New Year

I went swimming today at the Y! It was free swim, and it was in the middle of winter, and it is still during Christmas break, so bucket loads of kids were there. But still, I like swimming. It makes me happy. I have a pretty bathing suit, which I probably shouldn't be wearing in the hyperchlorinated water in the Y pool, but whatever.

We got a Wii for Christmas, which, it seems like everyone else has gotten. I am absolutely crazy about the boxing. Today I had the first match that didn't end with a knockout, and then I had a rematch with the same character, and I didn't win. This is horrifying. I'm a fiercely competitive person, even if it is against a computer generated character named Emma. We also have the Wii Fit, which is entertaining, particularly if you are watching someone else trying to avoid panda bear heads during the soccer game. But still, boxing makes me sweat like I just ran full out on the elliptical for twenty minutes. Possibly even more so. But it is fun, instead of just tolerable, like running on the elliptical while listening to music. With a few exceptions, depending on the music. So, currently, Wii Boxing beats out Wii fit, especially as Wii fit says I am forty years older than I am and my Mii wadles. It is not my fault that I am genetically imbalanced. My father's side of the family is legendary for being clumsy. Plus the weight thing. Bah. Stupid Wii fit. Luckily I can take my aggressions out in Wii Boxing!

So new year. It kind of annoys me because I say, okay, now that I don't really have the mountain of chocolate staring me in the face, I should have less trouble eating right and stuff now. And then I feel like a cliche for trying to lose weight at the beginning of the year. You just can't win.

Anyway. I'm trying to reprioritize. I'm not sure if I'm spelling that right, because Firefox doesn't recognize that "reprioritize" is a word. I was thinking mindful eating before, but that sticks about as well as water and flour paste. So I am rethinking it. Right now I'm trying Fitday.

Huh, Firefox accepts Fitday as being a word. Anyway, we'll see how that works out. I like how it is kind of nonjudgemental, unlike some devices that begin with a "W."

Also, I tried Zumba with a friend. The Y I belong to doesn't currently offer Zumba, but her gym, which is much closer to my house than the Y and just opened over the summer, and so I was thinking of joining, does. That class is rediculously fun. I don't think I've ever had so much fun at the gym. I looked like an idiot, but I did remarkably well for it being my first class ever. If you didn't know any better, you'd think I just wasn't used to the teacher. Plus part of it was kickboxing, and had some of the same punch and kick combos that my class does. I think I scared my friend at how intense I was during the familiar parts. But still, rediculously fun.

If anyone is reading this, how does anyone feel about changing gyms? This gym is probably a mile away, whereas the Y is ten miles away, so I have to set aside at least two hours for a one hour gym session, plus showering and things. But I like the people at the Y, I'm used to the schedule, and it has a pool. Plus they are adding Zumba to the class schedule sometime in the next few weeks. But, I'll admit, that twenty mile (total) drive every day is a bit daunting, especially when gas money is tight.



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Now playing: Dave Matthews Band - Big Eyed Fish
via FoxyTunes

So, yeah. I screwed up. I'm horribly angry with myself and yet again I'm horribly angry with myself for being horribly angry with myself. I've been looking at pictures of myself and being horribly disgusted because I'm fat. There is none of the gleefulness or the gorgeousness that came from being confident with myself. I probably only weigh ten pounds more, which granted I'm very displeased about, but it isn't something to beat myself up over or the rather severe depression that's been kicking my ass lately.

I've got the winter blues, and we only had our first snow yesterday. It sucks.

I have to kick my own ass over this. It doesn't magically disappear and fix itself by stepping into a Weight Watcher's meeting. The problem is that I have not idea how to fix the brain funk that I'm in. I'm piss poor right now, to the point where I have to budget out where I drive, and unfortunately, going back and forth to the gym takes about an hour of driving time. I've been doing some stuff at home, but for some reason it is harder to work so hard to pound the emotional stuff out at home.The therapist lady's been booked up because of the holidays, and I haven't had a session for two weeks, and it scares me that I'm dependent enough on the sessions to get this messed up after two weeks. But I have an appointment this week.

Maybe it is the "official" winter blues. I really don't care. I don't think I'm severe enough to need to be on anti-depressants, as I haven't been this depressed since...well, last December. But the point is, I'm doing, short of the drugs, everything that should be helping me. The money issue's been kicking my ass all the sudden, though I'm as rich/poor as I've ever been.

So, yeah, sorry after disappearing for a few months just to return to have a freak out. Maybe this is what I need until I get my head on straight. Blogging is free, after the internet service and the laptop.

So, anyway. I've watched that show on the Style network, Ruby. I'll admit, the first time I saw it on the guide thingy, I thought it said Rudy and I was confused about why the women's style network kept showing the football movie that makes people cry. It's actually not as bad or unentertaining as I thought it would be. Ruby is an interesting person with a really cool personality. I'm not a diehard fan, but I'm also rooting for her and she kind of makes me happy beyond the fat girl happiness of "Well, at least I'm not as bad as she is."

Non sequiter alert: I've been doing some life changes. I'd been trying to get into grad school for library science. Even though I'm not a spiritual person by any means, I've noticed that life tends to work out in the end. So, I'd been getting the run around from a bunch of different sources. It was getting to be exhausting and I noticed that I was getting more and more lukewarm about the idea and getting signs that this might not be the best idea for me right now. The whole process is/was stressful. But in the meantime, because of my taking the gre and apparently doing well on it, I was getting contacted by various universities and collleges, after getting my scores, wanting me to go there. Now, mind, I didn't tell the GRE exam people to send my scores all haphazard. In fact, I strictly told them not to. But anyway, various colleges, including Columbia and McGill, calling me on the phone asking me to go convinced me that I'll probably turn out all right and I wouldn't neccesarily have to do a job that I was never sure about. So, now, the plan is to enter, in a round about way, the legal profession.

So, see, I haven't just been sitting around eating comfort food and feeling sorry for myself. I've been making Life Descisions. I've also been planning my bragging rights when the relatives start poking their noses in at Christmas time.

Knock on wood. Knock on wood. Knock on wood!

So, I've been having a weird appetite lately. Ever since I've given a damn about what I eat, cookies have always been my kryptonite. I could be so on top of things and have all my good fats and vitamins and correct servings of fruit and protein and feel so absolutely in control of things, and then I'd remember that there are Keebler Fudge cookies in the cabinet. I'd try to resist it, I'd even go so far as to resist for a couple of days, thinking if I could just hold out long enough, I could break my cookie addiction, but like an addict, I would constantly be thinking about those cookies and how it woudl be so easy to eat them.

But for the past three weeks, I've not had any appetite for cookies. In fact, when I have any craving for something sweet, it's been for an apple or an orange. I see the cookies in the cabinet and they are perfectly good cookies. Bona fide Chips Ahoy or Nabisco Oreos, but when I contemplate eating them, in my mind they taste like stale cookies from the 99 cent store. Even when I'm at the totally awesome coffee shop down the street from me with the really good melty chocolate chip cookies, they still don't really appeal to me.

Maybe it is a case of changing an appetite. When I was younger I used to like pork chops, and now, while I'll eat them if someone's cooked them, I'd prefer something else. Hopefully.

Or maybe it is because of the changing seasons. It's starting to become fully fledged fall here, and while I'd expect that to mean that I'd be craving comfort food more, maybe fall is anti-cookie season. Though it makes sense my craving for apples all the time.

In any case, I've been knocking on wood so much I expect my knuckles to start bleeding any second now. I've needed a kick start for a while now, where my eating good and being healthy lasts for maybe a day. But now, I've had four good days in a row.

A quandry

There are many unanticipated problems with exercising. My current problem is morning breath. Mostly I like exercising in the morning. Like, shuffle out of bed, and get ready, and go, and wake up about twenty minutes into the work out. Alas, this means that I have to brush my teeth before I go. I mean, it's nothing serious, but my breath doesn't smell like roses in the morning. And I'm not a big fan of getting into the heavy breathing that accompanies exercising when I have to be breathing in and out stinky morning breath. Plus, I'm sure it wouldn't win my any friends in my kickboxing class.

But on the other hand, I have the tendency to occasionally get nausea when I brush my teeth too soon after I wake up or before I've eaten anything. And I suppose the easy thing would be to eat a few almonds or something and then brush my teeth, but I feel like I'm already pushing it with the getting dressed and putting contacts in with my early morning self. So basically I am postponing going out for a run until my stomach remembers that I brush my teeth every day and this is nothing to get freaked out about.

In happy news my best friend whom I've known since we were babies has gotten engaged. I very much approve of the guy and couldn't be happier, though it was kind of surprising at first because I still don't feel old enough to be having friends my age who are married. I'm in denial, even though technically I'm in my mid-twenties. Anyway, Best Friend asked me to be maid of honor, which I was even more surprised about and got weepy over and hyperventilated and now I think I've probably lost weight since she asked me from all the nerves. I've never really paid attention but there is a shitload of stuff to do.

I've never subscribed to the theory that a person should lose weight because of a specific event. I mean I've read over and over again that looking good in a dress simply isn't enough motivation to lose the weight and keep it off without giving up. But I've been rather short in motivation as of late, and it seems to be working anyway. Even in the period between when she asked me to be a bridesmaid and when she asked me to be maid of honor, I went for a ton of walks to work off the nervous energy and lost my taste for cookies. Cookies! The little round things which had previously proven to be my kyrptonite! And now with all the stuff I keep thinking I have to do, I haven't had much of an appetite. I mean, this can't hurt, I suppose.

'Ja miss me?

So yesterday I went kayaking. I love kayaking for many reasons. The primary one being that you know that feeling you get when you realize something unexpectedly cool is happening. Maybe the day starts off kind of blah and you are pretty much doing the same old same old and then a friend calls you to go out with them and you get a bit buzzed but not too bad and later on you do a one am run to the all night supermarket and get the stuff for s'smores along with baby carrots and exotic juice drinks which you intend on mixing with the vodka or rum but kind of just forget about it and just throw stuff into the fire, and when you think think about the boring run of the mill part of the day it seems ages ago, and that kind of makes the whole thing seem cooler.

Well, kayaking for me is like that. I live in Massachusetts, but I don't live in the particularly cool part. I live twenty minutes inland, which is okay, but you probably couldn't tell where I live apart from Michigan. I don't live in Boston, I don't live down the Cape, I don't live in the mountains. I live in the part where people live if they need to conveniently live kind of close to those places but don't want to deal with the possibility of not having an all night supermarket or worry about road construction being insane enough to kill you. It's a nice place to live and grow up in and I wouldn't want to leave here to move to the countless other places around the country that are convenient but not particularly interesting. Kayaking makes me feel like all those places you see in travel magazines that make you think everyone goes on vacations with hiking boots instead of their loosest jeans aren't really that exotic and are actually pretty accessable.

You look up places on line to kayak and the place I went to yesterday was fifteen minutes away, but I would have never knew it existed. There were all sorts of crazy inlets to explore and mazes of sawgrass. I saw a bunch of birds and some wildlife and what I swear is a UFO.

Unfortunately (or, considering this is allegedly a health blog, fortunately) one of the kayaks we use had a leak in it, and so the friend we went with has a two person kayak, so I took the single person working kayak intentionally, figuring I'd get a better work out and work my arms and torso more if I didn't have someone else to rely on. Alas, this pretty much meant I was constantly paddling for three hours to keep up. I was so tired yesterday afterwards that a few hours afterwards, after I showered, I decided that I didn't like the shirt I was wearing, but was too tired to make the effort to take one t-shirt off and put another one on.

I hope no crazy rowers will read this blog, or else they'd be thinking "Three hours! Pah! I could do that hung over in twenty foot waves with a malfunctioning paddle!"

But yeah, it was definitely an awesome day. Plus I only got a hint of a sunburn and a few bug bites on my heal. Score. At least I hope they are bug bites. At one point we got out of the kayaks to swim for a few minutes and I'm not a fan of swimming in places where I can't see anything. I'd suck at midnight skinny dipping. But anyway, I swear my foot touched something and I know I saw at least a horseshoe crab (it was a saltwater river). It could have been a sting ray or a man-o-war. If you don't hear from me, assume I've gone into shock and in a hospital.

That's another point for where I live. Convenient access to excellent hospitals, which presumably can rescue one from jelly fish attack.

Being all whiny

I really don't want to go to the Weight Watchers meeting. I haven't been there for three weeks, and I've gained more weight than I'm okay with because my pants feel too tight. There are going to be a bunch of cheery and optimistic people who have lost weight this week and are close to getting to goal, while I'm sitting there feeling bitter. But I'll go, and I'll probably weigh in, because I want to lose weight this week and I'd like to know about it next week. Better gain twenty pounds this week and lose a pound next week than gain nineteen pounds next week. The meetings have worked before and damn it if I'll give up because I'm being an idiot.

It's been humid as all get out, which hasn't been encouraging me to get outside and go running, because humid plus running plus girl who sucks at running equals terrible. I'd come up with something more witty but it is too humid. I'm well aware that if someone from Florida or Brazil or Mississippi were to visit right now, they would laugh long and hard at my discomfort. Just as I would laugh long and hard at their discomfort of below freezing weather in the winter. But, hell, I'm the one that has to run.

So, I'm off to get the bad news and get back on track.

Goals don't work. Ambiguity does.

So I've been away for a couple of weeks, in the sense that I have not posted and I have not really been paying attention to my health. I have a bit of an excuse for the first in that I was away in the beginning of July and it took me a few days to get my head on straight after traveling.

Part of the reason for not paying attention to my health is kind of good. I'm not all that ashamed of my weight any more. I'm not sure what changed, as I am in no way close to my ideal weight. Sometimes I look in the mirror and have a "Hey, I look pretty good" moment. Maybe other people don't feel that way and a few minutes later I feel like I'm probably just fooling myself. But hey, that's why I use the name Fooled. My goal was to fool myself into thinking exercise is doable, even for me, to fool myself into thinking that eating right makes me feel better, and pretty much fool myself into being a better person.

That and the Led Zeppelin song "Fool in the Rain" is one of my favorite songs.

But anyway, I've achieved, or at least, had achieved my goals. I'd do four hours of various forms of exercise during the day, because hey, why not. And goshdarn it if I didn't feel better when I did eat right. I had more confidence, which is one of my prerequisites for being a better person.

But I set out these goals, or at leas the health oriented ones, because my health wasn't good, or at least wasn't going to be good. A doctor scared me into not being such of an idiot any more, hence why I started eating right and exercising. And I started getting healthier, and lost weight, and I met goals, and ironically that was what derailed me for more than a few days.

I had confidence, I had done what millions of people hadn't been able to do, namely lost more than twenty pounds. I could no longer shop in the plus sized department. My body had shape now, instead of resembling a pile of raw bread dough. And these were the things I focused on. I focused on my successes.

I'm not saying that is a bad thing. It's a wonderful thing. If you don't acknowledged that you've changed, you'd probably go insane and spend most of the time you weren't at the gym curled up on the living room floor, completely drained because you hadn't eaten enough that day for all the exercise you had been doing.

But it can't be the only thing. It can't even be close to the only thing. For me, it probably shouldn't even be in the realm of the only thing. I started off because I wanted to stay healthy, and I wanted to have a long, uncomplicated life. That's what had kept me going. My weight loss stalled when I thought about what was coming next. When would I hit the next ten pound mark? When would I be one of those people who made it to goal? When can I wear single number dress sizes?

When I first got on this health kick, if that would even be the right term for it, I looked for a lot of information on just being healthy. That was the goal. I wanted to lose weight so I could be healthy. Don't think too much about being thin or being more attractive. That will come if I just focus on the health. I came across a blog talking about how to change your eating habits, and the woman wrote about vegetarians. She said that people who became vegetarians because of a moral reason tended to still eat a lot of junk food, because seriously, how much junk food has meat in it? But people who did it because of the health benefits were able to stick with it better and tended to not have the side effects associated with vegetarianism.

Somehow the point was that vanity was not a strong enough reason to stick to a lifestyle change. If you went into it with your main goal being to fit into a size 6 or to look good in a bathing suit, you probably wouldn't be able to stick to it. But if you went into because you wanted to be healthy or you were at risk for diabetes, you were more likely to stick with it. That resonated with me and when I focused on that, it worked, but ever since the first thought of "I want to lose X pounds by Y date" I've sabotaged my efforts.

My goals needs to be vague. I can't promise myself that I will reach my ideal BMI, my ideal weight, or my ideal clothing size, and I especially can't promise that I will have it by such and such a date. I can't do this with the goal of running the Boston Marathon or biking the Pan Mass Challenge and I can't seriously listen to people who, upon hearing my "crazy workout schedule" suggest such things. Whatever happens, happens, and I'll do my best in the mean time.

In other news, my grandparents are moving to senior housing, and the aunts and uncles are cleaning their stuff out of their shed and basement and old bedrooms, which is how I scored a thirty-three year old men's Schwinn ten-speed. The tires need to be replaced and the chain is loose, but the thing actually works. I haven't had a working bicycle since I was 10, because the next bicycle I got, the gear changer thingy didn't work and it constantly felt like I was pedaling uphill, which is not something an 11 year old is interested in. So I'm absurdly happy about having a bike, as I've been thinking about getting one for months now. Even though I haven't gotten tires yet.