holy crap.

just picked up two loft dresses (sizes 8 and 10) i'd bought thinking my body would change shape entirely when i lost a few more pounds and they'd look great.

well, they fit, but didn't look great (tooooo huuuuuge in the bodice, if you must know), so i bit the bullet and took them to a seamstress.

dude? dresses that fit properly? look ah-mazing. mind = blown.

now i have to pick which to wear to a friend's loverly wedding this weekend. and, oh! which SHOES. because one dress is a gray/black/purple/fuchsia/mustard/lemon print on dove gray, and i literally have 5 pairs of shoes that match it PERFECTLY.

must

so... last week was a little screwy, food-wise. honestly, i often didn't track my evening snacking (which was extensive) and TWICE i grabbed a snack-cake at the grocery store check-out and didn't even look it up, let alone track it. i also ate it alone in my car, which is a whole 'nother ball of wax. and the only workouts i did were my runs and one half hour on the bike.

plus last night we went to our favorite local byo for the multi-course chef's tasting ("multi" in this instance meaning 8: amuse-bouche, bread, appetizer, cheese plate, mini-entree #1, mini-entree #2, dessert and cookies.) which is not huge, but is amazing and has that roll-me-home quality if you don't arrive physically hungry. anyway, i'm a little puffed from it, too, so i'm up to 152.something.

this weekend we have a birthday party, a wedding, a post-wedding brunch and two cookouts.

this is what must happen this week:

1. i must eat 29 p+ each day-- no weeklies or activities until the weekend
2. i must work out every day but wednesday

and... that's it. despite the STUFF this weekend, i'm hoping for a one-forty-something weigh-in for july.

next weekend my husband will be out of town, which i hate.

goal check-in

• pack workday lunches>> every day this week... and i'm almost through the mexican leftovers from father's day!
  
• eat workday breakfasts at home>> except today :/ it was an early EARLY day and i just got a bagel with scrambled egg (ate 1/2 the bagel!)
  
• plan weekly dinners>> we've done... taco salad, tacos, "tampa salad"*, enchiladas and we're looking at tampa-taco salad.
  
• run 5k#2 >> still failed.
  
• run 2-3 times a week >> YES!
  
• start swimming lessons >> ughhhhh. not yet.
  
• get a massage >> also, not yet.
  
• record my p+ >> i could be doing better.
  

one more week of june goals!

* a salad my mother-in-law made the last time i was at her home in tampa: lettuce, tomato, red onion, avocado, queso fresco, olive oil and lime juice. over lettuce. YUM.

unprecedented

the last couple of nights have not been awesome. for one thing, we're still working on the leftovers from the father's day taco bar i made and mexican food is my kryptonite-- but there are chips and cheese and cinnamon brownies involved, too. then there's this wretched pms situation. in high school, i thought those "oooooh, my crammmmmps" girls were full of shit. i literally got my period out of the blue with no forewarning, once in the middle of an exam. but now, lately, i am a slave to my cycle. my uterus is running the show here, complete with floaty life-is-perfect-let's-have-a-baby ovulation days and ragey fights & self-hatred for 4-5 days before my period. and wtf is up with a 29 day cycle?? that's new. and not in a cool way.

(thanks to krissie for confirming that pms is realer than it was when i was thinner! i thought i was crazzzzzy!)

anyway. school started back up, so i'm home today, ahem, doing my schoolwork. it's been balls hot here. i mean BALLS HOT. and i am not a warm-weather girl. give me early sunsets and falling leaves and chilly breezes ANY DAY. i knew it would be hot today, so when i got up around 8, i checked the hourly forecast and, yep, 80* by noon. that's TOO HOT for me. so i suited up... and did my scheduled run.

dude, it sucked and i hated it. plus, i was out of the house for 44 minutes traveling 2.78 miles (2.5 at a jog) which was pretty slow. but now it's DOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE! this is the first time since SEPTEMBER i've actually gotten a workout in first thing in the morning on my "schoolday" as was originally planned. and it's AWESOME! i love it. i anticipate that i will actually have lost weight in my first year of grad school, despite the charming "grad school 10" i gained. by the end of september, i will be close to or AT my goal of 135. truthfully, though, i'm hoping to drop another 10 before my 5-year fativersary on january 9th, 2012. that's the day i plan to put away my dieter hat forever.

and on that note...

choices

last night, i only wanted to do two things: snack and sleep.

seriously, after dinner (a dinner that went above and beyond the plan-- not in a good way), the thought of my scheduled 20 minute run made me whine and weep.

"you will feel better if you do it," he said. that asshole. that asshole i'm married to. the one who forgave my rage-y awfulness on sunday morning, because he knew what was up lonnnnnnnng before i did. something about the odd weight gain, the feeling gross, the violent mood swings... oh, and he has a calendar.

i knew i had to make a choice. i could keep eating or i could go to bed-- there was no willpower option. i also had to choose to go to bed or do my short training run and stay on schedule.

so i weighed my options. running is my key. running is going to get me there and keep me there. i'm not a natural runner, i don't love it and i don't get high. it's WORK. and i'm slow. i have a race in less than 4 weeks, the triplet of the one i bailed on. i have to finish.

i chose fitness over weight loss and ran.

and when i got home, wide awake now, i snacked more and i split 3 beers with him. if i had a weigh-in today, it would not have been pretty. but i don't. snacking afterward made it possible for me to get my workout in. shit happens.

today is a better day. i feel less mood-swingy and tired (guess why??) and i'll be fine tonight. we're baking bread for the solstice and i have a stationary bike ride scheduled.

anyone else feel like pms is worse the thinner you get??

meme

A is for Apple, what’s your favorite variety?
macintosh, i guess. or sauce.

B: is for Bread, regardless of nutrition, calories, or whole grains what is your favorite type to have a nice big piece of?
i love me some dense, seedy bread. orrrrrrrrrrr... an airy, crust italian loaf.

C: is for Cereal what is your favorite kind currently (just one!)
i could eat a value-sized box of honey nut cheerios in one sitting with 1% milk. no kidding.

D: is for Doughnuts, you might not currently be eating them but what kind do you fancy?
chocolate cake. glazed.

E: is for Eggs, how would you like yours prepared?
scrambled with onion.

F: is for Fat Free, what is your favorite fat free product?
ricotta cheese. it has a GREAT texture and loads of protein.

G: is for Groceries, where do you purchase yours at?
trader joe's, the farmers' market and giant.

H: is for Hot Beverages, what is your favorite hot drink?
lattes. unsweetened.

I: is for Ice Cream, pick a favorite flavor and add a fun topping.
coffee with crushed oreos.

J: is for Jams or Jellies, do you eat them, and if so what kind and flavor?
i LOVE raspberry jam.

K: is for Kashi, name your favorite Kashi product?
meh... i dunno. they make an okay cracker, i think?

L: is for Lunch, what was yours today?
black beans and homemade spanish rice.

M: is for microwave, what is your favorite microwave meal/snack?
mine's been unplugged since october. i sorta miss turkey bacon & facon.

N: is for nutrients, do you like carbs, fats, or proteins best?
oh, i'm a carb girl, fo' sho'.

O: is for oil, what kind do you like to use?
olive or canola (aka "rapeseed")

P: is for protein, how do you get yours?
beans, eggwhites, meat as necessary.

Q: is for Quaker, how do you like your oats?
drowning in salted butter and brown sugar, alas.

R: is for roasting, what is your favorite thing to roast?
chicken thighs.

S: is for sandwich, what’s your favorite kind?
egg salad and sprouts.

T: is for travel, how do you handle eating while traveling?
we try to eat one main meal and keep healthy snacks onhand-- easier on the waist and the wallet.

U: is for unique, what is one of your weirdest food combos?
i don't really go in for weird.

V: is for vitamins, what kind do you take?
don't.

W: is for wasabi, yay or nay?
nay thank you.

X: is for XRAY. if we xrayed your belly right now, what food would we see?
probably none, i don't think that would work, would it?? today i've eaten 2 chocolates, refried beans, a small tortilla, spanich rice, queso fresco and a fiber one bar.

Y: is for youth, what food reminds you of your childhood?
mac and cheese, which i ate every time my family ate seafood for dinner.

Z: is for zucchini, how do you prepare it?
sauteed in olive oil, but i love it as fries.

curiouser and curiouser

so... i've been less scale-dependent lately. it's a thing. it's about... not letting myself make excuses. i was weighing once a week. then twice. this week, i weighed myself three times.

on saturday morning, i weighed 148.0! i was pleased, to say the least. i went to the gym for my lifting/training session, then ate properly all day, and finished up with a short run in the evening.

on sunday morning, i weighed 149.6. i was still pleased, but confused. however, every muscle in my body felt like it was knotted up. water weight. i went on to eat... fine. didn't count like i should have, but not crazy.

this morning? 150.2. huh. i ate breakfast at home and packed a lunch. i'm all planned and counted for the day including a short run per my schedule tonight. i still hurt everywhere.

so. what i'm thinking is... as i understand it, stressing the muscles causes microscopic tears in the muscle fiber, which retains water to re-knit the muscle stronger. that's why when you first start exercising, you gain a bit of weight. but with my brother-trainer, we lift to absolute fatigue every week. the whole point is that the body never gets used to what we're doing. so every week the muscles tear, retain water, cause small gains. and the next day or the day after that is weigh-in day.

my first instinct was to move weigh-in to saturday.

but what's the point? a small push now? i'm doing fine. probably great. i'm really losing weight at a healthy pace even after 4.5 years of this shit. this is good.

NEXT week, my real weigh-in will be in the 140s. for sure.

so, we host fathers' day and we had a taco bar yesterday. it was great! but i made too. much. food. for the next couple days it's tex-mex 3 meals a day. today i had a little refried bean burrito for breakfast (fat free, of course), pack rice and beans for lunch and will have a big-ass salad for dinner.

...

oh, one last thing. we got great portraits taken of us. i wore a dress that... apparently does not flatter. my legs look like tree trunks! i need a full-length mirror.

in the rain

i finally found myself a 5-weeks-to-a-better-5k schedule (here), just over 4 weeks before my next race-- 4w, 1d. so i started at the end of week 1. last night i ran two miles, in a row, outside in my neighborhood, wearing a tank top (and pants, and stuff, but not a tee shirt, too), in the rain.

okay, it only rained lightly for about 10 minutes. but! i kept going, so i get some points for that, right??

i also took a leeeeeeeeeetle peek at the scale because i had been feeling SO THIN. the news was sweet, 148.something (i forget). it will be a rough weekend, though. we host fathers' day every year and this year we're having a taco bar with sangria and spicy brownies. but also. tomorrow we're hanging out with friends who cook and tonight we're going out for japanese & beer to celebrate my grades: an a in accounting and an a- in law. i have a training schedule to stick to, though, and planned workouts to do. and how bad can a taco bar of my own devising be? (bad.)

i want very, very much to keep that 4, so i just will. i can do it, right?

*

*quebecoise toast, formerly known as fake-ass french toast

ingredients:

• 10 slices complete protein bread (ezekial, for example, i use trader joe's)
• 1 pint egg whites
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar or splenda (i use sugar)
• 1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla
• 1 1/2 TEAspoons cinnamon
• canola oil or "butter flavor" cooking spray

prep:

• combine egg whites, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon

cook:

• soak bread slices in egg mixture
  
• spray griddle or large, flat frying pan
• cook at medium heat, flipping only once or twice, until golden

these keep in my fridge from sunday night to friday and are tasty, protein-and-fiber-full and portable. we warm ours up in a toaster, but you could nuke them and eat them with syrup or something, too.

my apologies to any readers (::snort::) in quebec. i don't think you're fake-ass french, we just needed a nicer name for the dish. who really wants a breakfast with the word "ass" in it?

hookers and blow

• pack workday lunches>> have two days made, a week planned and one day packed!
  
• eat workday breakfasts at home>> made quebecoise toast* for the week
  
• plan weekly dinners>> planned up to wednesday
  
• run 5k#2>> that was a sad, sad failure. i'll look for another on around the end of the month.
  
• run 2-3 times a week>> fail, but i'm going to schedule 3 for this week... i'm on summer break!
  
• start swimming lessons>> in progress... i don't know if the gym is open during break
  
• get a massage>> see above
  
• record my p+>> MASSIVE FAIL, but i'll do better this week

i went to a bachelorette party on saturday. it was dinner, piano bar, hotel, brunch. not awful. pretty fun, really. mostly wine and show tunes, not exactly the hookers-and-blow event i'd imagined it. i missed dinner, drank a (planned) bottle of wine and made good coffee and breakfast choices (as nice as the banana/strawberry/nutella crepe looked... i needed protein BAD). the rest of yesterday was kind of a wash, though. we went to see the x-men movie (LOVE) and got pizza. i'm up a bit to 151.6.

oh. on friday? i bought a spin bike on craigslist. didn't get serially killed, but the sucker squeaks a little, so i can't use it when the husband is asleep.

it was different

yesterday's 5k was... different. it FELT different. everywhere you looked there were super-muscled RUNNERS wearing vibrams and little else. there were model-thin women with two kids in a jogging stroller (one an infant!). there were guys who looked like extras from baywatch. no friends, no community. the sponsors were brooks and some waterbottle people, not local businesses. this shit was for real.

we started out at the very back of the line. well, there were six people behind us but they all passed us immediately. it was hot. 90* and muggy. soon, i was last and k was shouting encouragement over her shoulder. i couldn't catch my breath. i tried to think of krissie, finishing a 10 mile trail run dead last and being proud of herself, but i just couldn't breathe and less than half a mile in, sweat was pouring off of me. i slowed to a walk, and, as i approached the street we'd parked on, just shy of the mile marker, i unpinned my bib and quit.

my eating has been all over the place and my drinking has been... yeah. i smoked for most of the past month, up to saturday. our next race is in 5 weeks. i'm going to finish.

wtf?

whoa. i dunno what my deal is but, WHOA. i have been out of control the past couple days. not crazy-cakes out of control, but certainly not in control. today, i didn't even pack lunch for the first time since APRIL.

it's okay, though. i just have to make a good choice, drink my water, run my race and be back on track with the packing tomorrow.

xanax and inhibitions

yesterday i had my second colposcopy, the first one was last year after my pap came back abnormal and positive for hpv. after a leep, there are two courses of treatment/monitoring. normally, they bring you in for semi-annual paps until you get it right 3 times. if you're a crazy person who has to be high as a kite to even CONSIDER getting a pap, they might let you stay annual and get an hpv test. guess which one i am??

so, this year i had no dysplasia, but still tested postitive for hpv, which makes my case chronic or persistent. theoretically, the leep is supposed to alert your body that there's an infection and your body should come fight it off. (it also removes those pesky gonna-be-cancer cells.) mine... did not. i mean, there's no obvious precancerousness, but there's still the virus. (and i've been vaccinated, so it's not possible that i was reinfected by my husband who almost certain has it because, well, we've been together 6 years this weekend.)

now i get to go in semiannually for a pap with an hpv test. lucky me, right? and get an annual colpo as long as i'm coming pack positive for hpv. de-fucking-lightful.

anyway... for the test, and any pelvic exam, i prefer to be high as a goddamn kite. i had a couple rough doctors, a couple weird experience and, oh, yeah, i HATE HATE HATE HATE being touched by anyone other than a select few, and touched THERE by anyone but a select one. it's kind of a thing. so my lovely obgyn prescribes me four .5mg per appointment and i take them at 45 minute intervals until i fell like, yeah, i could probably handle a speculum. and having some cells removed from my cervix with what i can only describe as a pointy bottle brush. (it takes all four. ALWAYS.) but 1mg in i decided to go get a cupcake.

i did fine, of course. it helped that there was no needle biopsy needed this time. my husband drove me, which was very good. he took me to sbux for my usual post-medical/dental 1 p+ light iced coffee. i asked to split an apple fritter. we did (6p+ EACH). then i went home to sleep. (3:30ish) at 6 he woke me up for pizza and i at THREE pieces (17p+ omfg). (welllllll, it was a small, but 2 is mu usual.) and then i went back to sleep. when i woke up at 11, i wanted a "tiny ice cream" as we call the variety of snack-sized trader joe's frozen treats we keep. i had three (5 p+).

clearly, i cannot be trusted with food after 2mg of xanax. CLEARLY.

back on track, though. no exercise today because i have a 5k tomorrow night. it will be 89*. help me.

151

WOOHOO! lowest weight-in of. the. year.

saturday was a p+ recording disaster and sunday came and went without a run. but! now! it's monday! and i have had breakfast and packed lunch and planned dinner! i have a tentative plan to go to the track if my final gets recorded early.

july will have a 4 in the tens place...

goals & plans

• pack workday lunches>> all week!
  
• eat workday breakfasts at home>> all week!
  
• plan weekly dinners>> whoops, we skipped cooking out for a storm that never came; ate steamed chicken & broccoli, white rice and a veg egg roll instead.
  
• run 5k#2 >> next week
  
• run 2-3 times a week>> eh... will probably squeeze in 2 this week: monday & sunday
  
• start swimming lessons>> promise to ask at the gym sunday! swearsies!
  
• get a massage>> see above
  
• record my p+>> all week! a bridal shower looms tomorrow, though...
  

plan for the weekend:

• tonight we have happy hour for a departing colleague of my husband's. i'll opt for a diet soda.
• planned dinner is fish for him, eggs for me.
• then we have a community art show! there will be wine and i will drink some.
• tomorrow is the FARMERS MARKET! my brother/trainer is at the shore, so i'll get my new drivers license then hit the market at open (9) and hang out soaking up the awesome until noon when...
• ... i'll head to a bridal shower. the hostess is a weight watcher, so i have high hopes. but i'll gorge myself on farm fresh strawberries so sweet and ripe the only part you don't eat is the leaves just. in. case.
  
• after the shower i hope to have a quiet evening at home, but may have to do a birthday dinner for smil.
• sunday i'll hit the gym at 10 for a jog & my swim/massage inquiries.
  
• then i'll knock out part 2 of my accounting final.
  

and then the weekend is over...

down periscope

i need a colposcopy. again. my cervix is not trustworthy. i was trying to describe the procedure to a friend but the "microscope" part was throwing her off. it's more like a periscope. you assume The Position and the doctor spends 5-10 minutes looking over your cervix with a periscope.

i am exhausted. i don't want drama and problems. i want a routine appointment to be ROUTINE. i hate working this job, going to school and taking care of the house. i hate knowing that i'll have to do all that next year while my husband goes to school full time. i hate how he questions if it's wise to try to do "all that" in a year. (all that = 3 terms overloading at 4 classes.) while i do half of that AND work and volunteer and keep house. i hate the sinking feeling that i'll need to stay in a job i hate, working to support us instead of staying home with kids for a couple years. instead of having kids, maybe. i hate knowing that every unlikely part of this adventure has happened: abnormal pap is unlikely to need a biopsy; biopsy is unlikely to need a leep; leep cures 90% of patients... and then comes the small percentage who pass the virus on during birth. well, shit. i guess my uterus is closed for business unless i get three clear tests in the next year and a half.

.................

it's june. goals:

• pack workday lunches
• eat workday breakfasts at home
• plan weekly dinners
• run 5k#2
• run 2-3 times a week
• start swimming lessons
• get a massage
• record my p+