I'm going to enjoy my drawing class

And I worked out for the third day in a row, and it's raining out, and I have a slight headache, and I've lost another 1/2 lb.

And I'm still getting over my head cold.

These are all things that I could tell you, if you asked me how I'm doing today. I would probably just say "I'm fine, thank you, how are you?" but I do have other things to say, I promise you.

Even writing this blog post, I have a million things buzzing around in my head, and the only one that is going to come out, is the one I just wrote about having a million things buzzing around in my head.

Huh. I wonder why that is?

Oh. One other thing. I'm not really good at drawing garlic. In case you were curious.

Reminder to myself: Life is about more than weight loss

Hard to believe, I know.

The reason I say this, is because I am trying very hard to commit more to the Weight Watchers program, and so I'm deliberately using the etools they have, and one of them is a blog. Which is fine, but I feel constricted on it. Like there are some things that don't belong there. And then it is very limited; I can't change my background or specify where pictures show up, and I get a bit claustrophobic about stuff like that.

Hey. I never said I wasn't more than just a little OCD. Not once.

And of course, I have a lot to say about weight loss and how motivated I am, and how great my workout schedule is, and how much I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE some of the treadmills at the gym, and how excited I am about how much of a head-turning hottie I think I will be...

Also, I never said I didn't feel attractive. Except maybe once, and that was because I was on a road trip for two whole weeks with my sister... and even then, it wasn't that I didn't feel attractive, its that nobody noticed me beside her... which is a completely different thing, and if I'm being perfectly honest, absolutely natural.

Most of the time, I promise, I picture myself as Marilyn-esque, turning heads when I walk into a room.

However, I digress.

Week 2: 1.2 lbs lost, 93.6 to go

...or in terms of my 5% weight-loss goal, 9.8 lbs until I get that little star.

Which I am really looking forward to, actually. I will still be above 200 lbs, but at least it will be progress.

Last week's meeting was good; I'm slowly figuring out what the agenda is in these meetings. Basically, it's all discussion among the attendees, with a few questions to focus the meeting. I don't believe a copy of those questions is posted anywhere; I will start taking notes next week so that I remember them.

There is also a weightwatchers weekly handout at every meeting, and I missed last week's, so this post will include my thoughts on both.

September 1-7, 2013
This month's Routine: Know What You're Having for Lunch

Sounds easy enough, doesn't it? And yet, I really didn't actually pay that much attention to it. To be fair, I got sick on Tuesday, and so basically lived off of chicken noodle soup and toast for most of the week.

However, I am going to try out the whole new routine thing in the online tool, and make that my routine, see if I can actually make that into a habit. (Today, I'll be having half of a chicken bacon ranch wrap, with veggies for the afternoon)

The hand-out had some good lunch tips in it, over all:

• What makes a good lunch - lean protein, complex carbs, healthy fat, fibre
• To prevent boredom, add colour, texture and flavour
• How to survive a business lunch - preview the menu, don't drink alcohol, be very specific with your order
• Eating lunch at home - Stir-fry over whole-wheat noodles or brown rice, Omelet with a side salad and whole-wheat toast, or a grain bowl (quinoa, barley, brown rice, mixed with cooked veggies and some lean protein)
• Eating lunch at work - brown bag it (whole-wheat pasta with extra tomato sauce so it doesn't dry out in the microwave, veggies and lean protein, days of the week salad - greens with different toppings each day of the week, rice and beans from a can, rinsed, and topped with salsa, shredded cheese and broccoli or peppers
• Eating lunch on the go - Use the Food Court Cheat Sheet (who knew???) at the mall, or brown bag it using a freezer pack in a tote: Hard boiled eggs, crackers, peppers, fruit, or Hummus pizza in a wrap for easy carrying, greek yoghurt with granola and berries, carrots on the side

It's Wednesday.

That's about all I have to say today. I woke up with a cold, I'm at home, it's a beautiful day, I still don't have a couch...

:)

I'm trying to stick to my diet, though.

I really thought I had something to say today...

I vaguely remember planning my journal entry this morning on my way in to work... maybe I should go get some coffee before I try to do this...

All right. Coffee in hand, mostly drunk, some work taken care of, and still no idea of what I was thinking about on my way into work.

This is what I definitely remember:

1. Thinking I looked good in yellow, which is a surprise to me after years of avoiding it.
2. Looking forward to "hot me" - Did I mention I started going to Weight Watchers meetings? Now I'm just a little bit excited about what I'll look like with ~90 lbs less weight than I'm carrying now... And to be really clear, I think I'm cute right now, but I'm planning on being absolutely stunning without the extra weight. :)
3. Wishing I was already retired and didn't have to be going to work.

Maybe I was dreaming that I had something to write about today.

And I'm not sure if you can tell, but I'm feeling much less "doom and gloomy" today - yesterday was mostly PMS-induced, and anything after that was just because it was Monday.

Journaling (How do you spell that word, anyway?)

According to my brother, who came to visit me over the September long weekend, journaling is very therapeutic. He writes down the things that are on his mind, and poof!! It's all okay. Those things that were buzzing around in his head, transforming from molehills into mountains are magically contained, prevented from sprouting into something the approximate size of the Himalayas.

He claims that my sister has had the opportunity of being given ~$3600 worth of advice from a professional life coach (for free), and in the end, it boiled down to her receiving a gift of a journal from Grand & Toy.

On Saturday, at my first Weight Watcher's meeting, the leader mentioned writing things down in a journal...

It seems to me that many different things are loudly shouting at me: Start writing stuff down!!! Your life will be less stressful, and you will be more successful for it!!!

And so, now seems to be an appropriate time to resurrect this particular blog, which is the closest thing to a journal that I have. And, in resurrecting it, I should probably own up to all the things that are weighing on my mind right now.

1. I'm overweight.
2. I'm... lost the word... you know, when you postpone things until its almost to late to get them done? Procrastinating. I had to look that up. I'm procrastinating putting my application together to get my CBAP.
3. I'm also procrastinating saving money to buy my second property.
4. I'm feeling out-of-control, and vaguely unhappy about something in my life that I can't quite put my finger on - maybe journaling will help me sort through all of that.

That's probably enough for now... I can only take so much "my inner fears under a microscope and then documented" at a time...

P.S. The general sense of something being off in my life today is probably due to the fact that I'm PMS-ing... just saying.

Weight Watchers Week 1

I'm jamming this post in for last week - I found the Model My Diet weight loss simulator, and wanted to get my Starting picture up for the record...

I want...

SOOO many things!!!

I want to be able to paint.
I want to be able to play the guitar.
I want to be in better shape.
I want to be able to buy clothes in single digit sizes.

I want to be able to run the half marathon as planned in a couple of weeks, but I allowed winter to defeat me this year. And yes, it was a CRAZY winter, lasting from the end of October until the very last week of April, but still, I totally wimped out in mid-March, and then just threw up my hands in defeat the second week of April, when I decided that I would NOT run a 10K race outside when the snowbanks were still taller than me.
I guess what I really want is to be able to say at the beginning of June that I ran a half marathon last month. And to say that I set a goal and followed through to the finish.

I definitely want to be loved.


And, I think I might maybe want something I'm not at all sure I should let myself have.

I'm still working through that one, though.

And if being loved means letting myself have something I'm not sure I should let myself have, am I a bad person?

Technology is not my friend

Had to put it out there.

For some bizarre unknown reason, technology has decided it doesn't like me. Just for the last week or so, but really, that's long enough for me.
With any luck, I'll wake up tomorrow and this will all be a bad dream.

Yoga

Well, I am happy to say that I have successfully managed to workout on schedule for a week now. That means I have been on a treadmill for 25-26 minutes every other day since last Thursday, when I stepped on a treadmill for the first time in about 7 months.

I should also note here that my first half-marathon is actually scheduled for the end of May, not the beginning of September. I am not changing my original goal, I will be running in the Queen City Half-Marathon in September next year with the goal of finishing in under three hours, but I am adding another race, and my plan for that one is to finish. It will give me some training partners, will show me what it is like to actually run a half-marathon race, and will let me figure out a personal race time so that I can work on my pace development.

... listen to me talking as if I'm actually a runner! Woo Hoo!!

And now, back to the topic of this post, which is actually yoga.

I need to start stretching. I am planning on modifying my workout schedule for this program (C25K) so that it includes 30 minutes of yoga on the days I'm not on a treadmill. The problem is that I have no idea how to arrange a yoga session, and as one blog auther puts it, Sequencing (Vinyasa) is the Holy Grail of yoga.

So.

I know the basics of yoga, but do I truly understand Vinyasa? I think not. My best hope is to find a 15 minute Sun Salutation sequence for both morning and evening that I can do every day, and a 30 minute "Other" sequence to do on my non-running days until the New Year.

Off I go to research.

Google is an amazing thing.

Days 1 and 3 of ... a lot

I am very happy to announce that I got on a treadmill for the first time in about 9 months.

The first week of the Couch to 5K (C25K) training program involves a brisk warm up walk followed by 20 minutes of alternating 60 seconds of jogging with 90 seconds of walking.

Day 1, my walking speed was 2.5mph, and my jogging speed was 3.0 mph. About 15 minutes into the 25 minute program, my hips hurt, my calves were cramping, my lower back hurt, in general, it was all I could do to keep moving.

Serves me right for avoiding all forms of exercise for so long!

At any rate, I finished the 20 minutes, having gone just over a mile (~1.9 miles), and was very pleased that I had stuck to my plan for 1 whole day.

Day 3, I left Angharad sitting in my apartment skyping with her parents and headed off in a snowstorm to the gym, where I hopped on the treadmill again.

My walking speed has increased to 2.6mph, and my jog to 3.1mph. My total distance was 1.15 miles.

My hips didn't hurt at all, and the only place that still cramped up were my lower calves and my feet. Probably time for a new pair of shoes.

I am also going to start doing yoga, aiming for two short daily sessions, morning and night, with a longer ~30 minute session on alternating days with my running. That should help stretch out my muscles.

Next step, figure out a yoga series. Or three, really. Morning, evening, and half hour "workout" sessions.

By tomorrow.

Hmmm. I have company this weekend, and I am now halfway through Week 1.

By Tuesday.

From Couch to 5K by New Years

Is the plan.

Stage 1 of my training for a marathon is to follow the plan from coolrunnings.com, which is essentially three workouts a week for 9 weeks that are supposed to get you from no exercise (me, currently) to jogging 5k (or 30 minutes).

What this means for me is that I need to be on a treadmill faithfully every other day starting tomorrow until the New Year.

Off to bed I go!!

Race Pace

Further comments about that goal I just set...

My race pace needs to be between 10:17.88 and 13:43.83

Running a half marathon

... that is the question. Do I even bother setting myself this daunting of a fitness goal? Or do I just say forget it, never going to happen.

The thing is, I would probably be fine if it was running a 5K next September. It's the thought of running 21K that terrifies me. That requires a definite commitment to training, and using my Saturdays for the next 10 months as training days. Ugh. With a capital "U".

Part of me thinks I am crazy to even begin setting that kind of a goal - my strong point is not, in fact, following through on big things, and there is another part of me saying "Screw those discouraging thoughts, of course you can do it!"

Sigh. Which voice to listen to?

The right choice, of course, is to listen to the one that says "Go For It, face your fears!"

But wow. I get a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach, my tongue is dry, I'm practically sweating here, just thinking about how big a commitment that is. Heartburn has just kicked in!

<Pause for some research here>

• As a non-runner I want to run a half-marathon
• Hal Higdon Training Programs
• The Couch to 5k Running Plan

<End Pause>

Here goes:

I will run the Credit Union Queen City Half Marathon in Regina, SK in September 2013. I will finish it in 2:15 to 3:00 hours.

And that, my friends, is a goal set.

And yes, I am hyperventilating here. Seriously, I'm shaking in my seat.

Note to self:

Breathe. 

In AND Out.