Wednesday Confessions

Confession #1:  When it comes down to it, I'm a lazy person.

I love laying in bed and watching Netflix.  I love to be super slammed kinda busy occasionally, but I just like to take life slow.  When working, I go out of my way to make sure I am not perceived as a lazy person.  I work the hardest so no one can call me what I really am.  This isn't self-deprecating, just true.  When I was unemployed in that other midwestern city, I had no money to go anywhere or do anything.  No working car.  So I stayed home.  For a month.  If I was hungry, Taco Bell was just around the block as was a drug store that had a large food section.  I'd load up with some good stuff -- salad stuff, but also ice cream.  Lots and lots of ice cream.  What else was I going to do all day but eat, watch NCIS on Netflix, and hope that an employer would call me back?  Lord only knows how much weight I put on during that time!

Confession #2:  I need balance in my nutrition.

I'm not "cured" of my old habits, but am improving.  I made these for lunch this week:

Spring rolls with yummy saucess

Roasted Veggies

Yes, the same thing for lunch, every day this week.  Good in theory, bad in practice.  Even on Tuesday I did not want what I had!  I ate lunch, had yogurt in the afternoon, then order pizza for dinner.  Same thing with today.  Super healthy lunch, yogurt and fruit for a snack, leftover pizza for dinner.  I REALLY need to get an appointment with the nutritionist, and possibly a therapist, geez!

Confession #3:  I am not happy school is out for the summer around here.  Yesterday, someone caught the apartment dumpster on fire.  This morning, I go out to my car and I see this:

Oh yes, vandals took my nobs to my radio!!!  It still works, but I was pissed!  My '89 doesn't lock (actually, it does lock, I just can't get it open after it locks!), so they just let themselves in.  You cant access the gas tank or the trunk without the key in the ignition, so they didn't take anything else.  Car seat was left in there, headphones, registration and insurance papers.  All there in their same places.  And this is a neighborhood where people leave bikes outside, strollers, grills, etc. Ugh.

Today I topped 1000 workout minutes for the month!!! Hot dog! :) hehe

That Devil on My Shoulder

I had 5 days off of working out about 2 weeks ago.  It felt necessary because I was so exhausted and eventually sick.  When I got back in the pool last Wednesday, I was ready to kick some butt.  As you see, I am often a big fish in a little pond when it comes to the skill level and speed of lap swimmers at the YMCA.  So when I saw the people in the pool I thought, pshht, piece of cake.  I'll show these people what lap swimming really is.  (Please note: Yes, my inner ego is really this high.  Quite a fault, but I'll take that over bashing myself any day.)

So I get in, do my warm up, switch lanes because water aerobics was starting, do a small set.  Then on to the main show:
10 x 50 yards
2 on :60
2 on :55
2 on :50
2 on :55
2 on :60

Looks like cake walk, doesn't it?  In the first 50 or two, I notice a guy in the lane next to me.  He is lap-ing me.  WHILE PULLING.  Yeah, only using his arms to propel himself through the water. If I had any thought of being "fast", it flew right out the window! I have generally being making 50s on :52-53.  So this was work for me!  And that is where my self-esteemed dropped to the bottom of the pool like an anchor.  I was trying my hardest and this guy was still lapping me (I'm assuming he is in college, and a collegiate swimmer).  I was barely making :55 seconds for the 50s, my swim shorts were falling down, my goggles were fogging up.  I was trying so hard, but I could not propel myself through the freaking water as fast as I needed to. All of a sudden, I was fat, I was slow, I was a terrible swimmer.  I should give up on weight loss and being healthy, and just go eat a mountain of food and sit on my butt because swimming all these laps and not making the right times was going to get me no where.  Instead of doing 10 x 50 yards, I ended up doing at least a 200 without stopping.

Looking rough after a hard swim.  Sometimes it is a battle!

Finally, finally, the torture was over.  I snapped back to reality.  Who the heck was this person who was swimming those terrible 50s?  Was that really me thinking those thoughts?  Anyone who knows me will describe me as a positive person...and that was a side of myself that I rarely see.  Things weren't sunshine and daisies, I was still annoyed (with myself?  with the fast guy swimmer? idk!).  So annoyed that I had a 50 butterfly on deck.  I was so immersed in my thoughts that I didn't realize I did a whole 50 and didn't die of exhaustion.  That's huge for me!  It is such a mental game.  Butterfly is the hardest stroke and yes, it does cause pain because it is that hard.  Reminded me of the first time I ran.  I was on top of the world!

Geez, sounds like a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde swim workout over here.

And yesterday, I had 4 x 50 butterfly to do.   I tried to talk myself out of it, but I wouldn't let myself back down from the challenge.  I survived!  Yes, there were some breathes in which I got a mouthful of water instead of air, but I just kept plugging along.  200 yards of butterfly -- hey!  I used to race that.  haha and yes, that was a painful swim back then too.



It appears I'm approaching the 1000 minute mark for May workouts.  VERY happy about that.  If I workout tomorrow (and I'm assuming no working out on Thursday because I'm babysitting), that will be 20 out of 31 days working out in May.  SUPER excited about that!  It is hard to believe I went years at a time without swimming and without exercising.  I'm having a lot of fun!

And one last note for tonight.  I found a running buddy.  Here she is:

SwimTot!

There were 5-7 extra (mostly drunk) people in our apt over the weekend.  That's not really my thing, so I took SwimTot on some trails.  And she wanted to run.  And she whooped me.  That kid is fast.  Now, it is easier to carry her 40lbs across land than it is my 270, but when she got tired, I caught up to her and told her to keep going (This is your soccer conditioning!) and she did!

Wait -- What's that?  I weigh 270 now??? haha yep, lost another like 1.8 since the last time I weighed in.  Pretty awesome.  Bout to get another pair of unmentionables out of my grab bag for another 5 lbs lost!

10 Things Thursday

1.  Walked a treadmill mile, lifted over 20,660 pounds in my circuit, and walked/ran an outdoor mile today.  I will be sore tomorrow.   That last mile was definitely 19 mins!  It was slow but steady.

2.  Had plans for dinner on Tuesday.  During the day I picked out what I was going to get from their online menu.  An hour before dinner, I got a text that the plans had changed and we were going the Cheescakee Factory.  I promptly threw my plan out and tried to grasp for a new one.

3.  My new fave piece of advise while eating out is to get an appetizer as an entree. I had a piece of bread while we ordered, about 1/3 of one of the 3 little loaves they give you.  I got a "cup" of soup, which in cheeesecake factory terms is a bowl.  It was too salty, I dripped way too much on my shirt, but I ate it all.  I got the Vietnamese Spring Rolls.  There were 3, I had 1.  It came w/2 sauces.  1 peanut sauce and one random other sauce. 

4.  I've had 0 caffeine this week and I feel great.  Initially it was because I was loading up on tea instead of coffee to kick this cold, but I like how no caffeine makes me feel, I'll probably stick with it.  Plus, I can drink this echineacea tea without sweetener, love that!

5.  I'm doing a 5K in less than a month!!!  I want to run as much as I can, but I am so scared because I cannot run a lone mile yet!  I know it isn't necessary to be able to, but I look forward to the day when that can happen!

6.  I haven't weighed myself this week, but last week I was at 272.2.  Hoping to see another drop this week.

7.  My temp job keeps hassling me about taking the job full time.  The pay would be great (like almost $5/hr more than I am making now!), but I am afraid I will do that sucky job for the rest of my life. 

8.  Duh I had cheescake!!!  I got a coffee flavored one.  I brought the leftover cheesecake pieces home (mine and my friends).  They mostly got eaten by the other people in this household.  I had the last of one last night and the last of the other one tonight.  Yummmmmm.

9.  I need new swimsuits in a terrible way.  Both recreation and workout.  The holes in my orange suit have expanded!  Sounds like some $$$ to me, good thing I have my real women dollars, or whatever they are callled, from LB.

Oh geez.

10.  I think I had a foodgasm this week.  No, it wasn't from cheesecake.  I had my leftover spring rolls and a sweet potato for lunch at work on Wednesday.  I mixed the left over peanut sauce and other sauce together = genius.  Mixing it in with a plain sweet potato = foodgasm.  I would eat it every meal if I could!

A winning combination!

10.5 And in case you were wondering.  I don't really like car decals, but this is one that describes my family well!

How Ass-Tastic!

Still here, still crazy.

       As usual, my life has been crazy and boring all at the same time.  After 2 weeks off working out in April, I was soaring through May with as many workouts as I could fit in.  I was swimming, running, strength training, recumbent biking, and even something new – rowing machines!  I was tired.  Okay, I was EXHAUSTED.  I wasn’t getting enough sleep, but I was trying.  My workouts made me feel good, so feeling tired was an okay thing to happen. 

       Then, one day I tracked my calories.   It wasn’t a good day because I had to eat my snacks for breakfast (woke up late, almost late for work = no time to grab something healthyish at Starbucks).  I only had 620 calories before 6pm.  D-U-H.  No wonder I was exhausted!  SparkPeople told me that I need 1800-2100 cals a day right now.  I felt terrible, exhausted, and cranky, but I had an appointment at the Y (which ended up being less than ideal).  I felt great after the Y, but in the ended up with about 1250 cals, still not the “fuel” that I need.  I really need to see a nutritionist! 

    Last Thursday I babysat and had no time for the gym.  Friday rolled around.  I knew after Saturday afternoon, there wouldn’t be another chance to workout this weekend.  On Friday, some $#@! Hit the fan at work and my emotions made me want to crawl in a hole and sleep till my problems were over (my fave method of ignoring my feelings is def sleep!).  Friday I came home and decided to take a nap and I could run outside when I woke up.  Well it was dark when I woke up (and I didn’t feel anymore caught up on sleep L) .  Saturday I slept in, and when I decided to go for a run, it was already 77 degrees.  Sick! So no workout then.  From being so inside/air-conditioning to outside/heat&humidity, I got a cold, or at least the cold that I was getting was more pronounced due to these circumstances.   I also ate lots of sugary stuff and felt physically terrible because of it!  Monday, I was still too sick to workout.  Although I did have a great dance when I found the “multi-symptom relief, night time” medicine.  Okay, it was a song AND dance that SwimTot had me repeat because she found it so amusing.  Yesterday I had dinner w/friends.  But today, today I will swim!!!  I’ve already had my bag packed since last Thursday, so I will pick up SwimTot, put her in childcare, swim my workout I printed out last week, and then retrieve her from childcare to go splash around some more.

     Last week I had some of the hardest workouts thus far.  No joke.  Felt super nauseous while swimming.  I like challenging workouts like that.  I just need to find that balance!  But you can be sure I'll post on how I do!