Bad Lady of Pounds

This week was a bad one and really I have nothing but bad excuses, the number on the scale and lack of motivation to blame. I'm setting myself up for failure if I don't start taking this more seriously. I started this thinking it would be great to be able to wear this, this and that by my next vacation but I need to start thinking in more shorter terms.

So here we are...short term goals:
1. On days I don't work I absolutely must get off my ass and do my work outs. It's 30 minutes, its not hard. And on days I do work I need to at least try for a work out or a walk, and I need to be honest about why I'm not.

2. I need to invest in some work out clothes. Something comfortable and that I will assocoate solely with working out. Most importantly I need a good sports bra...I'm tired of my knockers almost knocking me out.

3. Try to stick to water as much as possible. I always feel better when I limit my soda intake and the soda stream machine makes it fizzy like I like.

4. Stay the fuck off the scale. Women fluctuate as much as 8 pounds on a daily basis....EIGHT!!!! I need to stop focusing on the pounds.

5. Start utalizing my Sunday's off. I booked Sunday's off in order to do things like meal preps and walks or hikes so I bloody well better start using them.

Speaking of walks and hikes my friend SM and I went out to Banff/Lake Louise on Thursday. We didn't do much walking because I was so hyper focused on getting out of the city so next time I hope to just focus on an area and spend the day walking or hiking. SM also packed these "brownies" that she made out of black beans. Omg I would never had known they weren't the real deal they were so good!

So it was a bad week, but hey no one going through this process is perfect and if they say they are? Well I really wish that pants catching on fire happened cause that would be amazing.

No Matter How Hard You Try, You Can't Suck In Back Fat

So today was the official day 2 of working out, I have no real excuses but the ones I'm sticking with are life happened on Tuesday and I walked  over 17,000 steps at work yesterday and that's not including all the bending, twisting, squatting etc...that's enough of a freaking workout.

Today though I took my "before" photos....let me tell ya, the title of this blog rings true. Pardon me while I go invest in 100 spanks tank tops for the time being.

So I managed to do all 3 of the reps...cylces...whatever the hell they're called (clearly I don't speak fitness) but let me tell ya by the third one I was ready to collapse. I don't understand the masochists that enjoy working out and claim they love the pain because pain means progress. Maybe it's because I'm at the beginning and struggling to envision the results.

See this is my problem. Other people I talk to say things like "I just picture how good I'll look/feel" after a hard workout. For me I'm just praying that the pain I feel in my knee and back don't cripple me for the rest of the week. I'm a negative nancy, I know. I know I just need to work through the pain but being laid up from my back in the past has left me with this irrational fear that makes me baby myself.

Also had an interesting/very maddening conversation this week. Things are smoothed over now but at the time I was so angry and frustrated. It all stemmed from a friend who follows my Pinterest. Now I pin everything...clothes that don't fit, nails that aren't practical as a nursing aide, places I want to see, wedding plans that my perpetually single ass will never use...the usual stuff. Well in this case I pinned a recipie, not just any recipie, one for dark Chocolate cake, much like the one in the picture I've included. I pinned it to a board called "must try to make", a board that has everything from easy peesy "healthy" recipies down to a freaking 10 layer multi flavoured rosette decorated cake. So in other words stuff that looks good that I may or not make, for whatever reason.

Now, a friend of mine took it upon themselves to make a comment along the lines of "you won't lose weight if you make and eat that cake". I get it, being public about this journey means that some people will take it upon themselves to try to hold me accountable. I get that they care but shaming the shit out of someone for just even thinking about something that looks/tastes amazing is not helpful. The conversation continued with me saying a not so polite version of "thanks tips" followed by ne explaining the point of my Pinterest. I already knew this person was in the "if I fat shame you it's my way of trying to open your eyes and help you on your journey camp" and that they view fat shaming as a positive thing.

But here's the thing, it's not.

By shaming me they didn't motivate me, they didn't put me in the "oh yeah watch this" frame of mind that they thought it would do, it made me angry, but not at myself, at them. It made me feel a bit discouraged in fact, it made me wonder why I was bothering, but then the more I thought about it I also wondered...why did I care? I'm not doing this for anyone but me.

If I can't get through a full work out because it is just too painful or I just can't get my arms up one more time or can't get into that last set of squats because my knee is grinding too painfully, that's okay. You know why? Because at least I have two previous rounds that I did manage to get through and that's something to be proud of not ashamed of. It gives me something to work towards. So what if I can only do 10 pushups right now, that just means that in a couple weeks maybe I'll be strong enough to do 15 and then a couple weeks after that 20. I refuse to kill my body over what someone else might think of the work I am doing.

I think that this realisation means that this time, I'll actually be successful!

When Do We Start? MONDAY!

So funny enough I added the Work out routine today (monday). So many people say "monday I start my diet" cause it can't start any other day of the week.

I had a friend recommend a youtube/website called Bikini Body Mommy (link at end) and I spent the weekend checking out her videos and website to get a feel for her. Today was my first workout and I sweated as much in 8 minutes as I did in a 30 minute Beach Body work out.

I honestly can say I already really like the woman running the videos. It was encouraging to be working out along side someone who was huffing and puffing and vocalising how she felt and had to modify as needed, rather than some perfect body wandering around to their helpers and faking their way through the "workout". To quote my friend that recommended it, "she's real".

The exercises may only have been 50 seconds each, but as a fat person they were challenging. Here's my thoughts on each portion.

The chair squats: I did 30 before my knee really started bugging me, even at modified. They weren't horrible, the hardest was remembering to lock my core.

High Knees: I did the modified/slower version of them but still managed to do 62 reps. Again not horrible, looking forward to being able to speed those up.

Pushups: still.fucking.hate.them! I've never been good at pushups and I'm pretty sure I was doing them wrong, though I definitely felt the burn in my arms and shoulders. Still I managed to do 15, not bad for someone with the upper body strength of a 2 year old.

Squat jumps: okay there wasn't any jumping involved. I had flashes to that scene in What's Eating Gilbert Grape where she sits on the couch and all the beams shift, yeah except remove the couch and picture my ass falling through the floor. 21 of those.

Tricep Curls: so that's the one where you do kind of a combination squat and pushup using a chair. Yeah that one didn't happen. One I didn't trust the sturdiness of the chair I was using and I also knew my knee wouldn't take it so I fully admit I chickened out. Luckily I now know a modification for that.

Burpees: You cross fit people that do these all the time? Y'all are crazy. I did 5 and could barely do those. There was definitely no jumping and my pushups were pitiful. Definitely not going to be on that warrior ninja show anytime soon!

Alternating Lunges: by this point I was pushing myself. My knee was killing me and my legs were shaking. It surprised me that I was that tired after only 7 minutes but I also realized that the most working out I've done is ambulating and moving patients at work. I managed 16 though.

Elbow Plank: this one surprised me as I was able to hold the plank for a minute and 7.75 seconds. I thought I would give in sooner than that. My arms and legs were shaking hard by the end of it though.

Overall it wasn't a horrible experience. Unlike previous videos I've tried I didn't feel discouraged by the end of it. The only other one that has left me feeling like that was DDP yoga, but that will have to wait until I have a laptop again.

I can definitely see a good sleep in my future.

P.s. does running away from a giant spider count as a work out? Cause I moved fast and it definitely had my heart pumping.

Bikini Body Mommy site: http://bikinibodymommy.com

Sisters = cheat days

Days like today are the hardest ones. Not only did I go to my sisters for dinner which makes logging food a little harder, but I'm on night shift, which means my eating schedule is all outta whack with having meals way later than normal.

But at the same time I can never complain about my sisters cooking. She's essentially my cheat day!

I still need to work on fine tuning my conversions. When I transferred my step count information over to myfitnesspal last night suddenly I had burned 3 times the amount of calories. Apparently if I continued at that pace I would lose 35 pounds in 5 weeks. Damn wouldn't that be lovely.

My knee has been aching like a tooth ache and while I'm sure the cold rainy weather has something to do with it, it would sure be nice not to feel like I'm one of my 90 year old patients....though last night one of those buggers with her walker lapped me (senior goals).

Goals for the week are to start a couple different work out routines I discovered/was introduced too and to buy an adapter for my elliptical so that I don't feel like I'm moving a Mack Truck every time I get on the damn thing. Electronic and manual settings my ass!

An Apple a Day Doesn't Keep Anyone Away

So one of the most interesting things that happened since announcing this new attempt was the response. It was all supportive and positive which is amazing but the interesting part was the number of people who messaged me with program recommendations.

I seriously learned about 6 different programs last night. While thankfully no one was overly pushy about having me join it definitely made me realize that there is no lie when people say that weight loss is a money making scheme. The more sites O examined last night the more I realized how much these companies are predatory.

Now, I am in no way saying that my friends are being taken for a ride. What works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other and if you are seeing results it's by no means a bad investment. But the sites themselves put me off.

Almost every site makes the same claim, it's not a diet it's a lifestyle change, which is so true. You have to change your habits to change the things about yourself that you don't like. But seeing claims that a product melts the pounds off, seeing bogus claims about what it will do for your health (eliminate diabetes! Kiss heart disease good bye! Lower your blood pressure!) make me angry. Sure these programs may help these things improve, but so does healthy habits in general, it's not some special formula.

I'm not saying I'll never try a program, but a lot of research will go into it before hand. For now I want to see what I can do on my own, I won't get anywhere with some magic formula if I can't get myself healthy under my own steam. It's a relearning process and it's going to be an interesting one.

One Small Step For Larger Kind

Day 1 attempt number 2,897,702 at losing weight.

This isn't going to be one of those "oh my God this product is amazing" or "i feel great after working out for 3 hours" and all the other BS that gets written about. This is for me to sort through trials and tribulations of weight loss and if someone reads this, gets some inspiration or a laugh than that's a bonus.

A few months ago I had "the moment", that being the thing that makes every fat person go "alright, enough is enough". I was kneeling on a floor going through some DVDs trying to find something to watch and my knee couldn't support me to get back up. Of course my first thoughts weren't really about how I was trying to get up with my bad knee or how this was a sign that it was time to really take my weight loss seriously. No, the thought that entered my mind was more along the lines of "And this is how I die, stuck on the floor. At least the dogs will survive off me for a couple weeks", then I thought about the weight thing.

For years I've tried off and on to lose weight. Tried weight watchers and had some mild successes and beach body and hated my life, of course not as much as I hated the whoo-hooers on the work out DVDs. Seriously who actually enjoys sweating their balls off that much that they need to cheer their way through the torture.

My newest steps have been to ask my doctor to send me to a dietician and start tracking everything. Of course my doc sent me to a nutritionist, which was fine until she mentioned the classes. Now they promote these classes as valuable nutritional education, and there are definitely some educational aspects, but for the most part the education revolves around teaching you why you are fat.

Here is the thing, all fat people know why they are fat, it just depends on whether they acknowledge it. For some people it's medication, health issues and some are just flat out in denial saying they don't know how they got so large. For me I know why I'm fat, I make bad choices and I love food! I love cooking and eating food that is delicious. Sure there are some medical issues that aren't helping either, but what's frustrating is my doctor and I are struggling to figure out exactly what they are.

So that's my story for now. This is going to be a journey and a battle but in the end it's going to be worth it.