Week Two

As I wrap up week two of "Lose to Win", I find myself flaked out on the couch, typing this and watching "Dumb and Dumber" which is the most complex viewing I have the energy for.

It's been hard keeping all my gym commitments - tonight I did my Performance workout, followed by a Boot Camp.

Tonight's Boot Camp was the most brutal to date. I can only imagine that our insructor, A., had channelled some pent-up misplaced hostility into her programming. Eight sets of seven exercises, each turn twenty seconds, with ten second breaks in between, of the following soul crushers:

• Burpies - If you don't know what these are, just count yourself among the fortunate
• Squats
• Push Ups (on the floor)
• Double ab crunches
• Mountain Climbers
• Skiers - a "respite" exercise, kinder and gentler - and upright!
• And, just in case you hadn't yet lost your will to live by this point:
• Planks

During the planks, I was collapsed against the hardwood floor, feeling a wave of self-pity and condemnation - why had I let myself plump out? Why do I have the weakest, flimsiest arms in the country? And why was I listening to A., who clearly had it in for the class today?

Afterwards, I had enough energy to turn the water on at home, and sink into a bath of Epsom salts - sigh.

Zoom, Zoom

Due to an unfortunate set of timing circumstances - a 5 am Group Workout and a 6 pm Spanish class, I found myself, last Thursday, forced into Zumba class - the only option if I wanted to get in my 30 point group class.

The first and only time I had done Zumba was back in 2008 or so, at GoodLife, during my free trial - and vowed never again. Every memory I had of the hour spent working out to Spanish tunes, was underpinned with memories of humiliation and pain.

However, with points at stake, I saddled up.

Thanks to the intervening six years and countless workouts and classes, I was at least FAMILIAR with the moves. What I wasn't familiar with was the room setup. I had strategically placed myself in the far right-side, against the wall, a position akin to outfield. What I hadn't accounted for was the instructor's use of the wall-length mirror, so I ended up standing next to her, trapped in the front row, from which for everyone else, my "moves" would be a spectator sport.

Life has taught me to laugh at these moments of personal humiliation, so I just did my best to keep up to the beat and hope my movements weren't too many steps behind the instructor. Who am I kidding? Some of my moves weren't anything like the instructor's! And my arms and legs weren't my only swinging appendages either!

Tinman Yoga

Picture the Tinman, from the Wizard of Oz, doing the Down Dog, Sunset Salutations and Child's Pose.

That would be me, Yoga Class tonight....

It's Groundhog Day!

I've settled nicely into healthy eating mode. Beats me why I couldn't have accomplished this lifestyle two weeks ago, or two months ago, or two years ago, rather than peering over my ever-protruding stomach, to read the ever-advancing record of weight on my bathroom scale. It's a hard psychology to understand, let alone explain.

At the Nutrition Seminar on Saturday, one of the other attendees commented, "I tried eating what I should all day yesterday, and by the end of the day, I was a miserable person. I know I am supposed to feel hungry, but I don't want to feel angry!"

Her comment struck a chord with me, possibly inspired by the Geneen Roth books I've been reading. Roth believes that the reason people are overweight, is because they have learned to ignore the signals that our bodies send us. Our bodies tell us we're hungry, and we either try to ignore them or we gorge ourselves. Our body tells us we're in emotional distress, and we give it food, because that's one way of addressing the emptiness.

But are we supposed to feel hungry? I spoke up, "It's interesting. When we feel thirsty, we drink to quench our thirst. And that's OK. But when we feel hungry, we feel guilty, and try to ignore the feeling."

The nutritionalist may have misunderstood where I was going with this. I wasn't just saying that we sometimes mistake thirst for hunger - and yeah, that's true - which is why it's a good idea to be hydrated, and to reach for a glass of water instead of a PopTart.

But if I've learned anything from WeightWatchers and my own reading about nutrition, I can lose weight and not feel hungry. I can make healthy food choices, and satisfy my hunger, guilt-free. I can feel happy about those choices, which you'd think would be self-reinforcing and would propel me towards more and more healthy food choices!

I wish... That works - for a while... But once I get off-track, it's much more likely to be a self-perpetuating cycle of just one more Cadbury bar.

But like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, I will keep trying until I get it right!

The Right Stuff

I was musing today that despite the ups, downs and false starts of my weight loss journey (epic journey, one might say), I have, over the years, adopted some new healthier lifestyle changes that have stuck:

1. Regular to decaf coffee - During my Atkin's diet phase, I noticed that if I stopped drinking regular coffee for any length of time, I got a major headache which was unstoppable, even with Aspirin. So now I only sporadically have regular

2. Breakfast - Gone are the days when I wouldn't bother with breakfast, but would leap out of bed and into the workday - or grab whatever happened to be handy in the fridge. Now, I almost always have cereal - currently an organic kind

3. Milk - Went from 2% to 1% and never looked back

4. Soup Luncheon - Most often I have soup for lunch, not always, but most often. Versus a variety of whatevers. There was some backsliding over the summer, found myself in front of takeout rather often

5. Mid-Day Snacks - I acknowledge I need these, and have run the gamut from healthy, to questionable, to debacle-ish. Currently, I do fruit and have tried to up my veggie quotient. I bought a new two-part containor while in St. Louis, which has proved to be motivational. There's just something about owning a nice new containor, made in New Zealand, that makes me want to put healthy snacks into it

6. Exercise - Although I have gone for swatches of time in gym-avoidance mode, even when I'm avoiding it, I'm always thinking about it, and so can say that I am definitely more exercise-focused than before

7. Artificial Sugar-  I used to think artificial sugar was a good way to avoid calories, but now I think it's just plain unhealthy. Related to this was a switch from pop to carbonated water. I'll still drink pop, but mostly when I need to feel the bubbly, I'll reach for a can or bottle of carbonated water

This year also marks the first time I have ever put any thought into what I eat. Reading Salt Sugar Fat - How the Food Giants Hooked Us - was a real eye-opener. It completely changed how I saw processed food, and has led me into organic foods. I am loving my weekly (non bi-weekly) box from River Bell Market. If you check my shelves, fridge or freezer, you'll notice a scarcity of processed food now.

Despite all these positive steps, even when surrounded by healthy squash, carrots, lettuce, radishes, spinach, etc, I will still find myself buying and reveling in whatever the least healthy thing in the house might be.

A loaf of bread or a hunk of cheese will pour out its siren's call and I am powerless to resist! For the purpose of the Lose to Win challenge, I am going to be extra careful to avoid the foods that I know drag me down, which is pretty much anything in the bread family, the cheese family and the chocolate family...

Got to focus on eating The Right Stuff!

First Lesson Learned

Met the Performance Life and Fitness nutritionalist, Lucie, who weighed me, measured me, and handed me over to the mercy of a BMI-type reading device. I haven't decided how much of my personal data to divulge yet... I did reassure Lucie that I'm not particularly sensitive about my weight. I mean, I know I'm overweight - and pretty accurately guessed my weight before stepping onto the scale. Based on her readings, the last time I lost weight, about two years ago, I was 10 pounds away from what her machines estimated my weight should be. That seemed overly generous to me - I would have said I was more like 20 pounds away. However, 10 or 20, it is a moot point as I am no longer anywhere close to my ideal weight.

Her machines also indicated I was dehydrated.

Coworker Mike belatedly mentioned that I should have filled up on water before my weigh-in, which had not occurred to me! So I figure I could have had another couple of pounds of water weight, had I been less fixated on my Lindor chocolates!

First Lesson Learned!

The Morning After

Woke up this morning, in bed with my old friend, guilt, still feeling full from yesterday's decadent binge strategy. Guilt is an ever present companion, along for the ride, part of every feeding frenzy, hidden in every bite of chocolate, every potato chip, every ounce of buttercream. I greeted him warmly, turned over and slept for another hour.

Official weigh-in - one hour and twenty minutes away. Have decided that an Extreme Breakfast isn't going to make or break me, will settle for cereal instead. Cringing at the thought of my bathroom scale which is sitting patiently, judgementally. I haven't actually had the guts to weigh myself since my seven days-six hotel breakfast buffets extravaganza, during last week's St. Louis SAP Information Design Tool training.