I’ve been Upgrading. Personally, physically and slowly, I have made improvements to the old Heather model. And joyously, it has gotten to the point where people who haven’t seen me in a while are saying “Wow!”
They are also saying, “What did you do?” and “How did you do it?” So I thought I’d set it down on paper.
First things first let me tell you that I’m one of the laziest, over-indulgent sugaraholics you may ever meet. And denying myself things I want has never been my strength. Add that to the fact that ice cream is my favorite desert and its no surprise I got up to just shy of 160 lbs. Only my high energy day saved me from really packing on the pounds. Yet, then I’d spend my weekends in my favorite past time which is lounging around and reading a good book. That’s my idea of ‘giving’ to myself, since I’d spend so much of my weekend with my chores, the kids chores and any other extra work I gave myself. Then I’d usually snacked the entire time I read!
So the first step was exercise, “for my health”. Yeah. At my core I hate exercise. You’re fighting your body’s instinct to preserve energy ‘just in case of emergency’ when you go to the gym or do a sport. Then why do people do it? Because they get something out of it and/or they are motivated to do it.
I got heel spurs and my ankle snaps like it’s keeping time to a disco beat. So I changed out of constantly wearing tennis shoes and into expensive pretty Dansko sandals and Mary Janes and learned to relax by putting my feet up above my head at least once in the afternoons. And I started exercising to lose weight…after all my knees, ankles and heels would feel better not hauling all these extra pounds.
Heel spurs are grown when this tendon that runs from your toes up to the top of your calf swells up, over and over again. So naturally after 15 years in heels with never a problem, I spend 5 years as a mother in flats and tennies and suddenly it feels like I have a nail stabbing into my heel every time I take a step. Doctors say…stretch it and don’t let it swell…which I did. But what really cured it was going back to higher heels.
I guess it was almost three years ago I joined a gym. 3 or 4 days a week I’d swim, figuring I could get the maximum work out with the minimum time, because I was juggling so much. Then the gym restricted the free swim hours, my youngest left the school it was nearby and I got a great deal at 24 hour Fitness. Two years ago I began to go there and learned I can read on the elliptical machine. This became very necessary as I discovered I had to fight the running dialogue of my body in my head. It went something like this:
“Ow, ow, ow, isn’t that enough? I can’t breathe, I wanna stop, stop, stop, ow, ow. Really, ten minutes is good, you can stop. Look! Look, at all the calories you’ve burned, certainly that’s good enough? You’ll do more tomorrow. Shit, time seems to slow to a crawl when you’re on this machine. You’re close to your period, you should stop now, you deserve it, and you’re probably PMSing!
When I read, I don’t hear the running dialogue, which is good because she’s such a whiny bitch! And I found I couldn’t plot (i.e. write) in my head because she’s way louder than my ability to plot. And I found the best books to read were light Janet Evanovich books, especially the Stephanie Plum series. They are so funny, that more than twice I’ve almost fallen off the machine because I was laughing so hard…really, start with those, they all have numbers in the title and you can find them at your library. And Ranger is soooooo hot…all that dark, mysterious Latino…yum!
But like I said, going to the gym is against Mother Nature so it has to either be pleasurable or motivational. As you can hear from my inner me, it’s not pleasurable. So to motivate myself I would only allow myself the pleasure of reading at the gym. Not at home. And it worked. I looked forward to getting back to the book, so I looked forward to getting to the gym to read. Plus I finally found a time that worked with my schedule (it’s changed since then but now I’m firmly used to the new time so I can do it…see earlier blog for my typical day) I would drop the kids off at school and hit the gym by 8:30 am and manage to get to work by 10:30 am and put in 4 hours a day, and make up any extra hours at home in front of t.v.
That worked for a year and while I felt better and good about myself, I wasn’t really losing any weight. Shortly after that I started writing my first novel and as I got into it I would fantasize visualize the book selling, being a huge success and me going on a book tour. Then I took a good look at myself and realized…THAT is so not how I want to look ON A BOOK TOUR!
And that’s when I started substituting meals for Costco’s Kirkland Diet drinks. Delicious chocolate for breakfast and lunch and it amazingly filled me up. I’d sip my two cups of coffee throughout the day (now sweetened with Splenda or Nutrasweet instead of sugar, although I absolutely cannot part with my Caramel/Vanilla Creamer!) and made sure I ate a small snack every two hours. Because while the drink filled me up, I would still crave Chewing. Ladies that’s our problem…we’re not really hungry…we just want to chew something. The snacks were a Godsend.
I chose protein based snacks. A hand FULL of almonds (I have small hands but even I’m amazed at how much I can hold when its my only snack for 2 hours!), a hard boiled egg, and celery slathered with 100% natural peanut butter or my fav…Granola’s Peanut Butter bars. (I also use those bars to get my anti-fruit eating boy to eat at least a banana.) Then I eat a regular dinner and make sure if I’m going to have desert it’s at 6:30 when my boys do and not at 9:00 in front of television. The hours of 8 pm to 10 pm was my biggest challenge. That’s when I would finally sit down and have ‘me’ time and I was very, very used to rewarding myself. My solution…Trident sugar free, bubble-gum flavored gum, if necessary, I’d go through an entire pack in one night.
And it worked. I went to a doctor for an annual checkup and then had to go again for something else 6 months later and at that first appointment’s weigh in I had lost 10 pounds. I was shocked. I mean I knew I was losing weight, clothes were feeling looser but I had sized up because I was like a sausage in my pants, and I wash them a lot and they stretch. But to hear them tell me I’d lost 10 lbs in 6 months I was floored. And ecstatic!
To date I’ve lost 15 lbs in a year with the goal of another 5 this year. I’m not in a hurry. I don’t even have an agent yet and this system is working just fine. I have stepped up the elliptical machine workout to 30 minutes and Gina’s gonna show me how to target my “areas” with the weights more. But when I see a 24 Hour Fitness I get excited and hear myself think…Ooo, let’s go to the gym. Because it’s become my ‘me’ time. There I get to read. There I get to watch some of the cubs as they work out (always a plus!) or watch them play a game of basketball. And it’s there I get a few moments to pretend I’m Cat and practice her sultry saunter, although I’m in sneakers so I can’t really practice it until I’m leaving and in heels!
It all in the motivation and finding what really “works” for you. Remembering I was and am sexy did it for me, and NOT having it in the HOUSE!