tea berry-blue

My weight yesterday morning was exactly ten pounds less than my weight on April 15, when I started tracking my weight/exercise/diet/etc.

I've been walking once a week with intrepia for six months now, and we're both really excited about that. Last week, we made a commitment to raise the difficulty setting on our walks by wearing wrist weights. We'll see how that goes!

I have also been trying to walk at least one other lunch hour by myself, but I don't always get around to it. Gardening season helps a lot, I do a lot of hard work in the sun.

I am not so great at exercising in other ways. Fail!

Some of the things I've done in an attempt to become healthier:
--Eat a small breakfast (usually a granola bar). This keeps me from feeling insanely hungry at lunch time, and means that I am less likely to pig out.
--No soda! I have never been a regular soda drinker, but I've cut it out almost completely, apart from drinking it out at restaurants maybe once a week or two.
--Smaller portions! I'm not trying to keep myself from eating anything I really want, but I am trying to take, say, fewer scoops of mac and cheese and keeping to the rule of thumb that a portion of any given dish should be no larger than the size of my hand.
--Beer on the weekends! Okay, this might sound wacky. But I've discovered that if I drink a beer or two in the late afternoon, I am more fully satiated and less likely to pig out at dinner.
--Vitamins! I started taking a multivitamin and some other supplements at breakfast. This is part of the push for breakfast, too, because if I take the vitamins and don't eat, I get nauseated.
--Veggies! If I stuff myself full with green vegetables then I still eat other things with important nutrients at meals, but I'm less likely to, oh, eat a whole bag of potato chips.

My weight is about a pound heavier this morning than it was yesterday, but that is normal fluctuation. It doesn't feel like I've lost a ton of weight because my weight fluctuates about three pounds from day to day over the course of a week, but the high end of the fluctuation has been getting progressively lower-- from 159 to 156 and now to about 153. Once I am consistently under 150 lbs for a full week, I have promised myself that I will buy a nice new dress and possibly some new underwear. I think that is a fair deal.

I am pretty pleased; I am feeling more like I fit into my clothes than I have in a while, which is nice. And my thighs are definitely rubbing together less. Also good. Bras still are a nightmare, but I'll deal with that. It's just that last Wednesday and Thursday, I was so, so envious of anyone who could wear a backless dress. I have never done that since I was about nine.

Guys! So I haven’t had a chance to make a real for-real update since I spent most of my weekend busy, but Saturday morning, bright and early, was the Run For Congo Women.

Our team was made up of about 20 cartoonists, comic fans, friends, and people who lost a bet. Everyone was so nice and a lot of fun to chat with. We also ended up raising about $3500, the second-highest amount raised by any other group in the run! I personally raised about $300, and I would like to thank all of you so much for contributing.

I was very proud of myself– I ran all 5k from start to finish without stopping or walking. I ran a bit slower than a lot of people, but I met my goal of running the entire thing. It was a bit intimidating, though, when the lady pushing the double-stroller ran faster than me. That might get turned into a comic. It was a pretty hard run, harder than my usual track, but it was so gratifying to finish it.

I have decided that I want to keep running in the morning, although I am not going to run 5k every morning– that was a bit much, and I often felt a bit strained by the end. Today I ran 3k, but I made a point of making myself run harder than I did when I was running 5k, so it was still a proper workout. One thing I really like about running in the morning is that if I get up at 6:30, by the time I get to work at 9 am, I’ve already been up for two hours, and that really makes a difference in how I feel at work. I’m ready to work, and not groggy for the first hour.

There is one drawback I haven’t mentioned, and that is the effect on my boobs! My breasts are really sore when I finish a long run– on Saturday, they were pretty painful, more painful than anything else I felt. I also have been breaking out like a kid who just hit puberty in my cleavage area, with really big, painful acne. Which is ugly, too. And it’s a place I rarely got acne before I started running, so I can tell it’s directly related. I was wondering, do any of the runners who read this have either of these issues? What do you do about them? Thanks!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

I always say that a shower is for me what a cup of coffee is to other people– it wakes me up, it gets me going. I’m never truly awake until I’ve showered, and if I can’t shower some morning, it throws off my whole day. I’m cranky, agitated; I feel dirt crawling on my skin. Never mind the fact that my hair is almost impossible if I don’t wet it down and condition it heavily every morning.

So, beginning to run marked the first time in my life probably since I hit puberty and started to have to shower every day that I got up and did things in the morning, regularly, without showering first.

I get up. I put on my running clothes. I drink a glass of water. I go to the track, I run my 5k, I come home. I eat breakfast: yogurt and granola, sometimes with honey or fruit. A glass of water or lemonade. Then, and only then do I shower.

It’s changed my routine on days when I don’t run, too. I get up, I do my yoga while still wearing my pajamas. I eat the same breakfast and dawdle over email, since I always have more time on these mornings. Then I shower.

The thing is, it changes the experience of stepping under that spigot of hot water. I no longer feel like I’m half-asleep, like I need the sensation of droplets beating against my back to wake me up: I’m already awake. Instead, I can feel just exactly how the heat and the pressure and the moisture interacts with my skin and my muscles: loosening tightness, making me feel more free. I can feel the sweat washing away; I can tell the difference in the way my body reacts to things pre- and post-shower.

Is it a little weird to wax poetic about the difference in a single mundane experience when a routine changes? Maybe. But it is such a little, common thing, that the way it has changed is astounding to me; I never imagined that it could change in quite that way.

There are a few other things I’ve noticed. Today, at my parents, I weighed myself for the first time in a few weeks. In spite of everyone saying I look skinnier, my weight has actually increased about three pounds since the last time I weighed myself. I’m also noticing more difficulty in getting pants (which I barely wear in the summer; I am much more of a skirt person and only put on pants when the weather cools and demands it) to fit around my thighs. Three pounds is hardly enough weight gain for it to be noticeable on someone completely average in size like myself, but it tells me that running is having an effect, a noticeable, quantifiable effect on my body.

I’ve run 5k six times now. The run is next Saturday and I am confident that I am prepared for it. I will be reminding you all again that you can donate money to Run for Congo Women through my team here or through me individually here, but you can go do it right now if you would like to. It lets you donate even little amounts like $2.50 so give what you can.

I’va also decided that I like the way I feel, knowing that I am fit and active and not at risk of becoming a WALL-E like sedentary blob of humanity, my bones and muscles deteriorating from all the time spent typing letters into a computer. I intend to keep running once the run is over, maybe not 5k every day but probably 3k, which is a little under 2 miles.

One thing I keep thinking about is my high school physical education experience. I think the largest contributing factor to my not working out, to my not keeping physically fit over the years was the lack of a positive phys ed experience. I don’t think it was a bad experience by any means but it was targeted largely at getting us to hit fitness milestones required by the state, and not so much at giving us a set of good fitness habits we could carry with us. Not like English, where I learned to self-edit and take criticism well, not like History, where I learned to debate with consideration for another viewpoint. Not like Science, where I learned organization and methods.

One thing we did in Phys Ed class from time to time was run a mile. I remember running that mile, the way I would be out of breath, anguished, in agony by the time the first lap was over, the way it seemed interminable and excruciating, like every step was a chore. I think about that, and compare it to my experience now, where I can, at my current pace, only having worked on this for about a month exactly, run close to twice that before I start to feel like running is hard work. I am lucky in that I have a body that works well, that does what I tell it, even when I haven’t always been a very good caretaker. I am surprised, pleasantly surprised, that my body has responded as well as it has, but it has also taught me something:

Running is not as hard as it seemed when I was a teenager.

I have no doubt that my seventeen-year-old body, if I had pushed it to be a better athlete, would have responded better than my 32-year-old body. And yet, no matter how many times I was sent out to the track and told to run a mile, it was a torturous experience. I never improved, never got better, never had the moments like the ones I have been having so often lately, where I realize that I can do this, and maybe more. And it is leaving me wondering why that is. Why, at a point in my life when I should have been able to excel at this, given the appropriate measure of commitment, could I barely manage to succeed?

I started thinking about how the mile run was handled in my Phys Ed classes, and how we were basically turned loose on the track, and told to run (after some stretching). We weren’t given advice or tips, but more importantly– and this is the place where my experience now differs the most– we were never told to go out and run a lap. We weren’t told to work up to a mile, to practice doing one lap until we were comfortable doing that much and didn’t feel like we were out of breath or in pain by the end of it. To them more to two laps. To conquer the half-mile or even the quarter-mile and have a strong sense of our own success at that before being told to run a full mile. And yes, there will always be some people who really can’t do more than a half-mile or a quarter-mile because of health or ability factors outside of their control, but for kids like me, we would have been able to lift barriers to our success at fitness that should not have existed to begin with.

I can now consistently run three miles. I can consistently run about one and three-quarters before I start feeling much of an effect on my body. If you had told me that at sixteen, that at twice my age, I would be able to run three times what I could run then, I would not have believed it. And while I’m proud of myself now, I can’t help feeling that it is a shame that I was unable to really have confidence in my ability then.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

I hit 5k for the first time on Thursday, and then managed to do it again on Friday. Saturday was my rest day, and I ran again today, but today I didn’t quite make it to 4.5k.

I was disappointed because this is the first time I ran less than my previous runs, but my chest started to twinge really badly and slowing down didn’t stop it. It was also windy and rainy, and I suspect that the weather made it more difficult for me to run. I think I also may have accelerated too quickly early on.

Some things I’ve noticed about running: First off, I have been waking up at 6:15 every morning to do my running, and that’s about two hours earlier than I usually wake up– and one hour earlier than I wake up in the summer. Yet, I am not going to bed any earlier and I don’t feel tired. I am much more alert when I get to work than when I woke up at my usual time, and that I really like.

I am also a LOT hungrier, especially for fats, proteins and carbs. I am eating a lot more food, and specifically have found myself craving meat, dairy, bready foods and potatoes. I don’t find that I want vegetables as much as I usually do. It’s sort of weird because it’s the opposite of my usual diet, which is very green-vegetable-and-legume-heavy. I have been eating breakfast, but still have a hard time getting to lunch without a snack.

Other than today, when I just felt awful by the time I hit 4k, I have been really impressed with how visibly my endurance has improved. The first time I ran 1k, I felt like it was really wearing on me at about .5k, but by the time I got to 4k, I really only started feeling tired and out of breath around 2k. And it’s enough I can work through it.

One thing that is funny is that I have a hard time keeping myself at a slower pace, even though I’m trying to pace myself. If there are other people running, my body automatically adjusts to run at their pace, without me even really thinking about it. I also find myself speeding up when I am close to reaching milestones. For example, when I get close to completing 1k, I start running a little faster. I often don’t even notice it and it’s actually harder for me to adjust to a slower pace than a faster one.

I think that’s really everything I have to say for today. In spite of today’s setbacks, I’m very confident that in two weeks I’ll be fairly comfortable with running 5k and should be ok for the run!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

This is a quick one, but I just wanted to tell people that yesterday I made it to 3k! I did 3k again this morning. I’m very pleased with myself! This week, I am going to start working on getting up to 4k.

My parents say they can actually see a physical difference since I started running. It’s only been three weeks, though, so I don’t really believe them. I think it’s more that they’re proud of me for doing it :-P I am going to take more pictures, though, and see if there really is any comparison to some of my earlier fitness pics.

3k is hard stuff! I was actually more proud of myself the second time, because doing it once could just be a fluke. Twice is getting more like I can do it consistently.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

1) I have been running every morning! This means getting up at 6 to go out before work. On negativeneve‘s suggestion, I took this morning off and simply walked 2k instead of running. I can’t quite do more than 2.5k yet but I am trying not to push myself too hard. I am hoping this coming week, I’ll get up to three.

Since I started running, I’ve found that one of the stretches I have always done is aggravating my hip joints, mostly on the inner side. It’s always been my favorite stretch so I’m a little concerned about this. It’s become very painful to do. It doesn’t really hurt when I’m not stretching. Does anyone know what that is?

2) Part of running means I have also been incorporating breakfast into my morning routine. I never ate breakfast before! I have been eating Fage 2% yogurt with honey and homemade granola all week. I haven’t decided what I think of this morning thing, but breakfast is a plus.

3) My hair is driving me nuts. It’s gotten pretty long– below my shoulder blades– and I am using crazy amounts of conditioner to detangle it. Parts of it are matted pretty much every morning and I have to go in and pick the mats apart. I remember the last time this happened was when I was a freshman in college– the last time my hair was this long. So! I am thinking maybe my hair has reached critical mass and I should cut it back a bit. The question is whether to just cut three inches or do something short again.

4) I just bought two new dresses from eShakti. I have had several of you recommend them, so I finally was un-lazy enough to get out the measuring tape. I didn’t exactly fit any of their standard sizes, but I was closest to an 8, so I bought those. I am hoping they’ll see the big bra size and know what to do about it. If anyone’s wondering, my measurements are 38-27-38.

5) Remember a week or two ago when I told you all to read boxbrown‘s comics? Well, he has a new one, and it is called Everything Dies, and you should read it! It is about religion and humanism and stuff. There are three stories up for you to try. You should try them!

6) I am going to go meet rosefox shortly! I am very excited! So excited that I perhaps mistook the time I was supposed to meet her and almost jumped the gun by an hour and a half. Oops!

7) I like lemonade and have been drinking it a lot lately.

8) On the recent LJ thing: I have screencapped all of your locked posts, recorded video of myself reading them, and posted it on youtube. Just so y’all know. No, I wouldn’t share comments from anyone else’s posts with a link to a locked post in it; in fact, the idea to do that had never occurred to me before last night. However, whatever y’all want to do with comments on my posts is all good either way, as long as you don’t send anything I’ve ever locked into the world of public web stuffs. Even then, I will probably forgive you as long as it’s not personal information that implicates another person. If I even find out about it. But that’s just how I roll. I heart you all!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

So I totally fell off the fitness bus when I moved, although I bought a pair of wrist weights and have been wearing them pretty regularly.

Then last week, beatonna asked for folks who would join her in a Run For Congo Women. It’s a 5k run to raise money for women in the Congo.

I know, I know, I already posted about this, but for those of you who missed it or may have just been breezing by at the time, we would be mighty happy if anyone could give our team a donation at our team donation page right there.

Anyway, it’s a 5k race. And as most of you know, I am miserably out of shape. So, when I heard about the race, I started running.

I didn’t own sneakers or any running gear, so starting the first night, I did the running exercise on the Wii Fit, which I don’t even know if that counts as real running, but I figured it was something. I started with the “long” jog on the distance run and then worked up to the 20 minute jog on the timed run. I decided that one mile on Wii Fit is probably equivalent to about one kilometer of real running. I decided that each week, I’d increase by 1K. I have until September 25, so I think this is a doable timeframe to get ready in.

On Monday, I went out and bought myself my first pair of running sneakers. They were bright pink. And then I bought running socks! But I didn’t have any appropriate running clothes, and I wasn’t sure what to do about that. Then, yesterday, I was taking a walk to where Rina told me there was a Michael’s craft store, and, lo and behold, I saw it like a beacon in a storm: a big Sports Authority sign. So I trekked over to the Sports Authority, and when I got there, they were having a MASSIVE TENT SALE in the parking lot. Hooray! Unfortunately, the tent was not for sale.

I went into the mysterious tent, and when I emerged, I had bought two sets of running clothes and it had all cost me under $50. It was like a message from the universe, telling me that I should run! I was very excited! So I was telling Brendan about it at work today and he told me where there is a public track a few blocks from my apartment. So! I went to the track today.

It was a little weird, running in front of people, but I think it was a good experience, because it wasn’t as uncomfortable as I expected once I just sucked it up and did it. It is a big park with a lot of activities in it, and so there were a lot of people of all ages, and kids using the track to ride their bikes or skate as well as joggers. In fact, for most of the time, I was the only person really jogging.

I did five laps, or 1.25 miles, which is just a touch over 2k, and then I walked a bit to cool down. It was definitely hard work, but I also felt at the end like I could have done more. And unlike high school, I wasn’t winded after one lap of running, which tells me that the exercising I’ve done all summer helped a lot. So I felt like it was doable. Next week, I’ll try to work up to 3k, which is a little under 2 miles.

I’m still not sure about some things. Like, where do people put their keys when they’re running? I carried a little purse but it wasn’t the most practical.

All in all, though, this is a very exciting development for me!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Whew, so I’ve barely posted for the past two weeks on account of moving and getting things sorted, so it gave me a lot of time to think about the comments on my last post, and I think I’ve come up with a workable solution for the folks who are uncomfortable with these posts.

I’ve paid my web host to set up a subdomain. This means that you can block images from this subdomain if you so choose, without blocking every single image hosted on my website. That means you can read my comics even if you block these images.

I also set up a little handy button right here that is completely and totally unremarkable so you can block the images without scrolling any further down the page and looking at pictures that might be problematic for you.

If you’re on a PC, you can right-click and block all the images on this subdomain. If you are on a Mac, hit CTRL-click, and then you can block the images. The subject line will always stay the same so I am hoping that will serve as significant warning to scroll past. If it’s JUST the images that bother you, then feel free to read!

Okay! Now that that’s done, on to the actual fitnessy stuff.

whirled started doing some good requirements that I really like. For example, she started drinking more water. I made a pledge to drink the required 8 cups of water a day…before I found out that they meant 8 8-oz cups. I well exceed that in a normal day, just from going to the water cooler at work! Our cups at work are 16 oz! So I was thinking I would have to drink 16 oz. eight times, but no! Just four times, which is way less water than I drink in a day. But I have been keeping better tabs on my water intake.

Moving put a damper on my exercising, and I can’t go home and exercise at lunch anymore, but I did a heck of a lot of packing and moving boxes and unpacking, and I did make sure I walked a lot, so I am betting that I got an equivalent amount of exercise. Plus, I am freaking covered with box-moving bruises (you can see a lovely purple one on my ribcage below) I am pledging to but myself either an elliptical or an exercise bike for the new apartment; I think it would be a good investment, and I have room for it now. But I do need to get back into doing exercising and stretching this week. I moved into a fourth-floor apartment, and even though it has an elevator, I’ve been trying to make myself walk the stairs as much as possible. And my new subway is an elevated train so I walk stairs there, too! The biggest problem is that that doesn’t help my arms, and my arms are really what need the most help.

I’ve also been committing myself to eating dinners I prepare myself, now that I have a real separate kitchen with prep space. I have been making food ahead so I can just pull it out when I’m hungry. Also, I made blueberry sorbet which is freaking delicious. The other thing I have to work on is my lunchtime meals, since I can’t go home for lunch anymore. It would be both more economical and healthier to prep lunch at home and bring it, but it won’t be as tasty, fresh or convenient. So I’ll have to figure that one out. In the meantime, I peeled carrots ahead of time so I can munch on them whenever I want, instead of buying the pre-peeled ones from the store.

One thing I need to work on is eating more protein. I eat a good amount of veggies as it is but I often forget the protein. I also need to start walking at lunch, I think, even if I have nowhere to go.

Pics this week are in new apartment! And once again, if you don’t feel you can look at the pics, you can block them without blocking anything else on my site.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

Before I start this post, there is something I feel like I need to say.

After last week’s post, someone said that these fitness posts were triggering to them, but didn’t offer any details as to why. They asked me to cut them, and I said no.

That’s not something I will say very often, but in this case, for me, the purpose of making these posts is to challenge taboos about looking at bodies and discussing the way our bodies make us feel. It’s also for myself, to help me become more aware of the way I think about my body, and make me braver about my physical self. It’s very important for me, for the purposes of personal self-improvement, and putting these photos under a cut would not serve the same purpose.

I’m also troubled by the idea that photos of a woman in shorts and a sports bra could be so severely upsetting or cause such a severe physical reaction that someone can’t even look at them, especially since I see people dressed like this on the street when they’re jogging, or in less clothing when they’re swimming– or on billboards. Imagine how you would feel if someone told you that even a glimpse of your body could cause severe negative emotional or physical reactions to them. That really upset me. Even if it’s not what intended, it’s effectively saying “looking at your body makes me sick,” and I’m sure anyone who has ever had any kind of insecurities about the way they look or feel would be hurt if they heard that.

That being said, I realize that I have always been pretty healthy and able and for the past several years, on the slender side of normal as far as my body type. So if any of you ever take specific issue with something I say about body shapes or body types or anything like that, or think that anything I say shows an insensitivity toward other people’s bodies or ignorance about other people’s ability levels, please feel free to tell me what it is. I will try to listen and improve. After all, the purpose of these posts is to try to engage in body-positive thinking. But please don’t suggest that it’s bad for me to work on improving my self-image in my own journal in the way that I need to for myself.

On to this week!

So, last week I did my exercises every day but Friday, because we went to Delaware. So I didn’t get to take my pictures till today. I missed out on exercising yesterday but I walked a bit instead and I did some today.

I really enjoy stretching. I think it is my favorite type of exercise and it’s the one where I feel the most marked improvement every time I do it.

Once I move, I am going to get some weights and start working on my upper arm strength because I think that is the place where I am doing the least to improve my physical fitness. I feel like my upper body is very weak, especially my left arm, which is funny because that’s my dominant arm, so I really should start doing something about it. But a lot of the exercise routines are getting easier and easier. On a few of them, I still can’t do the “extra challenge” bits, but I can do most of the regular bits and that is making me really proud of myself. Especially when there’s this bit that I thought I was doing right all this time, and then I realized that my legs had become stronger and that in and of itself changed the way I did that exercise. It was a sudden realization of wow, so that’s how those muscles are supposed to work!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.

This past week was the first week where I didn’t manage to exercise every day at lunch. I had two errands I had to run on Monday and Tuesday, so those days were out– One day I managed to exercise in the evening, the other one I just did some stretching. But then, on Friday, I left work early to go to my parents’ for the long weekend. So I did a little stretching that day as well, but I really did not stick to the plan, Stan.

Also, these pictures were taken today, Tuesday, not Friday like they should have been!

Some high points of last week–

I flt increasingly comfortable stretching and more flexible overall! I think the highlight of the week for me came on Thursday when I did a routine I hadn’t done in about two weeks. This routine involve toe-touching, and the last time I did it, I could not really get my hands down past my shins without bending my knees. This time, though, my hands went flat on the floor with no problem! I was really proud and excited about that. It was the first quantifiable sign of progress for me!

I also, on Friday morning, officially met my weight goal, which was to hit under 140 lbs. Yeah, then I gorged so much this weekend I gained 2 lbs back, but since weight loss isn’t my main concern, I’m not sweatin’ it. I just felt like I should say so for those of you who are following my fitness adventure and thinking about starting your own. I know it probably doesn’t sound like a ton of weight, but I lost approximately five lbs in four weeks without changing my diet at all, and only making exercise part of my daily life, and I think that is a great thing to know!

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.