Diane

Oh my word!  Wii Fit is so fun!  We got one yesterday.  Didn’t get around to trying it out until almost 10 p.m. and still did 25 minutes of exercise.  Did almost 40 minutes this morning.  They have ski jumping, hula hoops, tight rope, yoga, step aerobics, running, several other things as well.  Haven’t tried the strength training yet. 

So how does this relate to the title?  Well, I cancelled my gym membership on Friday.  Looking back at my track record since joining the gym, I am still within 5 pounds of what I was then.  So, because I won’t be paying for the gym and could justify spending the money for the Wii Fit.  The store we were at had gotten 20 in earlier in the day and still had 2 left.  I am so happy with it.  I can even add in my other exercise - namely the WATP that I’m going back to.

Ever hear the song lyrics - “My world is changing so fast, leaves me lonely and afraid”?  That is me.   I’ve always dealt well with change, but it’s not so easy right now.  My oldest is going to Pre-K in a couple of weeks.  I’m questioning if I should send her to Kindergarten instead.  She is old enough.  She already knows how to read.  She knows basic math.  I haven’t actively taught her any of this.  I remember never feeling like I fit in when I was in school because I didn’t have the same rebellious thoughts of my peers.  They always seemed so juvenile to me.  I don’t want her to go through that, but I don’t want her to always be the “baby” in everything either.

My house is in chaos.  My husband got his dream television and we’ve had to completely reorganize the house.  Yes, I’m finally getting the rec/craft room I’ve wanted.  I’m finally getting to unpack everything after 3 years in the house.  Some of the boxes have been packed since we sold our house in Vermont over 6 years ago.  It’s all just more change and change that I control.

And I am now on my own for weight loss.   I cancelled my unused gym membership today.  I can reactivate it anytime in the next 90 days, but I don’t know if I will.  My plan was to start using it again when my DD went to school.  She has to be there at 9 a.m. 3 days a week.  I could then go to the gym with my DS and still have time with just him before picking her up.  But would I do it even then? 

I don’t have anyone where I live that I can talk about all of this to.  And I don’t want to burden my two best friends with it.  One is having to sell her dream house and isn’t sure where they’re going to move to because her husband’s business is failing.  The other is living with her niece because neither she or her husband can find a job.  My problems seem quite petty compared to theirs so I refuse to complain to them.  It just gets so lonely sometimes. 

I want to work on losing weight.  I want to have the drive to do that 20-30 minutes a day right now.  I just don’t.  Everything is changing and I don’t want to change with it.  I don’t want my kids to grow up.  I don’t want to have a craft room because then I won’t have an excuse as to why I don’t do any crafts.  I want my kids grow and be happy.  I want to be able to work on the crafts I enjoy.  I want to lose weight, but somedays don’t care if I do or not.  I want quiet, but I can’t stand the silence.  I’d like to blame it all on depression, but I’m not depressed.  I need to stick to a routine, but I hate routines.  I want the familiar, but crave adventure. 

I need a break.

Here is my dilema - I am trying to reorganize my house so that I can have access to my library and be able to work on my crafts.  Some of what is taking up a lot of space is clothing.  Not clothing I can wear, but clothing I used to wear and would like to again.   I’m thinking I should just get rid of the majority of it since I haven’t worn it in years.  I am much closer to 40 than to 25.  While I was never one to follow trends so they wouldn’t stand out as “from the 90’s” per se.   Some of it is jeans and some tops.  A couple of pieces will be kept for sentimental reasons even if I were to get rid of the rest of it. 

Should I dump it or keep it?  My big concern is that I really, really don’t want to look like a 40 year old trying to look 25 if I were able to wear the clothes again.   How long is too long to keep the “skinny” clothes?

I’m talking about TOM.  I just want to curl up in a little ball and cry.  Thanks to him, I over ate at dinner.   But he’s not going to win the rest of the day.  I will do my last 20 minutes of exercise and I will drink my water.  If he starts telling me I should find something to eat, some sort of comfort food, well, he’s going to get some nice roobio tea, not chocolate or bread.   He thinks the safety locks on the cabinets are just so the kids don’t get their own snacks.  He’s far underestimated his power to overcome my laziness.  Those suckers are hard to open and I’m not going to put that energy into it. 

Aside from dinner, today has gone pretty well.  I did the editing I needed to get done today.  I’m on track to finish the job by the 15th - 2 weeks ahead of schedule.  I got my 3 other “get done” items done.  I didn’t over eat the rest of the day.  And now the kids are going to bed so I will get a couple of hours to myself before my husband gets home. 

Moderation.  Everything in moderation.  Last week I was so fired up to get this weight off.  I did a half hour WATP with my husband.  Then I went to the gym, did weights and week one of C25K on the treadmill.  Yeah, ME!  Right?  Wrong.  I wasn’t able to exercise until yesterday.

Things I know - I have had problems with my feet since I learned to walk; treadmills only make the issue worse if I’m having problems already; everyone needs to start slowly when starting to exercise again; without a high daily dose of Vit. D, the pain becomes almost unbearable.  Can you see where I went wrong?  These truths are not something new to me.

The past week and a half I have been blaming my aches and pains on everything but me.  Yet, in truth, there is nothing to blame it on except myself.  I am the one who, even as I ran (okay, okay, slowly jogged!) on the treadmill knew it would probably cause me problems.  I am the one who didn’t make sure I took my vit. D every day.   I am the one who brough unhealthy foods into the house.  I have been my own worst enemy.

I am not starting over.  Starting over implies that I can go back and start from scratch.  If I could truly start over, I would rewind the hands of time 21 years and start there.  So, I am moving forward.  I am getting exercise back on track as that is the easier one for me.  Food is much more difficult.  It will come next.   Most of all, I am going to start being my own best friend.

A special thanks to all of the Diamonds and the others who have been supportive.  Your words of encouragement are so very much appreciated.

Just got a call from my Mom for the prayer chain at my church.  One of the members is being rushed to the largest hospital in Maine by ambulance right now.  She was scheduled for an MRI this morning to find out why her brain is misinterpreting almost every signal it is getting.  Things took a turn for the worse and the ambulance became necessary.  She is recently divorced and has custody of her 5 year old son.  Things are not looking good. 

So what have I learned in the past 24 hours?  Two 35 minute interval workouts AND swimming is too much for me right now.  Every muscle in my body hurts.  Hubby wasn’t feeling well so we didn’t get up at 5.  This week will be MWF for exercising together.  I am going to try to get in a WATP DVD at some point today.

So, even though it’s not as I had planned, I will keep going.  If one workout a day is what I need to do this week, so be it.  At least I can do that.  Had I been consistant over the past few months, my orginal plan wouldn’t have been a problem, but I didn’t.  Now I must deal with the consequences. 

Now I will get back to my day.  Hope everyone has a great Tuesday!

Today is my final D-Day.  I’ve had it with being fat, obese.  I don’t want to see another doctor write on my chart in red letters “MORBIDLY OBESE”.   I’m done soul searching for the reason I’m hindering myself from being healthy.  I really don’t care anymore why.  20 years of trying to answer that question as only left me heavier than ever.  Well, not quite, I have kept off 25 pounds from my heaviest.  I have theories, ideas, insights as to why I’ve allowed this fat to hang around and multiply.  It doesn’t matter.  Action is what is needed now, not more introspection.

Perhaps someday down the road I will need to revisit the why of it all, but for now, I am focusing on the how of getting rid of it.  Exercise, healthy foods and a change of attitude.  I will not make anymore rationalizations for not getting up in the morning to exercise with my husband.  Do I want to get up at 5 a.m.?  Uh, NOOO!  But I will.  I need to for me, I need to for him, we need to for us and we need to for the kids. 

Fifteen years ago I weighted 200 pounds.  I left in late August, 1993 for a village outside of Warsaw, Poland to teach for a year.  When I returned to the US in July of  1994, I weighed 150.  Aside from 2 or 3 times, I didn’t purposely exercise.  It was a part of daily life - walk to the train station: 1/2 mile each way; get off train and walk to Old Town: at least a mile each way; to get food: 1/4 - 1/2 mile each way.   Getting food was generally a daily thing as we only had a small fridge that 5 people were sharing.  As the days grew longer, I would go for long walks in the forest, most often alone.  My diet was bread, cheese, tomatoes, apples, candy covered peanuts, pastries, ice cream and Pizza Hut.  I ate when I was hungry.  I drank 3-4 litres of water a day.   Some days I barely ate.  Other days it seemed like all I did was eat.   I was up at 5 every morning and thought nothing of getting up then.

Somedays I would like nothing more than to go back to those days when exercise wasn’t an issue and my diet was just food.  But life is different now.  I have a family - husband, kids, dog.  And I’m not 21 anymore!  Exercise is something I must make time for.  Food must be planned and prepared.  I have finally accepted that if I want to be content with the reflection in the mirror, I must work at it.  I do not live a lifestyle that allows the weight to just drop off as it did that year and I haven’t for a very long time now. 

So, today is the beginning of the end.  The end of my obesity, the end of my procrastination, then end of being inactive while I try to figure out the irrelevant WHY, the end of token efforts, the end of being unhealthy, the end of blogging about starting over.

Whether the effort will show for myself and the Diamonds this week, I do not know.  What I do know is that it will in the long run, just as so many others have and are proving.

Been trying to get more of each lately.  Not always a good mix, but if I can get the water in earlier in the day, it’s not bad.  Getting sleep is actually the more difficult part.  It’s gotten easier than it used to be.  The kids haven’t been getting up at night for a while and my meds help with not getting up several times a night.  I do have trouble getting to sleep even thought the room is completely dark.  I can’t get my mind to shut down.  What would be nice, though, is if I could always understand what I’m thinking!  The closer I get to sleep, the more the words are not in English.  Guess it’s true that once you’ve learned something it’s always there, but the recall might not be that great.

Water is easier.  I actually like water.  I always have.  To make sure I get it all in each day I’ve started drinking it with meals, if I drink anything.  Before it was always milk with a meal.  Milk has kinda been grossing me out lately so I’ve barely been drinking it.  Trying to get in about 1.5 gallons a day. 

The best thing to happen this year was finding out I was deficient in Vit. D.  Some of you are probably sick of hearing me talk about it but I just can’t say enough about it.  Six months ago I was still exercising, but it would take me 30 - 60 minutes just to get up and moving without extreme pain.  That was the day after not exercising.  The morning after exercising, double that time.  I wasn’t sleeping well.  I was in near constant pain and my migraines were getting really bad again.   I was diagnosed with PCOS and put on Metformin.  I was warned about some pretty uncomfortable side effects.

Fast forward to now - never had the side effects of the meds unless I didn’t take it properly.  I take 2,600 IU of Vit. D daily (and now calcium since I’m not drinking much milk) and I am pretty much pain free.  I still have muscle pain if I over stress them, just normal stuff.   I can go walking, swimming, do gardening, have started First Day to 5 K and can keep up with it.  (Now if I just would, but that is a different blog topic!)  It’s amazing to me the difference.  I don’t have to worry if I’m going to be able to keep up with the kids the following day if we go to the zoo. 

Interestingly enough, I’ve discovered that there is a family history of Vit. D deficiency.  My mother had a brother that died in infancy of Rickets, my mother was recently tested and has NO Vit. D in her system, NONE!  I’m trying to convince my older brother to get tested as he is in constant pain and they can’t figure out why.  Every symptom that led my doctor to believe that might be a problem in me, my brother has worse. 

Okay, I’ll get off my soap box now.  I just felt like writing and getting everything I was thinking out today.  I really need some people to talk to face to face!

I took the kids to Jungle Jim’s to get some fresh fruit and veggies today.  Okay, some candy too, but that wasn’t the main purpose of the trip.

We’d already picked out the apples, plums, grapes, strawberries, bananas and yellow water melon, but still needed to get my celery.  I’d picked out the two bunches I wanted and was starting to push the cart away when my son grabbed a bunch of celery off the display and licked the entire length of it.  Yes, I bought it.  His reason was that he didn’t want all dark green celery.  I almost put his candy back, but thought it might be a tad counter productive to punish a kid for picking out a veggie he wanted.

Now I must go make a fruit salad for dinner.