12/10/2012: Weight Gain, Fun Shopping, Disappointing Customer Service at Ann Taylor

Morning Weight:  160.2

This Morning's Exercise: Strength Training, see last Friday

Yesterday's Exercise:  1 hour of racquetball with Jack.  I am getting better. Since he is so much better than I am I get a handicap.  I can score when he serves, but he can't score when I serve.  With that handicap I managed to get 17 points before he reached 21, yesterday.  Also, he doesn't play all out, unless he needs to turn it up to win, but I am getting to more and more of the balls, doing a better job keeping my eye on the ball until I hit it, and getting better at putting myself in the right spot to hit the ball.  It'll be a while before our games are truly competitive, but we are having fun and it is a great workout!  The initial plan was to run on the treadmill for 30 minutes after playing racquetball, but I was so wiped out by the time an hour of racquetball was up that I decided that was good enough.

Saturday's Exercise: Strength training with Jeremy Wallen.  I have four more sessions with Jeremy Wallen until I have used all of my pre-paid sessions at 24Hour Fitness.  I can't bring myself to not use them, and the workouts that the two trainers put together are pretty different from one another, so I figure it can't hurt.  Well...it makes me sore...but I feel like I am getting more muscles exercised.  The fourth strength training session this week did wipe my muscles out.  My arms are shot!  I was going to swim tonight for my evening exercise, but I think I will run, instead, to give my arms a break.  One of the exercises that J Wallen had me do on Saturday was pushups with my hands on foam rollers instead of on the floor.  Oh, that was hard and I am still sore from that. 

Yesterday's Calories: 1360
Saturday's Calories:  1549
Friday's Calories:  1581
Vitamins:  1-A-Day, D, B-Complex, Calcium, Glucosamine

As you can imagine, I am pretty disappointed in my weight this morning.  It is a mark-my-chart day and I haven't been able to bring myself to draw the line going above 160lbs again.  This has been an incredibly frustrating few weeks.  Obviously, I've reached a point where my body is fighting to hold onto its remaining stores and somehow I have to convince it to give some of it up.  I find myself wondering what would have happened if I decided I wanted to get to 140 pounds, would I have stalled out between 148 and 150?  Carla suggested perhaps that 158 is my ideal weight, and not 150, but I am not willing to go there.  I think I would feel differently if I had picked a target on the low end of normal for my height, like 135 and stalled out 8-10 pounds over that.  But I picked a target weight at the high end of normal for my height.  I don't think 150lbs for a 50 year old woman that is just barely shy of 5'6" tall is unrealistic.  I had Jack measure me so I could be sure of my height.  Yep, it's what it has always been.  Just a hair away from 5'6" tall.  I have heard of some people getting taller when they start working out a lot, but I had no such luck.

There was a bright spot this weekend; which only got slightly tarnished on Sunday, but life goes on.  I am attending Enterprise Bank's holiday party Wednesday evening (just for an hour - I'll still make bowling so no worries to my Spare Change teammates) and I have nothing in my wardrobe that fits except jean and tops.  Nothing.  Everything else has been donated to Goodwill or the Boys and Girls Club.  So I needed to go shopping.  I wanted to buy clothes that would be appropriate for the party, but that would also be lasting pieces for my wardrobe so I decided to buy a skirt and sweater at Ann Taylor, rather than a cocktail dress.  Of course, once I was there I had to try the on cocktail dresses (they were having a 30% off on dresses sale).  Every dress I tried on was an 8, and they all fit and fit well.  I looked good in those dresses.  If they were sleeveless I needed to wear a little shrug, just over my shoulders to hide a little extra skin right under my arms, but the dresses looked great and I felt wonderful in them.  I didn't buy a dress though, because I knew it would be something I would only wear once in a great while and I need to start building up a versatile wardrobe.  I ended up buying a very pretty skirt (size 8), sweater, and blouse (both mediums).  Unfortunately, that was a much more expensive option than one of the dresses at 30% off, but it feels like a much smarter purchase because I will be able to wear the sweater with jeans and slacks, the blouse with any number of other outfits and the skirt has a lot of colors in it and I will be able to wear it into spring.  The outfit is pretty, but professional looking, so I could easily wear it to business meetings in the fall, winter or spring.  I am sure these will be pieces that I will be staples in my wardrobe for years to come.

It was fun shopping and looking good in everything I put on.  What a treat it was.  My stomach (my biggest problem area, in my opinion) even looked OK.  The working out is making a huge difference.  In fact, when I put on the first sleeveless dress and I went out to ask for help to find something to cover up my shoulders, I bent my arms to touch my shoulders when I was talking to the sales lady and she said, "Do you work out a lot?"  She was impressed with my biceps!  We ended up having a great conversation and I told her how much weight I lost.  She kept asking me if I was on a special program and I kept saying, "No, I just exercise for an hour six days a week and try to eat less than 1600 calories a day."  Then, when I was trying on dresses she came back and asked me if I was on Weight Watchers, and I told her no, again.  Finally she said she felt like she needed to lose 20 pounds and was struggling with it.  She is middle aged, probably older than me by 10 years or more, so I told her she probably needed to start lifting weights.  I explained to her that women over 40 start losing lean muscle mass at a fairly brisk pace and there was no way women our age could successfully lose weight and keep it off without lifting weights.  To my surprise, she agreed with me!!  That doesn't happen very often.  Most women say, "Oh, but I don't want to bulk up."  My answer to that would be, "Look at me.  I weigh almost 160 pounds and I am a size 8."  An 8!  I haven't been an 8 since college.  Obviously the weight lifting is doing the opposite of bulking me up, it is toning me up and making me smaller, in spite of being heavier.  The last time I was an 8 I was 20 years old and weighed 135 pounds.  Interesting...  Anyway, it turns out that the sales lady was a ballerina in her younger days and had to do quite a bit of strength training when she was a professional dancer.  She still gives dance lessons, but she stopped lifting weights when she stopped dancing professionally.  She got quite enthused about the thought of lifting weights and said she was going to go home that evening and start lifting again.  I warned her that she would be sore for a couple of days, but she brushed that off and said she knew it was worth it.  It felt really great to inspire her!!

Now for the tarnish.  On Sunday, Ann Taylor advertised a 30% off everything sale.  So, like the good shopper I am, I took my receipt in to ask them to honor the sales price.  Seriously, I don't know a retailer that won't do that.  And they refused.  I was so pissed!  I told them I could go get my clothes, return them, and repurchase them and get the sales price.  Of course, they knew that to be true, but they said it was store policy.  On the way home I called Ann Taylor headquarters and filed a complaint.  I also sent an email.  Unfortunately, I had already cut the tags off the clothes.  Perhaps I could have still brought them back and repurchased them, but I didn't.  There were other things I wanted to do yesterday afternoon, like play racquetball with my husband.  I am going to harass corporate headquarters for a while, but I doubt they will do anything.  I do know they have lost a customer for life.  I like their clothes, but they are expensive.  It's not worth shopping there if they are not going to take care of their customers better than that.  So, no more Ann Taylor.  A shame.  I like their clothes.  But I don't like their attitude and life is 90% attitude. 

I am changing up one thing this week.  I spent the evening yesterday cooking two meals to take to work for lunch and to eat in the evenings.  I am hoping by eating my own cooking I will be able to shake the stalemate with the scale loose.  I am going to focus more on lean proteins and vegetables and eat fewer carbs.  We'll see of that makes a difference.  Ruth suggested spin class, which would kick my ass, I'm sure.  I'll have to check the schedule again, but it seems like last time I checked the classes were at times that were pretty inconvenient for me.  Maybe I can make it work, though.

I'm hoping for a weight loss week!  I hope you have a great week, too!!