Month: January 2010

I promised in a past post that I’d update you all on this weight loss thing and how it’s going. So here we go.

I’ve lost 31.5 pounds and 10% body fat. That’s a lot of fat. The last time I was at the gym I picked up a 30 pound weight just to see what it felt like and my body goaned and my heart skipped and my head exploded. 30 pounds is HEAVY!

A lot of people in real life always dance around The Question. The “What did you weight to start” question. I’ve never really understood that. Like, why is The Weight Question something that people are so reluctant to answer? It’s a number. It doesn’t define your self worth. It doesn’t MEAN anything to anybody but the person answering the question. I think that most women are scared to answer it, especailly when a skinnier person is asking, because women are SO OBSESSED with that number. It’s like a competition. It’s not. Women, seriously, stop it. I’d rather be 140 pounds of lean muscle mass than 105 pounds of weak emaciated limbs. The Number has a different meaning for evey person and using it to gain some kind of psychological upper hand is lame and catty and why 81% of the female population bugs the shit out of me.

Last September, a few days before my birthday, I got on the scale for the first time in MONTHS AND MONTHS and expected to weight MAYBE 200 pounds. I weighed 230. My body groaned and my heart skipped a beat and my head exploded. It’s a general theme. That wasn’t even the worst part. Ben and I made the collective decision to Get Healthy so we went to the gym and I ran for two minutes and had to stop because I felt like I was going to FUCKING DIE RIGHT THERE OMG. I couldn’t believe how out of shape I was. I was ashamed and sad and SCARED.

Today, four months later I weigh 197.6 which is progress! But still around 40 pounds from where I think a healthy weight is for me. I’ll never be 120 pounds again and, honestly, I don’t ever want to be that tiny. I want muscles. I want strong powerful legs and biceps and CURVES. I don’t think I’d make a good skinny girl.

I feel better, my clothes fit better, I’m stronger, I’m a better me. It hasn’t been easy. When the first pounds come off you feel GREAT. You are MOTIVATED and AWESOME and YEAH! Then you hit a wall. I haven’t lost any weight in the last two weeks and I have to keep reminding myself that I’m STRONGER. I have muscles now that I didn’t have before but it’s still easy to fall into that little lull that leads back to The Quitting. I set a challenge for myself this week to do intense cardio every day. For me this will be TurboJam kicking my ass.

One of the hardest parts of this entire journey so far has been what I see as a personal defeat: The Running. I LOVE to run. I love the sound of my feet hitting the ground, the feeling of air deep down in my lungs, the empty mind as I focus on breathing and getting to my next goal. It’s therapeutic and I love it. I’ve come leaps and bounds from that first two minute run. Cardiovascularly, I think I could run MILES but my shins start to ache after the first mile. Like, BAD ACHE. Like, have consistent pain for the week following. Like, actually limp up and down stairs for the next three days. I can’t begin to explain how frustrating this is to me. I feel like I have failed. My body is failing me.

So here’s my plan. My final effort. I’m going to give this one last try force my body with all my might to shape the fuck up. I’m ordring some shin compression wraps as soon as I’m done posting this and as soon as they get here my run will look like this.

1) Wear compression wraps
2) 10 minute FAST walk to warm my muscles up.
3) 1 mile run at 5.5 MPH (I can go faster but I want a baby step here)
4) IMMEDIATELY ice. Like, get off the treadmill, stretch, drive home, ICE.
5) Aspirin!
6) See how I am the next day.

This is pretty much my last ditch effort. I can’t tell you how bad I want this to work. I just can’t.

Till then, the rest of this week will look like this:

Wednesday: TurboJam Cardio Party
Thursday: Core training at home on the ball with the medicine ball & AbJam
Friday: Gym (cardio and upper body. Have I mentioned I’m addicted to my new bicep muscles?)
Saturday: TurboJam Cardio Party
Sunday: Core training at home on the ball with the medicine ball & AbJam
Monday: Gym (cardio and upper body)

We’ll see how that goes. I want my legs to be completely rested (from weight training at least) when I go for that first run.

AND! Now I’ve gone on a lot longer than I meant to.

Night!

PS – I might start doing some videos they way Julie is. I love watching them and I like the idea of being 1) accountable, and 2) able to look back later and see the change in body and attitude.

PSS – Talk me out of getting a fourth tattoo. Seriously. It’s been on my mind a lot lately.

I’m sure if you are reading this on the internet, or have been near a TV or a radio or a newspaper or another human being in the last 24 hours you’ve heard about what happened in Haiti. I just spent part of my lunch reading the devastating stories of bodies piled up in front of buildings, people dying on the streets because there is no room in the hospitals and people searching fearfully for their missing loved ones.

I saw this link posted a few times on twitter and wanted to share it:

Six ways you can help in Haiti.

The comments are full of even more links and phone numbers you can use to help. Do something, please. If you can’t afford to contribute, repost this to your own blog, tweet it, add it to your facebook status, emial it to a friend, just get the word out.

Ingredients:
1 4-6 pound whole chicken.
1 can of beer (you can use whatever beer you want but we use Modelo Especial)
Seasoning that you like

My dad made this for us when we were visiting at Christmas and it was SO GOOD I’ve made it twice since then. He BBQ’d his but I baked mine. Either is good.

For the seasoning I use garlic powder, Garlic Dude Dust and pepper. Just clean the chicken then dry it, season it, open the can of beer and dump 1/4 out, place the can in a roasting pan, push the chicken down onto the can using the legs to support it, then bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/4-2 hours or until your thermometer reads at least 160 degrees.

I’m not even kidding, guys, this is SO easy to make. It’s like five minutes of prep then let it be. When it’s done I let it rest for about 10 minutes then cut it up. Although it’s so tender that you only have to cut the breasts off, the rest of the chicken will just fall apart. I pull all the skin off and set it aside to use when making chicken stock (will post that recipe soon!) and since the chicken cooks upright all the fat drains off and you are left with lean, flavorful, tender and juicy breasts. *giggle*

My dad made leeks and green beans to go with it so that’s what I made too. I took green beans, leeks, a tablespoon of olive oil, salt, pepper and Garlic Dude Dust and sauteed it till the green beans were cooked but firm and BAM! Complete meal.

I haven’t gotten the nutritional facts together for this yet but the only fat you end up eating is from the tablespoon of olive oil in the green beans and I made enough for 8 servings so even that fat is a pretty small amount. It’s just protein and green veggies and SO GOOD.

If you make it, let me know what you think, what you did differently or what you’d do to make it better.

Enjoy!

LISTS! Because, why not?

• I’ve lost a little over 30 pounds. Believe me, I have A LOT MORE TO SAY ABOUT IT and that will come soon but for now, go check out The Curvy Girl Vlogs over on YouTube. It’s a little group I’ve joined where we vlog once a week. A kind of support group. You can watch my most recent video blow:

• I’m going to start posting recipes and knitting projects and stuff here. I keep thinking that people will find that stuff boring but then I remember that it’s my blog so NEENER NEENER! Also, how could you possible find ME boring. Pfft.
• Britt, please don’t kill me. I AM POSTING!
• Work has been INSANE lately which is a big part of why I haven’t been posting as much. I WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK and then I come home and the LAST thing I want to do is try and conform some kind of coherent sentence. Or try to be entertaining. Or even THINK.
• Extreme Home Makeover makes me cry EVERY SINGLE TIME.
• I finished The Good Wife the other day at work and it was actually pretty good. Probably one of the better new shows I’ve been trying to catch up on. I have pretty much the same taste in TV as Miss Zoot so I’m just going to link to her recent post and you just need to go over and pretend I wrote it.
• I really want a MacBook Pro and have spent an amount of time I’m not willing to admit refreshing the Apple Refurbished site checking out the deals.
• I also want a 4th tattoo.
• I also want to eat a Fudgesicle so I think it’s time to wrap up this list and do just that!

Also, I will leave you with what I think is probably the most awesome picture I have ever taken. Ever. This gorilla and I bonded, we share a soul.