I Won!

I took on that big 'ol chocolate bowl and I won! That chocolate thought it was stronger than me but I showed it who's boss. As Sarah said to Jareth, "You have no power over me." Would you like to see the offensive bowl? Here it is, slightly less full because of my efforts on Monday...



So yesterday was an off day for working out. Today is the gym followed by the pool. I've been getting up a lot earlier to get into work earlier so I can feel better about leaving early and not get so behind in my work. I'm still adjusting to the earlier AM rise, getting up at 6am now instead of 8am. I am going to bed earlier too though but you know, getting up 2 hours earlier throws off all my eating times, etc.

Oh, I have really good news! I wanted to take my mom for a pedicure for Mother's Day on Sunday. I suggested we go to the Sonoma Mission Inn & Spa. It's really friggin' $$$ but they have a pool and spa and fitness center so I was thinking I could spend the whole day there. My mom suggested we stay the night! She's picking up the tab for the room because that craziness is just out of my league, but I'm picking up the spa treatments, which is still out of my league really but I haven't gotten her crap for Mother's Day in years so it balances out. Breakfast is included and I'm getting a Swedish Massage at 12:30 on Sunday. OMG, I'm going to be luxuriating like you cannot imagine. When I say this place is nice that's almost an understatement. Here's a few pics I found online:





Miguel and I are going for a bike ride on Saturday morning and then I'm hustling my butt over to the Inn to get my luxuriating started ASAP. I am SO excited. I need a day like this. I need a massage and some fresh cut fruit on a linen tablecloth with silver utensils. I need filtered water with fresh ice cubes in a tall glass with lemon. I need a pool and egyptian cotton towels and the list goes on and on. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures!

Food Demons Don't Die

Picking up on something I mentioned in my last post. The last few days I've been overeating and then regretting it. Funny how you think you finally have the upper hand with your food demons and then wham! Back in your face.

Our office moved into a new building today (yay! i'll post pics of my lovely new cube soon) so, to add to the two meals at which I overate this weekend, today I had to face free office meals. I made good choices at the breakfast spread, avoiding the bagels and sticking with fruit since I already ate my cereal at home.

The pizza/salad lunch was not on the plan but I felt okay about eating two pieces of veggie pizza and salad. But the little individual chocolate bowl was KILLING ME!! I must have eaten at least 10 of them. You know the individual Hershey's with almonds and toffee? And then back to the kitchen for a third slice of pizza. Gahhhh!!! More chocolate after that and I am feeling very out of control.

The work day is usually a safe haven from food temptations for me. I rarely go out to lunch and we rarely have free meals delivered. It's normally the evening in which I have to face these dilemmas. Anyway, after eating all that crap I wasn't feeling so motivated to go to the gym. You'd think it'd be the other way around and I'd be saying, "Wow, I ate too much, I need to hit the gym!" But noooo, I overeat and want to pass on the gym.

Today was supposed to be the gym followed by the pool. I skipped the gym but mustered the strength to go to the pool. Honestly, after what Jean did for me letting me swim I didn't want to flake. I went to the pool and put in some laps. A mile altogether. I felt very disorganized with my stroke, I felt low in the water and just a mess. I had considered going to the gym afterward but when I left the pool at 7:45 I realized it wasn't worth killing myself to get to the gym. I mean I'm not a friggin' Olympian.

So on the way to the pool I made a plan to eat only fruit and veggies for dinner to try and compensate. I want to have a healthy relationship with food. I question decisions like this one. Am I restricting my food unrealistically? Or am I just balancing out a very high calorie day. I'm hoping it's the latter. Oh, and my Points? I just wiped out the day, which is 23 points, even though I know I ate more than that. But I have no WPAs left. Sometimes you just gotta move on.

Wanna see my salad? It was mixed baby greens with mushrooms, beats, tomatoes and my favorite salad dressing, Newman's Own Light Balsamic Vinaigrette (only 1 Point for 2 Tablespoons, which is almost always more than enough). It was very yummy. I ate an apple while I prepared the salad and I'm heading off for bed in a bit.

As they say, tomorrow is another day. The chocolate bowl will still be there. It's a damn big bowl and despite my best effort I didn't empty it. I will not eat any of that chocolate tomorrow. Do you hear me Michelle? I will not eat that chocolate. I will not.

The Weekend In Review @ Bolinas Ridge and SF Stairs

I forgot to mention in my last post that I fell on my a$$ in the locker room at the pool on Thursday. Slipped on some water and leg went flying up in front of me with the full force of all 170 pounds of me (hee!) landing on my left forearm and my butt. About 10 tweeners witnessed it and all expressed a lot of sympathy and started sharing their falls-in-the-locker-room tales. I'm ok, just bruised.

So on Friday I rode my bike to the gym and did Week 6 Day 3 of c25k. That's 25 minutes jogging with no breaks! I'm not going to pretend it was easy. I kept waiting for it to get easier but it just sort of stayed challenging. I wasn't dying and out of breath and my legs weren't burning, it was just not easy, ya know? Anyway, I'm going to repeat Week 6 next week as per my usual plan. Oh, but every time I took a step my butt hurt where I fell. Jiggle Jiggle.

On Saturday Miguel and I had plans to go on a bike ride. I picked one out of Bay Area Bike Rides. This book doesn't rate rides on a scale of difficulty, the author gives you the route, elevation profile and a description like "moderately hilly" and lets you figure it out from there. So I picked this ride in Bolinas that starts in town and rides up to Bolinas Ridge and across the mountain ridge and then back down to town. This is one Mr. Hosler describes as Moderately Hilly. I'll try and make a long story short from here on out. We realized the ride was longer than we had time for so we decided to ride up to the ridge and do the mountain trail portion of the ride only.

As we drove up the 5 mile road we had planned to ride our bikes up I quickly realized there is no way in hell I could have cycled up that road.
It was so intense that someone painted, about every mile or so, in huge white letters across the road, words like DESPERATION, REGRET, SUFFERING. Can you imagine? At the top, where we stopped and parked, the word RELIEF was painted across the crest of the road. Hmph. Moderately Hilly. Sure.

So we parked but noticed it was really crowded, lots of people standing around in this really remote area. We got out and asked what was going on. An endurance trail run of 52 miles was being done on the trail we planned to ride, the Bolinas Ridge Trail. Oh boy. We got our bikes out and took a crack at it. The trail was really nice, technically and physically challenging but doable for me, even if I had to walk up some hills. But there were almost always joggers around us. It made it hard to enjoy the trail. Once the trail turned really hard we decided that the combo of joggers and really hard was too much and we turned around. When we got back to our car we'd ridden three measly miles. I won't call it a total waste...the 1 hour drive there was beautiful, we got to know a trail we'll probably return to some day and...Miguel took a few nice pictures of me :) Here they are...





On the second one Miguel was trying to take one of me riding but didn't realize the camera was zoomed in. I really like the way it turned out though, even though it is so not flattering. Chin looks fat, tire roll at the waist, and my big chubby arm in the center of the shot. Hey, I'm just being honest! Anyway, I came home and got ready to go out to dinner with some friends. I had a really good Italian meal with desert! Oh the Points. I couldn't even really take a guess so I just wiped out the rest of my daily Points and counted 20 WPA's. That's what I will do when it's just too hard to try and figure out.

A quick note on eating. I overate at meals twice this week. I think my stomach has shrunk or whatever but I sometimes forget I can't eat like I used to. On Friday night we went to In-n-Out Burgers with a friend. I had a burger, fries and a milkshake. The milkshake was a mistake. I felt so full afterward that my stomach just hurt. I ate too much last night (Saturday) too and my stomach hurt. Both times I felt awful and tried to sear the pain into my memory to stop me from doing it again. I have been feeling very foody lately and just want to be eating all the time. I think that's what makes me eat too much. I need to do more snacking between meals.

So this morning I did a "Stairway" walk in SF. Here's how the organizer described it:

"The machines at the gym are fine for the work week but on the weekend there is a much better option - San Francisco’s collection of hills and staircases can elevate your heart rate as well as your spirit while building those buns of steel. As an added incentive we can get a group workout and have some fun while enjoying great views and fresh air that you just can’t get on a conventional stairmaster."

I had to be in The City at 9:30am. Blech. It was a lot of fun though. The stairs were great exercise and the views were fabulous. Here's a few pictures:





After the walk I went to my second bicycle maintenance class. We took apart the rear section, took off the chain, learned how to fix a chain, learned how to adjust the rear derailleur, took the pedals off and on, etc. It was really fun. I've learned so much in that class. I really feel like I can handle more common problems now that might come up on the road or trail.

Whew! I'm home now and I'm tired. I mean tired. I'm going to bed now. I hope you all had a fabulous weekend too!

p.s. I'm going to take the advice from Swizzlepop and Aslant and not lower my Daily Points Allowance when I drop into the 160's. That might not happen this week though due to aforementioned overeating problem. Thanks for all the support!

I've Got a Plan.

I wrote up a training plan for the triathlon. Well, I guess it's not really a training plan so much as it is my regular gym days with some swimming thrown in. Nonetheless, here's the plan:

Mon: Gym, Pool
Tue: off
Wed: Gym, Pool
Thur: Pool
Fri: Gym

As much as time will allow I plan to ride my bike to the gym and to the pool. I rode today to my Weight Watchers meeting (more on that in a sec'), then to the pool, then home. I had to ride over a hill to get to the pool, the biggest I've ever climbed. It wasn't easy but I used the tips Katie gave me on my weekend ride and just pedaled and focused on short distances. Anyway, I rode a total of 7.7 miles. I had the experience of swimming and then biking too, which was an unexpected benefit (of course I left the pool, showered off the chlorine, changed back into my clothes and then rode home so it wasn't the speedy transition I'll experience in the tri but still).

Miguel and I will continue to do stuff on the weekends so hopefully that will get my biking up to par. You know, all I really want to do is finish the triathlon and that's what I'm focused on. The thing that worries me the most is the 3.1 mile run. Jogging is still challenging for me and I haven't gotten up to even 2 miles yet. The thing going for me is that I will be all warmed up by the time I have to jog, but that's the downside too because I could be a bit tired. Anyway, I know I'll finish, even if I have to walk, but it would be nice to jog the run portion.

Of course now I'm in the market for some "tri" shorts. They are like bicycle shorts but with less padding so you can swim in them. It's either that or swim in my suit and throw some shorts on after for the bike ride. I won't have padding that way though. Oh the dilemna (which is now apparently spelled dilemma, they changed it!). So these are the shorts I decided I wanted but they are sold out everywhere. Dagnabit! Rest assured, I'll be keeping you posted on all the shopping.

Alright, enough already. Without further ado...It's weigh-in Thursday!! Woot Woot! Does all the fanfare give the idea I had a loss this week? Yes! I lost 2.4 pounds. Wow. Normally when I have a big loss (3.something pounds last week) I don't have one the next week.

Well I'm hanging on to the 170's by a thread. Next week I might drop into the 160's, which would be great and also mean I'd lose a daily point. I'm actually thinking of doing my Points Quiz in a way that let's me keep the point. It has to do with how much activity you get during the day. I rated my activity the lowest because my job is a lot of sitting and driving. But since I'm doing all this exercising, now I'm thinking about upping it, which would mean 1 extra point per day. I don't know, we'll see.

So last week I even went 4.5 points over in my points.



See that red "weekly exceeded" number? Oh I hate that. Anyway, it didn't hurt this week. Balanced out by all the activity I imagine.

Alright, I'm beat. Oh, and I changed my mind, blogging is therapy. So can I bill my insurance for my typing time?