwatchers and working out in earnest.  She fought off her fat and got back to her comfort zone.  I’ll say again like I said at the beginning of my body project: if she can, I can too.  

I keep thinking about this blog here: Tamara Shazam.  Throughout December I wrote minimally and didn’t even really think about it.  My enthusiasm is still here to blog, but my drive is minimal.  

That’s not to say I don’t have goals because holy moly, I do.  I’ve gained a bunch of weight.  I’ve been working out like a demon, but it hasn’t been nearly enough.  Apparently.  Last time I weighed myself I was in the 220’s. I thought it was my medication, but my doctor disagrees and directed me to a nutritionist and I’ve been there before to no good end so I didn’t go and…  I guess this is as close as I’ve been to giving up.  Letting go.  Falling off the wagon and forgetting how to stand up and get back on.  

Then, I realized I was choosing clothes based on which ones disguised my fat rolls best.  In spin class I’m having a hard time bending over my fat roll to ride comfortably.  I only look slim in my workout clothes anymore.  My fat is mushrooming out above and below my waist, so I’m determined to get things back in control…  I’m just not certain how this website fits in with that.  I’m good at instagramming right now if you want regular snapshots into my life.

My plans are as follows:

• Lose 30-40 pounds.
• Run run run- three days a week, with the kids to get back into good running shape like two years ago with Run the Year.
• Continue body pump 1-2 days per week.
• Squeeze in Zumba and hiking when it makes sense.
• Kick, claw, bite and fight my way back to my healthiest version of me.  I’m worth this promise.

Run these races:

• My Better Half Marathon*
• Hot Chocolate Run
• The Big Climb
• Kirkland Shamrock Run*
• Bubble Run (not signed up yet)
• Iron Horse Half*
• Beat the Blerch
• Captain Jack Treasure Run *

*Orca races- if you sign up, use code tamarashazam18 for an extra 15% off. This code will work for all 2018 Orca races!

Can you believe what landed on us for Christmas Day?  The snow was simply magical.  The last time I had this happen, I was 17.  It was 1990 and I was a senior in high school.  My grandma lived with us as well as our exchange student from Germany: Ute.  That year we had a date to ride the ferry to see our cousins in Kingston.  Talk about over the river, through the woods!  We headed over the Puget Sound, into the woods and up a bunch of winding hills!  In the snow.  With my brothers, grandma, Aute, me my mom and dad all in our car.  We couldn’t get up the hill and had to be saved by our cousins who could drive all over the place with no problem.  Anyhow.  I hadn’t any plans to workout on Christmas Eve after Zumba that morning, but there I was, walking around through the snow flurries by house lights and singing carols.  Talk about a magical night!  Waking up the next morning was just as beautiful.  After the exctiment of presents ended, we headed back out in the snow to take a walk and find the best sledding hill.  We got our steps in and even got sweaty in the process!  The snow was a gift on many levels. ❤️

In our quest for experiences over things, this year we offered our kids a choice: our usual Christmas with lots of packages to open on Christmas Day or a trip to Disneyland, a Macklemore concert and a small Christmas morning focused on one another, not the gifts as much.  They chose Disneyland!

High points from the trip:

• Riding the Haunted Mansion with Jack and Sally several times was so much fun. 
• Nighttime ride on the Mark Twain because the Santa Ana winds were too crazy (we were there for the start of the California fires).
• Our kids bonded and held hands while they walked around the park.  Boof- right in the heart!
• Appropriately aged boys checked Guinevere out and it was so cute to see her unaffected non-reaction followed by a smirk and blush as they passed.  Cute little 14 year old.
• Jude was a sweet little boy while we were there.  Disneyland allows him to embrace that imaginative, little kid while he’s there and for a little while, we have a little, young family again.  Plus a teenager.  We always had a teenager. 
• I was the runner who went back to the hotel and ran errands.  There’s something about being that guy who saves the day and puts a little extra energy in that feels good.
• I got one of the famous Disney candy canes in the last day.  I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but somehow it was one of my favorite experiences from the trip!

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!