Blocks of time

I see my days filled up with boxes of time, long blue rectangular boxes for sleep, hot pink wide squares for work hours and everything else in a spectrum of colours filling my free time with activities. BC (before child) those boxes were in such pretty arrangements, a stack of three fifteen minutes bright yellow boxes for my hair appointment, a pyramid of hour long orange boxes for a party on the weekend, a pile of violet half hour squares for a nap on a Sunday afternoon.

AC (after child) I found myself surrounded by a totally different layout of boxes. At first all the boxes were the same blurry gray colour, one running into the next, feed, diapers, wake, catnap, feed, bath, doctor appointment, rest, awake, awake awake...slowly we found our feet and the shapes came back but now the boxes of time are far more uniformed, more predictable and so much smaller. A teeny, tiny polka dot box in the morning is the time I get for a shower, The itsy, witsy lime green block in between dinner and bath time are reserved for a Facebook moment. Sometimes the monotony of the grind gets me down but then happy little rainbow squares of time to play with my boy pop up everyday, in the moments it takes to get him dressed for school and I must give him kneecap tickles, or the peek-a-boo games around the kitchen as he munches on a banana for breakfast. Those are the blocks of time I wish I could stretch into enormous day filling carton shaped boxes dedicated to nothing but playing, spit an giggling, cuddles and cuteness....ahhhhe, motherhood

The reasoning

The things I do for food...remarkable really...I have finally realized that if I turn my drive for nosh towards good rather then evil I get so much more done.

This morning at 5.A.M. the last thing I wanted to do was get up for a run...but I did
I couldn't find my good track pants or a pair of socks and I was starving so while I was rummaging around for the pants, stealing a pair of his socks and rustling up a light snack I, of course, woke the baby. I tried all my foolproof tricks to settle him back down which, naturally, didn't work because any fool knows there is no foolproof plan to settle a baby down. Finally as the baby is starting to slip back into whiny dreamland I head to the door only to realize that the skies had opened and it was raining fat cats and dogs....sigh.  I plug on....start my jog in the dismal, grey blah. 1/2 a block in i'm panting and wishing I brought my inhaler...I plug on....1 1/2 blocks later I am thinking OMG why didn't I bring my inhaler!!...I plug on. I make it only 1/2 my normal run and have to throw in the towel...not only had my lungs screamed enough's enough on the second of my four bends but my Ipod batteries kicked the bucket.

Why did I stick it out? Why did I bother...so I could have a bigger breakfast, a cookie at lunch and a glass of wine with dinner...and it was SO worth it!

Dial it down

Well after my weekend of debauchery I amazed myself with a fantastic 6k run, then I ran the next day too a full4.2 km...I was on a roooollllll.  Then the next day happened and all hell broke loose. First, the muscles in my legs did some serious protesting..they even went on a strike. As a result I have been limping around for 2 days, creeping in an out of the car, gingerly edging up staircases and generally moving like a old school hockey player who's out of Bengay.....then the stomach flu hit last night and along with it a fever of 38.2c. Not deathly but enough to scare me off anything physical for the next few days. My body deserves a break and has sent me a message. Luckily I have the stomach flu because with 0 activity brings a much stricter diet.



I'll be back at it by Friday though, rest up, heal up and hopefully return with little or no regression.

Recovering from the cheat

So here it is, the eve before the start of a new week and I have just spent the last 48 hours rather then 24 cheating. Everything from chocolate cheese cake to Cote St Luc BBQ Fries passed these lips this weekend. I don't usually feel that terrific guilt that can come along with cheating...after a week of running and dieting I feel I owe myself the break....but this time I went over board and the guilt has crept in.  Now, as I sit here, I am dreading the day tomorrow because along with the pleasure of cheating comes the pain of readjusting the stomach size and, usually, a very brutal run. The saturation of salt, fat and sugar in my blood stream makes me sluggish, demotivated and bloated....ugh! If I can just get through tomorrow i'll be motivated to get through the rest of the week (*I hope*).

So tonight I wallow with a belly full of twizzlers and Easter chocolate, tomorrow I pound it out on the road, I starve it out with pita bread and low fat cheese spread, I will it out with sheer determination...and hope I survive to live to another cheat day because, basically, Cheat Days are what I live for !

The Public Forum

When you are living life as a heavier person you live life with your biggest flaws exposed and this exposure has given me some advantages. I feel I have the ability to laugh at myself, the knowledge that looks are only part of the package and a sensitivity to see other peoples flaws with less judgment because, after all, no one is perfect. However, weight is an issue that is still open to general ridicule in the public forum. Without getting too preachy and obnoxious, fatso's are often the butt of many jokes, the victims of prejudice, are judged on what they appear to be and not on who they are; these are facts of life for a fatty. 

The public forum is filled with these kinds of battles, I happen to fall into a category that is flexible and subject to change if that is what I chose to do. Not everyone is so lucky. I applaud those who are out there day in and day out fighting the good fight against the injustice and prejudices they face daily, reeducating people as they go. I am thankful for social networking because it has given me a voice and the incentive to continue on my journey. It can be a great tool for all of us who are working on ourselves or on changing the views of others one tweet, status update, blog posting at a time.

The Wednesday Effect

We all know that some days are harder then others. The good news is that it works the other way 'round too, some days can be much easier and far more rewarding then others. Mid week does not mean the blues when it comes to my running program and diet. I feel like a light & lean moving machine come Wednesday and it has consistently been my most effective, successful and inspiring day of the week. Today I was able to jog 3.3 km stopping briefly four times. When I started jogging a month ago I had to stop after every 60 seconds for a 90 second breather. I realize that 3.3 km might be some peoples warm up route but for me it is EPIC. On Sunday this week I suffered. I felt like there was an elephant sitting on my chest when I ran, I was ready to dive face first into a bowl of whipped cream and salted chips. I gritted my teeth and thought to myself "Why isn't this getting any easier? " Here it is, Wednesday, and I am thinking "yum, fresh fruit and soup for lunch seems really appealing, maybe i'll have those cookies I brought with me today but only if I feel like it, I don't NEED to have them.  Run 5km...but of course I can do that....i'm almost there already right...It is Wednesday after all."

I wrote this on day 2 of the C25K

I hope it will get easier and I will be able to look back at the tragedy of today's leg and say....it's so much easier today then on day 2.

I can say, wholeheartedly,  that it is so much easier then day 2, it really is.

Oh, and I am totally eating those cookies...there was never any doubt about that!

You are my priority

It amazes me how much you learn about yourself when you decide to change what you feel has become your "persona" . I have always been that big girl at the party and with that status comes a whole mentality. You either hide away and drown yourself in shyness or you roll with it. I always rolled with it.  Now I see myself as one day being that athletic girl at the party and I am determined to get there. I have found that I am questioning things about myself that were always given's before. When I originally started the diet I figured that it was very personal and just for me but I have since realized that, actually, my motivations are less personal and more family oriented. I want to be energetic enough to keep up with my boy and I want to look good for my man, I want him to be proud of his girl. Of course this has me thinking "are these the right reasons and are they good enough to sustain a permanent life change?" . I hope my family will always be a driving force behind my decision to stay fit because it means that I am prioritizing my health as much as I prioritize having financial stability, time spent with my family or any other reason to keep the family happily together.

Thinking further along those lines I have also considered how my weight has impacted my thought process. For the most part it was a convenient excuse for everything from fatigue to mood swings. So once the weight started coming off my expectations were that I would be blissfully happy with every aspect of my life. That, of course, is just a set up for disappointment. It became clear rather quickly that weight doesn't actually define you, it does help your general attitude and good mood when you feel better about how you look but it doesn't resolve every issue you might have.  I can't rely on weight loss or the couch to 5 km to make me a happy person. This has been a bit of a learning curve in the process. I just assumed that I would always be happy once I lost what I thought was the only monkey on my back.  This is a fantasy. The reality is that in order for me to be a well rounded and over all happier person I need to cherry pick the things in life that make me happy and prioritize them accordingly. I have been having trouble spreading myself too thin since having the baby. Finding that perfect balance has been a MAJOR stumbling block and I still haven't mastered it nearly 2 years later. I am learning each day what is important and what isn't but sometimes it feels like everything is important and that's where I have been falling down. So, I have started with the diet, I moved on to the exercise and it still isn't good enough.  So, just for the record, my priorities today and for the years to come are:

My son's happiness and well being
My health and happiness
My man's happiness, health and love

Everything else can go to hell....

My progress so far

I started the couch to 5 km program at the end of March, it has been 3 weeks. In the first week I suffered. I lumbered and panted from start to finish. I doubted that I could ever run the 5 km. My expectation at the start was that I was never going to be able to jog 5 km without stopping. Today, I still have lingering doubts but that comes from a life time of convincing myself that I "can't run". But every run I do I wash away a little more of those doubts.  Today, I ran four blocks uninterrupted twice during my run. My walking periods we shorter then my jogging periods and I added a kilometer to my route so I am now jogging/walking for 4.25 KM. It is incredible how quickly the body adapts to an exercise plan. Our bodies are designed to move and we function better when we do. I find I am more alert, I am in a better mood on the days when my muscles are pleasantly sore from an early morning jog.  I find it is FAR more rewarding and the results are SO MUCH FASTER then my diet routine. The diet feels a bit like being deprived where jogging makes me feel proud of myself. If you are reading this and you are wondering if you could do it too....you can. I am still 50 pounds over my ideal body weight and I can do this. I'm not great at it, i'll never win any gold medals but I can still heft this body through the streets like any other jogger out there.

Try it, what have you got to lose???

Here are two great websites to get you started...

www.c25k.com
http://www.mapmyrun.com

Mentally ready

Back in January when I began this weight loss journey I had a lot to learn about how to stay on a healthy diet, how to incorporate exercise into my daily routing, how to balance my responsibilities and maintain my focus. At times this learning curve has been down right brutal. A daily and constant struggle to get my ass out of bed and walk in the middle of winter with the ice and the snow. To not give in to those emotional feastings, to have patience with myself when I can only run a half block instead of the 5 that I want to run. Bottom line is waaay back in January I was, mentally, totally ready to start this process. The idea of being "ready" to start a diet might sound foolish to anyone who doesn't have a weight problem, who can control their portion sizes and LOVES to work out. For those of us who over eat by habit and are lazy by nature changing your ways is like changing boyfriends, having a baby or starting a new job. It is time consuming, it takes discipline, it takes stamina and confidence. If you aren't willing to acknowledge that for the next three months, six months, a year, the rest of your life, you have to eat and move differently...you're sunk. I know this because leading up to my January start, I had tried three times and failed. A big reason why I failed is because I wasn't ready to make time for me. I was a new mommy, I was adjusting to life as a working mother, we had just bought our first home , so many excuses but they were all valid reasons at the time why I wasn't willing ready or, frankly, able to start the diet of a lifetime.

When I was finally ready to do it, I jumped with both feet and so far, so good :-)

The balancing act

Parenthood took my life by storm in 2009. I had worked with children for 12 years and assumed (oh so innocently) that I was going to breeeeeeze into motherhood like a natural. Oh my, how wrong I was.

One of my misguided assumptions was that, at 37, I had lived life and had sewn all of my wild oats. That I would happily give up my independence because I had waited until I was old enough and mature enough not to need any personal time or space. I found out over the course of the next year and a half or so that, in fact, there is no ending point to the need for "me" time. I discovered that I am not a whole person when I don't have alone time.  I don't understand people that say they don't like to be alone with their thoughts, I love it and I missed it dearly. The sleepless nights and coming to terms with the realization that my free time was now a mere fraction of what used to be was the most difficult transition into parenthood for me.

Instead of moving forward with life, I admit it, I sulked, I ate and sulked that I couldn't run to the shops at the drop of a hat. I now had to plan my nights out and I had a packed agenda for every single second of every day, no nights or weekends off. When I decided that it was time to lose weight I jumped into it with both feet. I was excited by the challenge but the exercise part was still a problem, when do I find the time? I started getting up at 5 a.m, an ungodly hour. I was determined that this was what it would take for me to fit the exercise in. An amazing thing happened, I was out on the road, alone, with my thoughts. For the first time since the baby was born I felt that familiar happiness at being on my own...what heaven.

Parenting is really about multitasking. With my C25K I am getting myself on track health-wise AND, bonus, getting the alone time I have been desperate for WIN-WIN

Some days are harder then others

Today has been a challenge to stay on track. It has been hard for a couple of reasons, I have been hungry all day, I have cravings for crap all day and at my weigh in last night I was up a pound...It's the trifecta the physical, the desirable and the depressing. I can handle each on their own but when they gang up on me I am held hostage. Instead of breaking I am trying to rationalize it. One, the physical is easy to solve, just eat a lot of the right things and i'll be fine. Two, cravings can be over come easily too by knowing there will be the feelings of guilt if I cheat on my diet and remembering that it is Thursday and that means in a few short hours I can have those cupcakes if that's what I want...I can hold out a few short hours.  The third is tougher of the three challenges. Disappointments like gaining weight lead to frustration and the idea of "What the hell, I can't do this". It is just a pound but it is just a pound in the wrong direction. It is irrational to lose focus because I gained a little weight this week but my mind has this automatic reflex, when I am mad, sad, discouraged, stressed or whatever, I pacify with a snack.

So the challenge continues, the internal battle rages on...should I eat that chocolate, should I have that banana instead. I will let you know which side wins tomorrow because at this point it is still anyone's game.

6:09 am, the next day....I had a big dinner and held out on the junk food...I made it!

Hard road ahead

Well today was another serious test to my endurance and commitment in terms of my running experience. I was out on the road,  early as per the routine, but this time, unlike any of the past few runs I have had, I experienced something like an asthma attack while on the road. I was about 1/3 into the 60 seconds run, 90 seconds walk cycle when I found I was having a really hard time catching my breath. I was thinking, this is it, this is what's going to make me end this brief but illustrious career as a road warrior. It won't be the early morning wake up call or the bleeding blister on my right heel that has been plaguing me since day one; it won't be the creepy guy in the black hoodie who I noticed TWICE in 20 minutes walking the same stretch of road on one of my runs last week or the brutal pounding my joints have been taking....it will be me, collapsed on the side of the road wheezing and sputtering like some old lady. Instead of giving up, which I am prone to do, I just slowed down my pace, changed my expectations and ran in shorted legs more frequently. Clearly I will need more time to build up my cardio and will adjust my expectations to match what my reality is when it comes to jogging.

Oh, and as far as the early wake up call ...I love it,
The weirdo in the hoodie, I changed my route
The bleeding blisters,  I will OVERCOME...nothing a few Bandaids can't help.
The pounding on the old joints...well we'll just have to play that one by ear.

Weekends!

In 2006 I went on Weight Watchers and lost 40 pounds. I kept the weight off until 2008 and really felt like I would have kept the weight off if it weren't for a very trying time in my life where I fell back on food for comfort. I can look back now, with the benefit of hindsight, and realize that I use food to help cope with difficult situations. As ridiculous as this sounds today, being an over weight person my entire adult life, I really didn't even notice that I ate like that.  Well, maybe I did realize but I didn't care. Today I know better and have to try to steer clear of the giant pitfalls I lay for myself in the path to being a healthier weight. Emotional eaters will always struggle with food as long as there are events, actions, children, relationships, jobs, money (you get the idea), to stress over


One of the tricks I used back in 2006 to maintain my sanity and my focus in order to lose 40 pounds and keep it off for 2 years was to take the weekend off from the careful counting of calories. I restrict the time to 24 hours from Friday night to Saturday night but within those hours I could satisfy all of my cravings and emotional feastings.  I would look forward to Friday so much and found I could hold off cheating during the week because it made the break that much better. I have been using this trick this time around and have lost 20 pounds regardless of having a bottle of wine or  a pancake breakfast between Friday and Saturday. Changing how you eat for life involves making exceptions to your rules. Allowances for parties, nights out, cravings or whatever. My goal is to try to keep those splurges to my Friday to Saturday rule.

Rewarding the successes as they come along.

Today I reached my first goal in this process, my first 20 pounds gone...takes a moment, pats self on back, takes a bow. As caught up as I can get on focusing on the finish line I think I MUST acknowledge my successes by rewarding myself along the way. So, as a reward for reaching this goal I have decided to commission an on-line caricature artist to make a personalized Avatar, me as a sexy baker. I feel this would be a fitting homage to the process that got me to the point of needing to get fit again hahaha.


According to Weight Watchers you have to find rewards that don't include food. At first I was like "Commme on now...there is nothing better them my eats". But, I took their advice and really applied myself to coming up with fitting rewards for hitting my goals that DON'T involve lovely food or beverages. The Avatar is one idea. Another is getting a new hair cut, or leaving up a picture on Facebook that I don't particularly like and rewarding myself with changing that picture once I have reached my goal. I have also thought of booking my folks for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon of babysitting and just relaxing, alone, by the water with a good book. For the really small rewards I will post on Facebook or Twitter about what I have achieved and have gotten so much positive feedback that it really does feel like a reward.

My twitter today
"I might not have reached anyone's ideal but I am my perfect right now"