Project Fitness Update

So it's Monday, which means I do a Project Fitness Update, and.... it ain't too shabby.  I'm within 6 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight!  I'm hoping to get that off in a month.

I actually can't say that I know how I managed to lose 5 pounds in the last 2 weeks.  I wish I did know.  I know the following:

- Hannah now weighs 20lbs and 5 ounces.  I lift her up probably about 50 times a day.

- Hannah is now waking up at around 6:15 each morning (though of course we pray that doesn't continue for long.  Mama needs her Alone Time in the morning to drink coffee, meditate, write, etc).  But it is what it is for now.  Who knows, maybe tomorrow she'll sleep in till 7:30.  Knock on wood.  But anyway, what it means is that we have very long mornings together before I start work.  We go for a walk around our lake - all three miles, pushing the stroller on a hilly path - the majority of days.

- We go to bed really early.  It's almost 9:30.  That's my bedtime.  We start bath time at 7, and then put her to sleep at around 8.  Then a little quiet time, and then bed.  What that means is that I don't do a lot of late night snacking.

I guess those three things are combining to speed up my metabolism or something.  I don't know what it means.  But I'll take it.

Project Fitness Update and Random Iceland News

So depending on which way I stand on the scale, I'm within 5 pounds of my prepregnancy weight.  If I stand one-footed, towards the front.  I'm trying to remember whether I stood this way on the scale before I was pregnant, because then I'm really comparing apples to apples.  Actually, comparing apples to apples would be seeing how my jeans fit, but it's been so hot, I haven't worn them.  And anyway, my weight has shifted around a lot (towards my belly - boo hoo) so it's still not quite apples.

I need to get back on track with using the loseit app.  I sort of checked out of it because I was eating out and eating new foods, and continually scanning barcodes when Hannah was spilling her sippy cup and throwing oatmeal at me got a bit trying.  But with that said, I have been walking around the lake, three miles, pretty much every day.  It used to be that on a rest day I actually rested.  But now, I just putter along walking slowly.  Hannah really enjoys the walks, it's something to do with her, and it gets us out and in the sunshine, so I continue to do them, even on days when I'm beat, but just slowly, listening to my audiobook in one ear.  It's still good exercise, even if I'm not racing myself; pushing that stroller with her in it is about an extra 40 pounds, up and down the hills.  Not too shabby.

So that's the news on fitness.

In other random news, Iceland just had their first fatal police shooting.  This is why I love Iceland.  The whole country has never had a fatal police shooting until now.  It's sad, but it's still a pretty great testament to how awesome Iceland is.  I can't wait for us all to go back there, with Hannahbear.  And spend longer than two days.  Fingers crossed it could be next summer.

Project Fitness Update

Really quick update tonight because I need to wake up at 4:30 tomorrow for an early flight up to San Francisco (though one perk of having a baby is that I'm completely on this morning-biased schedule and regularly get up at 5:45 anyway, so 4:30 doesn't seem as early) but this week was a lot better.  I credit it to hiking the three miles around the lake every day without fail, sometimes twice a day (if Hannah is really fussy).  I'm getting a lot faster.  It's a three mile trek around the lake, with lots of hills, and in my heyday of 2012, I could do it in about 36 minutes.  

With pushing a stroller it's a lot harder, having to navigate the hills and keep her from tipping over where the banking is weird.  Plus I was massively out of shape when I started again with her.  In the beginning, with the stroller, I did it in an hour and ten minutes.  Now I'm down to about 50 minutes.  Still a far cry from the high point, but fast enough so that J was impressed with my ability to push her up a steep hill, and not need to stop for breath along the way when he came along with us on Saturday.

I'm also really getting in the habit of not eating that much.  Now that I'm becoming mindful of what I'm eating, I'm realizing that I was just shoving stuff into my mouth before without even thinking about it.  A cookie there, a bagel here, some cottage cheese with blueberries now, and some chocolate in a few minutes.  That being said, I still need to work on finding other ways to deal with stress besides eating.  Today, for example, Hannah decided that, even though she was super tired, she wasn't going to take an afternoon nap.  Which led to her being fussy and totally unable to keep happy.  I had been at it for about 2 hours, and J ran an errand so I was alone with her.  She didn't want to be in the walker.  She didn't want to be in her safe play space (behind the gates).  She didn't want to go on my back and go for a walk.  She didn't want to eat.  She didn't want to play in the high chair.  I was running out of ideas.  And so I ate.  Cookies and cream ice cream, three spoonfuls of chunky peanut butter (choosy mom's choose Jif) and a spoonful of cool whip.  Yep, that was dinner.  In between her wails.  

It kind of makes me scared to step on the scale tomorrow, but I'll deal.  It's a new day tomorrow.

Granted, it's a day in which I'm going to walk past an Auntie Anne's pretzel stand in the Oakland airport.  But it's a new day nonetheless.  And maybe tomorrow I won't stop at the Auntie Anne's pretzel stand when we land.  Fingers crossed.

Project Fitness Update

It's Monday, which means that I'm doing an update on my fitness project.  My immediate goal, started 2 weeks ago, when I reinstalled the LoseIt app, was to lose 20 pounds, which would put me just below where I was when I got pregnant.  So now, two weeks in, I've lost 2 pounds, but I count that as a victory since last weekend I was in Vegas eating Convention Center food.  So this past week I lost a pound and a half, which makes me happy.

Hannah and I have been doing Mommy Daughter swim classes, which burns a lot of calories.  Something like 400 in the 45 minute session.  That's pretty awesome.

Plus, since Hannah has been acting like General Fusster lately (it's teething issues) we also go for a hike in the afternoons.  So we get swimming in the morning, and hiking in the evenings.  A pretty good combination.  And she is now officially super-mobile, which means that I do a lot of chasing.  A lot. Of chasing.  The two hours from when we get home from our walk to bedtime, which includes supper, bath, getting dressed for bed, last bottle, story, and bed are, without a doubt, the most exhausting 2 hours of my day.  

So I'm getting a ton of exercise lately.  Bummer for me I also like to eat a lot, but the LoseIt app is making me much more mindful of it.  We've pretty much stopped buying bread at the grocery store (a waste of calories).  And tonight J made a tofu dish that normally goes over jasmine rice; I managed to forego the rice all together.  Yay me.

I haven't given up sweets completely though.  Not yet.  I eat three peanut-butter covered malted milk balls a day.  At lunch.  I have limits, and cutting out chocolate completely goes past my limits.

Project Fitness starting again

Jonathan and I were talking today about how having a kid has made us so much more productive.  There are a couple of reasons.  First, before having a kid, if I was "tired" I wouldn't do the things on my list.  Since having a kid, "tired" has taken on a whole new meaning.  If I stopped doing anything just because I was "tired", I would barely be able to get up in the morning.  I wouldn't have breakfast.  I wouldn't work.  Nothing would get done.  And the second thing that has made us more productive is simply that we have to be.  If you want to do anything outside of feeding, changing diapers, and being a human amuse-the-baby machine, you simply can't spend time thinking about doing things - you have to, in the famous words of nike, just do it.

So things are getting done.  The house is getting clean.  Projects are being completed.  Things are getting crossed off lists.  It feels good.

One huge project that I'm undertaking again is my fitness.  I had reached a point before Baby H where I was feeling really good about myself.  That all went down a Lucky Charms sliding board when I had pregnancy cravings.  And so I gained like 53 pounds.  I still have about 20 to go to get to where I was pre-baby.

I've been reading Julia Cameron's The Writing Diet (count words, not calories) which is a series of essays about creativity and food, and how linked they are.  I'm really clear that I'm not expressing my creativity in the way that I would like, and I wind up numbing it with food.  What's comforting about "comfort food"?  The essays all are thought provoking and have assignments - usually writing assignments, though there has been the occasional assignment to take yourself out to eat a really special meal to see what you really like, etc.

The one today was on taking one day at a time, like AA.  I don't know if I can commit to eating healthy for the rest of my life.  It seems so daunting.  But I can commit to it today.  Today is doable.  Tomorrow, I don't know about.

So I've gotten into this habit of stopping at McDonald's on the way home from my walks around the lake.  We all know I have this Diet Coke addiction, right?  I used to stop at 7-11 for my fix, but with a baby it adds extra steps of having to take her out of her carseat, etc.  The drive through seems way easier.  But then it's easy to get a McFlurry.  Or some other genetically modified crap that makes me miserable.  I know it's terrible for me.  But I keep doing it.

Today I was walking around the lake and started feeling really hungry.  I thought about what I would get at McDonald's; ie a small snack before dinner.  But then I remembered.  No, I've committed to being healthy today.  I passed by the ball fields where the little league game was going on, and I bought a diet coke from their snack bar, and then ate a handful of almonds in the car.  When I got home, J and I cooked dinner together while Baby H sat in her high chair.  We made a coconut tofu carrot curry, and nibbled on bits of tofu and carrots as we were cooking.

McDonald's was avoided.  Small Victory.

A friend of mine once told me that he could always tell that I was happy when I stopped blogging.  And when I was depressed, I spent a lot of time sitting at home emptying wine bottles, writing about how my heart was broken, and the guy who didn't love me back was an asshole (this was, I should note, in my Single Girl blog, which would be about 10 years old this year).

So if I go away for a while, it's not because I'm pregnant, or I got kidnapped by a crazy gunman at 7-11, or anything like that.  It just means that I'm out doing my thing.  Especially with springtime arriving, I have spent as much time as possible outside, walking around the lake, and getting some extra doses of Vitamin D.

That being said, I don't want to just disappear again, so here's a lowdown on the events of the past few weeks:

1)  I decided to go to Seminary.  But I don't really know why.  I don't know that I ever want to have a church of my own, and preach.  Maybe.  I haven't thought that far ahead.  For now, it's enough to know that I just belong in Seminary studying the Bible, and being part of the conversation that creates Doctrine so that, you know, Christianity can be more about loving people, and not so much about excluding people because they're gay or whatever.

2)  My husband is hemming my performance dress for choir.  If you fancy hearing some nice a capella choral music on Saturday, the Claremont Chorale is performing at 3pm and I'll be up there in my hemmed dress, looking fancy.  It's super-cool that my husband can hem my dress, I should add.

3)  I've boarded the fertility treatment train.  But I'm not going to get carried away with it.  I'm really going to try to be conscious of the fact that you can easily spend thousands upon thousands of dollars, and lots of time and heartbreak, getting IVF and all that stuff, and frankly, I'm not that desperate to have a biological child.  If that's your thing, it's great that it's possible, and I applaud people who do it.  For me, I just want to have a baby.  I don't feel the need to genetically breed, and there are millions and millions of kids in the world who just want a family that loves them.  To me it seems like a needless expense, but that's just me being judgmental.

4)  We're also starting to seriously check out adoption, and are signed up to go to an open-day at an agency in the summer.

5)  This summer is going to so totally rock.  We're going to NYC for me to go to Book Expo and negotiate with publishers about our ebook project for libraries.  Then PA for some Family Time.  Then London and...wait for it...I'm finally getting my ass to Iceland to see 24 hours of daylight.  I'm so stoked.

6)  In the Realm of Stupid Things I've Done to Lose Weight: last week was high up there.  I had a weight goal I wanted to make by Memorial Day.  As of Wednesday, I was still 3 pounds away.  So I went on a liquid diet.  Didn't eat any solid food for 4 days.  I made the weight (of course I gained it back since then) and had a fun day shopping at the Gap Outlet, which made me feel like I was 19 again, because their Muzak was Songs from the 90's, and nothing says 90's more than shopping at the Gap and listening to The Cure, but I digress...now I feel ridiculously dizzy, tired, and stupid for having done that.  But whatever, I have new clothes.  So...yay for new clothes...

An awesome way to spend a Saturday

Last Saturday I was in San Francisco singing the choruses of the St. Matthew Passion.

If you don't know it, you must start this video while you finish the rest of this post:



It's awesome stuff!  Really gets the blood pumping.

Every year the American Bach Soloists put on a free choral workshop.  They always pick music that has something to do with their current season (they're doing the St. Matthew Passion at the end of February), you sign up in advance, they email you the music, and then you get to spend six hours singing Bach in a gorgeous church with 250 other people.  Their Director/Founder is awesome, PLUS he's from Pennsylvania (like me), so I bonded with him talking about pretzels.  What more can you ask for?

The organ of the church where we sang

Also, I have to give a shoutout to my 4square app because it helped me find a really good sandwich place in Little Saigon.  And the tips even warned me that the proprietors didn't speak much English.  Another win for social media!

And you know what I love?  I love that the San Jose airport has a meditation room.  Every airport needs a meditation room, as I first discovered last spring when I was in a rental car shuttle in Oakland and saw a baby who was exactly the same age that Baby T would have been, and when I got off that shuttle at the airport, all I wanted to do was go somewhere quiet to cry, away from the Auntie Anne's and the magazine stores.  I went to the end of the airport, to the furthest gate, buried my head under my jacket, and cried until it was time to board the plane.  I thought then that every airport needs a quiet place for people, and San Jose has one.  Even though it's a little further from my office than Oakland, I'm going to fly there from now on.  Plus, you can get to the car rental area without having to take a bus now.  Rock on, San Jose.

Hey, I'm starting my weight loss journey again.  I kind of hit a plateau and quit there for a little bit, but not anymore.  We're taking a little more time off before we try to get pregnant, and I'm going to use that time to lose another 20 pounds.  I was reading Fitness magazine yesterday, and there was this bit about how, if you spread out small treats, you don't feel the need to binge.  That makes sense to me, I think.  Then I read the example:  "have a few squares of dark chocolate every other day, to stay satisfied," they say.  Seriously?  How big are these squares??  You think a few damn squares of dark chocolate every other day are going to keep me from going on a binge?  My God.  Who are these people who are satisfied with a few squares of dark chocolate every other day, and what do I have to do to become one?  Do people like that even exist?  Or is it an urban myth, perpetuated by Fitness Magazine, to make me feel bad about myself because I gotsta have me my Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches?  Seriously, do a few squares of dark chocolate every other day even count as a sweet?  Isn't that, like, your daily requirement of dark chocolate antioxidants? 

Anyway, I'm down 1.4 pounds so far this week.  Go me.  Yay cabbage.  The other day my afternoon snack was beets.  I'm not kidding.  Beets.  But then I step on the scale and it's down 1.4 pounds, and I think, Ok, I can sacrifice some cake for beets, I suppose.  

Getting Fit Project Update: Halfway There!

I officially started my Lifestyle Adjustment on March 8 with the goal of losing 40 pounds by August (five months from then).  We're about halfway through now, and this morning, I officially hit the 20 pound mark.  Woot for me!  How that looks in real life: I lost 3 inches from my waist, 2 inches from my hips, an inch from each thigh and an inch from my bust.  That's 8 inches from the areas that I measure.  All the Boat Clothes I bought before our cruise in March are too big, which needs to be filed in the "Good Problems to Have" folder.

I'm finding it slower going now, but I expected that.  Your body eventually gets used to the new food regimen, and will adapt to it.  So I need to switch things up - eat often, to keep my metabolism going, for example.  And I read that up to 70% of your metabolism is determined by how much water you drink, so I'm drinking loads of water these days - at least two liters a day.  I pee all the time, but after being pregnant, I'm kind of used to that.

And I'm still hungry.  Seriously, I've said it before and I'll say it again.  All those people who say you can lose weight without being hungry are absolute liars.  I'm perpetually hungry.  But I'm getting used to it, and I don't go to bed thinking I'm going to die overnight if I don't eat a big bowl of cereal before I go to sleep anymore.  I'm eating about 1800 calories/day which generally includes at least one really big spinach salad for dinner.  If it were up to me, I'd be eating 3000 calories a day, half of that made up of cake and icing.

The thing that's worth it, though?  I went up to the attic on Sunday and got down a box of clothes I haven't been able to wear since 2004, and most of them fit.  

The big downside?  I'm noticing fine lines in my cheeks now, which I suppose have always been there but I didn't notice because of the extra weight.  So now I get to buy anti-wrinkle cream.  Sigh.

It's a Reward Day though, and my 10 Pound Reward this round is a new phone.  I'm getting myself down to the Verizon store quick-like.  New gadgets and old clothes are totally worth being hungry for!

Getting Fit Project Update

So it's a Tuesday, which means it's a Weigh-In Day.  I kind of fell off the wagon two weeks ago when I was on my second cruise with my mom.  Also, things had been going really well for the first few weeks, and now it appears to be slowing down a little bit.  I think that's normal - your body starts to get used to the new level of food you're giving it, etc.  But anyway, this is the 7th week that I've been on this Lifestyle Adjustment, and if I had been losing 2 pounds per week, I would be down 14 pounds now.  Which I didn't make this week.  But dammit, I'm close.  I'm down a total of 13.6 pounds.  So....half-yay?

I'm going to have a brainstorm to think how I can kick it in gear again.  I've been getting a little lazy with keeping my food journal and measuring food.  So I'm going to think about things I can do to jump-start the plan again, so I don't get into a rut.  I'm thinking about adding more exercise (I currently work out aerobically 4 days a week or so, and do situps and pushups almost every day - I could up it to 5 days and then 6) or getting rid of some more calories - I've been hovering around 1900 most days, and could drop another 100 out easily enough.

In terms of what 13.6 pounds looks like in real-life - I've lost 5.5 inches total from the four places I measure (hips, waist, thigh, bust) and can just about fit into my pre-pregnancy Gap jeans (I actually can fit them, if I don't care much about breathing).  A pair of trousers I bought on March 10 are loose on me now, which is funny because I almost bought the next size up because they were slightly tight when I bought them.

So, we're plugging along, but I need to figure out how to take it to the next level now.  This is where it gets tough - any sustained weight loss happens over the course of months, and it's hard to stay motivated to keep it all fresh and new during those months.  I bought a dress a size smaller than I normally wear, and have been trying it on every week, and can just about fit into it now.  That's pretty good motivation.  But I've got to figure out some other ways to keep it new.  So that's the Conundrum of the Week.  I'll let you know what I come up with.

Getting Fit Project Update

Ok, so it's no secret that I'm a Big Girl.  I've always been a Big Girl, and I've never really had a problem with it.  I like to exercise, and I have lower blood pressure than my hubby, even though I weigh about 80 pounds more than him.  I always joke about how I'm in great health, except I just like to eat chocolate too much.

But that's actually a lie.

The truth of the matter is that I've been yo-yo dieting since I was about 13.  Over the course of all that dieting, I must have lost well over a hundred pounds, but then they come back, plus more.  I've actually had a secret weight-loss blog going on for a couple of years, on and off (mostly off), which has lots of followers and everything.  The idea of putting it out there for the people who know me to read - well, that scares the crap out of me.  But I'm experimenting with doing things differently, and this is definitely different.

After I lost Baby T and started blogging about that, people told me how open and vulnerable I was, and I would think what a lie that was.  Blogging about losing my baby wasn't hard.  Blogging about how I thought it was my fault because I'm overweight...that's hard.

Now, having lost another baby, I'm seriously sick of feeling like it's my fault for being chubby (oh heck, if we're really being honest, let's just call a spade a spade.  It's not "zaftig" or "pleasingly plump" or any of those endearing names that my hubby calls it.  It's fat.  Capital F.  Capital A.  Capital T.  F-A-T.).

Given the fact that we're taking a break from the whole Project Pregnancy for at least 6 months, I figure that this time is a gift for me to learn how to take wonderful care of myself, and the biggest part of that is learning how to eat well; learning how to use food as the fuel that it was meant to be, and not as a friend-substitute, or an alternative to a good massage when I'm stressed out.

So this six months is it for me.  I'm looking at this time as a gift from my babies to me, to get myself in the best shape of my post-college life, so that when I get pregnant again, I'll already be that much further ahead in being able to take care of myself.

I'm not ready to post actual numbers yet...maybe at some point I'll do that, but not yet.  Let's just say that if I were to get back to my super-healthiest college-weight, I'd have to lose about 80 to 90 pounds.  Looking at that number freaks me out, so I'm not going to focus on it at all.  I'm going to focus on being healthy one day at a time, one meal at a time, and if that leads to a weight loss of a pound or two a week, then that's a great target.

So here's what I've started doing this past week to reach that healthy goal:

First, I am weighing myself every day because I've found in my previous weight-loss attempts, that, at least at the beginning, I have to make weight-loss the number one priority for me, and keep it at the front of my mind.  One way to do that is to weigh myself every day.  I know the experts say that once a week is when you'll see results, and if you do it much more than that you could get discouraged, but this is one area where I really know what works for me - if I don't presence that weight for myself every morning, it goes right out the window.  And then the weighing-in day comes, and I'm all, "oh, hey, am I supposed to be losing weight?  Wow, I forgot. Bummer."  Facing the scale every day takes some of the significance and scariness out of it for me.

Second, I am keeping a food diary.  But it's more than a food diary.  Every morning I write my weight, and the top five reasons I wan to lose weight.  Again, this presences it for me.  Otherwise I tend to forget why it's important - it's amazing how quickly stuff like this just goes right out of my head - until I'm at Target buying Breathe-Right strips and eating a pretzel, and I think, "Oh, yeah, I wanted to lose weight so I don't snore as much... bummer..."  Then I write down everything I eat as I eat it.  At the bottom I keep track of my water, and the exercise I've done.  And then at the end of the day I put my thoughts about the day, ie, "I should have had a snack before dinner so I didn't eat such a huge bowl of pasta," or, "I'm proud of myself for eating a salad at lunch."  And finally, at the very bottom, I write something nice I did for myself that day.  This is important to me, because it shows me that rewards and happiness don't just come from cupcakes.  It allows me to build up an arsenal of treats that don't involve calories, so that the next time I'm bored/sad/lonely and I feel like eating an apple pie, I can say, "oh, hey, that time I played with flowers made me really happy.  Maybe I should do that instead."  And thus, the pie-crisis may be avoided.

Third, I'm drinking craploads of water.  Nothing in it.  No flavor.  Just plain, boring water.  I pretty much hate it.  I can't see myself ever drinking water for fun, but who knows.

Fourth, I'm embracing hunger.  I'm pretty much convinced that the people who say you can lose weight without being hungry are all liars.  You don't go from eating 2700 calories a day to eating 1800 calories a day and not feel any hunger.  You just don't, I don't care how much fiber and protein you stick in your diet.  I'm going down slowly.  As in, last week I averaged around 2400 calories a day, and this week, I'm going to try to keep it under 2200.  Eventually I'll get it down to around 1700 or 1800, but I need to work into that.

The fifth thing I'm doing is taking my measurements every two weeks.  Well, I took them last tuesday, and I'm going to take them next tuesday.  I figure I won't see much in the way of change every two weeks, but again, it's a way of keeping it at the top of my mind.  If I only did it once a month, I'd probably forget all about it in between.  And if I did it every week, that would just be redundant.  So I figure every two weeks is a good compromise.

The sixth thing I'm doing is structuring a rewards system.  Every ten pounds gets a reward, with bigger rewards as we go up and get to 40 and 50 pounds.  I'm not sure what the rewards are yet, but I'm going to think of good things, for sure.

So how did I do the first week?  I lost two pounds, thank you.  I'm hoping that I can keep the pace of 1-2 pounds a week, which they say is the healthiest pace to lose weight.  I'd love to say, "oh, I'll lose ten pounds before our cruise," but that's just setting myself up for failure, which then triggers a cupcake-crisis.  The first goal I'd like to reach is to lose 40 pounds by mid-August (well, 38 after the 2 pound loss this week).  After that, I'll reevaluate and come up with a new goal, but for right now, 40 pounds looks reachable, and not-too-scary.

I'm going to report back on this a lot, because it will give me motivation to keep going.  That's another thing that I've found is important to losing weight - having a check-in structure to keep you accountable.  So this blog is my new weight-loss accountability tool.

Scary, but if it works, it'll be worth it.