Okay, fine, WordPress

“Pages” don’t work like I thought they would.

So here anyway is a first installment of product reviews.

Exercise-related things I recommend:

Workout clothes in larger sizes from A Big Attitude.  I particularly recommend the “capri pants” and matching “sports tops”.  Nice that you can get them separately in different sizes, too.

It’s been around a long time now, but I really find the Gaiam Balance Ball Kit to be a good beginner’s exercise system.

I like the following exercise DVDs enough to buy my own copy instead of keeping the Netflix copy forever:

• Shaping up with Weights for Dummies
• stay tuned for more to come

 

Milestone-ish

I’ve been focused on that fact that my weight is not going down this month at the rate which it had been previously and that I’m not going to make my end of the month goal of reaching 140 (unless I chop off an arm).  I will probably not even make 145.  

But today I went to the gym and realized I had sailed by another milestone without stopping to appreciate it.

You know the scales at the gym or the doctor’s office?  Scales like this:

Scales with those two sliders, one with pounds from zero to 50 and one with the “hundreds” digit? 100, 150, 200, etc.?

I’ve been working my way back down the scale. When I started, I had to set the lower rung to 250. And I’ve been going down steadily, first to 200, then 150. And waiting for the next big one – where I only have to set the lower rung to 100 and measure the rest of my weight on the upper rung, between 0 and 50. The lowest lower rung that I should be at.

Well, I got there. And I didn’t even remember to check.

Last time I weighed myself at they gym, I was still a little over 150 overall, ao I still needed to choose the 150 spot on the lower rung, and even though it was nice that the upper rung was waaaaaay over to the left in the single digits, I was waiting to get to that 100 point on the lower rung.

And then I got down to 150 and a little below and I forgot to even check. I didn’t think of it until today at the gym. So I checked. Yes, I am at 100 on the lower rung. True, I am almost at 50 on the upper – I make it 149, with shoes and clothes in the middle of the day, so maybe 148, 147 which is exactly what the scales at home keeping telling me. Today GS said 146.8 I think. But I’m at 100 on the lower. For sure.

I made it. Weee. I am more shocked that I forgot to check before than I am that I made it now. But you know, I haven’t made that monthly milestone, and I don’t know when I will – maybe not even next month, who knows? So it was nice to remember that there is some progress that is measurable none the less.

That and the $50 size 14 Gap jeans…

Technical note

The page feature doesn’t seem to be working, so reviews of stuff are not yet forthcoming until I can categorize them under subpages.  

The gift that keeps on giving

 

My birthday isn’t until the end of next month, but someone is getting an early start on their shopping…

The other day I received a “card” from the last PS I consulted with, Dr. Livingston, which says:

     “In honor of your Birthday, Dr. Livingston would like to extend to you a special price of $10 per unit for BOTOX Cosmetic (Regularly $13 per unit)”

Um, thanks.  

I’m wondering a few things, like – do they send these to all their patients?  The burn victims, the mastectomy survivors, the teenagers who just got a nose job?   Cause I came in for post-weight-loss plastic surgery, not botox shots and I specifically said that I was not interested in any facial work until after everything else was done.

I’m also wondering – how many units of botox do you need at one time?   Is Dr. Livingston giving me a $3 gift, or a $30 gift?

This latest tackiness just confirms my original opinion that I would not let him cut on me if he were the last plastic surgeon in Newport Beach (i.e. after The Apocalypse).

But hey – anyone with a birthday in June who wants discount Botox shots – email me and I’ll give you the card.   Offer expires 30 days after your Birthday month.

p.s. Dr. Livingston,  “birthday” is not normally capitalized in the middle of a sentence.

 

Mind the gap

Today at lunch I went to The Gap. I bought a pair of size 14 “curvy” jeans, a size S shirt and a size M cropped sweater.

It all cost $150 which just goes to show how much money I’ve been saving by not being able to buy clothes.

So, it’s quite a milestone to be able to walk into a normal store and find clothes that fit. The jeans, maybe just almost, but the shirts seem to fit in a range of sizes. Pants are the hardest – these fit, in the sense of go on, zip up, don’t cause me to pass out from lack of oxygen, don’t look like I don’t have the sense not to wear jeans so tight they just look worse. They don’t fit in the sense of, you know, “fit”. The waist gapes kind of and the rest fits tight. I’m way more “curvy” than the “curvy” style anticipated.

Hopefully some of this curviness will be surgically removed soon.

I may have also seen Jamie Lee Curtis shopping there. Not that unlikely I guess, since it is Newport Beach right before Memorial Day weekend.

Silver linings

The picture below was taken in October of 2006, which is really just about when this journey started again.   I had one dog and I took her to the beach.   I am sure it was a tremendous effort – walking the dog and my 300+ pounds across the sand to the water, standing and holding up my 300+ pounds for an hour while she swam.   I used to reach the car again after in total exhaustion.   Legs hurt, done for the day.

On Saturday I took both my dogs to the beach.   Walking to the water is nothing.  Standing, walking, running around after them is nothing.   At one point I walked the length of the dog area and back just because I felt like I could use more exercise since I was mostly standing in one place.   The walk back to the car was nothing.  I did two exercise tapes when I got home and went to a 5 year reunion.

Simply being able to do things makes a huge different in the amount of things you get done.   You don’t realize as your energy is slowly seeping away that you’re losing that ability.   Now that it is coming back, it really fills me with wonder and gratitude.   

 

Consultations update

I never received numbers from the special consultation with the Big Cheese.   I sent email through his web page more than a week ago and never heard anything other than the automatic “thanks for writing, we’ll get back to you soon” message.   Oh well, I probably wasn’t going to end up using him anyway.

I have scheduled another consultation.   It’s next Wednesday afternoon.  My first reason for scheduling a consultation with this particular doctor is that this doctor is part of the Cosmetassure complications insurance program.   I’m terrified of having a complication that my insurance refuses to cover because it’s due to uncovered surgery and having the $25,000 I spend on the procedure turn into $225,000 which I will never be able to pay off.   I am not sure Cosmetassure covers enough but I need to find out and you can only get it through doctors in their plan, you can’t get it on your own.   They spread the risk by requiring every patient of a covered doctor to get the insurance.   

This will be the second female surgeon I see.   As usual, I have high hopes that this will be “the one”.    I wonder if this is how dating feels.

 

The news from the rut…

 

Weight – haven’t seen much change.   Maybe half a pound down.   Maybe muscle, maybe not.   I definitely see more muscle definition and clothes are looser.

Exercise – I went to the gym tonight.   Just did the treadmill.   Well, it does show you what a year will do.   I put it up to 3 and it was a slow walk.   That used to be my top speed.  I warmed up by walking at about 3.6 for 10 minutes and then started “running”.  In quotes because I was only going at 4.1, and because I saw my reflection in the glass of the exercise room – at first I couldn’t find me because all the reflections I saw looked like they were walking.   I realized I am lifting my feet so little that it still looks like walking.   It isn’t though.   Mechanically, in walking you always have at least one foot on the ground.   When you switch to running, you are off the ground at some point in the step cycle.   I wonder why it is that that is harder than walking and takes more energy.   Is it the energy needed to propel yourself into the air, the added speed you need to do it, the landing and rebalancing?   So I was running, both feet were leaving the ground.   Just so slowly and with such low steps that it hardly looked like it.

I sort of did 7 minutes.   Except that by 4 I felt so tired that I held on to the bar.   Which was a lot better.   It takes away some of the need to balance on your own so it’s easier.  I still stopped at 7 because I had to, not because I thought I should.   My heart rate was up at or over 160 and once it gets there, I feel too much strain to want to continue.   I was also having trouble breathing - in the sense that I wasn’t able to take nice deep useful breathes.   I was breathing shallowly through my mouth the whole time.   Maybe because my nose is stuffy.   But I’m sure lack of proper breathing and oxegenation makes it harder to run.

Then I walked again until 25 minutes and cooled down for five.   That’s all I did.  My abs are still sore from working them on the weekend.  

I guess this is the time when I just have to recommit to a routine and a long-range goal.   I’m not getting daily or weekly reinforcement.   I do actually enjoy the balance ball and weights exercises at home.   It would be funny if it turns out that I’m a person who actually likes exercising.   I like going to the gym too, there are just practical issues (too far, too crowded, too hot, too full of thin, beautiful people) that bother me.   When I have time to go to the uncrowded, air conditioned gym at midnight, I really enjoy it. 

My really long range fitness goal, besides reaching my goal weight, is to run a 5K.  I’m going to have to get up to more than 7 minutes…

The weight still in my thighs is a problem – it’s a lot for my legs to be carrying while running.  I could feel them bouncing hard as I ran.  I guess I had lost more weight before I started running last time.   I was probably closer to 130 than 150 when I started.  Probably running without 20 extra pounds would be a good idea.

 

 

Hip hip hooray, let’s hear it for the Supreme Court

 I’m just saying …

 

 

 

stress eating

I have a stressful interpersonal situation going on right now.

I was just reading email from the other person involved, let’s call her “Medusa”,  and suddenly I got a huge craving for spaghetti. 

In the past, I would have listened to those cravings and responded and that’s why I ended up over 300 pounds I guess.  Lots of stress, lots of spaghetti, lots more stress over how fat I am, more spaghetti…. it all added up.

Now I honestly have no coping mechanism.   Between Medusa and the dog eating the futon and peeing in the house, I came home, sat down and just shut down.   I guess it has less calories than eating, but I wish I didn’t have to fight this black cloud of depression and exhaustion all the time.    And I wish the dog would stop eating the futon.