From Mushy to Marathon

I don’t know how this happened.

I have this same tank for over 8 years and have NEVER had snails in it. For anyone who doesn’t know - snails are an absolute nightmare for aquarists - they are the very devil to get rid of and they breed like mad.

Recently I cleaned it all out and bought some new fish, and some new PLASTIC plants, and that is all. How can I catch snails from fish and packaged plastic plants? Do snails lay eggs on fish?

Fortunately there are not that many - if I blitz it with anti-snail stuff and take everything out and boil it, then it should get rid of the snails and any eggs.

I also have no D key on my laptop - Ruby grabbed at the keys and the D and the F came off. The F just clipped back on again but the D won’t go on -so I am pressing that little rubbbery button thing for all the Ds.

My heel is a bit better. I could hardly feel it this morning, but now after a day of using it, it is a bit sore. But it is better than yesterday.

Weight wise, I was up a tad from yesterday, but only fractionally. I know I said I wasn’t going to weigh every day but I am seeing what the fluctuations are like in body fat % on my new scales an short of closing my eyeswhen it comes up (which is silly), I can’t measure the body fat without measuring the weight also! Yesterday I was 139.6, today I am 139.8.

Since doing my back to back runs yesterday and the day before, and also going on to walk a further two miles yesterday, I have had pain at the back of my heels. It hasn’t gone off, so I have just been looking on the internet as to what it could be.

Apparently it is retrocalcaneal bursitis, basically an inflammation of the bursa, a fluid filled sac where the very bottom of the calf muscles are joined to the heel bone. Cause - “Those at risk for this condition include people just starting aggressive exercise regimens or having some other sudden increase in activity without proper conditioning.”

Oh dear!

Initial treatment is avoiding the activities which cause the pain (duh!) and taking anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen.

So it looks like I won’t be doing Week 3 after all until this goes off!

I have these weird fuzzy short hairs at my temples, and I waslooking at them in the mirror this morning. One looked suspiciously pale so I yanked it out. I held it up against the dark blue tiles and - it was GREY!!!!! From root to tip. My first grey hair at 35.

What’s worse, after my shower I had another look and I found two more growing in the same place. I pulled them out but I know they’ll grow back.

Time to get another hair dye kit I think - stave off the inevitable.

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Anyway, now I know why they recommend not running every day.

I did W2D2 yesterday and then went out and did W2D3 today.

I wasn’t going to - I was going to go cycling, but the forecast for Friday, Saturday AND Sunday is for rain so it was today or not at all.

The first running step I took, my right foot hurt. And it continued to hurt all the way round. Not a lot, but enough so that it wasn’t fun. Also, it was breezier than I thought so the wind was in my face all the way out. it did make coming home easier, with the wind behind me, but it was hard work today.

I’m not sure I’m looking forward to doing Week 3. It seems a big leap from running 90 secs to running 3 minutes! Seems there should be a 2 minute option in there somewhere. I might make up a ‘Week 2 and a half” so I do more than 90 seconds, but not jump right into Week 3.

I bought myself some body fat scales today. The weight part of them is extremely consistent. My old scales would give a different reading every time you stepped on them. Not a big difference, but sometimes it varies as much as 0.5 in either direction. These new ones, the weight has been exactly the same each time, but the body fat and water % readings vary wildly. The lowest body % was 28.5% but the highest was 31.2%! My body fat % should be between 22-32%, but my friend’s scales said 27% - I like hers better!

I think if I just take it in the morning naked, before eating, the same time as I usually weigh, then I should get a fairly consistent reading. The instructions also suggest you stand on it with damp feet to make a better connection.

And I have lost . . . absolutely nothing. In fact I’m up a tiny bit - 140.2 this morning from 140 last Wednesday.

I know I’m not meant to be losing but I was so hoping for a nice surprise. I’m still only eating 1500 cals and according to Nutridiary I should be losing a pound a week on that. So a bit disappointed.

I am off out running this afternoon - it’s another lovely sunny cold day here. I so hope we have aq decent winter, it would be nice to get some good running in, although I’ll have to buy a thicker tracksuit if I want to keep going out once it gets colder. It’s about 10-13 deg C at the moment, but once it dips down to single figures I think I’ll be too cold in my short sleeved one.

I actually went out for a brisk walk yesterday in the rain! I had 45 minutes till Bethany came home from school, so I put my raincoat on and took my brolly and put the raincover on the stroller and walked for just over 2 miles. It was actually 2.13 miles in 38 minutes which according to mapmyrun.com was 3.36 mph - my best speed so far for walking. But you can’t really run with a brolly so the runs will be fine days only.

I dreamed last night that it was legal to euthanise babies that had been born, as opposed to unborn ones.

In my dream this woman was meant to be coming to euthanise Ruby!! And, what was worse, I had arranged for her to come. She arrived in the dead of night, THREW a premature baby on my telephone table, alive, as it was still wriggling. I just walked away, I didn’t want to see her euthanise it in front of me.

Then she came in the living room and started setting up her stuff, I just went hysterical, hugging Ruby to me and refusing to let her do it. She just said it was fine, she wouldn’t do it if I didn’t want her to.

What an awful dream. I had to have one of our cats put to sleep last week - maybe it’s delayed guilt.

I was supposed to start Week 2 of the C25K today. But yesterday, I was 39 minutes short of my weekly exercise goal, so I decided to do it yesterday instead as the weather was perfect for running. Sunny, cool and with almost zero wind!

AND I got to go on the clifftop path, which was as great as I thought it would be. Blue skies, blue sea, white-topped breakers, seagulls crying - a perfect run.

I extended the workout by making the initial 5 minute warmup walk a 10 minute one, and as I do a ‘there and back’ run rather than a round trip run, it made the last 5 minute walk a 10 minute one too, making the whole thing 40 minutes instead of 30.

I actually got it a bit wrong -I was supposed to be doing 90 secs of running alternated with 2 mins of walking, but I set the timer for the first run to 2 minutes,and then wondered why I was knackered! But it did mean I was able to make the final run 1 minute instead of 90 secs, which was a nice way to finish. I did OK - I always count my steps in sets of four when I run, once I know how many to count for the period of time, it makes it easier to bear. Also it gives me an idea of how my pace is varying. When I am running faster I might have 67 sets of four steps, compared to 64 when I am tired.

The girls and I went out for a bike ride this afternoon, although a leisurely one, as I have to go at Beth’s speed, which isn’t very fast. But it’s still exercise. AND I started my evening abs as well. My bedroom has been geting a bit messy and there was no room to lie down - lol. But today I gave it a good sort out and was able to do them again. Haven’t done them since July, before we went to Portugal.

One more full day till my weigh-in. I haven’t cheated again, mainly because we had chicken dinner yesterday and I am always up a little after we have chicken dinner. So Wednesday is a good day to weigh in.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is rain ALL day so I don’t think I’ll be going running! Wednesday’s forecast is sunny intervals, so I should be able to get out then.

I wasn’t going to weigh-in until Wednesday but this morning I was feeling super-slim so I couldn’t resist a little sneaky peek on the scales. And . . . I was exactly the same!!

Which is a good thing - I am maintaining after all. But I was still hoping it would have gone down a touch!

My size 10 (US 6) jeans have been getting loose around the belly and legs so I went to a shop I know does quite large sizes to try on their size 8s (US 4). But I was foiled, as they don’t do size 8s! Except in petite and I am too tall for petite. So I went to a different shop that is aimed at young ladies (18-25 sort of age) and grabbed a pair of size 8s and a pair of size 10s for comparison in a regular fit (in stretchy denim!), not thinking for a second that I would get into them.

And they fastened!!

I actually managed to fasten a pair of size 8 jeans round my body.

Not saying they looked good or that I would be able to sit down in them, but they fastened. So I am rather pleased with that.

Went out and did Week 1, Day 3 of the C25K today. I am really enjoying this - which is amazing as I always hated running.

But it is so doable, and just the right place in between easy and hard, just enough to push you and challenge you that bit.

Amazingly, I think I see a difference already. My jeans suddenly feel looser around the thighs and the muscles at the front of my waist seem harder. You know the ones I mean - the flat ones on each side of the abs. I don’t know if running somehow works those too - whether you hold your body differently as you run, I don’t know. I was taking off my running pants and putting my jeans back on and I was mesmerised by this long slim muscle that has suddenly appeared in my thigh.

I love running!

I have been eating well since I started my maintenance journey on Wednesday - I have been averaging 1500 calories per day and resisting the urge to get on the scales. I actually am hoping that I will have lost a bit when I do weigh-in on Wednesday.

Well, I was going to do the C25K W1D2 today, but the weather is awful. Not actually raining but cold and very windy, 30mph with gusts of up to 50mph. And tomorrow is forecast to be more of the same so I couldn’t put it off till then either. The cold isn’t too bad, running warms you up anyway, but I wasn’t going out there in the wind, so I got creative.

Instead of the first 5 minute warm-up walk, I did the 10 minute warm-up from my dvd.

Then when doing the running parts, I jogged partly in place in my living room and partly up and down the living room. My living room is small so I only managed 4 steps before having to turn round and come back again, but provided I turned round a different way each time I didn’t get dizzy, lol!

In the walking parts I alternated plain old marching on the spot with box steps, and a step from my dvd which they call the Lambeth Walk. I was also able to add in some arms too.

So I did 20 minutes of those, then did the 10-minute warm up again as a cool down, then added on the 10-minute ab crunch section from the dvd (which I am getting better at).

So in total I managed to get a 50 minute workout out of a 30 minute one!

For the first weigh-in of The Great Maintenance Experiment, I weighed in at 140 exactly. So I’m not weighing in again till next Wednesday, which is pretty scary! Mondays were always my official weigh-in days although in practice I tended to take the lowest weight from the previous week and use that, which is kind of cheating. So, as we always have chicken dinner on Sundays, I decided Wednesday was a better day for a weigh-in.

Yesterday I ate 1534 calories, which was far easier than I expected. One extra snack and a nice big mug of milky coffee and it was gone!

Starting from today, I have stopped dieting - I am entering the scary world of maintenance.

Shannon’s thread about continuing to lose has made me think.

My original goal was always 140, which I hit about 2 weeks ago. But when I came back here in December after having my baby, I decided to make my goal 135 instead.

But for the last two weeks I have been bouncing between 139 and 141 and can’t seem to get any lower.

So I have made an executive decision to stop ‘dieting’ and start maintaining, and see what happens. I do still want to get down to 135, but I’m going to up my calories to 1500 a day instead of 1300 and see what happens. I have heard of the phenomenon of eating more calories to lose weight, but have alwys been too scared to try it - what if I didn’t lose, or put weight on?

So, if in my head I am maintaining and not trying to lose, then not losing won’t be a bad thing, is my thinking.

I am also going to start working on my fitness levels, I have started the C25K progam, and am going to buy some body fat scales. I’m also going to stop weighing every day and start weighing once a week instead. Starting from today.

In a way I feel like a failure as I haven’t hit that magic 135. But, since my first weight loss journey in 1997, I have been trying to get to 10 stone. That time I made it to 10 stone 7. In 2006 I made it to 10 stone 5. So to actually get below 10 stone, to hit 9 stone 13, is NOT failure at all! If I hadn’t changed my goal I would have been ecstatically bouncing off the ceiling right now (well, 2 weeks ago actually), instead of feeling like I somehow cheated my way to goal.

And any weight I continue to lose is just a plus.