Monday, March 31, 2008

Better

I have been ever-so-slowly improving in the health department, Peeps. I went to the gym at lunchtime last Friday and did some very good running, and that combined with my no-white new eating habits (I don't want to call it a 'diet' because I'm not even glancing at calories or restricting amounts in any way), has helped me feel better. I don't know if I look better, although TT says I do, but I feel better.

Surlier, without question, but better health-wise.

I'm going to go to the gym today at lunch. It's been a great discovery that I can actually do that because usually when I work out at home it means being awake until 11 or 12 at night. That's fine once or twice, but over the long-term it's a killer.

The only downside is that right now today I can feel my stomach swelling because of the IC. I'm having bladder pain; only level 2 which is well managable, but still noticable.

I'm hoping with every hope I have that it's been brought on by the two rounds of major antibiotics and being sick. If it's the new excercise and/or eating plan I'm on, that could be bad news for long-term change.

Keep your fingers crossed!

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Help Me See the Light

So, I got sick again. That is some bad news. The further bad news is that today, three treatments into some heavy antibiotics, I couldn't stand it anymore and tried going to the gym at lunchtime.

I had to walk there, find my way around, get dressed, find a treadmill (of course, one that was right in front of the mirror. Hooray! Get to watch my fat ass run!) and the Bally's had their heat set on "HELL".

For the first ten minutes I walked fast and ran. I ran for two minutes, then I ran for three and a half minutes and then I died.

Honest to god, I tried to walk fast after that but I got dizzy and felt so, so much like I was going to puke.

Please remind me that this is what I want: fit and fun!

Please remind me that this is what it is not: a contest.

I don't have to be there tomorrow. I can have to take a break and it's just tough titties if I gain a little when I stop. Right eating would help, and I'm working on that, but emotionally beating myself up for having to take a week off because I'm sick does nobody nogood nohow.

Mostly now I feel like crap.

I hate being sick.

PS - I'm on a diet of no white sugar, no white flour. Good thing I didn't look at the ingredients before I guzzled down two vitamin waters after my "workout".

Nice. Real nice.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

NOT ME THE PANTS

I went to Lane Bryant, Peeps. I tried on the Jeans of Doom in the same size and cut in which they were originally purchased.

THEY TOTALLY FIT.

If I didn't know that they were going to shrink to two inches shorter and several inches smaller in the waist, I'd totally buy them again.

In fact, LB told me to bring back the shrunken ones and they will make it right. In the future I'm handwashing and line-drying all my clothes. It's just easier.

NOT ME THE PANTS.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Bad Pants Good Bar

Last night I went out on the town with Mah Mahan. We've really been hitting the excercise equipment and were feeling good. Then I made the tactical error of trying on jeans.

I do not know how, other than to assume that all my jeans have been shrinking, how to account for the fact that last summer I could wear them, when I was a similar size, and now I cannot. At the same time that these jeans have been riding up slowly and becoming difficult to button, my fat pants have been getting to the point where they are falling off of me, and my bathing suit no longer fits.

I officially hate all my clothes.

So I got dressed and it's just disappointing. I FEEL so much thinner than I look, and I look a lot thinner than I'm dressing.

By the time we left to go out last night I was miserable about the stupid fucking jeans and feeling fat again. After all this work, fat again.

Then I got hit on a bunch of times and once at the bar from a 25 year old kid who thought I was his age. It was wonderful. And I ordered two drinks because I could obviously not go back up to the bar because I was blushing horribly and stammering and acting like an idiot.

I'm too fat for my jeans, my fat pants are too big, I have nothing to wear, and I attract cute 25 year olds.

I have no idea what the fuck is going on.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

TO FAT LADY SINGZ

Sweetheart, I don't know if there is something up with my firewall or what, but any time I try to get to your website I get an error. I can read what you write through my blogger feed, but I can't get to your actual page, which means I can't comment.

I've been reading, I hope the best for you. Let me know if something about your page has changed so that I can update the blogroll and start commenting agian, okay?

KP

Independent Inspiration

Well, it's been going well. I don't know how many folks still read here, but I thought I'd give you an update. Afer my last whiney post I've been firmly back on the excercising wagon. It helped that I took the Troublemaker to a strip club for his birthday this week. I didn't need to be thin for that event, but I really, really needed to feel good about myself. Excercising and sexy red pumps did the trick nicely.

HEADLINE: ACCOUNTABILITY

The day before the outing I hit a goal marker for me. We have a treadmill that has a speed program. I wind up going a distance of a mile and three quarters. It goes like this:

2 minutes slow walking - warm up
2 minutes medium walking
2 minutes slow walking
3 minutes running
1 minute medium walking
2 minutes running
1 minute fast walking
4 minutes running
1 minute fast walking
2 minutes running
1 minutes medium walking
3 minutes running
2 minutes slow walking
2 minutes medium walking
2 minutes slow walking - Cool down

That's 14 total minutes out of a 30 minute program spent actually running. If I put the treadmill at the lowest speed setting I can walk those running segments. I have to walk very fast, but I can do it. When I started out I walked all of it. It's enough to raise my heart rate.

Over time I've slowly been bumping the program up just a little bit and trying to run longer and longer periods of time. At first if I did any running I called it good. Then I ran every other segment, and half the middle four minute segment that makes baby Jesus cry.

Three nights ago, for the first time, I ran the full 14 minutes that are called for. I very nearly died, but I did it. 14 minutes of running.

Then the next night was Strip club night and I didn't excercise.

Last night I was hung over and exhausted and miserable and had to talk myself up by telling myself at first that if I just GOT ON the treadmill it would count. Then I said, hey, it's all good, why not just do the walking version of the program?

Of course, when I got on the treadmill I sort of started into the program on automatic and even though I was hung over and exhausted and I lurched around and looked sad, I ran all the running minutes again. I just kept telling myself I'd done it before so I could totally do it again. And you know what? I was right.

I've been excercising almost every day. I do the half hour treadmill program and then I do a half hour on the recumbant bike on a hill program. While I'm on the bike I do weights on my arms. Then I do the 90 crunches and I'm up to 20 wimpy, halfassed pushups.

I don't even care about the stupid scale. I can see the difference in the mirror. I can feel the difference in my head.

HEADLINE: INSPIRATION or WHAT KICKBOXING CAN DO

One of my big heroes right now is P!nk. She's kind of crazy and strange, but she's powerful and looks like someone who lives in her body. I'd like to live in my body. I'd like my next letter to my body to not feel like it was a message in a bottle.

Here's her interview with Ellen in November of last year. She looks tremendous, but more than that she looks strong. I like that she looks strong.



Of course, maybe the reason I like the way she looks there is that it's doable for me. That's what I look like when I lose weight. I don't get "skinny", I get "fit". So what her body is doing? I mean, she's thin but she still has thighs and a big head and a nice butt big shoulders? That's what my body does. In fact, I actually preferred the way she looked a year before this interview, when she was a little heavier. Her butt was cuter then.

In the interview P!nk says that she runs for an hour a day and then does yoga for an hour a day. Then, of course, she has tours where she sings and dances for hours a night. I can't do that, but lordy I would love to get to the point where I do the program listed above and then turn around and start it over again. Run for an hour. That's madness. I love it.

At one point, when I was about 25, I was kickboxing and lifting weights three times a week and dancing every night. I was hot. Really hot. This is what I see when I think of myself in my head. This is why the mirror is always so disappointing:




That's what I want. I want me. I want me at my best, not perfect, but seriously awesome anyhow. I don't want to be a stick figure, I want to be STRONG. That, that photo is me. I'm going to try and get as close as I can.

I inspire me.

When I reach this look again I'm going to die my hair red again (don't care how poor we are) and get a tattoo. Because I want to mark the day I stopped making excuses. I want to mark the day I decided I was done being old and sad.

In case you want some musical inspiration: Later on Ellen, singing U + UR Hand, the song that gets me through those four minutes of hell on the treadmill.

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Can Lightening Strike Twice?

Last night was a success, Peeps. I started off with six miles (a half an hour) on the recumbant bike at a moderately difficult program with some hills. I lifted weights. I did two less reps than I usually do with each grouping, but I lifted weights.

Then I walked a reasonable clip on the hill program of the treadmill for a half an hour (a mile and a half). It wasn't enough to get sweating and was NOTHING like what I left it at, but I moved.

I did ninty crunches and 15 pushups (wimpy ones).

Today I felt kind of fluey and icky and my hips hurt this morning like a motherfucker, but I did it. I moved.

As soon as I sign off here I'm going to put away the groceries, take out the trash, and then try and do some of it again, even though I'm tired. I'm not going to run flat out or worry about how far or how fast... I'm just going to move.

Ugh. I hate moving.

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Losing the Lost

Ugh, there is this challange going around right now, Peeps. It involves writing a letter to one's body. Without fail I have seen, over and over again, women writing to tell their bodies, perhaps a little grudgingly, that they love them. I think that is awesome, for them. Me? My letter (the short version) would look something like this:

Dear Body,

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. How you continue to function while being totally and completely fucking useless is beyond me. A big old thank you for the gorgeous kid, but beyond that, go fuck yourself.

KP


It's not pretty, I know it isn't, but let us take the recent events as proof that I really really hate the way my system is set up. Here I am, as usual, finally getting off my ass, making an effort to get us cleaned up. What do I get?

Flu
Secondary Pneumonia
Antibiotics that mean I have to be treated for a systemic yeast infection
Antibiotics that mean that my Intersticial Cystitis is back and I cannot:
Eat anything nice
Have sex
Pee
Breathe .... without pain
Hemorrhoids - because, really, why not?!

I lost some weight early in the process, as you do when you spend the entire day sleeping instead of eating, but as quickly as my body responds to excercise is as quickly as it falls back. I feel like I've lost all my returned muscle, lost my momentum, and I'm just as fatty fat fat as I've ever been.

Today I took my last antibiotic pill (YAY!) and I'm not feeling so awful I want to die for the first time in two weeks, so I have made a deal with myself -

I am going to do an experiment to see if I can watch a Harry Potter video on my computer while on either the treadmill or the recumbant bike. I was going to do my nails first, but as I've procrastinated until 11pm, that might be a little "ambitious". Movie+Moving. This is my hope.

I have a big old post about the difference in weight loss before and after you have kids, but that's hanging out in the back of my head.

Here's hoping I don't break a limb or something tonight! Wish me luck!

*snarl*