Health

When You Least Expect It

08/31/2009

Saturday, because of the rain, was a swim day. I usually swim train with a friend on Saturday morning and that makes it more fun. Yesterday though, Jen was off on vacation, so I headed to the pool alone. I did not want to go. It was rainy and dark and miserable here yesterday. To swim on Saturday, even in crappy weather means getting to the gym by 7:30 am. The pool starts to get crowded around 8:15 or so. I had to coax myself out the door. However, I was off from training on Thursday and then again on Friday, so I made myself go. The way I felt, I wasn’t so sure it would be a very good training session, but these things need to be done. I got there and there was only one other person in the pool. Sweet. I love it when I get...

Soul Searching

08/28/2009

I went to lunch with a friend yesterday. It was my last day of vacation and it was a nice close to a couple of days off from work. I’ve gotten over my crazy binge-y days (well, sort of) and for lunch yesterday had a nice Caesar Salad with grilled chicken, dressing on the side. It was yummy and filling. And the whole way home, I wanted ice cream. Cold, creamy and sweet. I got home and had a bottle of water, thinking maybe that was just thirst. But about 15 minutes later, I went for the ice cream… (in a controlled fashion this time, light ice cream, 1/2 cup.) But I wanted that sweet. And I realized, I always need want something sweet after a meal. Bear with me as I digress… Last night I was talking with my sister who had gone to a past life regression...

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

08/26/2009

I have a magic mirror in my bedroom. When I was heavy, it was always kind to me. I’d get ready for work in the morning or to go out somewhere and it never made me feel fat, well not too fat anyway. There was no getting around the fat thing really. I was never that delusional. But I always felt ok in my clothes until I’d see myself unexpectedly…in a store window say, or in pictures. Is that what I really looked like to other people? Because it wasn’t how I saw myself. As a fat woman, I generally dressed in clothing that was on the loose side. Even though all of the magazines said dress in fitted clothes to shed ten pounds instantly, I was never comfortable with that. Wear a belt? God forbid. In reality, I probably made myself look even larger than I was (now...

There Are Still Days…

08/19/2009

There are still days where I wake up late and don’t get out to exercise in the morning or at any other time of the day, planned or unplanned. There are still days where I would like to eat anything that doesn’t try to run away from me and the more sugar the better. There are still days, after more than a year of eating healthier and exercising regularly, where I’d like to throw in the towel and go back to my old ways. There are still days where the threat of gaining the weight back doesn’t have nearly as much of an impact as eating cake would. Today is one of those days. Maybe it’s hormonal or the time of the year or lack of sleep/stress. Who knows? I would have hoped that after more than a year of a healthier lifestyle, the lure of empty calories and...

Running Away… From Stress

08/18/2009

I have a large family. Four brothers and a sister. Both of my parents passed away quite some time ago, and with everything we’ve been through, we (my four brothers, sister and I) have stayed very close. In fact, my sister is my very dearest friend and we talk on the phone two or three times a day. She lives in Virginia. I’m in New York, close to two of my brothers. My other brothers are in North Carolina and Florida. One of my brothers was having a crisis last night/this morning and sent a text message that had the rest of us scrambling to reach him and reach each other at 5:30 am. When we finally did reach him, everything was fine, but the whole situation left me kind of stressed out. I live in a pretty constant state of stress anyway with things currently going on in...

Lifting The Limits – Why I Started Losing Weight

08/17/2009

When I see people I haven’t seen in a long time, I am usually met with surprise at the changes I’ve made. After the “You look great!” comments, which of course I love, the questions start. “How’d you do this?” “What motivated you?” Answering the how is easy: Eating healthier and exercise. Answering the why is a lot harder. What was my motivation? Why did it work this time when it hadn’t in the past? That’s the $6 million dollar question. I’ve always told people that I was turning 50 and I didn’t want to feel old. And that’s what I told myself too. But I knew that wasn’t the whole reason. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. After all, the age factor didn’t help when I was turning 30 or even 40. I’ve thought about this often during the journey. Why, this time, is it easier...

Weight Watchers Relationship Update

08/13/2009

So after much soul searching yesterday and a long conversation with my Weight Watchers online point tracker last night….we cried, we laughed, we reminisced about the good times and tried to figure out where things started going wrong…I decided that, overall, the relationship has been good for me and deserves another chance. Besides, just once, I’d like to get to lifetime member at Weight Watchers. That would be cool. However, I am taking a little vacation. We need some time away from each other to sort out the issues and recommit to the long-term goals. I’ve gotten too caught up in the day-to-day details and it’s making things difficult. So after weighing in this morning— I lost the same .8 pounds I gained last week so I’m back to my weight of two weeks ago— I’m not weighing in again for two weeks. The home scale is going in...

Is It Time To Break Up With Weight Watchers?

08/12/2009

Lately, I’m feeling obsessed with food and the scale. My weight loss, while moving again, is still very slow and frustrating. And as I get closer to my weigh-in each week (on Thursdays), I step on the scale every day and get frustrated when it goes up instead of down when I’m eating right. On days like yesterday, sometimes the weight fluctuations (even though rationally I know they are from water weight, hormones or whatever else) throw me into a funk, which can ultimately lead to poor eating behaviors, as in “Oh hell, nothing is working anyway so why not eat that row of Oreo cookies?” I’m on Weight Watchers and for the past year, it has worked for me. I’ve stayed accountable because I have to get on that scale every week. But the scale doesn’t tell the whole story. And lately the scale doesn’t want to tell...

Exercise Won't Help You Lose Weight…Or Will It?

08/12/2009

There was an article this week on the Time magazine site that was titled Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin. The article got my, and everyone else’s, attention. It also left me scratching my head? HUH? Remind me again why I’m working so hard then? Running, biking, swimming, abs, and all the other stuff I’ve been doing? Now granted, the article does talk about the health benefits of exercise. It just proposes that exercise increases hunger and therefore, may not be the best path to losing weight. Now I don’t know about the guy in the article, but exercise for me has been essential to losing weight. I don’t eat more on the days that I exercise because I’ve worked so hard to sweat some of the calories off. It’s days like today where I didn’t exercise that I don’t resist the Oreo cookies. Exercise backlash, perhaps? I don’t...

When I'm 65 …or Thereabouts

08/07/2009

In my race on Saturday, one of the things that impressed me the most while I was hobbling through the run, was the 65-year-old woman who passed me. She wasn’t flying but she was moving faster than me. I knew she was 65 because they put our ages on the backs of our leg. And there is no faking it either because you have to produce your license when you register. As I watched her go by, I thought to myself as I picked up my pace, “I am so impressed. I want to still be doing triathlons when I’m 65, and I want to be running the whole way.” Then I signed up for my next triathlon, The Trek Women Tri, which I’m very excited about because it’s all women. It’s also in September, so I hope it will be a little cooler. It’s a quarter-mile pool swim,...

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