Less of Josephine.

Just a little assessment of what’s working for me and what’s fallen by the wayside recently.

- Running is my addiction and biking I enjoy (though not quite as much as running). Swimming, however, isn’t happening at all recently. I guess it’s because I have to swim on their schedule instead of my own and the pool hours have been funky and not at all to my liking. I’d show up and all lanes would be taken up with swim lessons and water aerobics and whatnot. Still, I’d like to get back in the pool, so I need to put some effort into that. Ideally, I’d run every other day and alternate swimming and biking on the days I don’t run. Ideally.

- Strength training and push ups are totally not happening. I just haven’t been able to summon up enough enthusiasm to stay on any sort of real schedule. So for now, I’m just not going to pursue them. I’m sure strength training would be of real benefit but if it is just going to be a source of emotional friction and guilt for me, it’s counter-productive. Nobody’s perfect; my muscles will just have to understand and get the most out of my other activities.

- The classics…. gah. I have mostly given up on trying to improve my mind with serious literature. I’m currently working my way through a trunk-load of books passed on to me by my father: W.E.B. Griffith, Dick Francis, Clive Cussler, Herman Wouk and the like are the order of the day. So if you see me at a cocktail party, for god’s sake don’t ask me about Tolstoy because I’ll get all embarrassed and have to hide in the coat closet until you and your smart mouth leave.

- In the food department, nothing has changed (yay!). I still plan my meals out, still count calories, still weigh everything, still eat the same things over and over, and still write things down religiously. This seems to work for me so I’m gonna keep doing it — forever if necessary. So buy stock in companies that makes cute little spiral-bound notebooks — they’re my favorite for recording meals so you’ll make a mint off me.

With all that’s going on I forgot to post my weekly Monday weigh-in. I weighed 145 even, which means I lost only -.2 pounds for the week, putting me down -62.8 pounds and -30.22% overall. I’m 5 pounds from goal and I guess things are going to go slow from this point forward (I lost only -3.8 pounds over the course of Month 6), but that’s OK with me. As long as the scale continues in the right direction, it’s all good.

Wow, that was my six month weigh-in; a whole half a year is gone. Never put off til tomorrow what you can do today, because the time sure flies and before you know it, all your daily efforts have piled up into a half a year’s worth of accomplishments.

I had to postpone my Maine trip because my beloved 17-year-old kitty, Twinkie, went into kidney failure late last week. After trying desperately to get her rehydrated (and basically restart her kidneys) with subq fluids this weekend, I finally had to euthanize her this morning.

Needless to say, I’m going to miss her desperately. There are simply no words to describe her surpassing sweetness.

Looking forward to taking the diminished me on more hiking like this — Big Basin Redwood State Park in California.

This morning I am 145.2, which is a 2 pound loss for the week and makes me 62.6 pounds down overall. Ooooo and I just passed the 30% (30.12% to be exact) of original body weight lost mark, yay!

So 30% of my former self is sitting on a sofa in another dimension wearing blown-out, elastic-waist shorts, stuffing in the Doritos and HoHos while planning her next giant binge meal — the whole time vaguely wondering why the hell she’s such a chubmeister.

The present 70% of me has completed a 5.51 mile run, eaten oatmeal for breakfast, and is planning her hiking trip to Acadia National Park (we leave on Saturday!) while wearing her new, pretty-darn-cute North Face hiking shorts in roomy size 8. Yeah, I don’t miss that extra 30% at all!

Rant: why can’t I find nice, fun, interesting friends in real life like I can find online? I swear, I have the hardest time finding REAL friends in real life. That makes me sound all lame and pathetic, doesn’t it? But it is true.

My husband is pretty introverted, so besides golfing with his “work buddies” he doesn’t socialize with anybody, either. We haven’t gone out with another couple in over 4 years (my parents don’t count).

*sigh*

I want all the cool people I’ve met online to move to my town so we can all bowl/play poker/ride roller coasters/go kayaking/make fun of the Oscars together. Is that so much to ask for?

Notice how this real-life friend is totally unimpressed with my new running shoes. Bah, I say, bah.

Still dropping slowly towards goal… this morning I’m 147.2, which is a -1.8 pound loss for the week, and I’m now down -60.6 pounds overall.

I’m still driving hard towards goal, but I’ve been trying to stay away from the computer — I feel like as I’ve gone through this process I’ve been very much a hermit from the real world. So I’m making an effort to re-engage and get out there and DO STUFF instead of spending so much time on the Interwebz.

Well, the scale is not cooperating this Monday morning, I have to say! I was down over a pound yesterday, but this morning I bounced back up to 149! Drats. Ah well. For the first time in 21 weeks I’ll be recording a gain (even if it is a tiny one) for a weekly weigh-in. I’m not too freaked out as I have been mentally preparing myself for a bumpier ride the closer I got to goal, but I won’t lie, it’s a bit of a bummer that the scale had to bounce up on a Monday morning. Couldn’t it have waited for Tuesday? Anyway, this week I am 149, which is a +.2 gain for the week and puts me -58.8 pounds down over 21 weeks.

It is too soon to make any sort of changes to my meal planning, I guess, though my knee-jerk mental response is to lower calories. There really is nothing else for me to change. I’m happy with my exercise plan, I’m happy with my food choices, I’m happy with water intake, etc. The only thing to tweak would be calories and I don’t think I’m quite prepared to lower them just yet. But it is a possibility going foward, so I’ll keep an open mind.

My progress pictures show that things are going just fine, so I think I need to heed the advice I’ve given to so many others and not let the scale be the only judge of my progress.

… things can get a little freaky. So a couple of months ago, my husband stopped at the grocery store to pick up a snack for himself. Being the total sweetie that he is, he also wanted to bring me home a surprise item, something “Fun!” and “New!“. And of course, something “Vegan!“, which still occasionally flummoxes him. Apparently, he scoured the frozen foods section for a good 30 minutes, carefully reading the ingredient labels of various items to avoid purchasing me something made with left over horse parts (soilent green is made of horses!), and finally settled on “Gabila’s Potato Knishes — Famous Since 1921!”.

He brought the prized box of frozen knishes home to me and placed it at my feet, then got down on one knee and recited poetry from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. OK, I made up that last part. He really just handed me the box of knishes and then disappeared into his office to build a giant robot (or whatever it is men do in their offices that involves disassembling 6 or 7 computers). Fortunately, he was right, the knishes ARE vegan and while it is hard to sell breaded, fried mashed potatoes as a “health food” item, each knish has only 170 calories, 5 grams of fiber, and 6 grams of protein — and is incredibly satisfying to that part of my brain that loves anything breaded, fried, and potato-y.

That night I cooked up two knishes and gobbled them down in short order with grilled onions and peppers. They were delish! His surprise item was a huge hit! He was so proud. After stretching out the remaining two knishes in the box across two more meals, I demanded more, more, more knishes — pronto please! Unfortunately, the store that carries these little tasty bundles of joy went through a dry spell for a couple of months. No knishes to be purchased at any cost. My husband kept checking every time he was within range of the store (not our usual grocer) but it was always the same story: an empty place in the freezer case where the Gabila’s should be.

But this past weekend he checked the store again… and behold! The knishes were in stock! So I’m now the proud owner of 6 boxes of knishes (all the boxes the store had). That is 24 meals of knishes, mind you, 24. I’ve eaten two already, so I’m down to 22 knishes.

Gee, anybody want to come over for a knish party?

Me, executing the world’s worst flipturn just for fun!

A little over 2 years ago, when I decided to give triathlon racing a try, I didn’t let the fact that I couldn’t run and was only marginally skilled at biking (on a big, honking mountain bike no less, NOT a road bike) bother me. Ever the optimist, I figured that no matter how slowly I ran and biked, I’d eventually huff and puff my way across the finish line, and that’s what counted anyway. I was, however, TERRIFIED of the swim portion of the race. To me, “swimming” was defined as splashing about in a pool with a vodka martini in one hand and a pink inflatable raft firmly under one ass cheek. And I assumed that my method of swimming differed somewhat from the open-water race techniques employed by triathletes. I was right. My first real swim session at the local lap pool indicated that I couldn’t swim even 25 yards without stopping to stand up and mightily suck wind — much less swim a quarter mile in open water which is what the race required. Clearly, I did not know HOW to swim freestyle properly.

Did I let this stop me? No, I did not. I did what any rational, thinking person would do: I put my lack of swimming skills firmly out of mind, avoided the pool like the plague, and focused on my running and biking. Come race day, I did what was necessary in the water: I breast-stroked, side-stroked, dog paddled, and floated on my back for a quarter of a mile while real swimmers churned the water as they swam around and past me. I think I got out of the water last in my race wave and close to last for the race wave that started several minutes after me. Whatever. At the time I was just proud I hadn’t required assistance from the safety kayakers and that I didn’t actually drown. Given how bad I was in the water, that was a REAL victory!

Bad swimming notwithstanding, I’d had ALOT of fun at my first triathlon and a few months later I decided to register for another one. But this time I wanted to actually SWIM (instead of float) during the swim portion of the race. I went searching for help online looking for anything that could improve my non-existent abilities. Enter the Total Immersion (TI) Swimming technique. After reading pretty rave reviews on various newbie triathlon forums, I purchased both the book and the DVD. Right from the first session I was thrilled. This system teaches you how to swim freestyle from the ground up. You build a good foundation for the stroke by drilling in basic balance techniques, then basic body-movement techniques, then basic stroke techniques. I was amazed at how WRONGLY (is that a word?) I’d been swimming and how much more efficient the TI method made me right off the bat. I became slippery and streamlined; I learned to move through the water cleanly and quickly. I learned how to use front-quadrant swimming and keep my legs (and my lungs!) fresh for the bike and run. In the months leading up to my second race, I probably hit the pool 3 times a week following TI’s progression of drills and lessons. I enjoyed every minute of it and swimming went from something I loathed to something I loved.

The day of my second race arrived. I was prepped and ready and actually felt confident about the swim portion. I didn’t care where I finished; I just wanted to put all my newfound knowledge to use in an open water race. And I did. Once I got through the crazy, flailing, churning, cluster-f*ck that is the beginning of mass wave swim start (it has to be experienced to be believed), I quickly got into a rhythm and began to pass people. In fact, I began to pass guys from the wave before me (I could tell because they were wearing different colored swim caps)! I exited the water fresh as a daisy and riding a great high. The rest of the race went smoothly and was a blast. Later, when the race results were posted, I discovered I came in FIRST in my age group! From last to first, that’s amazing — particularly when you consider that I really have no innate athleticism or coordination!

So if you have ever thought about triathlon or just swimming but don’t feel like you have great freestyle skills, I can recommend TI whole-heartedly!

Here I am at the race waiting for my swim wave to start, displaying my “conehead”! It is HARD to get all my hair under a swim cap, trust me. And yes, I am probably making a snarky comment.

The first swim waves ready themselves as the sun rises over the causeway bridge in the distance. After the swim we will bike over 4 of those bridges, then run over it twice!

Old news, what with my “Into the 140s” post, but this morning was my official weigh in and I was 148.8, which is a 2.2 pound loss for the week and puts me -59 pounds down for 20 weeks.

Creeping ever closer to goal, yippee! Only 8.8 pounds to go!