Tuesdays With Anna

How weird is it that I only ever want to blog on Tuesdays? So odd.

I'm on week 2 of my third boot camp. I moved to 7 am. So far, so good. It's actually kind of motivating me to get up in the mornings! I thought for sure I would just sleep through all of them and screw everything up. Whoo-hoo! I'm kicking butt. Also on Friday they featured me as the fitwit Camper Profile on their blog, so that was quite the lil honor. It was a good way for me to kind of give my perspective on the whole experience, and that makes me feel more comfortable in general. I'm not sure why, nor am I even sure I want to know why, but I am addicted to fitwit. My goal for this camp is to have perfect attendance.

AND THEN... I joined the fitwit dance club, which basically just means once a month I'm going to go to a dance class with some of the people. I've been wanting to go to dance 411 and shake my booty real hard, but I always feel like an ass going to those things by myself. So, now I have someone to go with. High five.

AND THEN... I bought a 25-class card to aqua boot camp, which is very near my work and has a lunch time class. I scheduled my first few for my off days from fitwit.

AND THEN... I fell off the wagon hardcore this past weekend... We went to Alex's graduation in Charleston, SC. I can't believe I'm the aunt of an adult now. It's just too weird. They grow up too fast. Anyway, I ate a bunch of garbage while traveling, and I had a lunch meeting today with an employee, and I have dinner plans tonight, so I'm just screwed. I'm planning to pick my paleo lifestyle back up tomorrow and run with it. I honestly can't believe the difference it makes when I'm eating clean vs. not. My stomach has actually been hurting after I indulge in whatever garbage I used to eat by the bucketful. It's been a very telling experience, for sure.

Hey, have you heard of the 30 day song challenge? Everybody is doing it on facebook. My problem is that I'm friends with too many music snobs and I don't feel like undergoing that kind of scrutiny. So I'm going to do it here.

Day 30: Your Favorite Song at This Time Last Year
"Summertime Clothes" by Animal Collective
The song and lyrics create such familiar imagery for me; it really resonated with me. Atlanta is HOT in the summer! And until I had kids, I was one of those night people...

That's when my bipolar tendencies kicked in

I noticed I was blogging on Tuesdays and I wanted to put a stop to that and since that time I've only ever thought about blogging on Tuesdays, so I figure if I just give in to Tuesdays I will somewhow self-regulate.

The food fight ended on 5/21. I didn't win. I did, however, lose 18% of my body fat. If you're making a little impressed face at that, then just take a moment to realize that that percentage doesn't mean anything. I did lose quite a few pounds and inches. Then I went into this bizarre sort of post-partum about it. I indulged in all sorts of evil foods and drinks all week and basically felt sick most of the time. I think I was trying to have some kind of backlash, but I really don't know wtf I think I have to rebel against. Living longer? Good habits?

The descent into madness started a couple of days before the food fight ended, when I realized I couldn't possibly win. The trainers had this side bet going about which of them could lose the highest percentage of body fat. The trainer who won lost 25% of her body fat. She was already rail thin. Then it occurred to me, if someone only has 10 pounds of body fat, then they would have only had to lose 2.5 pounds over the past 11 weeks to get to 25%. So then some little sparks flew around in my robot brain for a couple of days until I got dunked. I lost 18% of my body fat, plus 4 pounds of muscle. I won't say how many pounds I lost, but I will say that I lost more than 1.5 pounds per week, which is 'unhealthy'. Why? Because you lose muscle when you lose weight that quickly. The woman who won lost 27% of her body fat, which would have been damn near impossible for me to do in 11 weeks, and entirely unhealthy.

Shenanigans!

Nonetheless I was thrilled to have lost the fat. Additionally I had lost inches, my clothes fit better (or worse if they were too big), my mood had stabilized, my blood pressure was better, my sleep apnea was cured, and I was fine with not winning. I can't win everything.

Then came the photos. I had to have Kevs take pictures of me from the front, side, and back for my 'after' shots. I looked awful. I mean really. Awful. All I could thinks was wow, I worked my ass off for eleven weeks just to look slightly less disgusting. And it was depressing. And all the fatigue and discomfort and nausea and hunger that I had been grinning and bearing for the past eleven weeks came back to me and forced their way through my tear ducts.

I mean, I had so many positive changes in my health and my life and the way I felt over the past few weeks, I couldn't understand why my body didn't really reflect that. In fact, very few people have made any kind of 'Have you lost weight?' types of comments at all. It's barely noticeable.

It's because it's kind of a drop in the bucket. I'm a big fat whale of a woman, and I have a long way to go. And no one to blame but myself. I just get kind of freaked out when I think about continuing to do this over the next I-don't-know-how-long until I'm in good shape. It's overwhelming.

So I trudged back into fitwit this morning, and I'm eating my fucking fruit for lunch. I don't have any choice any more. Oh but yeah now I have the added joy of having to wake up early in the morning to go exercise because the fam can't really handle me being gone an extra hour 4 nights per week.

It's cool. I'm going to rock this shit if it kills me.

an endless journey of self-something

I seem to be blogging on Tuesdays. How very odd.

I've been following this primal / paleo / caveman diet thing lately, for the sake of the fitwit "food fight" competition. If you've never heard of it, you can peep it here and here, but it's basically like, if you can't kill it with a spear or hack it out of the earth, you can't eat it. Oh and also you can't eat any grains or legumes for some reason. (Sigh) I hate diets that aren't really based on anything, but this one seems to be working and seems to be keeping me relatively fed, so I guess it is based on something, I'm just not 100% sure what yet. But you know, don't sell it like it's some caveman trip when oh, but if you come across beans or corn don't eat that shit for God's sake. It's all a lot easier to swallow (wah-wah) when there's some kind of basis behind it. Like Gittleman's stuff - I could understand that. I get the glycemic index. It seems to make perfect sense. If I eat something a little too sweet, I can totally feel it causing more cravings. This diet I don't really understand that well yet, but it's the fitwit way, so I've been giving it a whirl. Oh yeah, no dairy or alcohol either. Guhhh...

So, here are some things I've discovered on my foray into paleo-ism.

• Dehydrated ginger tastes like hair on fire.


• There's this thing called a Tanka Bar that's basically dried buffalo and dried cranberries that someone came up with, and it's the big / main / only? paleo snack food. Now in spicy pepper flavor too. Hey guess what? They taste pretty amazing. Not as in, "I'm starving, oh wow suddenly kale tastes good," either. I mean they actually taste good.


• I love canteloupe and hate honeydew.


• I knew 'sugar makes me hungry' before, but I did not know that fat is what makes me feel full.


• Apparently saturated fats are righteous now? This one is still confusing to me, but doing this for a few weeks probably won't kill me. Right?


• You just can't make kale taste good. Eating it raw is tolerable, making it into chips by tossing oil and salt and roasting is tolerable, but it cannot be made good.


• It's damn near impossible for me to eat enough protein in a day to be the beefcake my body is trying to be.


• Coconut water tastes like stale water. There's a weird meatiness to it. It tastes the way that it smells when you're sitting near someone with bad breath. Not horrible breath, and not right in your face, just bad. But when you splash it into a big glass of water it tastes nice and apparently rebalances your electrolytes wonderfully.


• Coconut oil works like regular oil but smells like coconut. I do love that smell. And I'm so happy to not be reading any recipes that call for vegetable oil. That stuff smells disgusting.


• Coconut meat tastes fine, but not as good as I had imagined it would. I love dessicated coconut, even unsweetened, and it seems like if that has been ligin in a big sphere with coconut milk then it would taste amazing, but no. It is pretty filling, though.


• My stomach lacks the ability to signal for "full." But lately I've been trying to at least take a stab at guessing, instead of ignoring the problem altogether. That's progress, I guess.

How many Harvard grads does it take to change a lightbulb?

Just one. She holds the light bulb up to the socket and the world spins around her.

That was a weak segue into my new constant obsession about my inability to find a balance between Anna and non-Anna concerns. Like last year when I felt always stressed for time because eyedrum was eating into my family time, I worry about the time I spend away from the kids. I didn't see them all day today, other than a quick good morning and a quick goodnight. Unlike last year, I feel that this is a much more important reason. I'm getting healthy -- that would buy me years of time with them that I might otherwise not have. But I could spend more time with them and get healthy if I would just work out at home. But I never did that when I had the chance. I didn't want to, and they wouldn't let me. And then let's not even talk about my new diet being completely different from what they eat. But wait, should it be? Am I still in the trial period? Is this an opportunity for me to feel guilty about something?

I haven't bought their Easter stuff at all yet. What do I have to do again? Egg hunt? Color eggs? Where am I?

I'm so tired.

Belly dancing continues unabated. As does boot camp. I ran an incredibly slow mile today and patted myself on the back for it. I'm back off the cigs, which of course is WONDERFUL. I pigged out over the weekend, but it was scheduled so therefore fine I guess. You wouldn't believe what a hard workout belly dancing is.

Kinda bewildering...

You spend so much of your life thinking people suck and being unable to identify heroes, role models, etc., that when you actually meet one you don't know what to say...

Enter the assistant trainer at fitwit, Jer. I was impressed by him last camp because he spent so much extra time with me and the other "special ed" kids. I liked him because he has a decent sense of humor and unlike many athletic folks, did not seem to be a fattist. He's a great guy; I knew that.

But HOLY FUCKING HELL! Look at this!

Man Saves Man from Fall on MARTA Tracks: MyFoxATLANTA.com

Wow, I'm just amazed. Then I read his blog and I'm even more impressed; the guy has tons of awesome stuff going on. Very refreshing. So no, not some dumb athlete at all. He's just incredible, really.

Today was the first day back at fitwit after a week off. I felt like a schlub, but I didn't feel all weak and terrified like I did 7 weeks ago. I worked hard, almost barfed yet again, and felt trembly and stiff afterwards. Somehow this is good news.

Have I ever mentioned that I'm incredibly competitive? So yeah, there's a contest... I have 6 weeks... Gotta... Pull... Off... a... Miracle...

Oh, and joy of joys, there was slideshow to commemorate the last day of fitwit last session. I was featured not once, but twice, not working out whatsoever, but doing this:



and then they go all Special Olympics at the end with this final shot:



GAH!

(but how awesome that I wore my KISS t-shirt)

I feel sexier already.

It really is amazing how exercise makes me feel so much better so fast. I just wish I looked better faster.

The temptation is completely with me right now to say, "I'm on spring break from fitwit. Slag off. I said slag off!" But I gotta stay kinetic. Time and again we've seen what happens when I don't. The problem, and this is true of the homeworks as well, is that I don't seem to want to do fitwit workouts when I'm not there. I KNOW, believe me I KNOW how good they are for me. But the problem is that they're just so dang difficult. Remember Anna from 8 weeks ago? The one who never did anything whatsoever? Nada? Zilch? She lives within me. New Anna envisions myself coming home and running up and down my block and doing push ups and burpees and so forth in between. The other one is still there with all her anxiety and her busy life and her body at rest, staying at rest. Her economy of motion. The garden is more important. The laundry. Shopping. Having hormone related meltdowns. Raking.

A compromise is in order. I scheduled up some compromises. Sunday I did hours of grueling gardening including tilling. Tilling takes it out of me. Thursday I have a pilates class on tap, and I've never done that before. And tonight, my Mom and I went to a belly dancing class! Man, I've always wanted to do it. So we did! I love most kinds of dancing, but this has been a little slutty dream of mine for ages. Thanks to halfoffdepot.com , the dream could finally be realized. Mom and I are doing a six week class together. The moves actually came naturally to me, but when I looked in the mirror all I could see is this awful flubber flying around. The goddam Franklin Mint couldn't make a coin sash big enough to camouflage all that. But fuck it, it was fun. And I moved my body and worked up a little sweat. Mission accomplished. Poor Mom, she was so nervous, and then she has problems with rhythm. It reminded me of when I used to go with her to Richard Simmon's Workout America back in the 80's. But I think I got the moves down pretty easily, despite how gross I looked doing them. My coach at fitwit had a word for it but I can't remember what it was - he said I had a good sense of how to do exercises, like an awareness or aptitude or something, but I can't remember what it is called. In any case, I'm happy with what I'm doing every day now, and I'm feeling much better about the fitness conundrum at the moment. It may be true that I'm in the honeymoon phase of my newest fitness initiative, but I have to just keep chipping away at it.

In other news, I'm playing bass like a badass also these days. I ripped my hands apart playing so much over the weekend. I'm also working on a disgusting song that I'm writing. Can't wait to get it nailed down and out into the world.

something in the face of whatevs

Jesus Christ, March was a mother of a month...

I did something weird on February 21. I joined a 6-week fitness boot camp. Tonight, I finished it.

(Hold for applause).

For four days every week I headed down to the local high school and worked out really, really hard for an hour with a trainer and some other people who were also paying him to play PE Coach. Like a purple robot. Six weeks later, I am stronger, more capable, and a little slimmer. I probably would be a lot slimmer except I only started really trying to watch what I eat about a week ago.

I am, in fact, proud of myself.

However, I smoked about 5 cigarettes tonight. This was the first time in ages, but I'm having a massive problem with the kids' daycare. Those SOB's really, really pissed me off. Looks like we will have to change daycare centers for the first time ever. I'm not beating myself up about the cigs.

On the 16th of March my grandmother passed away. She was very dear to me. I'm not handling it very well. She was 93 and had been battling cancer for three years. She had every right to go; it was completely and utterly her time. She did it with grace and dignity, as she did everything in her long life. It's still been tough for me. She was a constant in my life. She loved me. Now there is one less person on Earth who loves me, to go along with the many new ones every day who seem to hate me for no apparent reason. Moreover, it's a kind of love that can never be replaced. No one will ever love me like that again.

So in addition to the grueling ten hour drive (each way) to Toledo with my two toddlers (and my Kevs, thank God), and the ridiculous expense, the time away from work, the new funeral clothes, the extended family, the pet sitters, and everything else... my heart is broken.

I missed exactly two boot camp sessions. My shining achievement throughout all this. I've got to take care of myself. It's so much more than a mantra.