Seesaw

Wow--my weight is all over the place. Last week, I gained weight almost every day and ended up 3.3 pounds above my low weight the week before. I stayed within my calories every day, so I kept expecting it to come off the next day, but no, ever upward. Fortunately, the opposite seems to be true this week, and I've dropped 1.5 pounds in two days.

It's such a mental challenge to stay focussed when I'm gaining weight. My historic pattern has been to exercise and eat carefully till I hit my weight target, then slowly put the weight back on over a period of 3-5 years by the magic combination of eating more and exercising less, until I hit a weight that I can no longer take it, and the I start the whole cycle all over again.

My worst was a number of years ago when I weighed myself every week and watched my weight climb and climb, and felt powerless to do anything about it. My limit that time was 188.8. It seemed a perfect place to stop because that's the weight the electronic scale starts at when it resets itself. That was the first time I realized I had the capacity to be really obese. I'm glad I stopped. I've read that gaining and losing weight is really hard for your heart--I guess harder than staying stable. I really, really, really want to stop the cycle. I know that in order to do that, I have to pay attention to what I weigh, and when I put on a few pounds, take it seriously. I'm doing a great job now, but I've eaten healthily before and know how easy it is to slip into unhealthy patterns.

Oh, oh

I'm having trouble keeping this blog going. I think it's important to continue--that it's part of staying connected to my commitment to fitness. I need to schedule a time everyday to blog. And it can't be at 10:30 at night like it is now, when I should already be asleep.

Out for a Spin

I feel so great after spinning class. I feel thinner and more muscular, even though there can be no real change from before I went to class. I'm really glad the workout yesterday focussed on the upper body, because even though I got what I asked for yesterday in terms of soreness, I didn't use any of those muscles spinning. Both my abs and my triceps are REALLY sore. I'm a little sore in my deltoids. Surprisingly, given all the pushups I did, I'm not sore in my pecs.

My friend Ruth suggested that I think about getting a recumbent bike with an extra wheel, so I don't have to worry about falling and breaking something. My first reaction was, a bike with an extra wheel is called a tricycle, and no way in hell am I riding one. But I've been mulling it over in my mind--maybe with the aging of the population there is some kind of bike-like thing I can enjoy riding and get a good workout outside on, that doesn't scare me to death on these hilly, pot-hole filled roads. I'll check out the local bike shop, and actually, I'll look online now. I do want something I can do outdoors when the weather gets nice. I spent the whole summer inside last summer and I want to make up for it this year.

Doubt and Worry

I haven't posted in a couple of days. It's hard to stay focussed on it on days I don't work out. I rearranged my Fitness Together schedule so now I'll do spinning on Mondays and Saturdays and Fitness Together on Wednesdays and Fridays. I tried calling my doctor's office today to see if I can add in running but kept getting the answering machine with no recording option.

I'm finding myself worrying about whether I will stay on my fitness and nutrition regimen without the level of overview I was getting from Fitness Together. I wasn't aware of how much it influenced me knowing someone was looking at everything I ate and that I had a commitment to someone else to workout 4 times a week. I've haven't been over my eating points ever since I started, but I did have a beer tonight. It tasted really good. I have to keep in mind that if I think my diet is heading south, I can always ask the people at Fitness Together if I can send it in every week. It's not as if asking for support is some shameful thing to be avoided at all costs.

I had a great workout today. I told Savanah that I wanted to be sore tomorrow, so she gave me a workout where everything I did, I did for 20 seconds, rested for 10, and repeated 6 times. I started with pushups--the last 2 sets were murder. Then I did squats with 12 pound weights at shoulder level, going into a press when I stood up. Then I did ab work, starting by sitting on the floor in a vee with my arms and legs in the air, holding a ball and lowering it to the floor on the right side and then the left side, followed by crunches with my legs in the air, reaching my hand to the outside of the opposite leg.

Then onto dips on the bench, lowering myself to work the triceps. Finally, rows using the rings. My body was at about a 45 degree angle from the floor, holding myself with straight arms with the rings, and then pulling myself up.

All in all, just the kind of workout I asked for. When it was happening, I was unhappy that I had requested such a hard workout, but it felt great when it was done. I'm sure I'll be sore tomorrow. Fortunately, it was mostly an upper body workout, so spinning shouldn't be painful.

It's Sad, So Sad

I got a comment from my niece Sarah about my blog about the year the family triathlon, which we called the Ironola, fell apart. I'm sure that only in the interest of historical accuracy, she corrected my account and let me know she was 9 the year she won, not 11. How humiliating! I was 39, and all but 2 of my siblings were younger than that. The person who suffered the worst humiliation, however, was the boyfriend of one of my nieces. He was going to the University of Minnesota on a track scholarship, and I'm sure thought that he would be teaching all of us a lesson about how real athletes perform. I don't remember where he placed in the competition, but the idea that a 9 year old girl had beaten him was too much to take--he hid in his cabin the rest of the week. Poor guy--I wonder if he still recoils at the memory.

Sara, here's my wish for you. See this picture of your adorable daughter:


I hope that we reinstitute the Ironola this year and that it continues, and that 7 short years from now when Naomi is 9 and you are 37 (about the age I was when you won the Ironola), she beats you in it. Then, and only then will justice prevail.

The proof that yesterday's workout was as tough as I thought came through today. My muscles are so sore! I've been getting out of my chair like a 90 year old and creaking around until my muscles get a little warmed up. I love that feeling, especially at a time like this when I've been working out regularly--I know I'm pushing myself to a new level of fitness.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I Think I've Got It!

I've still been struggling with how to plan my workouts so I get the most out of each one. I want to work out 4-5 times a week, and with that schedule, it seems crazy to work out at Fitness Together in the morning and go to spinning class in the afternoon on Mondays. When I get home from spinning, I'm completely shot and I have to spend the entire day eating to account for the 1,000+ calories I burn. There would have been a time when that would have been a fun problem to solve, but because I'm not eating desserts or drinking alcohol or anything with sugar in it, i's hard to consume an extra 1,000 calories and I don't want my body to think I'm in starvation mode and slow my metabolism.

Monday is the best day for spinning because Peggy teaches the class and she's amazing, most of the rest of the week spinning is at 6am, and I'd rather be sleeping, and while here is a class on Wednesday at 6pm, it's meant for beginners and Wednesday evening is when I try to hang out with Avery (Heidi and Gina's 14 year old son). We're having fun watching old movies that I love.

So I finally figured out what I hope will work--go to Fitness Together on Wednesdays and Fridays at 7:30am, do spinning on Mondays and Saturdays, and fit in another class if I'm in the mood, like spinning or yoga at the Y on Sunday. I have a message into Fitness Together to see if my old Wednesday time slot is still open.

I haven't been putting pictures in my blog for a while for a pretty silly reason. I like doing my blog on my iPad. I'm on computers all day long, so switching to the iPad in the evening feels like I'm doing something completely different. I couldn't figure out how to insert pictures, though. So since I'm having such a brilliant day, I thought, why don't I google "how to load pictures on a blog using an iPad" and of course there were a bunch of solutions. I picked the $2.99 solution of buying an app called BlogPress. I'm writing this blog using it. It's easy to use and even easier for inserting pictures than using Blogger directly. I just transfer my pictures from my iPhone to my iPad, open BlogPress, touch the picture of the camera, touch the picture I want to load, and shazam, it's there! I love apps, I love technology, what a great time to live.

I had a great lower body workout today. Lots of squats and lunges. I will be pleasantly sore tomorrow, which is always my goal. Mark took pictures of three of my favorite exercises today. For the first one, I had a 15 pound dumbbell in one hand, leaned forward to bring the arm with the dumbbell down toward the floor and the leg on the same side up until it was parallel with the floor, like this:





Hmmm--my leg isn't exactly parallel, I'll blame it on Mark for not catching me at the perfect time. Then I stood up without touching my foot to the floor and curled and pressed the weight like this:



This was great for balance and strength. I wish I could say that I did all the reps without my foot ever touching the floor, but I'm very principled about not lying on President's Day.

Then I did 4 sets of walking lunges, starting with 20 pound dumbbells, like this:



One set involved lunging the length of the room forward and lunging in reverse back to where I started. I have to admit I rejected a lot of the lunge photos because it is hard to keep your back straight while lunging with weights.

Then my very favorite--squatting while pulling up a weight stack. What I really loved about this today was that I squatted the entire weight stack--85 pounds--as you can clearly see from this picture:



All in all, a fun day.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:N Farms Rd,Northampton,United States

How Satisfying

This has been a very satisfying week. I'm down 5.3 pounds from Monday. I know some of that is because I had a more salty diet than normal on vacation, but I'm down 3.4 pounds from before we left. I know that losing weight is never linear--there will be times that I'll stay the same weight for a week or so and times I'll lose more quickly, but it sure has been satisfying to get on the scale every day this week and weigh less.

I feel like I've really changed my eating habits. I really like the way I'm eating and how I feel as a result. One day on Ometepe I had 3 beers over the course of the afternoon and evening and ate ice cream. I really didn't like how I felt that evening. I want to remember that evening when I'm feeling tempted. The other important thing is that if I have a day like that, it can be a unique event, it doesn't mean I have to eat or drink like that regularly.

I feel like I'm back in the swing exercising, too, even though I don't have a specific event I'm aiming for. Wednesdays may be difficult until I find something I enjoy doing that day that I enjoy and is challenging. My niece Sara has proposed a running race at the lake this summer. We used to do what we called a triathlon at the lake--it started with three events--rowing, swimming, and running, but we cut it down to 2 because there weren't enough row boats, and the ones that were there varied so much in design it wasn't an equal contest. It was a great time. Being the competitive family we are, we gave out trophies and kept expanding the categories we gave trophies to--first place individual, first place team, first place over 40, and the most absurd, first person to finish who hadn't one a trophy. It all came to a crashing halt the year Sarah won. She was 11 or 12. My generation could see the future and it didn't involve any trophies for us, so that was it, we stopped doing it. So it will be fun to start it up again. I say we should still call it a triathlon--if we could call it that for 2 events why not for 1? I have to call my doctor to she what she thinks about me running--keep your fingers crossed.