Joshilyn Monday, 8th of February 2010 at 08:49:54 PM
Not the face! Not the face!
Of course, she would probably just dodge and say, “Punches are good cardio! You don’t get arms like this for free!”…Lydia gave me a copy of The Thirty Day Shred, and my whole body feels pretty dern shredded about right now. Not shredded like a Jersey Shore kid, alas. More shredded like cheese.
Title aside, I really, really, really like this DVD, even though it is high impact out the wazoo, so people with gimpy knees, beware. I like it because it is Short Attention Span Theatre. Three minutes of strength, two minutes of cardio, one minute of core work, repeat 3 times.
This means you do not do ANY single exercise for longer than a minute, and the majority you do for 30 or 45 seconds. This works for me, because I have a brain like a squirrel. I do not mean my brain is literally like a squirrel’s brain, all nut-ccentric and the size of a pea. I mean my brain is like a WHOLE squirrel in that it runs around nonsensically in short bursts in directions that seem random but probably have something to do with mating or snacking, and when it panics, it zig-zags.
It also, like a whole squirrel, is not task oriented or efficient. It likes to do a thing for a short period of time, and then do some other thing. Right now, for example, it wants to stop blogging and engage in 30 seconds of cake eating.
SO in order to not eat cake, and also in order to not talk about the elephant in the room (which is ME, I am afraid, since I am EPIC failing with a scale number that turned on me and went way the hell the wrong way) I am going to tell you a couple of other goods and services I am finding useful. Although considering that I, in the room, am best represented by the last plate on the right, you may want to take these recommendations with a grain of Mrs. Dash. Or fresh basil. But not salt, obviously, because salt makes you retain water.
Even if you are not on the diet, you can find so much to love in The South Beach Cookbook. We try something new from it every week, and so far we have been 70% wowed, 25% Meh-ed and only 5% Ew-ed. This is an extremely high ratio of Wow to Meh to Ew, especially considering that I am including the kid reactions here. Family faves include the shrimp ginger stir fry and “South Beach Mashed Potatoes” which we have renamed “cauliflower and parmesan casserole that tastes nothing at all like potatoes, but we all really like it and I guess is the same color as mashed potatoes, so what-ev.”
I may have the name slightly wrong...
And finally, if you are in one of the many markets that has stopped carrying Kashi Vive, and your cereal heart is broken forever because nothing like it is anywhere on the cereal aisle, do not commit ritual cereal seppuku just yet. Trade Joe’s has a thing called “Sticks, Weeds, and Crumpies” (or something very like that—see pic) and it is almost as perfectly super. Although it is not probiotic (Alas!) it does boast a little more protein, a little less sugar, and has a very similar taste and texture as an accidental bonus. Of course, if you are in one of the many markets that has stopped carrying Kashi Vive and you have no Trader Joe’s near you, I am sorry to report that you are shafted. Sad panda!
You can always turn to the internet and order 36 boxes of Vive directly from the source. Yes, I pioneered this tactic. No, I am not exaggerating. I have 34 boxes left, and come the product discontinuation notice, I am taking alllll of them and a huge stockpile of weaponry into my survivalist Vive-hole.
Those are my best diet bets…what do you swear by? Sports bra and cook book recs especially appreciated this week.
I have been a mother for ten years. I have been a wife for twelve. I have written several novels. Those took a long time. I’ve read fiction, while nursing a sleepless infant, in tiny little intervals so interrupted that it took me months to read a single book. I’ve completed two degrees. I’ve knit afghans. I’ve watched the entire miniseries, “The Winds of War,” on VHS. I have practiced the violin with my child almost daily for six years. No, I am not impatient. You might almost say I am a paragon of patience. I do not easily get distracted, when I’m working toward a goal that I want. I learned as a child, the value of delayed gratification. In many aspects of my life, I am all about the daily grind.
Except when it comes to diet and exercise.
When I adopt a new fitness program, I have about two weeks of energy and will power and enthusiasm in a bucket. It flows generously from me, spilling over into my conversations, interrupting my thoughts, invading my web browsing, my blogging. I really love that excellent honeymoon phase, where I’m tracking calories, trying to make my own salad dressing, suffering, weighing myself. Sisters and brothers, let me tell you: as I sit here in week 5, that part is over. I have to remind myself to weigh myself. I have stopped counting calories, except unlike Mir who has stopped counting because she’s transcended it, I’ve stopped counting because I have been bored into paralysis by it. Dieting is boring. Everything about it bores me to the last twitch of my corpuscles. The bucket of excitement is so dusty and dry that the wind whistles through a rusted out hole in the bottom, and the sound it makes isn’t even a mournful whine. It’s just a whisper.
I just want something else to do, something else to think about. I don’t want to think about fiber and protein any more, it has dissolved my brain into an unhealthy inorganic mush, and I’m bored with it. I want to be done.
But there are a lot of things that bore me this much: dishes, laundry, driving, reading “Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?” for the millionth time. Yet, I don’t give up laundry after a few weeks, thinking, “Ah, well, I’m too good for laundry, it’s just not scintillating enough for me.” I don’t wander away from the dishes, feeling that a person of my caliber should not have to be dragging along, cleaning plates. I just do the dishes and laundry and shut up about it, and at this point in my long, joyful life, I don’t even really notice it, except sometimes. And then I notice it briefly, and do it anyway.
Why can I not put diet and exercise into the dishes and laundry category? Why can I not do the diet like I wait for the dog to come back in from outside? Am I so glamorous and significant that I can’t measure my dinner for 10 straight weeks? Am I so completely absorbed by my exciting life that I cannot pay attention to what I put in my mouth and what I do with my arms and legs? I get dressed every day — do you know how boring that is? The same clothes, basically, in the same sequence. I wash my hair — and after 37 years that’s not exactly like unwrapping the big present under the tree. It’s more like boring drudgery, like chopping vegetables, like resisting Dove Give In to Mint ice cream, like marching up and down the stairs. Yet I sit here with reasonably clean hair, stultifying boredom notwithstanding.
This week’s goal: Pay attention. No rushing off to investigate shiny objects. Notice everything I put in my mouth. Exercise like I do the laundry: without excitement, without joy, but with grim, bitter, cyclical, endless determination.
In our infinite—okay, nearly infinite—collective wisdom, we here at Five Full Plates have decided that as part of our endeavor we should do a weekly check-in to see where we’re all at, and what we’ve learned in the past week.
Congratulations to us and to everyone who’s playing along at home: We have officially reached the half-way point! If you care to picture this journey as a mountain, now we’re either in for the hardest part or we’re coming down the other side, depending on how masochistic your personal imagery tends to be. (Okay, maybe that wasn’t the right metaphor.)
Here’s how our plates currently stack up:
Joshilyn reports, “I cannot get on the scale today. I spent 14 of the last 24 hours on planes and the OTHER ten hours I spent drinking wine. I know from experience that that will put me up anywhere from two to four pounds. I KNOW it will fall off in the next 48 hours, and yet I ALSO know that if I look at that number, on top of the two pound retreat damage, I may actually be higher THAN MY STARTING WEIGHT. If that were to happen I would be totally derailed, decide I can’t possibly accomplish this, and quit. So, this week, in a near miraculous burst of learning, I decided not to sabotage myself. Or at any rate, I chose not to sabotage myself this one time. I have yet to see if this particular bit of knowledge has staying power. Before the planes, I legitimately gained 1.8 actual pounds, thanks to Jameson’s, dark chocolate and working out only once a day. As of Thursday, I am 2.7 down from starting weight.” (I am fairly certain that what she learned this week was that planes are evil.)
Lydia lost no weight this week, still sticking at 4.2 pounds lost. But considering the amount of transgression that happened on retreat with Joshilyn, she is just considering herself lucky not to be back at square one. This week she’s going to resume that silly exercise thing, and try and log 3000 stairs climbed by the end of the week. That, coupled with a return to virtue regarding liquor and chocolate, should shave a few pounds off the old rump. (I’m not sure what Lydia learned this week. Maybe that Joss gets really mad when they go on retreat together and she doesn’t gain any weight?)
Gray has tragically regained .6 of a pound this week, bringing her total lost to 2.6 pounds, and she is also sick with a chest cold. She theorizes that the extra poundage is from the fluids in her lungs, and steadfastly refuses to consider that what she put in her mouth this week has anything at all to do with her weight loss results. Lots of reading, television, and computer gaming are what the doctor ordered, so Gray learned this week about Geraldine Brook’s The People of the Book, fictional interglactic archeology, Photoshop gaffes, and she figured out a new way to make a bucketload of Warcraft gold by buying cheap mats in the AH, crafting things, and vendoring them. (I… am not sure I fulled grokked that last sentence.)
Kira lost zero pounds this week, which she is FINE with, because earlier this week she had gained a pound and a half. She is now holding steady at 5 pounds down. Kira says, “This week I learned that if I am not careful, when I return to the gym with renewed vigor, I will just hurt my stupid self. Also, swearing does not burn very many calories.” (Welcome home, Kira. We missed you!!)
And Mir (that’s me!) is willing to take a break from her Rocky-style swaggering around the house to report that as of this morning she stands at a full 5.2 pounds lost. Honestly, this week’s breakthrough, whatever it was, is intoxicating. I feel fabulous. This week I learned to give woo-woo a chance and focus on what I want, not on what I think is annoying or bad or aggravating. Who knew positive thinking actually works? Certainly not me.
So that’s us. How are you holding up? Five weeks have passed—where do you stand?
Oh, look. My tail fell off. And my lean-to blew over. And THE WORLD IS ENDING!
Last week I was a gigantic sack of sad. I was the saddest, most downtrodden, positively pitiful dieter that ever there was. Look; I know most women in this country have a long history of dieting and setting fitness goals, but this is new territory for me and I am quite frankly alarmed at how freakin’ hard it is. I track calories and ride my elliptical when I’d much rather be napping and yet I lose no weight? Am I on Candid Camera or something?
It didn’t seem like it was possible, but here I was. Working hard. Checking in every week and getting more and more frustrated, until the Week 4 check-in had me all but taking my ball and going home. Because—make no mistake—if not for this blog, I would’ve been all, “Screw this, I’m done!” a couple of weeks ago.
I persevered, though, because while I am more than comfortable letting myself down (another issue for another day!), I couldn’t let these other fine ladies down, nor risk the face loss that would occur if I threw the 38-year-old equivalent of a loser’s temper tantrum. Also, there was the matter of the shoes.
My purple Frankenshoes.
Joshilyn went on and on and on about her fancy Frankenshoes, you know, until I decided that I needed a pair of similar monstrosities. Because if they’re truly going to firm my butt and legs while I’m just walking around the grocery store complaining about the price of chicken, why not? Like the good bargainholic I am, I comparison shopped and did my research and finally went to eBay and purchased myself these lovely direct-from-Korea purple monsters, and I’ve been wearing them for a couple of weeks. They are exactly as gaudy as the picture here, by the way.
Nevertheless, as we’ve discussed, last week I was far too busy feeling sorry for myself to think too much about my new hideous shoes. No, my time was spent bitching to anyone and everyone that I was doing everything right and making no progress and wah wah wah WAH.
So I’m going to get a little woo-woo on you here for a minute, but try to stick with me. It was suggested to me that I picture myself at my ideal weight. That I focus on the number I want to see on the scale, even. That I imagine looking in the mirror and seeing myself exactly the way I want to look.
This is about the transformative power of the mind, right? But I’m not actually comfortable with that. Too woo-woo for me, you know. So somehow (after a few days of stomping around) I decided that hey, I can imagine all that stuff without a problem. Only it’s not about my mind being powerful, or me willfully flexing my powers of body dysmorphia, but about The Mighty Purple Shoes doing a little secret superhero thing. They’re my cape, if you will. I know it’s silly. I was more comfortable with that, though, and whatever works is good. So I went for it.
I wore my purple shoes. (Clomp, clomp.) I pictured myself at my ideal weight. I envisioned the number I want to see on the scale. I took a pair of boot-cut jeans I never wear because they’re a little more form-fitting on the thighs than I like to the tailor… to have them made into skinny jeans. (Previous body dysmorphia demanded that I not even consider skinny jeans, lest my thighs conquer Atlanta while people cowered in fear.) And then I went and bought myself a fabulous (read: very colorful, and different from my normal wardrobe) tunic top to go with said skinny jeans. I made an appointment to get my hair done. I stopped tracking my calories—I’ve done it long enough to know exactly how many calories just about everything I eat has, and I know how to make good choices and stay in range without charting everything, so I stopped. I’m not going to tell you I like exercising any more than I used to, but let’s say I think maybe I’m starting to hate it less.
I’m going to save my actual progress number for the Saturday check-in, but I’ll tell you this: Whatever it is, it’s working. The gap between the woman I picture and the woman I am is closing.
I know it sounds ridiculous. I think it’s ridiculous.
And my shoes are definitely ridiculous.
But I’m thinking maybe I need a purple belt to go with ‘em, because my pants are all starting to fall down.
Kira Thursday, 4th of February 2010 at 01:57:43 AM
I just got off a plane a few hours ago and have staggered home and shoved my children in bed (full disclosure: my mother fed us dinner, thereby single handedly saving my family from death by mutual dismemberment and consumption). (Full disclosure part 2: I have also had a bath, thereby single handedly restoring a full tablespoon of sanity to my skullular region.)
For the last week I’ve been with my husband’s family, following the sudden loss of his dad. I love my husband’s family, and I loved his dad, and I’m not gonna kid you here, I’m sort of fried. So instead of a thoughtful post, tonight I give you the following list of things I have NOT done:
1. Unpacked. Bah.
2. Gone to the gym in the last week and a half.
3. Eaten carefully and thoughtfully, logging my daily diet and avoiding such things as soda and caramel macadamia nut cluster thingies from hell.
4. Weighed myself. (Get on the scale AT NIGHT? After a day of modern air travel and eating on the run? ARE YOU INSANE? I will weigh myself in the morning, on my own scale, after peeing, before eating, stark naked, as GOD INTENDED.)
5. Given up.
Pardon me if I bring the room down a little here, people (gestures at lighting guy, leans in to speak breathily into the mike), but I’ve realized something in the last two funeral-riddled weeks. Life is short. Whether you survive almost all the way to your 92nd birthday, like my grandfather, or you lose the fight with cancer way too soon, like my father-in-law, you only get a certain number of days.
I know eating kale and flailing around at the gym is not going to make me immortal. But this, right here, is my life. And I can waste it in the dim and cushy margins where I am comfortable, or I can give it my best efforts. And although I wouldn’t mind fitting into that pair of pants that is TAUNTING me from the closet, I meant it when I said I am in this thing to get faster, lighter, and stronger.
Consider this Back on the Horse, v2.0. I have a lot of life to be living.
Gray Wednesday, 3rd of February 2010 at 04:50:27 AM
Adobe’s Photoshop is used by graphics editors to manipulate images for commercial use and to put silly antlers on the cat for the family Christmas card. (Seriously, I googled “Photoshop cat Christmas card” and found that image. Oh internet! You never disappoint!) But fashion editors, celebrities and magazine editors have all been subject to criticism these past few years for publishing altered images of models and celebrities while absolutely standing by their firm assertions that those images are reality.
You may have witnessed the Demi Moore “W” magazine debacle, the Ralph Lauren disaster, and the stoking of the already hot debate on what sort of message these images send to us, society at large, we who can see perfectly well these impossible waists, and we who already have endless internal dialogues about the size of our ankles and prominence of our cheekbones.
If you want to see a mesmerizing example of how Photoshop works, watch this video, brought to you by Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign few years ago.
(Ironically, in a fascinating article in the New Yorker about “the premier retoucher of fashion photographs,” Pascal Dangin admitted to working on that very Dove campaign in print media, “Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he asked. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.” You can’t make this up.)
The Internet is full of examples of “celebrities-before-and-after” retouching, and entertaining Photoshop disasters abound. But there is a not-so-subtle message here and it says, “your regular self isn’t good enough, NO ONE’S REGULAR SELF IS GOOD ENOUGH. That’s why everybody, even size-zero models, get ’shopped.’” Then next thing you know, men and woman are subconsciously comparing themselves to fictional, digital beauty (and in some cases, disconcerting freakishness) and yearning for a standard of beauty that is completely unattainable, in that it is entirely imaginary.
Me pre-Photoshop. As you can see, I've just had my hair done.
I don’t believe that there is a sekrit WE WILL MAKE YOU HATE YOUR BODY AND LONG FOR PERFECTION YOU CANNOT ACHIEVE cabal, but like the whole overeating thing from last week, those are some of the unintended consequences of overuse of photo manipulation. So now here’s another thing I have to consciously watch for, the dysmorphing (I made up that word!) of my body image (like it isn’t completely screwed up already.) Why are “they” making me work so hard just to be not less crazy? WHY?
Me, post-Photoshop work. AM I NOT HOT?
So in the the interest of manip-style honesty, I am including images of myself before and after Photoshop.
Link me your favorite little Photoshops of horror from the internets, and let’s have laughs at the expense of poor Photoshop skills! Maybe you’ll tweak (in the RIGHT direction) our images of what’s real and healthy and worth striving for in the process of sharing the lulz.
Important deciphering key: Odd=Lydia Even=Joshilyn
Go to the mountains.
This is a sparkling vista. Appreciate it.
I am very tempted to say here, “Have a retreat,” and leave it that because I am drunk on carbs. Had a huge roll with olive tapenade for lunch. Like the roll mother-ship. Super roll. (Rule one of this retreat was, by the way, no carbs.)
Before you go to the mountains, completely disregard your true friend’s clearly articulated concerns about the historic winter storm that is at that moment charging down the Rockies and across the plains, toward your mountain retreat spot. Make dismissive noises. Pooh-pooh.
On the first day of your retreat: write, eat sensibly, drink wine. Celebrate good times. Do yoga tape. Sing the praises of the mountains. Try to take pictures of them with your cell phone, even though the pictures you take of mountains with your cell phone NEVER LOOK LIKE MOUNTAINS.
On the second day of your retreat, learn that a big blizzard is coming that will snow you in and likely kill you. Panic. Get told, “I SAID ON THE PHONE BEFORE I EVEN FLEW DOWN HERE A HUGE STORM WAS COMING AND WE WOULD DIE IN THE SNOW UP THERE.” Say, “At the time, that information was not relevant to my interests.” Pray, and simultaneously realize you have brought up NOTHING but meat and fresh vegetables and liquor, and the liquor is running low.
(And the meat is inexplicably rotting.) Important fact about North Carolina: THERE ARE NO POLAR BEARS IN NORTH CAROLINA. Even if you see one, while driving through a blizzard for liquor, do not say to your friend, “IS THAT A POLAR BEAR? YES IT IS A POLAR BEAR!” This will not help her drive.
(It was a malamute.) Once down the mountain, notice enormous sheafs of snow just POURING out of the sky and dangerously coating the near vertical roads you will have to traverse to return to the cabin. Make it halfway to town before giving up, blinded, and pulling into the G’s gas and grill where you inexplicably FILL UP THE CAR (so that it will have more combustible liquid in it when it plummets down the mountains????) and buy a crapton of whatever horrifying food items are available. This should include, but not be limited to: Chick-O-Sticks, cream-of-soups with fine dust patinas on the lids, and off brand cheesy popcorn.
NORTH CAROLINA FACT: If you’re going to say “Don’t worry about the snow sticking on the grass. The snow still won’t stick on the roads because the roads are warmer than the grass!” make sure you don’t immediately drive past a herd of boiling hot cows who are covered in a thick layer of snow. It will weaken your great point you were trying to make.
Inappropriate Footwear
TRUE FACT: When packing for your winter retreat in the mountains with a thunderstorm approaching, pack shoes that are not clogs and Massai Barefoot Technology sandals. Things that provide instability on purpose, and things that do not have a heel part of the shoe to cover the heel part of your foot are not welcome on this trip. They will lead to you falling down a hill or wading around in “wintry mix” in what amounts to no shoes at all.
After your trunk is full of aged chocolate and your tank is full of explosives, turn around and get your ass back to the mountain. Wave to the sleepy gate guard, who told you not to go out, and now thinks you are very very stupid. Feel superior, right up until the point where you SLAVISHLY OBEY ONSTAR, which orders you to plummet your car directly over a precipice and into a snowhole.
Churn around and teeter back and forth and dig your tires willfully into the fifty feet of winter-slush-mud trying to get out of the snowhole. Abandon the car and trudge the rest of the way back to the cabin, where you proceed to drink every bit of liquor you have left with righteousness and vigor.
Totally appropriate footwear!
When a strange man arrives at the door, claiming to be your “neighbor,” who wants to “help you with the car,” immediately give him every key you have, including the one to the cabin. Now watch four episodes of Dexter in a row on DVD. NOW TRY TO SLEEP. Spend two days in the cabin, with no phone, no keys, no cable, and no internet, but lots and lots of Dexter. Freak the hell out.
While freaking the hell out, do nothing to improve your situation except write boatloads of novel. Be astonished by the sight of the neighbor who has gotten your car out of the hole and returns your keys on the morning of the very day ALL THE CHOCOLATE AND ALCOHOL ARE GONE. Feel confirmed in your long term belief in the existence of God and kindness. Celebrate by going to Walmart, which at home is considered a punishment, but today feels like Paris.
True: Joshilyn worked out every day.
False: Lydia worked out.
True: You can go away on a writing retreat in the mountains and finish thousands of words of novel and be snowed in and terrified and fall in a hole and freak out, ALL WHILE MAINTAINING YOUR DIET AND EXERCISE REGIME!
In our infinite—okay, nearly infinite—collective wisdom, we here at Five Full Plates have decided that as part of our endeavor we should do a weekly check-in to see where we’re all at, and what we’ve learned in the past week.
The five of us are in universal agreement that Week Four sucked hairy donkey balls. I mean, okay, I may be the only one crass enough to put it in those terms, but the consensus is clear: Week 4 is when the wheels come off the bus, or at least it feels that way. So if you had a hard week, too, we get it. The question is whether or not we all get over this hump and it gets easier again… and that, I’m afraid, only time will tell.
Here’s how our plates currently stack up:
Mir (that’s me) was fully prepared to tell you a sad tale of woe and injury and grumpitude today, but stepping on the scale this morning reveals a bit of progress—I am now at 2.5 pounds lost. Yes, I’m still behind. And no, we’re not talking actual weights here at FFP, but I have to tell you that after stalling out at 2 pounds for a while, that extra half a pound crossed me over an invisible barrier from a weight that ends in 0 to one that ends in 9, and a point I have many other times struggled to cross. So! I am feeling triumphant and like maybe, just maybe I can really do this. This week I learned that I have to start thinking long-term; what changes can I sustain for longer than 10 weeks? I’m finding ways to incorporate “cheats” into my diet, and I’m happier and the scale moved again. Coincidence? Maybe not.
Kira is still away tending to family and her father-in-law’s funeral, and we feel certain she is strong and beautiful and loved and extra-skinny. Yes.
Gray embraces this week’s theme—she reports, “I’m down 3.2 pounds as of this week, which is behind, but at least I’m going in the right direction again. This week I learned that one month into a self-improvement effort produces a huge swoon of fail and despair, as evidenced by all of our posts and comments this week. Life gets in the way of our most earnest endeavors but we’re marching on despite them, and that’s either insane, or pretty cool. Probably both.”
Joshilyn mailed me a lengthy diatribe that involved higher-order math and repeated weighings and finally told me that her total loss stands at 4.5 pounds. She concluded, “This week I learned that if you do not like the first thing the scale tells you, you are not going to much like the second through seventh either. It’s like the diet version of measure twice, cut once: Weigh Twice, cuss at least nine times.”
Lydia submitted her report to Joshilyn, who relayed it to me over the phone when my hands were full and I was certain I could remember what she was telling me without writing it down. Um. I may have it wrong, and apologize if I do. But I think she stands at a total loss of 4.2 pounds. Her wisdom to share this week is that if you want to lose some weight and you are the sort of person who tends to have a nervous stomach about things like boarding a giant metal tube that hurtles through the air while strangers cough in your air supply and babies scream loudly, planning a trip is a terrifying yet slimming idea.
So that’s us. How about you? Did your week seem as hard as ours did?
Once upon a time, Joshilyn was describing to me why she had detested a particular novel. “Look,” she said, “I could rewrite that story like this: I try and I try and I try and I try and I fail. But I pick myself back up! And dust myself off! And I try and I try and I try and I try and… I fail. And I pick myself up again! And dust myself off! And I try and I try and I try and I try and I FAIL. AGAIN.” There was accompanying pantomime, but nevermind that. “It’s too depressing,” she concluded. “No redemption. No grace notes. Just someone getting beaten down again and again. I don’t want to read that.”
Today I have been on the Five Full Plates 10 week challenge for four weeks—nearly to the halfway point—and I feel like all I have is a story about how I try and I try and I try and I try and I fail. Only I’m getting kind of tired of getting up again.
Actual bread I baked from scratch for my family. And didn't eat. I cried a little, writing that.
During the first week, I began a new exercise regimen and started tracking my calories and modifying my diet. I lost between a pound and a half and two pounds, depending on when you asked me. I was thrilled.
The second week I restricted my calories even further, reasoning that I was already miserable and so I may as well lose more weight, more quickly. That totally backfired; I lost nothing and y’all told me I was screwing up my metabolism by not eating enough. Okay, lesson learned. I would eat more.
During week three I pushed the calories back up a bit and really amped up the exercise… until I woke up one morning unable to move my neck. I have an old whiplash injury that sometimes freaks out on me, and apparently it’s not fond of kickboxing (go figure). I was unable to exercise for nearly a week and I lost… nothing.
Week four brought continued recovery (thank you, amazing chiropractor!) and two days ago I got back on the elliptical. It was a little rough owing to my break, but I pushed through it and felt good. I woke up yesterday morning with what appears to be a sprained ankle. I know. Who the hell sprains their ankle 1) on an elliptical machine and 2) without noticing? That would be me, apparently.
I miss eating food for the pleasure of enjoying something yummy. I miss bread, constantly. (Okay, that’s not the diet’s fault, because I had to give up wheat for other reasons. But I’m wallowing here so yeah, bread is going on the list.) My neck is still sore and my ankle is all lumpy and swollen and hurts when I walk on it. I hate weighing myself. I hate tracking my calories and every single day combing through my logs and confirming that yes, I am eating a balanced and restricted diet but still not losing any weight. I hate feeling like I’m trying and trying and trying and failing miserably, no matter what I do.
I hate that my pants were just starting to fit a little differently, feel a little looser, and all I want to do is give up because it’s too slow and too hard and I’m hungry and cranky and injured and pissy.
It cannot possibly be true that I have six more weeks of despair ahead of me while everyone else slowly loses weight and I just sit here with a host of bizarre roadblocks (what’s next? maybe I could break my arm while singing in the shower!) and no progress. Right? That would be… crazy. And a lousy story.
And while I’m willing to admit defeat (repeatedly) when it comes to fitness, I refuse to be a story about futility and failure. REFUSE.
I need a new strategy. I’m not sure what it will be, but I am going to find my plot twist, here. I have to.
Mir Wednesday, 27th of January 2010 at 11:23:17 PM
Hey, y’all. This is Kira’s day to post, but I am saddened to report that her family is dealing with its second tragedy in as many weeks, and she’s off holding tight to family and doing the things one does when someone cherished leaves us too soon.
The rest of us here at Five Full Plates are holding Kira and her family in our hearts and prayers. If you’d like to join us in [insert spiritual or metaphysical "lifting up" metaphor of your choice here], well, that’d just prove our point that this community really is about support.
Monday, 8th of February 2010 at 08:49:54 PM 
In our infinite—okay, nearly infinite—collective wisdom, we here at Five Full Plates have decided that as part of our endeavor we should do a weekly check-in to see where we’re all at, and what we’ve learned in the past week. 
I know eating kale and flailing around at the gym is not going to make me immortal. But this, right here, is my life. And I can waste it in the dim and cushy margins where I am comfortable, or I can give it my best efforts. And although I wouldn’t mind fitting into that pair of pants that is TAUNTING me from the closet, I meant it when I said I am in this thing to get faster, lighter, and stronger.
