Backtracking (Weigh-in)

Apr 25, 2012 by Gretchen

I know I say this a lot.

Etc, etc, etc.

Well, this should come as no surprise to you all, but I’m saying it all again. Of course, the difference is that this time I actually feel like I mean it.

See, I’ve been skirting around this whole weight loss thing for the better part of the past year, holding on to one not-insignificant, though often-inflated, accomplishment: the fact that I lost 60 pounds once. Hey, did you know I lost 60 pounds? I lost 60 pounds! I used to be obese and now I’m just overweight! 60 pounds!

And while my intentions really have always been to keep going, to lose just a little more weight, to follow through to my original goal, my actions weren’t doing much to prove it. No longer being completely disgusted with the way that I looked naked was making me think, well, maybe I don’t really need to lose any more weight. Or rather, maybe I don’t want to. But I kept blogging, I kept saying that I was recommitting, I kept pretending to strengthen my resolve because, well, I’m a weight loss blogger. That’s what I do. Oh, and didn’t you hear that I’ve already lost 60 pounds?

Then my girl Cassie wrote a kickass blog post earlier this month about facing the truth when it comes to her weight loss (or lack thereof), and it struck a serious chord with yours truly. I had wrapped up my identity so much in those 60 pounds I had already lost, I was blinding myself to my own truth. Under the false pretense of saying I’m content with how I look, or taking tortoise vs. hare metaphors and applying them to weight loss, or saying that I am purposefully trying not to slip back into my disordered eating habits, the truth of the matter is that I’ve just been lazy.

It’s never been that I don’t want to lose more. I do. Of course I do. I know that there are crazy tall and/or athletic women for whom 180 pounds looks like 140, but no average-height, soft, mildly athletic girl will ever tell you that her ultimate, ideal weight is 186 pounds. Even if she “carries it well”, or “still looks healthy”. Even if she really has made some outstanding progress in her weight loss so far. Yes, I started this blog at 246 pounds, and I lost 60 of them. But I became complacent. I stopped actively counting calories. Yes, I started exercising more regularly which is awesome for me, but I’ve also been eating pretty much whatever I want so as a result I’ve been gaining and losing, regaining and relosing, the same five pounds ever since. I don’t want to be stagnant anymore. I want forward motion.

I know I’ve said all of this before. And sure, there’s probably a high likelihood that I will be saying it all again at some point. But I do mean it. I am going to be making some changes. Or rather, making some changes BACK. In addition to the new habit I’ve picked up of actually working out/running a couple times each week (this is big progress for me, guys!), this week I’ve put my actions where my mouth (or rather, fingers) are.

I’m cutting back on my dairy consumption again, since I’ve been in denial about how much it wrecks my digestive system. And upset-tummy-Gretchen is a Gretchen who justifies french fries for lunch and pasta for dinner. I’m eating breakfast again — SO important for me, but something I’ve let fall by the wayside. I’m trying to shift my eating back into day-long grazing/5-6 small meals a day instead of the 3 squares a day that I’ve lapsed back into. I am going to start juicing again so at the very least I’m getting in vegetables SOMEHOW, and I’m going to be limiting my coffee intake (though not today. I really needed it today, haha). And I’m upping the ante on my water intake, since being properly hydrated (over hydrated, in fact) has been crucial in supporting all of the above for me.

Let’s see whether or not these “new” changes have gotten me off to a good start or not, after my post-birthday weight gain from last week, shall we?

Starting Weight: 246 lbs
Last Weigh-in: 194.0 lbs
This Weigh-in: 191.0 lbs
Difference: -3.0 lbs

Well, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping that I would have magically lost all 5.6 pounds I had gained over the previous two weeks, but I will most certainly take it. Here we go again.

PS: Since this post is starkly lacking in pictures, I offer you the following photo that Ben took of a very fluffy Daxter who weaseled his way into an under-bed storage box. You’re welcome.

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Earth Trekking

Apr 23, 2012 by Gretchen

First things first: holy mackerel! The entries for the V8 V-Fusion Sparkling Giveaway are still rolling in, so get your comments in before tomorrow morning for your chance to win! I love reading about all the various ways you all like to add sparkle to your lives — you inspired me to add a little to my fingernails while I was playing around in Sephora yesterday!

Perhaps a little too much, haha.

At any rate, I hope you all had fabulous weekends, despite the ridiculous cold rain that’s been plaguing the DelMarVa region since Saturday evening. Bleh. I spent my weekend up in Columbia visiting my sister!

Jenny, her husband, and I all got LivingSocial deals for an introductory rock climbing course at Earth Treks Climbing Center a few months back. Since they’re about to move to Houston (SOB!), we needed to use up our deals, so Saturday morning we ventured over to their Columbia location (they have a couple spread throughout Maryland).

Harnesses. So hot right now.

The first forty-five minutes or so of the class were spent teaching us about how to properly put on our harnesses and tie the appropriate knots needed to strap ourselves in. We got the knot-tying down pretty fast, so it wasn’t long before our instructors had us move on to belaying since one of us would always need to support the climber when it came to that.

Before we actually began climbing, I thought that belaying would be the more difficult part. I found it pretty challenging, which probably makes me sound like a total n00b to any actual climbers out there (…which is true, haha). There’s a very specific pattern that you need to follow as you pull the slack of rope, and I kept getting confused. There’s also a whole bunch of jargon that the climber and belayer (is that the right word?) are supposed to exchange, which I kept messing up. “On belay?” “Belay on.” “Climbing!” “Climb on.” And so on, and so forth.

Of course, once I actually started climbing, my tune changed very quickly. It is HARD! It’s fun — really fun, in fact — but it is definitely challenging. You don’t realize how tightly you’re gripping onto the pegs/rocks/things in the wall until you release. Plus, you are using muscles that you rarely use on an everyday basis. My forearms are still killing me!

After the intro climb in the upstairs (read: easier) area, we were let loose in the main climbing room, where there were various routes marked on the walls with colored tape. There’s a rating system that marked how difficult the routes were, and even though we tried one of the lower-end levels that was recommended for us (a 5.6, I think), it was still REALLY tough. There is a HUGE difference between just climbing up willy-nilly and having to follow a specific path. All three of us needed the two on the ground to help direct us to the appropriate pegs, especially for our feet. It was difficult to see which ones we were allowed to step on when we were looking down at them. I only made it a little more than halfway up on that one, Jenny made it about 3/4 of the way, but Dan scaled all the way to the top!

Jenny the Monkey

Generally, we Powells aren’t known for our superhuman upper arm strength, so I knew it would be a challenging go for me. That said, I did a lot better than I thought I would initially! Hoisting myself up wasn’t that difficult, it just became really hard when I didn’t have pegs that were easy to grip onto. Some of them had little divets that you could hook your fingers around, but some of them were just rounded, and my grip wasn’t strong enough to utilize them. Rock climbers must have fingers like BICEPS, I tell ya!

I think it’s also pretty clear that body mass and the way your weight distributes itself really affects how easy it is to climb. A lot of it is mental and feeling confident in the fact that you are fully supported and you won’t fall even if you miss or slip. And of course, since it’s me, I totally slipped at one point and careened off of the wall. It was actually kind of fun!

At the end of the class, they gave us license to go back and do some bouldering, which is free climbing a shorter wall without need for a harness or ropes. I thought this was really, really fun too. The walls only went up like 12 or 13 feet, and they had big fluffy mats underneath to fall onto. I did a little baby route with ease, though there were tons of routes that went up on slants and eventually had people hanging off the ceiling — crazy! I gave a half-assed attempt at one of those before realizing that I was probably being a little overly ambitious. Still, I can totally see why people get into rock climbing. It was fun, a great workout (you don’t realize how hard you’re working until you come down!), and even now I keep thinking back to that first route I couldn’t complete and wish I could give it another shot. Motivating!

The membership fees at Earth Treks were something like $65 a month, which is really comparable to what I pay for at my regular gym right now. They also have a small gym room with treadmills and weights and whatnot, so I could see this as being a great option to have instead of a normal gym membership. If they had a location closer to me, I would really consider switching over! I’ll have to do some research to see if there are any other climbing gyms close by.

Have you ever been rock climbing? There was a rock wall at UREC, the gym on campus at JMU, that I never took advantage of. I kind of wish I had now! Maybe it would have gotten me into the habit of exercising long ago…

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Anxiety (Weigh-in)

Apr 18, 2012 by Gretchen

I am not exactly what you might call a laid-back person.

You know, that whole personality trait where you can let things go easily, you don’t stress out, you don’t get worked up? Not me. This is shocking to you, I’m sure, given the level of enthusiasm I’ve been expressing for the past week over all my various birthday activities, haha. I just run a little more emotionally high than some people.

Normally, the whole excited-about-everything-good-and-bad thing works for me! While I’m generally always riding the line of being stressed out about SOMETHING, I’ve never had a particular problem with managing it. I’ve never had to deal with stress or anxiety on a large scale. Which is probably how it should be because, let’s face it, I live a relatively stress-free life. I don’t live in a warzone, I don’t have a chronic illness or an incredibly demanding job. I’m certainly not rolling in cash monies, but I’m no longer carrying around any credit card debt and I still live a very enjoyable life on my budget. I have a supportive family, great friends, a wonderful boyfriend, and two epic mini schnauzers. Okay, now it just sounds like I’m bragging, hahaha.

The point I’m trying to (rather unsuccessfully) make is that yes, while I have my share of days that are full of pressing deadlines and less-than-ideal circumstances, it’s never been something that a hot shower or pedicure or heart-pumping sweat session or trip to the dog park or 8 full hours of sleep hasn’t been able to fix. But lately, increasingly so in the past few days, I’ve been feeling really anxious. About everything. About nothing. It’s a strange, new, and uncomfortable state for me to be in. I find my breath hitching when I’m doing nothing but sitting at my desk writing emails. My heart starts racing and my palms begin to sweat when I’m cooking dinner. And I don’t really know how to deal with it appropriately.

I can’t really pinpoint what is it that has me on such high alert lately. Yes, there are a few things on my mind, what with my recent potential career change decision, the Reach the Beach relay (both the logistics/travel/planning for it and the thought of actually, y’know, running it), and, as always, my weight loss progress (or current lack thereof). But these things have been subjects of thought for a while now, so why is it only now that my body feels like it’s physically rejecting them? All I know right now is that despite yesterday consisting of a massage AND a sweaty Zumba session AND a hot shower afterward, I only felt better for like, 4 hours. I slept fitfully and woke up feeling as anxious as I did the day before. My brain is a douchebag.

(source)

As you can imagine, my weigh-in for today didn’t exactly help alleviate my feelings of anxiety this morning. I posed a question on Facebook yesterday to gauge whether or not I would be severely judged for skipping my weigh-in (again) in the name of birthday glory (again), and while some of you gracious souls did give me the go-ahead to skip, more of you ended up convincing me to just do it and get it over with. The not-knowing would probably have caused me even more stress in the long run anyway…

Starting Weight: 246 lbs
Last Weigh-in: 188.4 lbs
This Weigh-in: 194.0 lbs
Difference: +5.6 lbs

… Or not. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Well, you guys are always telling me not to be too hard on myself (“I suck!” “How can I call myself a weight loss blogger?!” I’ve wasted a year with all this yo-yoing!”) and I’m always telling myself to stop making excuses (“It was my birthday!” “I drank! A lot!” “Sodium! Alcohol! Sugar!”), so in the spirit of compromise I won’t do either. I’ll just say that it is what it is, and if I got to do my week of birthday debauchery all over again, I’m sure I would. I’ve been pretty good about eating cleanly and exercising since the party so hopefully in another week I’ll be back down a few libbies.

You’re also always encouraging me to stop with the negative self-talk, so in that spirit I’ll simply re-post this photo from Saturday, which I love:

And remind myself that 190+ might still be a little lumpy but, all things considered, it doesn’t look all that bad.

For now.

Onward.

Backtracking (Weigh-in)

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Earth Trekking

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Anxiety (Weigh-in)

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