I made it through my week of drinking and debauchery with very little damage, and no weight gain. yay, me! I’m in week 3 of the couch-to-5K, and it’s going…ok. I’m doing it, which means something, for me. I also, in a fit of mental lapse (I was going to say a fit of insanity, but, well…it would just mean a bad pun…which it will be, anyhow..STFU!!!) did the Shaun T INSANITY workout* today. So far, I “normally” have been doing elliptical training and then maybe a bit of weights, or a long yoga session on the days when we’re not running. But I’m also sick of the way I look, so today I decided that there would be no rest for the alcoholic. I started back on the Insanity workout, but I’m only doing it on days that I don’t run. If my past experience with Shaun T and Insanity is any indication, I will be will not be happy about running at all for the rest of the week, much less 12 hours from now, and with a workout in-between (what?? I told you I am not fitting into my old pants yet, and I had practically a whole bottle of wine at my “business-ish” dinner tonight!) there is no way my calves will ever forgive me, but they will just have to get over it. Sadly, I will just have to pay the price: I am miserably, dementedly committed to this running program. I have been tracking my calories faithfully again (a half a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc has 313 calories!) but am now so hopelessly confused about what and how much I should be eating that I am seriously contemplating asking my doctor for a referral to someone who can tell me.

At any rate, I wasn’t thrown too far off track. For my next trick, I will learn how to fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, as opposed to staying up all night writing about how sore I will be in the morning…

*The sad part about this is that I only started back down this Insanity workout path because the library was closed when I went there this morning, and the workout I had in mind to do in the afternoon was too long to fit my schedule if I waited for the library to open. But what kind of crazy person thinks “Oh, the library is closed. Guess I’ll go home and punish myself before I go to the grocery store this afternoon!”?? yeah, it’s this guy.

…I saw pictures on a friend’s facebook page of the 4th of July party we all attended. I was kind of horrified. I looked kind of fat. In almost all of them. I looked way out of shape. Now, I knew I needed to get back on track, but this was something way worse. My clothes didn’t look right. I knew my jeans felt tight, but the fact that they looked like they didn’t fit…it was enough to send me straight to the gym.

But I needed more that that. I need a goal. Otherwise I will just lose 5 pounds, have a bad day, and it’s back to pizza and beer for me, because, hey! I don’t have to fit into anything until September! (when we go back East for our “at-home” family wedding party) So I decided on a Couch-to-5K program, and chose the Cool Runnings version. Now, anyone who knows me will tell you that if there’s one thing I hate, it’s running. I have bad knees, I get shin splints and stress fractures, I can’t breathe, I just hate it. But it has a schedule, and I’m not giving myself a choice about it. It allows me to KNOW that at least 3 days a week, I will be running. For insurance, I have enlisted my shiny new husband to do it with me. He enjoys running, but lately (for the past year or so) he has been enjoying ice cream way more. So he needed to get out of the computer chair and start working out, as well.

I’m currently in the midst of week two, and I’m not hating it as much as I thought I would. It’s motivating me to work out in the off days. We’ve been doing weight training on the days we don’t run, but we go to the gym in the afternoon when C gets home from work. Prior to that, I will try and get in either some yoga or a short while on the elliptical machine. It’s been pretty hot, so this weekend I looked up some pool workouts. I’m pretty happy with the way things are going, so far.

This week will be a challenge, as I have a girlfriend coming in from out of town for a couple days. Our usual MO is to walk around the park looking at museums or going to the beach, but our days typically degenerate into happy hour and eating junk for the remainder of the evening. So, we’ll see if I can balance my workouts with bad caloric behavior and see where it gets me. Things are looking promising, as she’s super active and is happy to come to the gym or go running with me. So we’ll see how this week plays out.

Speaking of visitors, she will be here in an hour or so. I suppose I should clean this place up a bit…

My sad tale began last Friday. We went to a happy hour at a friend’s place Thursday night, had a few drinks, got some dinner and came home. I was a little tipsier than I should have been, but whatever. It was a rest day for workouts. Cut to about 5 AM. I’ll spare the details, but suffice it to say I was sick. I couldn’t believe how awful I felt. I couldn’t really sleep after that, but dozed off for a little while, until about 7AM, when I woke up again freezing and decided I would take a shower. Once I actually got up and started moving around, there was a new wrinkle. I had a stabbing pain in my right side.

The fiance decided I might have appendicitis, and insisted I go to the hospital. Not wanting to make a big dramatic scene out of what I was assuming was a hangover (even though it was not at all proportionate to what I had to drink the night before), I refused. I figured I would try and drink some water and get some more sleep and greet the world in a couple more hours. But no. He had to go and call my mother. The nurse. Who then instructed me very gravely to “get my ass in the car and get it checked out,” posthaste, or else.

So a compromise was struck, whereby I agreed to go to my doctor, and not to the E.R. And so, a couple hours later, off we went. First all she could tell was that I was dehydrated (duh) and then did some blood work. I was still in pain (and feeling ridiculous at all the alarm!) and eventually was sent for a CT scan. After much confusion and a disapproving nurse, I got my scan and was sent packing back down the block to the doc’s office again for the big reveal.

As it turns out, I did not have appendicitis. (Yay!) But I did have a ruptured cyst. It sounds bad, but the remedy is just to sit around and wait for your body to reabsorb all the fluids and adjust. Which means no workouts, no drinking, and eating bland foods. Not exactly a rowdy good weekend. And so I spent the next few days sitting around, watching movies, complaining, and missing out on the most gorgeous weather in months. Well, I did sit on the new patio furniture on our porch. I had my little blanket and slippers, just like a real little old lady. It was just how I felt, too.

But now that I’ve had a few days off, I’m feeling like I can jump back into my routine. It kinda sucks that last week we had started the second installment of Insanity, and I had to miss about 4 workouts. I think we are just going to start that week over again. C was having “sympathy pains” (read: laziness by proxy) and didn’t do them, either. Back on the horse tomorrow. Hope I don’t rupture anything else…

I got a little discouraged, however, when I logged into my  SparkPeople page. I joined the site shortly after we moved here, and it was a big help in getting me motivated to get in shape. It can help track calories (both consumed and burned), plan meals, and outline a workout plan. It’s got all different kinds of cool features, and a very active online community. Best of all, it’s free to use. But I digress. On the site, I have a tracker that tells me how far I’ve come, and how close I am to my goals. One of the trackers is weight loss. Now, I am not so preoccupied with how much I weigh, as long as my clothes fit. But I hadn’t logged in to this particular site in a while, and seeing this weight loss ticker made me kind of…unsettled.

It was awesome to see that progress has been made, but then I started thinking…it’s been a year. I am one third of the way to my original goal. While it’s encouraging to look back and know that I’ve lost some weight and maintained it, it was kind of disheartening to realize that for all that effort, I have kind of stalled out. I got back into some of my old clothes and just lost my intensity. And that made me kind of mad. As unpleasant as it is, I’m glad to have this perspective on my progress (or lack thereof, haha), and it makes me realize . I’m a big fan of The Biggest Loser. If some of those contestants can lose 10 lbs in a week, I think I should be able to do more than that in 12 months.

So, time to refocus. And kind of perfect timing, too. We start the second, more intense half of the Insanity series tonight, after our third “fit test.” I think that measure of progress (and my actual measurements) should give me an added boost of motivation. If I can still type tomorrow, I’ll upload our pics.

all gone!

What? Just an empty spinach container, you say? I invite you to take another look!

This is a triumph! A masterwork! It’s an empty spinach container, a beauteous carton, mercifully devoid of content because we ate all the spinach!

That’s right, all of it! Not a single leaf had to be thrown away due to neglect!

“So what?” you say? Let me tell you what. We buy bags of spinach, or spring mix, or mesclun greens (aka “weed salad”), and eat it all. After a time, we begin to get all smart and decide to buy in bulk! Because we’re sooo healthy and smug about our salad-eating tendencies. “We love salad! Of course we’ll eat a whole enormous Costco weed salad! It’ll be gone in three days!”

Then, tragically, inevitably, pizza distraction strikes. We are off salad, and as everyone knows, there’s a short shelf life for that stuff. The poor salad (or box of spinach, as the case may be) mopes around the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, forlorn and getting all slimy, until one afternoon I realize it’s been a couple weeks and action must be taken to relieve the poor, suffering salad of it’s misery. It’s an age-old tale (around here, anyway), because as Grandmom Fry would say, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The salad was always the one to suffer, in the end.

But no more! This box of spinach was entirely consumed, with nary a leaf wasted. So you see, we have broken the cycle! We have overcome our spinach neglecting ways!

I’m so happy, I think I’ll order a pizza to celebrate!

It will be awesome. I will be sure to take pictures and post them of the “mid-way” point. I’m not really losing weight, but I don’t really care as long as I am losing inches. I also kind of wish I knew how many calories I was burning doing these workouts. But altogether I’m feeling pretty good about it. Wish us luck!

This weekend is big for us. GO ARMY! BEAT NAVY!

We had engagement pics taken last month, and we got the proofs last night. I like them, they’re great. But we’re still kind of fat. Christmas, my birthday, and a two week bender trip home are all over and done with, and I am in high gear with wedding stuff.

The big news, however, is that we succumbed to the infomercial and bought the Insanity Workout DVDs. We’ve been at it for 5 weeks (we’re currently doing week 4 over again, because I missed a full week and some days while I was on the east coast) and it sucks. Which, of course, means it’s working. The first few days were absolutely brutal, and we were sore (as in, could barely walk, literally – we looked positively geriatric) for about a week. I was a little discouraged by how quickly I was spent, after all, I had been doing yoga or walking the dog almost every day. I thought I was in ok shape. As it turns out, I was not.

But things quickly improved. After week one, I was amazed that I could actually tell the difference in my endurance – it got a little easier every day. We have found that it makes it even easier to get through when we make shit up about the people in the DVDs. We have nicknames and invented motivations for almost everyone now, and the harder we work out, the snarkier we become. There are secret affairs, jealousies, backstabbing, and other soap opera staples. We dislike most people and constantly correct Shaun T’s grammar. When it gets especially rough, we resort to kicking each other “accidentally,” of course because our living room is so small. But as each workout is 35-40 minutes long, the misery is over soon enough, and we can get back to our regularly scheduled evening of TV watching, dinner making, and tea brewing (or, when we’re particularly cranky, TV watching, pizza ordering, and wine drinking).

Things are coming together nicely. We’re getting in better shape, I’m getting back to my starting point pretty quickly, as 2 weeks of drinking, eating subs, and sleeping in = 5 lbs right back where they started, and we’re getting lots of wedding stuff done. Right back on schedule, whatever schedule there was. Next up is finding an officiant for us and hotels for our guests. Wish me luck!

Well, my parents left, the World Series has begun, and the Eagles have a shot at the top of the NFC East. I was pretty remiss (in everything!) while mom and dad were here, but I will say, we did do a lot of walking and I was mindful of portions when we went out to eat. But since they’ve gone, I’m right back on track…ing calories. Such is my exciting and glamorous existence. Don’t hate.

I’ve also been recording calories burned the last few days. I use thedailyplate.com for a food journal, as it has a huge database and can handle fractions of portions. My only complaints are that it tells me I only need 30 grams of protein a day, which is something that I’m paranoid about (being a vegetarian and all), and  the somewhat confusing manner in which it tracks your net caloric intake for you when you record both calories consumed and calories burned. Which is why I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to “eat back” my burned calories, as the site suggests. I’ve done this in the past, and ended up being so confused by the caloric breakdown pie chart that I’ve way overeaten a balanced percentage of carbs, or protein, or whatever. So if I do decide to “eat back” my burned calories (which would give me the “net” caloric intake of what the site recommends for me to lose weight) I will have to figure this out or ignore the pie chart. We shall see. And Dear God this is boring. But don’t worry, it gets more interesting.

For today, I will likely “eat back” my calories burned, because I not only walked the dog, but I went to our gym this afternoon. I’ve not been there before (scandal!) and it was nice to have the place to myself. But I had a plan, see. I want Chinese food for dinner. And it’s Friday, so there will probably be cocktails. I like to pretend that I’m Betty Draper on Fridays. I clean the house, wash my hair, do my  makeup and put on a cute dress, and have cocktail hour(s) beginning around 5. Sometimes I will even wear shoes! It’s a nice way to end the week. But it generally heads me into a weekend of eating too much cheese and drinking too much…everything, and by Sunday I’m having french fries and a ShockTop draft for breakfast at Hooters for football and have long since given up any intention of 1) getting any kind of exercise besides jumping off the couch to shout at the TV and 2) paying the least bit of attention to what I’m eating. By that point, it is just too depressing.

So, I am going to try to not have this happen this weekend, and at the very least, I will have a bit of a head start going into my dinner tonight. Because with the Eagles playing the Giants at home, and World Series game 4  at home, I will have much more pressing matters to attend to on Sunday than calorie tracking. Like fielding mocking phone calls from everyone I know on the East Coast.

sorry about that, She-li!