Blizzards and Weight Loss Do Not Go Together

Ah, blizzards and weight Loss. They're certainly no peas and carrots.

Since Friday at noon, when I got out of work early because of the impending snowstorm, to, well, right this very moment, where I still don't have work today and haven't since. While I may have work tomorrow, it's less than certain. If the metro's still not fully operational, then the federal government will close, and I, too, will have another day to fill up with nothing but bad habits.

It's been a disaster. Really.

I do well with my diets during weekdays because I'm out of the house for work and bring only a limited amount of food with me. During the weekends, I do well because I exhaust myself with gym trips and walks around the city, far from my kitchen. And then there are blizzards. Where I can't go for walks because crossing the streets is terrible, and after 40 minutes outside my boots are soaked wet and out of commission for the rest of the day. And I can't go to the gym, because it's alternatively closed and separated by a block with a vacant parking lot that nobody's even thought of cleaning.

So, I haven't been doing well. It's my own fault. I got thrown out of my element and out of my routine, and I've let it defeat me.

Falling is okay, though. The trick is to get back up. And I'm going to get back up.

I just hope hope hope this storm that might come on Monday turns out to be a bust.

Yeesh.

Still 237.5

DC is in the midst of preparing itself for a Snowmageddon, so last night I went to the grocery store after work to stock up on a few essentials to carry me through the storm.

A reasonably common sight on street corners in DC is vendors hawking "Street Sense" which is a non-profit newspaper that deals with homelessness and is sold by the homeless as a source of income. While sometimes it can be a little "I'm just trying to walk don't shout at me," in general I've always thought it's a perfectly decent non-profit and respected their work. The vendors generally aren't rude or obstructive, and won't put pressure on you or bother you if you're waiting for a light at the same corner and have indicated you're not interested.

I say generally. There's one guy who hawks the paper on P street between 14th and 15th, right outside of CVS and next to the Whole Foods I go to. He's always been very aggressive, rude, not like the other vendors. So, you know, not a good guy, but whatever, I have my headphones in and can just zip right by. Last night, as I did so, he shouted out something along the lines of "Hey [Lady? Blondie? I couldn't tell] you know I looooooooooove big beautiful women."

Fuck you. (Not you guys!) Seriously. I do not need to be called fat on my way to Whole Foods. What a douche. I half wanted to give him a New York Salute, but instead just walked on by because, you know, I'm not an asshole like he is. I am officially NEVER buying Street Sense again. And I'm going to tell my friends never to buy Street Sense again either. Fuck him.

Needless to say, this made me a little mad. And you know, whatever, I am fat. I get it. I lost 40 pounds. I'm working on losing more. But someone essentially shouting at me on the street "Hey Fattie"? Not helpful.

Brushing it off as best I can, I go into Whole Foods. It's chaotic, at best. I manage to get fruits and veggies, milk, and get myself in one of the enormous lines. (They were actually wrapped around the aisles, it was crazy.) Right in front of me was a mother with two small children, one in a large stroller, and the other a girl of about 5 or so. Although the mother and I briefly commiserated about the length of the lines at the beginning, DC's a city, people don't really talk in the lines, and she wasn't all that comfortable in English. (It seemed like she was speaking Chinese to her children, but if you told me it was another Asian language I'd believe you.)

As I stand around waiting, I sometimes like to stand on my tip toes just to see how long I can hold it. The five year old, it seemed, was amazed by this and asked me how I did it. I showed her. This was about a 30-45 minute line, so we had plenty of time to kill. She and I ended up going through my basket food by food, with me saying "do you like bananas?" and her replying "I like bananas." After we'd been through the 12 or so items, I went into "do you like cheese more than strawberries?" and whatnot. Then I did the only economist trick that's vaguely cool to young children, by proclaiming that I knew she liked cheese more than bananas, even though she hadn't told me, because she liked cheese more than strawberries and strawberries more than bananas. Ah, to be 5 and still impressed by transitive properties and revealed preferences.

And we waited and waited.

She started asking me the same questions I asked her: "Do you like green beans?" "Do you like tomatoes?" and on and on.

And then, as we waited more, she pointed at my tummy and said "Do you have a baby in there?"

Yeesh.

I don't blame the (adorable) little kid. She obviously didn't know any better. And she certainly didn't know I'd just got called fat by the homeless guy outside.

But still, yeesh.

Still, I suppose it's all for the better. I'd hate to lose all the weight before I at least once endured an erroneous question about pregnancy.

Thursday Weigh In

237.5

Well, today's the big official side of the blog weigh in. I am, unfortunately but predictably (I'll get into that part later) up .4 pounds from yesterday. I'm also, however, down 2.7 pounds for the week, which to me is a definite win. 2.7 pounds in a week is a strong showing by almost any definition. I've now lost a full 7 pounds since I came back exactly 2 weeks ago, and 40.5 pounds since I began this whole adventure in July.

So, why was it predictable that I was up .4 today? Two reasons. First, I didn't workout last night. Second: I had easy mac in addition to my dinner. At 220 calories, it's not really that bad for you, but the sodium in it is just insane. I've been in the habit of eating relatively low sodium foods of late, so one processed food and I tend to see a big jump. So, it is what it is, and I don't think it's a real gain.

Okay, it's getting late and I've been trying to write this post forever, and just keep filling it with negative nancy stuff. I lost 2.7 pounds this week. That's great! I'm back over the 40 pounds lost mark. That's great too!

So today, no nitpicking. I'm happy with my progress, and that's that.

Worth It

237.1

The weigh in this morning was very nice, but I don't want to curse myself for tomorrow by talking about it too much. Still, I'm definitely moving in the right direction, and seemingly at a pretty nice clip.

Before I get into anything else, Kimmers of 100 in 28 has officially lost 100 pounds! YAY Kimmers! I'd encourage you all to go over there and congratulate her.

I did, in fact, wake up this morning and go to the gym. (So did Lynn! Go Lynn!) Sure, I didn't hop out of bed at 6:30 as one might like, but I managed to schlep my way over there—through 3 inches of snow—and put in 20 minutes run-walking on the treadmill. Not a huge workout, but if I give myself credit for the 1.4 mile roundtrip walk there, it's about a million times better than not waking up early. I am incredibly proud of myself for getting up, and hope to make a habit of it. I'm still planning on hitting the gym after work tonight. For my lunchtime walk, I'm hoofing it over to the charity to drop off the clothing I'm donating. It's about a mile and a half roundtrip, which is about half of my normal lunch walk, but since I'm going to be carrying lots of bags and it's for a good cause, I'm still giving myself credit.

For the eggs, I ended up just going with two plain scrambled eggs. They ended up being incredibly delicious even without the cheese. I loved all the good egg recipes in the comments! I may try out a few of them as I work through the remaining 7. And to answer a few other assorted questions from the comments:

I do have a DVR and in fact record Biggest Loser as I watch AI live, I just don't want to put off watching Biggest Loser a whole day since I'm almost certain to get spoiled and find out who got booted.

You can technically freeze the Purdue perfect portions things, but whenever I do it just doesn't turn out right. Freezing meat is somehow still above me. Which is actually impressive considering that all that's involved is, you know, putting it in the freezer.

I do have (and love!) Trader Joe's. I eat their organic vanilla yogurt every morning and it's like the best thing ever. I love their salad mixes, their apples, their baby carrots, and use their whole wheat as my go to bread. All their stuff is so cheap and ridiculously delicious. I loooove Trader Joe's. (I love Whole Foods too. I begrudgingly accept that Safeway must be a part of my grocery store rotation, but still hate it with the fire of a thousand suns.)


In other news, I'm wearing contacts today! Two weekends ago (right after I got back to blogging/weight loss) I saw the eye doctor and decided to go for it. I'd considered it before because I hate the way I look in glasses—every pair feels like it makes my face look fat, which could just be because my face is fat, but still makes me emo—but I'd just never been able to get over the fear of touching my eyes. I think part of me just accepted that I was ridiculously unattractive anyway, so what was the difference between a fat girl and a fat girl with glasses?

All of which makes wearing contacts (and learning how to put them in) a big deal for me. The first time I was able to walk outside and see without a pane of glass separating me from the world was just amazing. And while I've worn the contacts on the weekends, today's the first weekday where I had enough energy and enough will to get them in on a work day. I'm so, so happy I did.

So, so, so much of this journey is just accepting that you're worth something. I'm worth work outs, I'm worth eating healthy. And you know what? I'm even worth touching my eyes for. (And that, blog buddies, is friggin' terrifying.)

For the comments: do you wear glasses or contacts or none of the above? And if you're feeling inspirational and have a strong tolerance for cheesiness, what's one thing you're going to do (or did!) today because you're worth it?

A Groundhog Day Resolution

238.2

Another day, another .4 pounds down.

Yesterday was, in a word, solid. My eating was absolutely on point: the food I'd brought into work for breakfast/lunch/snacks, and a chicken breast and salad for dinner. Exercise was 100% acceptable: an hour walk during lunch and an hour on the elliptical after work. I'm not yet one of those awesome people of awesomeness who does early morning workouts, but I still give myself full credit for both a lunchtime walk and a regular workout, with a few bonus points for pulling out a full 60 minutes on the elliptical rather than wussing out after 45.

Today, I'm mostly feeling exhausted. I went into bed a bit before 9:30, but I wasn't able to fall asleep until well after midnight. I've been having a lot of problems sleeping of late, and it's the most annoying thing ever. I want to be able to fall asleep at a decent hour mostly so I can wake myself up at 6:30 to go workout. But I can't fall asleep early. And then I can't wake up early. And thus the bad cycle of badness continues.

I'm tempted to say, here and now, my Groundhog Day resolution is to wake up tomorrow and go in for a morning workout. But tonight has both American Idol (my gosh can they get to Hollywood week already? I'm so over auditions) and Biggest Loser, so going to bed early is definitely not happening. But maybe just maybe I'll be able to power through and wake up early tomorrow, even if I can't go to bed early tonight.

Okay, yeah, let's do it. My Groundhog Day resolution is to workout tomorrow morning before work. No excuses.

In other news, I've run through my Purdue perfect portions chicken breasts and am now faced with the difficult problem of making an actual decision about what I want for dinner. (Whenever I buy the Purdue perfect portions I pretty much have to eat them for 5 days nonstop because there are 5 pieces of chicken in the package and the sell-by date is always like 5 or 6 days ahead of when I buy them, no matter what. It's annoying because it's such a commitment of "guess I know what I'm eating all week" but it does make things easier.) I have 9 eggs that expire on the 8th, so I'm thinking I should do something with those, but everything I come up with is way more calorific than the 130 calorie piece of chicken I've been making the centerpiece of my dinners. 2 scrambled eggs would work, but I'd want cheese, and then I end up at 230 calories. 1 sunny-side up egg is also viable, but that needs toast, and then I'm at 215 calories. Decisions, decisions.

For the comments: how do you like your eggs? Happy Groundhog Day!

230s!

238.6

Technically, I re-entered the 230s on Sunday, but today is my first time posting about it, so yay 230s! Thus far I like them much better than the 240s.

I'm .6 pounds away from reclaiming my 40 pounds lost trophy, which is pretty exciting. This is also the first time since I've started back up that my BMI has been 40.whatever instead of 41.whatever. There are tons of baby markers of progress that I could give you (Over 5 pounds lost since I started again! More than halfway to my mini goal!), but the basic point is that the weigh in this morning is a pretty good one.

I originally had all sort of outdoors adventures planned for this weekend, but unfortunately DC got hit by a nasty snowstorm which forced me to cancel most of my plans. Instead, inspired by all of Monica's do-gooding last week, I decided to sort out all my too big clothes and see if I could find a good place to donate to. Luckily, there's a women's shelter not too far from my house that does really great work--including health care, education, training, and job placements and all sorts of support--that takes some donations, and almost all the stuff I wanted to give away was on the list. (Interestingly enough, they right now will only accept clothing in larger sizes, which I suppose isn't that surprising when you think of the strong connection between obesity and socioeconomic status: donors are statistically more likely to be thin, and those using the donations are more likely to be fat. Which isn't to say there aren't exceptions: see, for example, me.) Anyway, I'm overjoyed that I've found a place that will be able to make good use of all my nice but too big suits and work sweaters. They were even able to take my casual pants and shirts. I'll be dropping the donations off on Wednesday during my lunch hour.

Overall, I'm mostly in a good and productive mood. There are some nagging doubts and issues that I really ought to blog about, but if I keep trying to write then I won't be able to go for my lunchtime walk, and that would clearly be no good.

So, off I go, into the cold and (now slushy) snow to get a bit of fresh air. Enjoy the afternoon, blog buddies. (For the comments: what are you going to do today that's outside?)