Friday, December 23, 2005

Make A Plan

Today's weigh in was 120. I'm gonna talk more later about what this means, because it is a huge deal for me, but for right now, I'm gonna focus on damage control. Because this is normally the time I would give up for awhile, slack off, before making the big push for another five pounds, and I just can't afford that right now. And plus I feel like I'm on some kind of a roll, despite the holidays and all the traveling we're about to do, and I have to take advantage of my crazy willpower when I can, because you never know when it will get away from me. And also not only do I not want to gain back any weight, I'd like to be at 115 by February 14th. That's the day I started all this craziness, two years ago.
For me, the best thing to do in these circumstances is to make a plan, and to try to stick to it as best I can.

So my plan is:
1. no gas station treats except water and sugarless gum. If I get desperate for gas station treats (I really love gas station treats!), I can have baked chips or mentos, but really, I don't need this stuff, I have a crapload of healthy stuff all packed up and ready to go. (I get VERY hungry while traveling, and very bored, and for years I thought of traveling as free time, when I could eat all the junk in the world and it didn't count. So eating healthy while traveling is really really really really really hard for me.)

2. If I get hungry, eat FRUIT.

3. For dinner, I'm going to have stuff I brought plus I can have whatever grilled chicken sandwich is on offering, or a double cheeseburger without the bun. Either option will be gross. But that's ok. I need to get beyond my idea of McDonald's as a "free exception because it's inevitable and delicious so I get a pass here" and more like "This isn't going to be good, this isn't a treat, I'm going to get the least bad for me thing and eat it so I'm not hungry but I'll have a real treat later". I was so deprived of McDonald's as a kid that this is really hard for me.

4. And I'm gonna go back on the wagon and say "no treats". If I start allowing treats as a possibility, then all of sudden I'll let myself eat ANYTHING and all of sudden treats are just a matter of course and then I'm just walking by the table throwing cookies in my mouth without even realizing it and I need to more conscious of my choices than that. So NO TREATS. Unless I get a bad chocolate craving, then there are contingencies in places for that. :) Sometimes being at my mom's just makes me want to eat chocolate and sometimes you just have to. (The contingency plan is that I am allowed to drink booze if I really need it, but only whiskey, since I don't like it that much and can't drink that much but it really relaxes me, dark chocolate, but only one per day, and I am allowed to have oyster stew on Christmas Eve which I don't even think is that bad for you and it's a family tradition so I'm just not gonna be able to get out of that one.)

Thursday, December 22, 2005

I hate packing

I simply cannot express how much I completely and totally cannot stand packing. Or getting ready for trips. It just hammers home to me how much different I AM from how I wish I WAS.

I wish I was the type of person who could throw on a cashmere sweater grab some tampons and some sunglasses and a copy of Vogue or something and just take off. And hell, if I need more more clothes when I get somewhere, I could just buy some fabulous native clothing and start a new fashion craze for Indian saris or something. In reality I am the type of person who will make 60,000 lists of things to do for weeks before I leave, who will fret for days over whether to pack the only cashmere sweater I own because it's so ratty because I wreck all my clothes, who will end up packing only jeans I wish I fit into because I'm in denial about what actually looks good on me, and who will end hating everything I've brought with me the second I arrive at my destination, who can't afford to buy anything new and who has to lug around the nine hundred pounds of luggage I brought with me even though I hate it all and will just end up wearing yoga pants and one of Mr. E's huge t shirts the entire time anyway.
I wish I knew how to stop being this way, but I don't. I wish boots didn't take up half of my suitcase, but they do, and yes, I do need six pairs. I wish my life didn't come with SO MUCH baggage. Every once in a while I'd like to just jet off to India...free as the wind.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Christmas Crafts

Here's my vintage popcorn strand.
The ornaments are vintage, the popcorn is not :)
This is my favorite Christmas decor so far! Although for some reason I had to buy THREE batches of popcorn to find any large enough to string.


Here's the latest nativity scene in my collection, and Annabelle's "antlers"



And here's the cookie packs I handed out as office presents. I loved these because I got to buy and sample all my favorite christmas candies and goodies without having entire boxes around to tempt me for weeks. These had white fudge covered oreos, applets and cotlets, Trader Joe's chocolate chip meringues, mini candy canes, maple walnut ginger spice cookies, sugar cookies, cherry bombs, lindt truffles, dove dark chocolates, toffee, ribbon candy, brownies, chocolate toffee bars, and maybe some other stuff I can't remember. Yum! I was sad I didn't get one, but my ass was happy :)

Love

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Tenacity.

Over the years that the award was given, Senator Proxmire provided steady material for reporters and headline writers and made the nation laugh.

But he counted among his most significant accomplishments the government's 1986 approval of an international treaty outlawing genocide, for which he had delivered more than 3,000 speeches in the Senate over a 19-year period and which President Ronald Reagan finally signed into law in 1988. It took 40 years for the United States to join 97 other countries in a treaty outlawing genocide and it would not have done so were it not for Mr. Proxmire's tenacity.

For two decades he would deliver a speech in favor of the treaty every morning the Senate was in session.

From NYT

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

NSV????

(For those of you not in Weight Watchers, NSV stands for Non Scale Victory. It means you didn't lose weight, but something else good happened)

For awhile now, since I've had anywhere from the last 5-15 pounds to lose, the weight has come off SLOWWWWWWLY, to say the least. My last weight update I was at 128, I don't remember when that was, but I do know I was wearing shorts in my picture, and now I'm at 122, and it's snowing. So that gives you some idea. Six pounds lost isn't bad, obviously, but the more interesting thing to note is that my clothes size has gotten much much smaller, even when the scale hasn't gone down at all. Obviously due to having more muscle, less fat, running, etc.

So I'm in a weird place, right now. I'm not at my goal weight, but I've grown out of all my clothes, I can't afford to replace them, I can't find clothes small enough in some stores in the mall, and I still don't feel skinny.

I don't know if it's because the scale says 122 instead of 115, I don't know if it's because of my body dysmorphicness, or because I have unrealistic expectations, or because I sometimes think I'm "skinny fat person" with no muscle definition and my arms don't look like what I thought they should look like when I was "done", I don't know.

WhenI started this, I said all the time "I just want to be able to wear size 6 Gap jeans". Ok, that's done. I can do that. Those jeans are TOO BIG for me now, and I still don't feel happy. I justify it by saying that the jeans I am talking about were the jeans I wore in 1992 and there has been rampant size inflation since then, but the reality is that I'm about to have to start buying size 2's in some stores and I don't want to be that person. I don't want to be the person who can't find pants SMALL enough.

What prompted all this thinking is that this weekend I finally bought new jeans. They are a size 4 Petite from American Eagle. I never thought I'd see the day. I never even dared to think of it. To be honest with you. I never ever did. Even though when I started this, it was partially because I couldn't find jeans big enough to fit me in a size 16 at Old Navy. In a lot of ways, a size 4 at American Eagle is a HUGE NSV for me. But in other ways, I still feel like a failure. I'm still not happy with how I look. And more importantly, I'm still not happy with how I see myself.

It's so screwed up that I could weigh 180 pounds and think I looked pretty good, and two years later weigh 122 and think I look like crap. I wish I knew how to fix it, but I don't.

But what I am going to say is that I really don't want to outgrow my size 4 jeans. I don't want to be too fat to wear them, and I don't want to be too small to wear them. So I am still going for 115, and if it makes my size four jeans a little looser, that's ok, but if it means I have to go look for size 2's, I need to stop where I am, and learn to wrap my brain around the number on the scale, and the size I am. And a little more resistance training wouldn't hurt. I do think I would feel better about myself if I were a larger number on the scale but had some more definition.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Holiday Run Recap

I ran my fourth race yesterday, the Holiday Run. I'm still waiting for the race I finish and say "That was easy!" but this was not it. However, like all the Lincoln runs, it was really well organized and thought out, with cool touches like hot chocolate and cookies at the finish, jingle bells for everyone's shoes, and presents (gift certificates, water bottles, etc) scattered throughout the course.
It's a cross country run, all around a giant park, up and down hills and through the forest. It was very very pretty, and it was fun (in retrospect), and it felt great, but it was HARD. I've never run through snow before, and the closest thing I can compare it too is running through dry sand. I also think the people who turned out for the race were a bit more hardcore, because the group started FAST. Way too fast for me, as it it turned out. Pacing is definetely my weak point, and I always start too fast (which is why I like 5k's so much) but running fast isn't actually my strength, my endurance is. About a mile in I started to feel SO much like I was going to throw up. It's a miracle I didn't. I also really really wanted to quit. Then I saw Mr. E and I knew I couldn't. Shortly after that I fell in with a slower pack of four women and I started to feel better, so much so that I passed them shortly. After that another woman and I traded leads the rest of the way. She was a great motivator. I don't know that I would have run as fast as I did had she not been on my tail the whole time. When we went into the final stretch, I was determined that she would NOT beat me, if it had anything to do with will, and I turned it on, and blew past her to the finish. Or what I thought was the finish. Actually it wasn't that well marked and I ran to the left instead of the right and someone had to run over and grab my tag.

Still, it was really fun and quite exhilarating. And I could feel it the rest of the day. I was TIRED. But a good tired. Oh, my time? 31:40.

Not the time I wanted, but considering the snow and ice (at times we had to "skate" rather than run) it was ok. It does make me nervous to run nine minute miles for the half marathon though. Oh well. I ALWAYS beat myself up after races, telling myself I could have done more, I could have pushed harder, I could have left more out there. I have to remember that a year ago, maybe even a month ago, I could not have done this at all, or at least not in 31:11. Oh, and that I can push through anything, even snow, ice, and impending vomit. And I do need to work on my pacing.
It's hard when I spend so much time running on the treadmill. I'm gonna have to get in every outdoor run I can between now and February.