Gee But It's Great to be Back Home

It's good to be home in snowy, snowy Massachusetts. I had a really great trip in terms of staying with my fitness goals. I had a long talk with Mark at Fitness Together on Friday before I left about eating strategies on the road. Flying is usually a problem for me, because there really aren't many healthy choices at airports. I brought an egg and cheese sandwich, apples, almonds, and protein bars for the flight to LA, so didn't need to get anything at Bradley or at my layover in Las Vegas.

I also texted a friend of mine that was also going to be assisting at the workshop over the weekend. I know she usually goes to Trader Joe's for food for the weekend and I was going to be arriving too late to go there, so I asked if she could pick up some yogurt, turkey, and cheese, which were great for breakfast (with almonds and fruit) and lunch and I had protein bars for snacks. I ate out for dinner, focussing on protein and veggies, avoiding sauces and breads. I was tired of turkey and cheese by dinner time on the flight back, but found sushi at the Baltimore airport--perfect. Sushi is high in protein and low in calories, is filling, and tasty.

I also managed to get one workout in over the weekend. The result was I came back weighing exactly what I weighed when I left. Success!

Speaking of protein bars, finding a good one is hard. Most of them are candy bars in disguise. If you read the ingredients, sugar in some form is usually the first ingredient, and if it's not, it's probably because they use a bunch of different forms of sugar, which if combined, would make sugar the first ingredient. What I want is a bar that's high in protein and low in sugar. The one I've settled on is the Think Thin Peanut Butter Protein bar, which has 240 calories, 20 grams of protien, 8 grams of fat, and no sugar, although now that I look it up, it says something about sugar alcohols. I have to find out what that means. When I first started eating them, they seemed pretty tasteless, but now they taste fabulous and are really filling.

Just a little over a week until my assessment!

Lucy's In The Sky With Diamonds

We had to put Lucy to sleep today. She was getting weaker each day and hadn't been able to stand for a day and a half. It's such a hard decision--when would she want to go, what is her quality of life. Especially since we want to keep her with us as long as possible. I am in LA, so I participated by videophone. I'm glad I got to be there. Lynn, a vet tech from Riverbend Animal Hospital, came to our house to administer the drugs. Lynn frequently house sits for us when we're out of town and loves Lucy tremendously, so it was great to have Lucy surrounded by love as she died.

Lucy lived with us for 8 years. She came to us because I got a call from a woman I know who volunteered with an animal rescue organization. She told me that someone had tied a pregnant dog behind their house with no food or water, and had moved. They needed to find a foster home for the dog to have her puppies until they were old enough to find homes and the rescue organization would find homes for the mother and the puppies. If they didn't find a home by the next day, she would be put to sleep.

We had 3 big dogs already, but because we always rescued dogs, we hadn't had puppies. It sounded like fun. Liz and I made a solemn vow that we wouldn't keep the mother or any of the puppies. I didn't have any fear we'd keep the mother--she must have something wrong with her to be abandoned the way she was.

The next day, a woman from the rescue organization came over with the mother. It took seconds for us to fall in love with her. She was engaging, liked people, just a great dog. What sealed the deal was when the woman had to get some paperwork out of her car. Lucy followed her to the door and stood on her back legs to see where she went. Lucy had known this woman for a half hour and was already bonded to her. Liz and I looked at each other and that was that. When the woman came back, we told her we were keeping Lucy.

Lucy gave birth to 9 puppies two weeks later. Despite the short time she knew us, she completely trusted us to help her with her babies. Liz took each puppy as it emerged, helped with removing the balloon surrounding each one, let Liz dry them off, and let Liz bring the runt back to life. We couldn't get Lucy out of the house for a day and a half--she wouldn't leave her puppies. Finally, we had to put all 9 puppies in a cat crate and take them outside to get Lucy out. I've never seen a dog eliminate so much at one time.

We found homes for all 9 puppies. The hardest or us was the runt, Charlie. We cried so much when the person took him, she asked if it was ok she was taking him. A couple of months later, she called us and needed us to take Charlie back--her other dogs kept beating him up. There we were with 5 dogs, but we weren't giving him up again.

Lucy's been a great companion for 8 years, an integral part of our lives. We'll miss her presence, and are thankful for the circumstances that brought her to us.

It Ain't Over

I have 2 weeks left until my next assessment. I'm realizing that I'm starting to think that my training is already done--like there's nothing more I can accomplish in furthering my fitness goals in the next 2 weeks. When I stop to think about it, it's crazy! Two weeks is a full one-fourth of my training period--of course I can increase my fitness level in 2 weeks.

I know I've done this with many things in my life--stopping the race well short of the finish line. In the first place, I'm not going to stop training when my free training period is over, so nothing is really ending. And it's not like I need to taper for my assessment, which is the rationalization I've used for other athletic endeavors. I think it's a self-defeating thing I do. I stop trying before the end, don't achieve my goal, and then have an excuse for not hitting my goal (hey--I didn't prepare the way I should have), and then I get to spend some time in the well of self-hatred--I can't even finish what I started.

Well, no matter what I might be thinking, my thoughts are different from my actions. I'm going to keep up my training. It's going to be challenging because I'm heading to LA this weekend and making a quick trip to Illinois next week. I'll miss a spinning workout on Saturday, but will see how hard I can push myself in the hotel gym. I'll miss another spinning workout on Monday--I'll have to check my flight info to see if I can work out before I have to head to the airport. I moved my Monday Fitness Together workout to Tuesday. I'm going to see if I can fit in an extra spinning class on Wednesday.

I can see as I'm writing this that I'm contributing to being self-defeating by not looking at the workouts that I'll miss and getting new ones in my schedule. I'll do that before I go.

I Love Lucy

I'm just going to do a short post tonight. Our old dog Lucy is in the process of dying, and had a hard day today. Our vet told us before Christmas that she has a tumor in her spleen that's causing bleeding in her abdomen. She could have surgery, but it would either fix the problem or make it worse (I guess that's true of most solutions). She's an old lady, so we decided we didn't want to put her through surgery when there isn't a clear positive reason for doing so. So for the last 3 weeks, she'll have a bad day or two, where her tummy swells from internal bleeding and she is pretty exhausted and doesn't eat, followed by a good day or two, where she eats and goes on short walks and is engaged in life.

The vet said that this is a painless way to go, so we'd love for her to die a natural death, but it's pretty agonizing to watch. When she has a bad day, we're sure she's going to die that day or over night, but she's a pretty tough old bird. As the time has gone by, though, she's getting weaker and weaker, so even on a good day, she can be pretty wobbly when she walks. She still wants to be part of the family, though, so as we go from room to room, she somehow gets herself in the room where we are.

So I'm feeling very down tonight. Here's a picture of Lucy tonight on her new deluxe, heated dog bed:

It Takes a Worried Man to Sing a Worried Song

I only have 7 more free sessions at Fitness Together, and I'm worried that I won't have accomplished enough. I want FT to be able to use my before and after story to show what great work they do, but I've only lost 8 pounds so far and no one has noticed a difference in my appearance. I had Liz take a picture of me to compare with the one she took when I started, and I actually think I looked better in the before picture.

I decided I was being crazy, so I put the pictures aside to look at when I was more rational, and guess what--I still thought I looked better in the before picture. Well, I've got 3 more weeks to have a better after picture. I brought my worry up to Mark when we trained together this morning, and he thought I was disappointed for myself, so he was reassuring me that I've made appropriate progress for the time I've been working out. I guess if Mark isn't concerned that I won't make a good story, I shouldn't be.

I'm very pleased with my progress. I would like it if my weight went down faster, but I feel great! I feel muscles where I didn't before, I can feel the fat disappearing like glaciers in global warming, I'm eating really great food and not having any trouble staying on the diet, and I'm loving the taste of food in a way I haven't. All that's good--stop worrying!

I had two great workouts today. I told Mark about the pain I was having in my ankle, so he had me do a lot of exercises that involved balancing on one leg and then the other. I would have thought that would have exarcerbated the problem, but it worked. Here are pictures from my two favorite exercises from today. I know, the first pictures look like I'm a person in the witness protection program demonstrating exercises while concealing my identity. Anyway, I would step onto a 1 foot high platform on one leg and then do presses. I did that about 40 times .

 

 








For the above exercise, I stood on one leg, holding onto a weighted cable, leaned forward until my leg was straight behind me, and then stood up and did a one-arm row, all without putting my foot down. I think I did 60 of these--4 sets of 15. Or was it 4 sets of 10. All I know is that I was really ready to stop at the end of each set--the sign of a good exercise.

Then tonight, I did spinning at the Y with Peggy. My ankle had been aching a bit, so I debated whether or not to go. I decided to err on the side of going, and if it hurt, I could always stop and come back home. I'm really glad I did, because I was able to make it though the whole hour. I didn't try to stay with Peggy--no jumps of standing for 8, sitting for 8, etc., but I stood a lot and tried to pick up my cadence both standing and sitting. I was able to get my heart rate into the 160s, and according to my heart rate monitor, burned 840 calories. I'm really pleased to have lasted the hour.

Best Laid Plans

Well, my plan of 3 workouts in 24 hours didn't work. After about 10 minutes of spinning yesterday morning, my left ankle started hurting. I rode for another 6 minutes at a slower pace, and not standing on the pedals, and then my ankle started hurting all the time, so I stopped.

My ankle had started hurting during spinning the night before, so for the last 10 minutes, I didn't stand on the pedals and it didn't hurt. The problem with the place my ankle hurts is that it's the place on the inside of my ankle that was operated on, so there are plates and pins under the skin there. Here's the scar:

 The pain could be caused by everything trying to adjust to all that hardware, which is something I've really been aware of on my left wrist when I do push-ups.  Here's my arm scar:

Another cause could be because the pin that goes between the two bones in my leg has broken. My doctor saw that on my last X-ray and said to let her know if it started hurting me.

Unfortunately, it is also the place where I've had chronic pain since I was 23. That summer, I biked back and forth from Northampton and Amherst everyday, using a bike that had a problem with the pedals, so it had a little hitch when I pushed down on the left pedal. I was at an age that it never occurred to me that that repetitive motion could cause a chronic injury.

I know from years of experience, when that chronic pain starts, I have to take it easy on my ankle, or it just gets worse. I've had regular pain in my left ankle since my surgery, but it's never turned into that chronic pain. But I know when I feel it, I have to pay attention, so I'm taking today off, too, so that hopefully I can work out at Fitness Together tomorrow morning and take Peggy's spinning class tomorrow evening. Wish me luck!

Who Knows Where The Time Goes

I only have 3 weeks left in my free training period. Wow--the first 5 weeks flew by! I've decided to step it up for the last 3 weeks and see if I can go to 3-4 spinning classes a week instead of 2. I did another double today.

At Fitness Together this morning, Savanah put me through a workout that was very similar to Mondays--lots of squats and lunges. In fact, the workout was all about the legs except for a short ab workout at the end, because I did an upper body workout yesterday.

The great news is that my legs weren't at all dead at spinning tonight, unlike Monday, and I was able to get my heart rate into the 160s regularly. In fact, I broke into the 170s for the first time. I think it's a sign of my improved conditioning. We'll see how it goes tomorrow morning. I've never done 2 spinning classes and a Fitness Together workout with 24 hours.

I was noticing tonight how much more I'm tasting the flavors in my food, now that I'm not eating any sugar. Both the cucumbers and the cherry tomatoes in my salad tasted incredible--and this is not a notable time of year for tasty vegetables.