New Year's in September

I love September. These past few days have been cool and clear, and you can almost feel the back-to-school energy like electricity in the air. I was one of the few kids who could not wait to go back to school in the fall...all the way through high school. To me, it always represented a fresh start, another opportunity to reinvent myself. It was my "new year".


To this day, I still feel that excitement as September approaches. As much as I love the summer, by mid-August I'm longing for the cool, wood-smoke scented air that signals my fresh start.

And here it is!


I've already got a couple of irons in the fire on the reinvention front. But now it's also time to get back to business on my health.

I know, it's a risk to pile more onto my plate (no pun intended), but it has to be done. Anyway, I've been here before, so it should be easy. And I'm not sure I'm going to go all-out, gung-ho South Beach at this point, just sticking to the basics:

1. Drink the water. It does absolutely no good sitting there in the water cooler. My head and muscles will be so thankful.
2. Moderation, not deprivation. And not overindulgence, either -- I don't care what "they" say, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Just ask my gut. And my husband.
3. Exercise. I don't care if it's just a walk around the block -- my butt needs to unstick itself from this chair at least once a day. And a trip to the fridge doesn't count. Neither does the trip across the room to the water cooler, although that is a good start (see #1).

That's it. Plain and simple. What are your "back to school" resolutions?

Getting My Groove Back

I can be as on-the-ball-cruising-along-all-systems-go as anything with the healthy lifestyle, and all it takes is one nasty cold to blast it all to hell.

Well, maybe it's not that bad... but for a few days last week it really seemed like it. At the very least, life as I knew it pretty much screeched to a halt. I didn't feel like eating, much less eating well, and forget about the running routine. All I wanted to do was wrap myself up in a blanket and sleep until it was all over.

After a mess like that, it is really, really hard to get back into the swing of things. I had stopped exercising, given up the food diary, lost control of the meal planning and had no motivation to go to the grocery store. I had lost my momentum.

For another several days after I started feeling better, I kind of floundered a bit as I tried to regain my footing. We ate take-out more often than I'd like because a) there wasn't much in the fridge and b) I had no inclination to cook, though I am proud to say that for the most part (short of being in control of every single ingredient) we were able to keep it healthy: Chinese shrimp & mixed vegetables, Greek chicken souvlaki with grilled vegetables, and that one Wendy's baked potato with some chili. Having lost a week on my running program, I wasn't sure where to start back up. I regained one pound that I lost during my illness -- which was fine, because that was kind of a "cheat" pound, anyway, but it also shined a light on the fact that I have been really off my game.

This weekend, I started taking steps to get my groove back:
1. Meal plan. I buckled down and created that meal plan for the week. From that, I made the grocery list. And then... I actually went to the grocery store. The house is now stocked with everything I need to stay on track, and I once again have a road map for the week's dinners. Now, at dinnertime, there is no "but there's nothing in the house" or "I don't know what to cook" -- my two favorite excuses.
2. Running program. When it comes to exercise, Nike really had it right: just do it. Seriously, I just had to get up off my arse and do it. I ran one day at the level where I last left off; then stepped right up to the next level and will continue the program from there. And you know what? It felt good. Why that fact is so easy to forget is beyond me.
3. Food diary. Really and truly, I believe in the food diary one hundred percent. Not only does it keep me honest, it helps me to evaluate my eating habits and ensure that I am eating enough of the good stuff. I know, for example, that I really need to kick up my vegetable intake a notch; I'm not getting enough dairy, or fruit for that matter; and I should probably pull back a little on the cheese. That doesn't even sound painful at all -- go figure, a "diet" where I have to eat more!

Despite a minor detour, I think that I am headed back down the right path. And it only took me a week to figure it out; in the past, it might have taken a year. That's progress!

I Want a Jumperoo!

As I've been sitting here, lamenting the fact that I have not yet been able to get my body in motion as part of my new, healthy lifestyle, I noticed my daughter in her Jumperoo, bouncing herself into a state of laughing and babbling glee. Oh, how well she is going to nap this afternoon!

Then I realized that I have been going about this whole exercise thing all wrong. I keep thinking of exercise as a regulated, regimented thing that I have to drag my butt out of bed to do, involving some kind of video or TV program, or a trip to the gym. Clearly, that has not been working for me.

Looking at Caroline jumping away, I can't help but think how fun it might be to have one of those Jumperoos, adult-sized, for myself. Of course I'd look pretty ridiculous -- and where the heck would I put it? -- but the heart of what I am thinking isn't all that crazy. Remember how much fun it was to just play? A game of tag, jumping rope, hopscotch, or even just spinning around until you got dizzy and fell down -- these were a BLAST, and we didn't have an inkling that we were actually getting exercise. I think that is the best possible approach to exercise.

Now, I haven't been completely inactive: for a few weeks now, I have been playing a weekly game of basketball with some friends at the local middle school. It has been enormously fun, despite the fact that my lungs are burning from about ten minutes in... and, go figure, I've gotten an hour of heavy exercise in each week without blinking an eye. I look forward to it every week.

I do realize that there will probably be some forms of exercise that are necessary and might not be entirely enjoyable, but with more fun-based activities as the core of my routine (oops, there's that word again) it could be far more tolerable.

I Stripped My Way Through College

Well, no, I didn't...but I got your attention now, didn't I? Actually, I was in the city yesterday and happened to notice this guy walking along the sidewalk with a big thought cloud over his head that said "I stripped my way through college." No joke, it's true -- undoubtedly part of some very interesting ad campaign (it was a cut-out of a thought cloud mounted to a post that was strapped to the guy's chest), though by the time I could see the flip side of the thought cloud I couldn't make out the name of the company or campaign.

My first thought was Wow, I WISH I'd had the body to strip my way through college. Then I thought that actually, what I really wished was that I had the body image to be able to do that. Then I saw another guy with a thought cloud over his head that said: "I think that I am ugly." That really got me thinking... body image is such an interesting thing. There are a lot of things about my body that I am not happy with; I can think of ten things easy, right off the top of my head. But Dave, my husband, will look at me like I've got two heads if I mention any of them: "What do you mean? I think you look great." (Of course, one might say he is playing exactly the right card when faced with such a loaded comment.)

My point, though, is that body image is such a subjective thing. Why is it that when we look at ourselves, it is like looking into a fun house mirror? The image is completely distorted, and nothing like what the person standing next to us sees when he or she looks at us. And why, I wonder, does that body image have to be so closely tied to weight, or to fitting into size xyz pants? Distorted body image is what drives so many of us to crash diet, imbibe all sorts of "miracle" weight-loss concoctions, and at its worst is at the heart of depression, anorexia, bulimia and a host of other disorders. None of which is healthy.

Now, I can't change everyone's opinion of their own bodies, or how they choose to deal with it... but I can change my own. For my own sake, and for that of my daughter. More than the weight, more than fitting into those size 6 (or, dare I say it, size 4?) jeans, more than even eliminating the spare tire around my belly or the jiggle in my arms, I want to learn to feel as confident in my body as I imagine a stripper might. And I want to feel that way regardless of whether I "fix" any of the things I currently see "wrong" with my body. I want to feel that way because I am healthy, and active, and strong, and content. To do this, it's going to take more than simply changing my eating habits and exercising. It's going to take some real introspection, and a lot of mental work.

So for me, "Walking the Beach" is taking on more meaning than I originally thought. While I will continue to muse about my food choices and building healthy habits, I see it also becoming a journey of self-discovery that I didn't exactly anticipate. I am excited to see where it will take me!

My Opponent, the Stress Monster

Wow. Today, the Stress Monster blindsided me and ran me over like a Mack truck. I simply could not get ahead of it, no matter how hard I tried. The funny thing is, I spent most of yesterday working my butt off to get laundry done, the house straightened, meals pre-cooked and veggies washed and prepped... just so that I would feel prepared going into today. And somehow, it completely backfired. I was overwhelmed from the minute I woke up, and only now -- at eleven o'clock at night -- do I finally feel it has relatively eased up.

I'm not sure what exactly caused it... Did I burn myself out yesterday, trying to get ahead? Is it hormonal (yes, turns out it's "that time of the month")? Was it dehydration, because I didn't drink nearly as much water yesterday as I had gotten into the habit of drinking? Or maybe it was a manifestation of anxiety over a play date I had planned for this afternoon, with several women I've never met before? It could be a combination of all of these things.

Whatever the cause, I decided to take control over the things that I have the power to control: drink that water, and ease into the next phase of the program by adding whole grains and fruits back into my diet. Maybe the stress was a sign from my body that it is ready to move on. My cravings are well under control (I got through today's play date without so much as salivating over the buffet of sweet treats at my fingertips...heck, I even brought the Munchkins and I didn't eat one); now I want to be sure that I am not depriving my body of too much, for too long.

The other thing I need to do: get exercise. I need to get moving. I need to find a way to work it into my already crazy schedule, or I may go insane. If there are two things the Stress Monster hates, it's healthy eating and exercise. I've focused a great deal of time and energy on one, and have not been working the other equally. No wonder I was blindsided. If I don't keep both gloves up, I get smacked in the head.

Phase I, Day 6

January 6, 2009

Today, I actually had to leave the house for work (I work from home), and I went prepared: I packed two legal snacks and a lunch of leftovers along with a bottle of water in my lunch bag. It worked really well. When I got home, I had another small snack while waiting for dinnertime, and it held me over nicely.

I did experience one stress trigger today, where there was a bit of tension between me and Dave, and I immediately started thinking how good some McDonalds french fries would taste at that moment. It was really interesting, almost like an out of body experience, because although I could hear myself thinking that (very illegal) thought, there was a much bigger part of me that knew that I wasn't going to do it…that I didn't even really WANT to do it.

And…I played BASKETBALL tonight with some of the ladies in town! An entire hour of nonstop motion! It kicked my BUTT…but oh, it feels so good to get active, and especially to have the opportunity to "hang with the girls" while doing it. It's entirely satisfying.

B: 1.5oz smoked salmon w/laughing cow light cheese (garlic & herb) wrapped around a cucumber spear, V8, coffee

S: 30 pistachios

L: leftover turkey meatloaf and 1C broccoli

S: ½ C. cottage cheese w/cinnamon & splenda, 1oz lf cheddar cheese

D: leftover Southwestern Taco Chicken w/avocado & 1T lf sour cream, salad w/Salad Spritzer

S: 1 C. ff milk

Water: 10 glasses!
Exercise: 1 hour basketball!