Hitting the ground......sneezing?

Yep, I was all set to launch into my first week of exercise. I came home from work Monday night feeling a little tired. I had a bit of a sore throat that I was quite sure would pass. Yet I wasn't feeling up to going to the gym at all. So I decided I would do SOMETHING....I popped in a yoga DVD, got out my mat, and spent the next 40 minutes trying to be circumspect rather than panicked about how inflexible I've become. While I didn't exactly enjoy the routine, I DID feel good stretching some areas that I'd been having problems with. I modified where I needed to, finished feeling relaxed and satisfied, and figured out how to do my poses on only 3/4 of the mat since the cat decided I'd rolled the last quarter out for him. To be fair I got an encouraging paw on top of my foot now and again, and when I lay down in savasana he helpfully contributed to my experience by licking my eyelids.

Tuesday I woke up in full blow sinus ick, and struggled through half the day at work so congested I was making strange honking noises when I tried to swallow. Five cups of green tea and two doses of daytime cold medicine later, I decided no one needed to listen to my tiny squeaks and continuous sniffling and went home. Himself went and signed us up at the gym while I watched my temperature climb and then hover around 100.6. I stayed home today to try and sleep/hydrate it off.

Today, I don't feel like doing much. Its 2:31pm and I'm still in my pajamas, though there is a load of towels in the dryer and I whipped up a new batch of laundry detergent. (I make my own because a. its cheap and b. everything else seems to make me itch) I finished a book. I'm sensing there is more tea and another nap in my future, though if I'm up to it I may work on one of my FlyLady tasks for the week, which center around tidying the kitchen. I have one of those cabinets full of plastic containers that cascades out on my feet whenever I open the door; it might be a good day to rake it all out and organize it a little better. Its a little disappointing that my exercise is on hold until I can breathe, but I'll do what I can until I'm at 100% again. I've made the commitment and I won't let this sidetrack me.

Getting Down to Business

Well, this weekend didn't turn out to be quite the glorious whirl of Useful Work I'd hoped it would be, but I did get one thing started.

The Control Journal.

The link explains what it IS, I've spent a lot of time on what it is NOT. In the past I would take a project like this and turn it into a be-all, end-all, perfectionist nightmare; if it wasn't the best thing ever I'd lose interest and wander away. For most of my life getting ready to do something was more fun than the actual doing; I'd go to Staples and spend $50 on all the colored tabs and highlighters and special notebooks and little pockets for this and that and have a little joyfest putting it together and then when the time came to actually USE it, my brain went "OooO! Shiny!" and I was distracted by something else. End of project.

This book is simply a place to keep my to-do lists, my menu plans, and the routines I'm trying to establish to dig my house out of the cat hair encrusted clutter layer that seems to envelop every room. This time of the year can be a full scale Depresso-rama for me, so what better time to do stuff INSIDE to make life better?

So anyway, I have a simple 1" binder with dividers. I've made lists of things I need to do in the morning, evening, and at night before I crash. I have to figure out how to work the nights when I have meetings and ambulance duty, since I often hit the ground running and don't wander back home until after 10. One step at a time.

For now, this week has a short list of missions:

• Go up and get the gym membership around
• Catch up on home paperwork (ie bills) that have languished over the holiday week
• Commit to a morning and evening routine that keeps the sink free of dishes and me looking a little less like I slept the night on a bus

Anything I manage to get done outside of this will be a bonus.

Resolutionary Road

Well, its time to implement the plan I've talked about, and also to join my great intentions with Margaret's 'This Time I Really Mean It' Campaign here. So here is my list. In a way, its a circle, since all of these things seem to be connected in a 'when one thing is off, its all off' kind of way.

1. The Fitness Plan: Time to make the magic happen. To that end, I've chosen a plan (explained in earlier posts), subscribed to a menu service (not a personal chef or one of those God awful diet food in a box deals, but a tool that actually helps plan varied, healthy, and economical cooking), and we are getting a gym membership for the winter because walking outside when the chill is -4 F doesn't just take cojones, it takes a certain flavor of stupid that I am just not cookin' with.

2. Its time to FLY. I am working on using the FlyLady's methods to turn my house into something more than a rambling hairball-coated pile of old books and discarded socks. Part of this effort (because it involves organization) is getting away from my slipshod budgeting for household expenses, or, as I like to call it, 'panic accounting'. Because its getting SUPER OLD.

3. Its time to think about what I want to be when I grow up. And see if there isn't something I can 'DO' with this writing thing I do. (Translation: Might I exchange my clever word piles for green papers with Presidents on them? Presidents other than Washington or Lincoln?)

While its ridiculously cliche to start all this the first week of January, I'm going to, since that is when my meal plan starts and this weekend I'll shop for the things I need. I'm spending this week retooling my daily routine to make room for things that need to be done every day.

That's it! Only three things! Should be easy, right? Come on along for all the triumphs and rifle/bell tower moments on the way. You'll be spared no details.

Err

You can get this scale here.


Okay. So as I mentioned the other night, we are starting from ska-RATCH. According to my new friend Chantel, who I have determined not to resent, there are five decisions one must make to break old habits and engage new habits that don't send you down the path to Elvis. (I refer, of course, to the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches and not so much the amphetamines, chicks, and heavily sequined jumpsuits with capes.) The first of the five decisions is 'Be Truthful'. So here's me, being truthful. Hold on tight.

I got on the digital scale this week, and it said I weighed Err. I take this to mean "Err, I do apologize, but I don't think I can help you." I like to imagine my scale is polite and it isn't saying "Great Jeebly Jeebus, would you get off before you crush my delicate innards?" Either way, it ain't saying much except 'Err'. I got on the speedometer-dial scale at work, which helpfully includes people in my freight class, after the needle goes all the way around and starts back toward zero. My numbers are in RED, which conveys just right touch of panic and potential spring failure that I believe they were going for. Subtracting five pounds for my clunky man-shoes and several layers of dampness-repelling fleece I was wearing today, I believe we're standing at around

342 pounds.

Hey. She said tell the truth. You can't get much more truthful than that without divulging painful dating memories or your social security number.

The first four weeks of this sixteen week program begins with exercise. The idea is to establish a regular-as-peeing routine of exercise, 30 minutes at a time, five consecutive days a week for four weeks, so that exercise becomes as much of a habit as anything else you manage to find time for every day. I am starting this phase now. Not waiting for some magic date, beginning of the week/month/year/moon phase/curling season, but now. Some days it may be walking, some days a DVD in the house, depending on what is going on, some days I may walk during my lunch hour, no matter what, I'll work it in somehow. I may do this for more than four weeks if I feel I need it to reinforce my habit or because I have to start a bit slow. Either way, this is where I'm at.

I also had to get out the dressmaker's tape and pull some other numbers together. These are also scary. But in the interest of 'telling the truth', here goes.

Bust 50"
Chest 44"
Upper Arm 19"
Waist 61"
Hips 67"
Thigh 38"

Uh huh. I'll give you a moment. My husband's aunt had a wonderful expression when she would call someone on their BS; she'd smile sweetly and say, "Oh, shug, speak the truth and let the Lord bless you,"

I am hoping I just accomplished both.

The Road Out

Okay.
So, when last we visited this realm we talked about Standards. Military fitness standards, and how if one attained them and met about, oh, 158 pages of other requirements, one could still, at my age, enlist in the United States Army.

And then I explained nineteen times or so that I was NOT PLANNING TO JOIN THE MILITARY. I had simply said, hey, I wonder if I could do that.

Do not think, gentle reader(s), that I had simply forgotten the whole thing and moved on. Sometimes ya gotta ask for help. I asked for help. I asked the Big Guy for help.No, not that Big Guy. This one.
Actually, it was more of a 'hey, I can't do this, I've tried umpteen times, You have to help me' kind of asking.
I won't bore you with the miseries of struggling with being overweight, some of you know and the rest want to understand but don't really and that's okay. As it turns out, God has a way of reminding you not to take it all so seriously. Lemme explain. No. Is too much. Lemme sum up.

A few months ago I was wandering through a bookstore and I saw this book.
Yeah. I know what you are thinking. I thought it too. Where's Hugh? Uh huh. I didn't even touch the book. I said to myself, what the hell does that woman know about living in this body? Cue the bitterness and dismissal. All I looked at was the picture. And the picture was enough. I gave it a pass.

Fast forward a couple of months. I'm listening to a woman I've never heard of being interviewed on the radio and she is talking about her epiphany moment, where she was listening to her husband watching a football game and realized she weighed more than any of the Miami Dolphins. She went on to say that she lost 200 pounds. TWO hundred. Holy cats. I willed myself to remember her name, forgot it, forgot the whole thing for a couple of weeks, then remembered enough about what she said to Google the title. I emailed my favorite local bookstore and asked for them to order it for me. I went to pick it up and laughed out loud when I saw her again, Mrs. Shiny Blond Perfection, on the cover of the same book I'd spurned.

Guess what. Smart stuff comes in pretty packages sometimes. I've read it, its sensible, and I've decided that this program, a very straightforward and simple improvement of what I/we/you do every day, just might help me get the job done. I'll let you know what the steps are as I do them, since this program involves first the establishment of an exercise habit, then an improvement of eating habits, then the addition of strength training, and so forth, over the course of 16 weeks. In my next post I'll list all the stats I can muster, so we can see how profoundly zero I'm starting from. That should be fun.

Standards

It started, as such things often do, with an idle conversation.

"You know, the military is offering incentives for employers to encourage their employees to join up. So I want all you girls to join," my boss said. It was one of those random, hilarious, late afternoon pronouncements from the back office.

"Ah, I'm too old," I said.

"No, actually, you aren't. They upped the age." I thought he was kidding. Because why would they do that...oh. Right. "Well," I said, "the other problem is, I'd have to lose about 200 pounds, I'm lazy and I like food."

But the wheels started turning. What are the standards? I asked myself. At first I thought I'd have to endure a conversation with a recruiter wherein I asked the question while he stood there in his trim green uniform and shiny shoes wondering why on God's green earth I'd want to know. But no, its all here where graduating seniors and curious middle aged fat ladies alike can check it out.

The first couple of sites I looked at gave me waaay too much information; I ended up reading an unclassified document on all the medical conditions that would prevent you from joining. I'm fairly sure I still have my gall bladder and I'm not polydactyl, a term I only know because in addition to my many charms I'm also a crazy cat lady. But this guy is out of luck, and not only because he's more than very nearly dead.

I poked around, and found out what I'd have to be able to throw down to join. Assuming it takes me more than a year to do it (because after age 41 they give you a WHOLE EXTRA POUND OF LEEWAY), I'd have to be:

151 pounds

No more than 34% body fat

I'd also have to be able to do at least 6 pushups in 2 minutes, 29 situps in the same amount of time, and be able to run 2 miles in 24 minutes and 6 seconds or less.

Huh. And so the wheels started spinning. And I thought to myself, COULD I do that? I'm not trying to do it by the time I'm 40, or because I'm actually considering JOINING the Army (I'm too fond of sleeping in chafe-free conditions and, you know, not getting shot at) but I am still compelled by this notion that I could pursue and achieve this small punch list that would, from a physical standpoint, put my house in order.

I'm still reading and gathering information, which will eventually lead to some stats so you can see exactly where I am now in terms of these goals. Off the top of my head I'd say I am:

300-something

A percentage of body fat that puts a little 'X' on the outside edge of a chart with an arrow that says 'YOU' just to the right of 'Saints preserve us, are you carrying an unabsorbed twin'?

I can do all kinds of pushups, but I look like a cat with a piece of scotch tape on his back. Situps? I can do those too. A few. Two miles might take me about an hour and a half with a good tailwind and a downhill slope and the promise of a frosty one at the end.

So.

I'm going to noodle with the numbers, and get back to you.

And I'm going to do this.

Refusing to give up has got to count for something....

...if only it burned calories, I'd be all set.



I have fallen down so many times, and gotten up so many times, its not funny. Really....its not. But what it is, is okay. I don't have excuses or bold statements, I'm just regrouping and making another bid for the summit.



I went to the movies last Saturday night and barely fit in the seat. It was a tight squeeze and uncomfortable. (Luckily the movie SUCKED and I left over an hour before the end, and enjoyed a nice stroll through town which restored circulation to my butt and cleared my head of images of blue weiner.) This time when the cluephone rang, it was for ME.



I have a chance to be on a Relay for Life team this summer, and I found myself excited about it. Something about getting outside my own weaknesses and doing something for someone else, all that kinda thing. I don't have anything inspiring, hilarious, or heck, even cohesive to share. I just figure that if I refuse to give up I won't be one of vast number of people who simply fail. It might not be pretty, bu I'll get there eventually.