8/31/16: Focus on Exercise and Fitness

Weight:  154.6
Exercise:  3.2 mile run (Week 3, Run 2 - Base)

I need to get the food situation figured out.  I'm still eating a little too much.  I still have cravings.  I am still attributing that mostly to stress.  The stress level has decreased somewhat, I hope to see an improvement with the food cravings soon.

In the meantime, I am focusing on my exercise regimen.  Along with posting my weight daily, I will post the exercise that I have done since my previous post.  This morning I went for a 3.2 mile run.

While on my run this morning I was thinking about strength training vs. running.  Which is more important?  Why?  Intellectually, I give them equal importance because they accomplish very different things.  I find weight lifting more immediately rewarding because it's easier to see and feel the changes in my body; therefore, it is harder to motivate myself to run.  I want to run three times a week.  My goal is to run a half-marathon next fall.  Training will consist of 2 base runs a week (relatively short, consistent distances) and 1 run for distance each week.  This is my 3rd week of training.

I want to be able to do a pull-up.  Why?  Partly because I've never been able to do one, but partly for safety.  I want to be strong enough that I can pull myself up into a boat or onto a dock without a ladder, for instance.  I can't do that.  I have to have help.  I don't think it is a lack of arm strength as much as it is a lack of chest, back and lat strength.  Someday.

I gotta run.  The clock is chiming and telling me to get to work.

Have a great day!!

PS - Hi Ruth!!  I ran in the rain, today!

8/30/2016: Exercise

Weight:  154.4

I can't seem to get motivated to be very disciplined about food right this minute.  I want to be and I feel like I "should" be, but there are so many other things competing for my attention.  I'm not eating sweets, but I am eating a little too much to lose these four pounds that I want to lose.  It's a constant battle.  It will be a battle for many years to come.  Maybe, sooner or later, over time, my set point will change to a lower, healthier weight.  Until then, I'll have to keep fighting the good fight.

The other half of the equation is exercise.  It is a critical element to my program.  This week has started off well and I feel like I am settling into a healthy workout regimen of 3 strength training sessions and 3 runs a week.  Here is a snap shot of my last two workouts (yesterday's is on top, Saturday's is on the bottom).

I am posting this partly for the benefit of my trainer, so she can see the weights that I used yesterday. Hi Lauren!!

The workouts are designed to take a full hour, yesterday's took a little longer than that.  My goal with the strength training workouts is to be strong, agile, and well balanced into my very old age.  I am getting a little stronger every week.  I guess there will come a time when I stop getting stronger and the program will be about maintaining strength, but I'm not there yet.  I have to admit, I kind of like strength training.  At the very least, I like the way it makes me feel.  There is something very satisfying about being strong and having muscle definition.  It is still my goal to be able to do a pull up some day.  I am no where close.  When I hang from the bar I can't even lift myself an inch.  It must be a lack of lat and back strength.  We're working on that!!  I have a slight pain on the inside of my left elbow when we do dumbbell curls.  Lauren is pretty sure it's a sore tendon, because I don't feel it when I do hammer curls.  It is possible that the tendon is stressed because of weak grip strength in my left hand, so we are going to do more grip strengthening exercises to see if that helps.

Today is going to be a good day!  Have fun!!

8/27/28: Feeling "Full," Why is it Satisfying?

Weight:  154.4

Yes, you read that right.  After all my talk and all my determination to stay the course, I veered off of it in a serious way for about 4 hours late yesterday afternoon.  Four hours is all it took for me to "gain" 2 pounds.  I put the word gain in quotation marks because I know it's temporary.  I know most of it will be gone tomorrow.  I know most of it is fluid retention, swelling, systemic inflammation, water-weight, or whatever you want to call it.  I call it my body's warning sign that tells me I mistreated it yesterday.

It started with dinner.  Well, it started before dinner.  I was hungry all day, just like I had been hungry all day on Friday and all day on Thursday.  There was only one day last week that I wasn't hungry all day long, I think it was Wednesday.  For the most part, throughout this last 4 years of losing weight, I have not been hungry. I am not sure why now, all of a sudden, I am hungry all of the time.  That's not true, I guess when I think about it I know what it is, it's stress.  The hormone cortisol is released when you are excessively stressed and cortisol stimulates hunger.  That is what it is.  Ugh.  I have to get rid of this high level of stress.  It's just plain unhealthy.

By the time I got to dinner last night, I was tired of being hungry.  I had a healthy breakfast and I had a healthy lunch.  We ate dinner on time, so that was not the problem.  Part of the problem is that we had a dinner that I really like.  When we sat down to eat, I took a reasonable portion of food.  After I ate it, I kept eating out of the serving dishes.  I ate until I was full, probably consuming about twice the calories I should have.  After dinner, it didn't stop.  I really wanted a beer and there were a few cold brews in the fridge.  I opened one and sipped at it while we played games.  It was a beer that Steve had bought and it tasted OK, but it wasn't my favorite, so I only drank about half of it.  I also opened a bottle of wine, but I only had about two sips even though it tasted pretty good.  Therefore, I didn't drink a lot, not even the equivalent of "one drink," but I was also craving something sweet.  I settled on raisins.  Raisins are not technically a forbidden food for me, but as a rule I don't keep dried fruit in the house because of its high sugar content and because of how I can substitute it for candy.  I did that last night.  I ate a lot of raisins last night.  I ate raisins until I didn't want any more.  By the way, the raisins were left over from making oatmeal cookies a few months ago, when we had a lot of family in the house.  I should probably throw the damn raisins away.

Last night I ate until I was full.  You know what I am talking about, right?  That feeling you get when you put enough food in your stomach that your tummy feels just slightly uncomfortable.  I never eat until I'm full.  Well, almost never.  I can't say never because I did it last night.  Most of the time I eat my prescribed portion of food, just enough to fuel me until my next meal, and most of the time I am fine with that.  Yet, there is something incredibly comforting about feeling full.  I have no idea why it is comforting, but it is.  Last night I wallowed in it.  This morning, I saw the result on the scale.  I just want to knock myself upside the head for that one.

It's as obvious to me as I am sure it is to all of you that I need to correct the underlying source of stress.  I am working on that, but it takes time.  There are a variety of scenarios that can play out and I need a little longer to see which makes the most sense for me and my family.  In the meantime, I have the day off from work tomorrow, which will help.  I can relax a little more today, get some cooking done, have a play day with Jack, and finish chores and relax a little more tomorrow.  I'm also going to go for my run when I am done with this blog post.  Last week rain and lightning kept me from two of my three runs and that frustrated me.  Yes, I know, I need a treadmill.  I'll remedy that one of these days.  But today, I can run outside.  It's 7:00AM and it is already very warm and very humid, but there is no lightning.  It's a perfect day for a run!

So there you go.  It is humbling to admit failure and my ridiculous eating yesterday afternoon feels like a failure. There is no reasonable excuse for it and I do not try to rationalize my behavior. At the same time, I do try to understand what triggered the behavior so that I can decrease the frequency of these episodes in the future.  I have lost about 100 pounds in the last fifteen years, 74 of them in the last four years, and it will probably take another 5 years, or more, to adjust my set point to a healthy 150 pounds.  I still have issues with food.  It's still a mood altering drug for me.  It takes constant vigilance and constant determination and a desire to be healthy into old age that is bigger than my desire to medicate my moods away to stay the course 98% of the time and to immediately get back on course when I stray.  I am back on track.  Again.  I am sure we will have this exact same conversation in the future.  Again.  Such is the way it goes.

Have a great day!  I know I am going to do my best to do exactly that!

8/27/16: On Track and Thoughts About Surgery, Eight Months Later

Weight:  152.4

I am happy about being back on program!  The days are still rough.  I was hungry and had food cravings most of the day yesterday, which was day 5 without sugar.  That's the bad news (being hungry and having cravings is the bad news- not the no sugar).  The good news is that I have lost a couple of the pounds I gained over the previous 3 weeks and the bloated feeling is just about gone.  If I pay attention to my body, I know if I am treating it well or not.  I know with another week or so of discipline staying on program will become easy again.  I just need to stay the course.

It's been eight months and fourteen days since my "mommy makeover" surgery and I am finally beginning to understand the full impact that having the surgery is going to have on my life, in the long term.  For quite a while it was difficult for me to comprehend all of the ramifications of the surgery because the recovery took so long.  Now that I am 99% recovered, I am beginning to truly appreciate the long-term results of my decision to have this work done.  I am going to attempt to put into words how I feel about the surgery, at this point, both the good and bad.

I'll start with the bad, though bad is too strong of a word.  I'll start with the negatives, of which there are only two:

• The scars are real.  
• When you are sitting in the plastic surgeon's office flipping through the pictures of the women that have had this surgery, you see the scars; but you also see the before photos right next to the after photos.  When you see the after pictures of shapely, youthful breasts with a small vertical scar below the nipple next to the before pictures of long, deflated, pendulum breasts; that little scar seems completely inconsequential.   
• The same is true of the long scar just below the "bikini line" that is the result of the tummy tuck.  Yeah, you see the scar in the after photos, but the before photos, with all of the folds of sagging skin are so much worse that you say to yourself, "So what?  Who cares about a "little" scar if my tummy can look like that!"
• After surgery (AS), when you look in the mirror and the "old you" isn't standing right next to the "current you," you do see your flat belly and your youthful breasts, but you also see the scars. I'm not saying it is not worth it, the sagging skin was much, much worse.  Every now and then you have to dig out a before surgery (BS) photo and then you go, "Oh yeah, the scars are a HUGE improvement over that!"  It's all about perspective.  But the scars are real.  I do see them in the mirror.  I have one thick scar under my right arm that is about 2 inches long that I am still getting steroid shots in, now and then, to help it heal (the 1% that is not recovered completely).  The only reason I am even talking about the scars is to keep this real.  If you are contemplating this surgery, don't minimize the scars you will have afterward.  You will live with them for life.
• As a side note, I already had a cesarean section (and hysterectomy) scar.  I honestly didn't think the new scar would be much different, even though my surgeon said it would be longer.  I was wrong.  First, I couldn't see the old scar because my skin sagged so much that it completely covered up the existing scar. To see the scar I had to lift up my sagging skin.  Second, the new scar is much longer, it runs hip to hip.  It is much more eye-grabbing, if you know what I mean.
• The scars will continue to fade, a year from now they will be much less pronounced, but they will always be there.  It's OK.  Really it is.  I am not complaining.  I'm just saying that you can't ignore the fact that the scars are there.
• The recovery was long, much longer than I thought it would be.
• My surgeon told me that recovery would take 6 to 12 months.  I chose not to hear that. "No way," I said to myself, "will recovery take that long.  I'll bounce back faster than that.  I always do!"  Yeah, right.  Don't fool yourself.
• Every time I see my surgeon I mention how long the recovery is taking and he reminds me that I had a huge surgery.  He says, "Well, you had a lot of work done.  Recovery takes time.  You are doing great.  Just be patient."  Patience, it turns out, is not one of my strong suits.  This long recovery period has been difficult for me.
• The Internet is amazing. You can find a ton of information about plastic surgery in general and this surgery in particular, on the Internet.  Photos and stories from real people that have been through this are illuminating.  But the stories focus on that first few weeks AS, those hell weeks.  The first few weeks were difficult, but to me, they were not as difficult as I thought they would be.  Yeah, the drains were miserable.  Yeah, I was constipated from the pain medication.  Yeah, everything hurt.  Yeah, it was hard to sleep.  All of that is true, but that part didn't last very long.  As long as you don't try to do too much, you take your pain meds regularly, and follow doctor's orders, after about three weeks, the worst of it is over.  Then comes the long, slow slog to full recovery.
• That stage, that long, slow slog, took another 7 months.  I am just now feeling great.  It has taken me this long to get my body back into pretty good shape, and I am still not in as good of shape as I was BS.  I still can't run as far or do as many sit-ups.  I'm improving and I can tell I am going to get there, but I think my surgeon was right.  It'll be a full year until I am 100%.  This has been much, much more frustrating than I thought it would be.  I like being strong and fit and I find it incredibly frustrating to not be able to perform at the same level as I did BS.
• I was surprised how long it took AS to be able to start exercising again.  My surgeon said I could start exercising six weeks after surgery.  By exercise he meant going for walks. He did not mean lifting weights or running.  I could not start seriously running or doing weight training for over four months AS. Four months of inactivity wreak havoc on one's body.  I was going crazy in months three and four as I watched my muscles soften and lose shape.  I, the woman who claimed so adamantly 5 years ago that she hated exercise, was going nuts because I couldn't exercise.  Oh my god, you would have thought someone was torturing me, it bothered me so much.  I kept starting exercise programs and realizing it was too soon, and stopping again.  Yeah, that was really rough.
• Until I could really start exercising again and start getting my muscle tone back, I could not truly appreciate the results of the surgery.  Now I can.

This brings us to the positives, which far, far outweigh the negatives:

• I like looking in the mirror.
• The saddlebags are gone.  I hardly ever talk about the fact that I had liposuction on my outer thighs because I keep forgetting about it, mostly because there are no noticeable scars.  I couldn't stand those pockets of fat on my thighs.  It didn't matter how much weight I lost or how much I exercised, those pockets of fat would not go away.  In fact, the better shape I got in, the worse they looked because the rest of my leg would get lean and smooth and then there were these significant bulges sticking out on my upper thighs.  I'd put on a pair of jeans or a skirt that fit and all I'd see were those damn saddlebags.  They're gone now.  My thighs are smooth. It's impossible to describe how good that feels.  This is something I could not fix on my own, it needed intervention.  
• My tummy is flat and I no longer have to hide it behind just the right clothes.  I have a waist.  Clothes fit.  I'll talk more about this later.
• My breasts are cute. This is a big deal, a much bigger deal than I thought it would be. My breasts developed and got large when I was young, too young.  They've always been heavy and large and I have always been self conscious about them.  Two babies and a 100 pound weight gain just made it so, so much worse.  BS my breasts were two sacks of loose skin that I stuffed into a 36DD bra.  The bra was the right size, but this is not a comfortable way to live.  When your bra holds you up and compresses your breasts against your chest, you can't wait to get it off at the end of the day.  Of course, when you take your bra off, your breasts hang down to almost your belly button.  Ugh.  Now I wear a 34D bra, and it fits comfortably.  
• Clothes fit so much better.
• Tops, bras, pants, underpants, skirts, dresses:  you name it, it fits better.  Not only do clothes fit better, they are so much more comfortable.  The waist band of pants don't dig into my flesh.  My bras fit over my breasts, instead of holding up and compressing my breasts.  This means bras are comfortable.  You have no idea how much difference this makes in my everyday life, but it is huge.  I am no more or less comfortable in a bra than out of a bra.  Sometimes when I am home I don't wear a bra just because there is no reason to put one on.  In the past when I was home I didn't wear a bra because they were so damn uncomfortable and I couldn't wait to get them off.  My bra straps don't dig into my shoulders anymore.  I no longer have pain in my right shoulder.  This is a pretty big deal.
• I can wear just about whatever I want to wear.  When I go shopping for clothes, I am not trying to hide anything.  If something is the right size, I can wear it.  So now, I look for things that I think are fun and attractive, rather than looking for clothes that hide my belly, my chest, my substantial bra, or my saddlebags.  I find it interesting that when I show someone a before photo of my belly they can't believe that was my belly right BS. That tells me I was doing a pretty effective job hiding it.
• I am looking forward to finding "my style."  I know what I want my style to be, I want it to be playful and fun, maybe even a tad "inappropriate" for a woman "my age."  I am not sure what all the means yet, but I sure am having fun figuring it out.
• I finally feel like an athlete.
• I've been told before that I am an athlete.  In the last 10 years I have gone on 4 bike rides that were over 500 miles long.  I participated in an almost Olympic length triathlon.  I exercise 5 to 6 times a week.  I play kickball and bowl and in general train hard and keep myself fit.  But I couldn't wear the mantle of "athlete."  My body just didn't fit that image.  I'd look in the mirror and see fat.  That colored everything.  Now I look in the mirror and see the muscle tone in my legs and arms, I see my abdominal muscles, and I see the curve of my waist.  I put on clothes and I look fit and trim.  I look at myself and think, "Yeah, I can see it now.  Athlete fits."  This is the first time in my life that I could identify with that word, and it feels amazing.
• I can see the results of my hard work, or lack thereof.
• As I discussed in yesterday's blog post, I can see and feel a couple of extra pounds.  This has made a huge difference in my desire and willingness to stay the course when it comes to my food program.  I have no idea how many times over the next 50 years I will stray from what I know is good for me, but I am confident that I will not stray for long.  I don't like it when my belly gets a little round or when my waist thickens.  Three or four pounds is all it takes to see a difference.  Before, it was more like 15 or 20.  My motivation to eat well and exercise regularly is much, much higher than it was before.
• Exercising is more comfortable.
• I can wear exercise gear that is comfortable, including bras.  My breasts don't bounce around nearly as much.  I don't sweat under the folds of skin.  It makes it easier to get out there and get it done.

In summary, everyday is a better day.  I am a happier person.  I feel more powerful, if that makes sense.  I don't try to hide my body anymore.  I feel like I look the way I ought to look, given how hard I work on my exercise program and how disciplined I am with my diet.  Before, I worked my ass off and I still had all that extra flesh that I had to deal with.  Now I work my ass off and it shows.  It makes being disciplined so much more rewarding.  I decided to become disciplined for my long term health and well being, which, theoretically, had nothing to do with the way I looked.  But I couldn't not see all that extra skin hanging from my body.  I debated doing this for years.  I can honestly say that I am very glad I had this surgery done.  It has changed my life.  It has changed me.  I am so much more comfortable in my own skin. It was 100% worth it!

8/26/2016: Rain, Rain, Rain

Weight:  152.4

I am pleased with what has been happening on the bathroom scale the last couple of mornings. It makes days like yesterday worth it!  I wanted to eat all day long.  From the moment I got to work until I went to bed last night, I thought about food.  Some of the time I was craving something sweet. Most of the time I would have been satisfied with any food.  I peaked into the pizza box on the counter in the break room.  I was relieved when it didn't look good.  The good news is that I didn't eat any off-program food yesterday and the only thing that I ate that was not on my plate was a handful of nuts when I got home from work.  By the time I got home, I was truly hungry and I had several hours left until bedtime; I knew I needed to eat something or I'd be battling my hunger all night.  The nuts took the edge off.

When I assess the day and try to figure out why the food cravings and hunger were so overwhelming yesterday I come up with three possible causes:

• It was day four without sugar.  The addiction is kicking in and trying to force me to succumb.
• Stress.  The day did not go as planned.  I thought I was going to get a lot of projects done and I got interrupted a lot.  None of the projects got completed.
• Weight lifting caused a calorie deficit, I didn't eat enough.  My trainer has shifted my weight lifting sessions from 3 whole body workouts a week to each workout targeting specific muscles groups.  The goal is to improve strength.  The weights are heavier, the workouts have more of a cardio vascular element to them, and I am seriously fatigued at the end of the workout.  I may need to eat more on days when I lift weights.  I have read that eating something protein heavy right after a workout helps the muscles repair themselves.  I eat a hearty breakfast before my workout (at about 4:15) and I eat lunch at about 10:30.  I might need to consider adding a light meal right after my workout and pushing lunch back an hour or so.  We'll see how it goes next week.  I will definitely keep this in mind.

Yesterday stood in stark contrast to Wednesday, when I did not have any food cravings at all.  There were some significant differences to the two days.

• I didn't exercise Wednesday morning because it was raining and it was a running day. (We are having thunderstorms again this morning, which is why I have time to put up a longer post.)
• I was able to complete several small projects at work and make the progress I wanted to make throughout the day.

I have 2.4 more pounds to lose.  I am OK with muscling my way through some hunger pains for a short period of time to get there.  On the other hand, I will be careful to pay attention to how much I need to eat on weight lifting days.  I've never really had a problem with not eating enough, but I may be exploring new territory with my exercise regimen and I don't want to unintentionally sabotage myself by not eating enough.

On another note (Does anyone actually read these entire posts when I start rambling like this?  I kind of doubt it!  That's OK, though. It helps me just to write about it.  Blogging keeps my mind from spinning for too long on a particular topic.) As I was saying, on another note, it is amazing how different my body is after my mommy makeover than it was before my surgery.  There is the obvious, of course.  My tummy is flat, my breasts are shapelier, and the saddlebags are gone.  But I am talking about something much more subtle, yet maybe more important to my long term health and happiness. I can see and feel every pound.  Before surgery (can we call that BS?  I kind of like that.  And after surgery will be AS.), I could not see or feel 5 or 10 pounds.  There was so much loose and sagging skin that seemed to just absorb extra pounds, I just couldn't tell if I was gaining weight without getting on the scale.  This made it possible for me to gain 15 or 20 pounds before I started to get really uncomfortable.  Now, without all that extra skin, if I gain even two pounds, I can see it and I can feel it.  My tummy gets a little bulge to it and I get a little puffiness around my waist.  The shape of my body is altered perceptibly by just a couple of pounds.  While this might sound awful to some of you, it is a huge relief to me.  I need every trigger you can think of to keep me from sliding into bad habits that will be detrimental to my long-term health and well being.  When I can see the results of my overeating within a few days of "the slide," it triggers me to stop that behavior.  I love my flat little belly.  I am so relieved to be able to put on clothes that just fit my body without having to pack in my folds of skin and sagging breasts, that I never want to lose that.  I am willing to exercise regularly for the rest of my life to keep it this way.  I am also willing to watch what I eat for the rest of my life.  But sometimes, my life gets hectic, stress intervenes, I am away from home too long, or I just get lazy and my diet and/or exercise habits falter and I fall back into the habits of yesteryear. Within a week, I start to thicken around the middle and that is just flat out unacceptable. At 150 - 152 pounds, I'm fine.  At about 153, my belly starts to get a little round and by 155 (where I was two days ago) I start to get thicker around the waist.  I used to scoff at the "skinny girls" that complained, "I need to lose five pounds, I am getting so fat!"  But now I get it.  It's not that I feel like I am getting fat, it's that I can feel and see those 5 pounds and I don't like it.  My clothes don't fit as well.  I know I am on a slide that is not good for me.  If you are reading this right now, and I ever minimized your feelings when you said you needed to lose ten pounds, I am sincerely sorry.  Back then, I couldn't see how being 5 or 10 or even 20 pounds overweight mattered.  Back then, all I could relate to was how awful it felt to be 50 or 75 or 100 pounds overweight.  That was a problem.  Ten pounds? Bleh! Who cares? I feel like such a cad. I get it now. I really can feel every pound and I am glad for it. One-fifty to one-fifty-two?  All good.  More than that, not so good. One-fifty-five and the emergency sirens are going off.  Yes, I like this change in my body.  It is one more tool in my tool box that will help me stay close to program for life.  I had no idea it would be like this, but I am grateful that it is.

The title of today's blog post is rain, rain, rain; yet I haven't talked about the rain.  That is the title of this blog post because that is what I thought I'd talk about today.  I am a little worried about all this rain because it highlights the weak element of my home gym.  I don't have a treadmill or any similar piece of equipment and I don't belong to a gym.  Most of the time that is completely fine.  I will run all winter and I'll run all summer.  Heat and cold are not a problem.  It's also not a problem to miss a day here and there due to rain or snow.  It starts to feel like a problem when I miss two runs in the same week due to thunderstorms. It doesn't help that I looked at the forecast and saw thunderstorms predicted for the next several days. As you know, I find it very difficult to exercise after work, but on days like this I am going to have to try.  Yesterday, Jack and I went for a walk after work so I could stay away from the kitchen.  At the very least I will try to go for another walk this evening.  If it's not raining, I will try to go for a short run.  I don't want a treadmill.  I don't know where I'd put it.  I don't like running on treadmills.  But maybe I'll get a treadmill.  I might have to concede that the long term plan doesn't work well without one.  We'll see.

I guess that's enough for one day.  Have a good one out there!

8/25/2016: I Can Work With This

Weight:  153.4

What a relief!  Finally some downward progress on the scale.  A week of vacation and two weeks of stress and crappy eating & drinking took its toll on my body and my psyche.  I'm glad to be getting centered again.

I have gone three days (plus a night) with no sugar.  Today is day four.  Yesterday was easier than I thought it would be.  I thought I would have another really rough day yesterday, but I didn't think about eating sweets at all yesterday so I never had to tell myself "no."  That is a huge relief.

The six week bikini body challenge is really a 5 1/2 week challenge.  I started the challenge on Saturday, August 20th. and we hit the beach on Thursday, September 29th.  My dad thinks I am becoming an exhibitionist.  No, it is not that at all.  This is what it is:  bikinis, believe it or not, are way more comfortable than 1 piece suits.  They are easier to get on and off, particularly when they are wet and you've got to pee.  Have you ever had on a wet one piece bathing suit and had to peel it off to use the bathroom and get it back on again?  It's a pain in the ass!  Also, you feel kind of like a stuffed sausage in a one piece.  I've always envied women that can wear a bikini.  I mean, I guess I could have worn a bikini before, but it would have looked terrible.  I guess I am a little too vain to truly let it all hang out there, when everything was truly hanging.  I still have my battle scars in the form of stretch marks; they are never going away.  But with the breast lift and tummy tuck, I actually fit into a bikini without having to lift everything up, strap everything down, and compress myself.  It is so liberating!  Could I, would I, walk on the beach tomorrow, in a bikini?  Well, yes; yes I would.  But would it be more fun if I can tighten up my abs, my butt, and my legs a little more? Most definitely.  And, oh yeah, don't forget this is going to be a family reunion.  That makes me a little extra self-conscious.

So the challenge is on!  How much progress can I make in the remaining 5 weeks before we leave for San Diego?  We are going to find out!!  Challenges help me stay focused, too.  It gives me something to work towards.

I had a great work out this morning.  The strength training is getting serious around here.  I did not run yesterday because of the weather.  I will get run #2 in tomorrow and run #3 in on Sunday.

Have a good one out there!!!!

8/24/16: Afternoon Update

It's 5:49PM on day three with no sugar.  That is a good thing.  Cravings subsided substantially today.

I am glad to be sugar-free, yet again.  For me, it is the best way to live.

I hope I see a little progress on the scale tomorrow.  It will be very frustrating if it inches up, again.

8/24/2016: Stress, Sugar, Set Point, or all Three?

Weight:  155.0

Ugh.

Major Ugh!!

I have not had sugar or any other off program food since Sunday afternoon.  That is the good news.

I gained another half a pound, that is the bad news.  I feel it everywhere.

Article after article tells you that stress causes weight gain because the body generates more of the hormone cortisol when it is under stress.  Cortisol impacts the release of insulin and other hormones, which can result in weight gain.

I had three fairly lousy weeks of eating.  Perhaps this last little half-a-pound is the result of that, and the upward trend will end now that I am on Day 3 of only on-program foods.

Perhaps my body is fighting to get back to a higher set-point weight.

Maybe I'm gaining weight because of the increased rigor of my strength training workouts.

I need to calm down.  Stress is a killer.  I don't need to allow this level of stress into my life.  It's all going to work out.

I need to stay away from sugar.  Day 3 is always difficult, but after I get through this week, the sugary treats will stop calling my name.

I need to eat a little less.  I have noticed that when I cut out sugar, I tend to eat more for a few days.  I think it is a subconscious decision to keep myself from getting hungry and caving into the sweet stuff.

I need to drink more water.

I need to stay true to me and to my program.

I need to tell you all about my 6 week bikini body challenge.  I'll talk about that tomorrow.  I took start photos in my new bikini on Saturday.  Should I post them?

Today is a brand new day.  It's going to be a good one!

8/23/16: I'm Hungry

Getting back on program is rough.  I've been hungry since 8:30 this morning.  It's a half hour until lunchtime.  I'll make it.

A week or two of struggling, and I'll stabilize.  Getting off that damn sugar is a bitch.  I'm just saying!

8/23/16: 40 Hours Sugar Free

Weight:  154.2

I have not had anything sweet to eat since Sunday at about 4:30PM.  That is significant progress. Better yet, I didn't really want to eat anything sweet yesterday, I just wanted to get through the day on-program.  I got home quite late yesterday and I was very hungry as I walked in the door.  I ate a small handful of nuts.  I'm OK with that.

I had a good workout this morning.  I ran yesterday.  All good.

So that's that.  I gotta go.

I hope you have a happy day!  That's what I'm aiming for!

8/22/2016: Perspective

Weight:  154.4 (Still)

It was an incredibly busy and exhausting weekend but my feet no longer stick to the kitchen floor, the toilets are clean, there is a week's worth of meals for three people in the refrigerator, I had a great workout with Lauren, I bought my first ever honest-to-god bikini bottoms that I am going to wear in San Diego at the end of September at our family reunion (if it is hot enough for the beach, that is), and I've got my head more-or-less screwed on straight.  That's not too bad for a couple of days' worth of work.

My diet over the weekend wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible.  I was more disciplined than I have been since leaving for vacation.  I feel solid about beginning a new week, with a refreshed perspective, and a solid program to rely on.  It's all good.

I did not get my long run in yesterday because I was cooking and cleaning from 6:00AM to 4:00PM and by the time I was done with that I was beat.  The new workout Lauren had me do on Saturday was taking its toll, too.  By yesterday evening I was wiped out.  I did a base run this morning (3.1 miles) and it felt pretty good.  As a reminder, my goal is to do two base runs (about 3 miles) and one run for distance (last week was 4.6 miles) each week.  The distance run will get a little longer each week, but I will walk as much of that run as necessary to be comfortable.  I can also walk during the base runs, if I feel like I need to.  The only problem with not running yesterday is that now, if I am going to get a distance run in this week, I need to do it before work, so I have to start a little earlier. It will be my goal to do that on Wednesday.  I will also do 3 strength training workouts a week.

It's Monday.  Who knows what it will bring?  I don't have a clue, but whatever it is, I'll do my best to handle it with grace and keep my perspective.

Have a great day!!!!!

8/20/2016: Reboot Needed

Weight:  154.4

You have no idea, and I mean NO IDEA, in capital and bold letters, how much, after stepping on the scale this morning, I did not want to put: Weight:  154.4 as the first line on this blog post.

"Oh, it doesn't really matter," I said to myself, "I can just put 153.something and no one will know the difference."  But that is not what this is all about.  This is all about keeping it real, keeping myself on track, and being open about the challenges of living everyday life while staying fit and healthy and strong into my very old age.  I had a bad week.  I had a bad two weeks.  OK, OK, OK;  I had a horrible couple of weeks.

There were moments in the last two weeks that I was almost holding "it" all together.  "It," is defined as my health program.  There were other moments that I didn't give a shit about my health program and I ate and drank whatever felt good.  Yeah.  That's the truth.  That's what happened.

The stress level I have felt for the last two weeks has been off the charts.  I cannot talk about specifics, but there were some unexpected life events that I could not control that I had to respond to in a well thought out and productive way.  I am OK.  There is no need to worry about me.  I will work my way through this, so please don't worry.  I only post the fact that this two week period of time has been difficult because of how it impacted the way I ate and how often I exercised.

As I said above, for the most part I tried to maintain my healthy lifestyle throughout the last two weeks.  I wasn't always successful.  I gained a few pounds.

Each morning I would get up determined to eat on program.  The days started well, but most days, by mid-afternoon, I was looking for something extra to eat, usually something sweet.  All of those candy jars around the office that I have been able to ignore for so long seemed to have my name on them.  I didn't eat a ton of crap, but I ate some crap every day.  If I ate just a little crap, I'd weigh the next morning and say, "OK, 151.something, I can live with that right now."  If I ate more crap, the scale would jump up to over 152 pounds and I knew that was a problem.  That next day I would force myself to eat less crap so the scale would drop back below 152 pounds.

After two weeks of see-sawing back and forth between a decent food day and a bad food day, I had two bad foods days in a row,  yesterday and the day before.  Thursday afternoon I went out in the evening and had chicken nachos for dinner.  Is there a worse food?  I have no idea, but chicken nachos comes pretty close to ranking right up there when it comes to too many calories with very little nutritional value.  I looked at the menu and none of the healthy-ish foods sounded at all appetizing.  I wanted junk food.  I like chicken nachos.  I haven't had them for ages.  I ordered them. I ate them.  All of them.

I also had a few drinks.  Yeah, I did it up right.  I was lit up.  It was quite the evening.  A real dam-burst kind of night.

I woke of Friday morning feeling pretty rough around the edges and didn't even weigh myself.  Not because I didn't want to, but mostly because I was stumbling blurry eyed through my morning and I was half-dressed before I realized that I hadn't weighed myself.  At that point it seemed silly to strip down just to get on the scale, so I skipped the weigh-in ritual yesterday morning.  I started the day with the intent of staying on program, but by mid-afternoon I was back into the candy jars and I scarfed a treat off of the engineers' goody cart.  I ate a healthy dinner when I got home and got a little too full.  Then Jack and I went to the ball game and all I could think about was food, so we split an order of fries.  I ate most of them.  *Sigh*  So there you go.

My exercise program didn't go quite so far off program.  I lifted weights three times last week and I ran twice.  I wanted to run three times, but I'm not going to complain about a 5 exercise session week. I want it to be six, consistently, but 5 exercise sessions during a very stressful week is not that bad.

I had a very productive exercise session this morning.  It was the first time Lauren and I worked together for a few weeks.  We missed one week because of the camping trip and then we missed a couple of weeks because of her surgery.  She used her time off productively and designed a new workout for me, focused on increasing strength, particularly keeping in mind my goal to do a pull-up by the end of the year.   The weights are starting to get heavy, I did barbell squats with 70 pounds on the bar.  It's getting tough, but it is strangely satisfying.  I don't know why, exactly, I like lifting weights, but I do like it, in an odd, masochistic sort of way.

Today is about the reboot.  Decisions have been made, a plan is in place, and I know what I need to do.  I have an awesome support group among my family and friends.  I have a weekend with no planned events so I can get my house clean, my blog updated, the bills paid, the meals cooked, and even go get a pedicure.  It's all going to be fine.  It really is.

Here's to all of us having an awesome day, today!!!

8/18/16: Good Workout

Weight:  152.4

I had a great workout this morning, including increasing the weights on some of the lifts.

I did not have a great food day yesterday but it was better than the previous day.  Improvement is good.  I did not eat or drink anything except water after I got home, so that was good.

I have made a significant decision that I am comfortable with.  I will disclose it as soon as I can.

Have a wonderful day.  I'm running late, but I have to work late tonight, so I am OK with that.

8/17/16: Stress is a Trigger

Weight:  152.8

I am capable of handling a fair amount of stress in stride, but every now and then it pushes over the top and I find myself in situations where I don't necessarily make the best food choices.  That has been the case since I've been back from vacation.  Between work being over-the-top stressful and coming off a vacation where I was eating off-program food, my cravings have been terrible. Yesterday I did fine most of the day, but when I got home late in the evening I had a couple of glasses of wine, a little dark chocolate and some chips and salsa.  I know that sounds like a weird combination, but somehow it was strangely satisfying.  Predictably, the results showed up on the scale this morning.

Right now, it is 5:20 and instead of lifting weights I am putting up a quick blog post so that I can scoot out of here in a few minutes to go to work.  I left for work very early yesterday morning as well.  I am not worried about destroying my workout routine, as this is the last morning that I plan on doing this.  I have to have a project done by 2:30 today and I can work late this afternoon to get caught up on everything else. After that, I should be able to keep my work load manageable and I will get back into my healthy routines.

I have to get back on and stay on the straight and narrow with regard to my food program, so that I can get to and stay at 150.0 pounds.  It will probably take all of a week of being regimented.  I've proven that I can be regimented with regard to diet for months at a time, a week should not be a big deal.  I'm a stress eater.  That is a habit I need to get over.  Now.

Here's to having a good day, today!

8/16/2016: No Time to Blog

Weight:  151.4

I don't have time to write today, but wanted to get my weight posted.  Was glad to lose the pounds and a half that I gained over the weekend.

Have a wonderful day!

8/15/2016: Eat, Drink and be Merry?

Weight:  153.2

I ate and drank too much this weekend and I am a pound and a half heavier this morning because of it.  There was a family reunion in Topeka on Saturday with food, food, food, galore!  My meal was a relatively healthy taco salad, but the dessert table did me in.  Brownies, cookies, and cheesecake; oh my!  I shouldn't have had one, but I did.  One turned into many.

Saturday evening Jack and I went out and met a friend of mine for a couple of drinks.  A couple of drinks turned into three, which was fine, but we also split an order of chicken wings and french fries. On top of that it was late.  We ate at about 9:00PM.  Not good.  When I woke up yesterday I weighed 153.2 pounds, it could have been worse.  Yesterday was an incredibly busy day which included mowing the back yard which I declare is real exercise, and we ate dinner late, at around 6:00.  I also had a relatively large dinner because I pretty much skipped lunch (I snagged a chicken leg at about noon between chores), so any hope that I would weigh less this morning was pretty much tossed out the window.  The good news is that I didn't weigh any more than I did yesterday morning.

This morning it is back to the regimented food program that I know and love.  That is OK by me!

As promised, I started training for my half marathon on Saturday.  I did a 4.6 mile run on Saturday, for distance, and a base run this morning of 3.2 miles.  I haven't finished reading my training book yet, but my basic understanding is that training should start out with a couple of short-ish base runs a week and one run for distance.  No focus on speed during these runs.  Speed training, should I ever choose to do it, comes much, much later.  My distance run will get a little longer each week, but the recommendation is to walk as much as I need to walk to feel comfortable and so that I actually enjoy the run.  This will help prevent injury and keep running from being dreadful.  Later, hill training gets added.  After that, if so desired, speed training gets added.  I'm recording my training runs using Strava.

I have more to talk about, a lot was on my mind during my run this morning, but it's getting late and I have to go to work.  I hope to get up early enough tomorrow to put up a longer post.

Have a good one out there!!!

8/13/16: Keep on Blogging

Weight:  151.2

I'm going to keep on blogging.

It was easy to know what to blog about during my 12 week challenge; mostly, I blogged about the challenge of staying true to my challenge.

It was easy to blog throughout 2012, as I was struggling to lose 74 pounds and get fit.  That is a struggle many people identify with and the day-in-day-out challenge of staying on program was significant.  Blogging kept me close to course.

Like so many of us, I find it incredibly difficult to maintain a healthy weight.  I have identified 150 pounds as my healthy weight.  When I started this blog several years ago I carried 224 pounds on my 5'6" frame.  I was depressed and frustrated.  I knew I needed to lose a lot of weight and I knew how hard it would be to stay the course.  I decided to see if blogging about it would help.  As it turns out, blogging was a game changer.  The desire to report good news was highly motivating to me.  I wanted to put up a post each day that said yesterday I ate right and exercised and today I weigh less because of it.  It was not uncommon for my fear of having to post a higher weight the next day to keep me from eating something off program.

July 29th, 2016, was the last day of my 12 Week Challenge which I designed to demonstrate to myself how much difference exercise makes.  My commitment was to exercise 6 days a week and eat on-program every day for 12 weeks, with the goal of trying to lose 13 pounds, bringing me back to 150 pounds (which would become my permanent weight), and to get back in shape.  I decided to take photos every week so I would have photographic proof of the difference exercise makes.

I now have that proof and it is astonishing.  I still stare at the photos in awe.  I inspire myself!  I inspire myself so much that when I can't get out of bed in the morning to exercise I visualize those photos and I think to myself, "I want to be like that woman!"  It gets me out of bed and to my weight room!

I quit blogging not too long after I reached my goal weight of 150 pounds in 2013.  I didn't know what to talk about anymore.  I felt like my posts were boring and repetitive.  To me, they no longer served a purpose.  Earlier this year, when I knew I needed to kick myself in the rear and get back in gear, I started to think about blogging again.  It helped so much during 2012, would it help again? The answer is a resounding yes!  Since I have started blogging again I have had several people ask me to keep it up.  They find it inspiring. One of the common comments I get is that it inspires them to read about the struggles of a regular woman with a high pressure job and a family and all of the other distractions of every day life and see that she can maintain the consistency needed to get fit.  They see themselves in my real life day-to-day struggles.

One of my challenges with blogging once the weight is gone is that it is not quite as much fun to put up blog posts that don't show progress towards a goal.  My intention is to weigh 150 for life.  I intend to start every blog post with my weight.  That seems boring, doesn't it?  Who cares if I weigh 150.4 or 151.2 or 149.8 (wouldn't that be cool?)?  Probably no one.  I care.  But even I know that a pound or two above or below 150 is insignificant.  What is significant about my weight, now that I am no longer overweight?  I guess that is the significance, I am no longer overweight.  Over the years, if I do manage to keep blogging, this blog is going to naturally drift to other topics.  By posting my weight first every single day, I will remind myself and anyone that reads this blog, that this is, first and foremost, a blog that started as a tool to help me get healthy and fit, so that I could enjoy this second half of my life.  I need to use this blog as a tool stay healthy, fit and trim; just as I used it as a tool to get to this point.  I am going to keep on blogging.

The title of this blog is, "It's Not Downhill From Here."  As a reminder, that title is a reference to the fact that I started this blog when I was 49 years old, 74 pounds overweight, and determined to get healthy so that I could enjoy the second half of my life.  On my 50th birthday it was clear to me that I had lived through the hardest half of my life and that the second half of my life was full of potential. I looked forward and could see all of the hills out there that I had not yet climbed and they beckoned me.  Come and get it, they said.  We're here, what are you waiting for?  I knew, that day, on May 3, 2012, that I wasn't done.  I was nowhere near ready to sit on my ass and start sliding downhill.  I had a lot of umph left in me and I wanted to see the view from the next hilltop.  I'm not much of a fan of the view from the valley, I much prefer the view from a hilltop, or even the flat prairie.  There is so much more to see.

It's not downhill from here.  There is so much to do, so much to see, so many people to meet, so much to experience, so much love to give.  I am excited about today and tomorrow.  I'm not going to say I have no regrets.  Of course I do.  But, in spite of my regrets, in spite of the mistakes I've made, I am going to keep on truckin' and I am going to keep on blogging.  Yes, I am looking forward to tomorrow.  Why the hell not? Tomorrow is coming, ready or not.  I'm going to do my damnedest to be ready for it!!

Have a good one out there!  I hope wherever you are, it's a beautiful day!

8/12/16: Ugga Mugga

Weight:  151.8  (That's not the ugga mugga part, that's the Woo Hoo! part.)

The ugga mugga part is how much I did not want to work out this morning! As I was lying in bed listening to my alarm go off for the third time I seriously considered getting up and going straight to work after breakfast.  The stress level at work is high right now, which can cause me to forsake my healthy routines for too much work.  As my stress levels go up, my desire to do difficult workouts decreases. This morning I had to work hard to talk myself into working out.  The good news is I succeeded in talking myself into it and I had an excellent strength training session.  It was excellent in that I did it and that I pushed through some very difficult exercises and completed them all.  I feel much better now that it is over.  I am grateful that my habit is well enough established that even on this day when both sleep and work seemed preferable to exercising, I exercised anyway.  I will admit that the memory of my progress photos was quite an incentive as I was debating the various merits of an extra hour of sleep, an extra hour of work, or an hour of strength training.  Strength training won out!  I love being strong and I love looking strong and fit.  Yeah me!!  I got it done!!

Now, it's off to work.

Have a good one out there!!

8/11/16: Grandkids and Progress

Weight:  152.8

Yesterday was a much better day with regard to food.  I brought my lunch and dinner to work and I ate on schedule.  I wasn't "perfect."  I still had cravings and I succumbed to them twice.  The first time was when I was looking for someone after a particularly stressful meeting and she had a jar of those tiny, bite-size snickers bars on her desk.  I ate two of them.  When I got home from work I had a small handful of nuts.  The candy was obviously off-program.  The nuts are an on-program food, but they were not scheduled into my meal plan for the day.  Still, it was a much better food day than Tuesday was, and I am almost back on track.  I mowed the front lawn yesterday and I now know why Jackie keeps saying we need to get a self propelled mower.  That was work!  I need to mow the back lawn tonight.

I am happy to be getting back on program and I am looking forward to losing the few pounds I gained while on vacation.  It's funny how hard it is to maintain a program when I am not at home.  I start strong, but each day longer that I am away from home gets a little harder to stay on program.  Of course, having the five kids with us didn't help much!

Our vacation was a huge success!  We decided to take our time getting to and from Idaho Springs, CO, and I am glad we did.  The drives going both directions were like mini vacations of their own. The meat of the vacation was our camping trip with the kids.  Here are a few photos of our family:

All five kids that went camping with us.  Proof that they can all sit still at the same time!

Annika, the eldest

Alena, the baby of the family.  She didn't camp with us but we spent a day with the entire family at a theme park in Denver.

Grandmama with James, the younest (age 3) that camped with us.

James with his eyes open!

The kids after they got their Junior Ranger badges (except James, he is too young to be a Junior Ranger).

The five kids with Grandmama and Grandpa, on a hike.

All the kids with their beautiful mama.

Sharlynn

Taren

Caden

8/10/2016: Way too Busy

Weight:  153.0

I've been way too busy since we've been home.  I worked very late Monday evening, went back to work early on Tuesday, and then went to a ballgame with Jackie last night.  I'm not getting enough sleep and that is impacting my food choices and my ability to exercise.  I am going to try to right the ship today, work a reasonable day, and come home and get some chores done.  I need to mow the lawn, since Jackie can't push the lawn mower for the rest of the summer.  If I get the lawn mowed tonight, that will be a fair amount of cardio and resistance training.  I think it will count towards my exercise for the day!

Speaking of Jack and his arm, he is recovering well.  The splint came off and the stitches came out on Monday.  It's always a relief when the surgeon comes in, takes one look at the results, smiles, and say, "Wow, this is looking great!"  The prognosis for Jack's arm is for a full recovery.  He can't push, pull or lift with that arm, at all, for 4 more weeks.  In four weeks he goes in for a follow up appointment and will probably get released for light duty with that arm.  After six more weeks (3 months after surgery) he can begin lifting light weights.  It will take a full six months for him to be able to lift heavier weights and participate in sports like bowling.  The bone and tendon need that much time to heal around either end of the anchor.  Jack is relieved because he can already tell that he has more function in the arm than he did before the repair of the ruptured tendon, it's just going to be a matter of time and patience before he is 100% again.

Speaking of surgeries, my personal trainer had surgery on her hip bone on Monday, so I will be flying solo for at least a couple of weeks.  This is fine as I have plenty of workouts to choose from, but I wish her a speedy and complete recovery! I look forward to being able to work with her again, soon.

Today, my diet goes back to 100% on program. Yesterday I noticed myself having a lot of cravings. This was partly (or largely) because I forgot to pack my lunch and dinner and I had to go out to lunch and wait until I got home to eat dinner.  This threw off my entire schedule.  I am looking forward to reestablishing my routine that works so well for me.  Breakfast at 4:30, before my workout, lunch between 10:30 and 11:00, and dinner at about 4:00, before I head home for the day.  I won't forget my meals again.

This weekend I am going to begin training for next fall's half marathon.  I still have a goal to be able to do a pull-up by the end of the year.  My goal is and always will be to weigh 150 pounds, to be physically strong, and to be very active.  This will require diligence with my diet, regular strength training sessions, and running a few times a week.  As I transition from my challenge to a day-in-day-out routine, I will have to explore different strategies to stay the course.

Have a fun day, today.

8/9/2016: Quick Post

Weight:  152.8

I'm running late because I was up very late last night and had to sleep in a little bit.

In spite of last night's evening discussion over a few drinks and some pub chips, I lost two tenths of a pound yesterday; but I was a bit groggy getting started today and forgot to pack my lunch.  I will go out for a salad at about noon and have a small dinner when I get home.  Jack and I have a ball game this evening, so tonight will be another late night.

Ah, the joys of getting back into a routine after vacation!

Have a great day!!

8/8/2016: Back into the Routine

Weight:  153.0

That's not too bad, I've been on the road for over a week and I gained 2.8 pounds.  It's particularly good, considering the fact that chocolate chip pancakes were part of every breakfast that we were in camp!

Jack and I had a fabulous vacation, both with our grandchildren camping in the Golden Gate Canyon State Park about 20 miles north of Idaho Springs and on our leisurely drives to and from Colorado.

We got home early yesterday afternoon and spent the rest of the day unloading the car, putting things away, grocery shopping, cooking and doing laundry; all to get ready for our new week to start.  This morning I got back into my routine by cooking my on-program breakfast and weight lifting for an hour.  We still have some post vacation work to do as we broke camp on a wet morning after a night of rain.  We need to lay out the tents and tarps and let everything dry before they are put away until our next camping trip.

Our vacation deserves a post of it's own, with photos, but I don't have time for that now.  I've got to get to work.  I'll try to get a post up this evening after work.

Until then, have a good one out there!!