Return to bliss

I’m relatively certain you’ll all be quite relieved to know that my new Nike + iPod arrived today.  As a counteractive measure against the agony it has been to be without my Nike + iPod for 5 whole days, I also ordered some snazzy Nike sport headphones so I don’t have to worry about them falling out of my ears when I run (which, just so you know, is wildly distracting).

I may also have gone ahead and spent money on warm running clothes so that I might attempt to convince myself to continue running outside through winter. 

Being as I’m consistently running 3.5 miles/day for weeks now, I’m going to go ahead and also start calling myself a runner.  Before, I would have just said that I attempted  to run with regularity.  Now, I actually do it.  Yay me!

We may all resume our regularly scheduled lives now that I have the love of my life back.  I apologize for the interruption.

Devastating News

Today, I lost my Nike shoe sensor.

It’s possibly the worst thing that’s happened since my grandpa died.  Oh wait, there was that whole friend screwing the guy I was seeing thing. . . no, I think this is worse.

This is what I get for being all rebellious and thinking I could sneak by with my Asics instead of spending $100 on a pair of shitty Nike running shoes.  Well, or it’s what I get for not being a little smarter about how I attempted to sneak by with my Asics instead of spending $100 on a pair of shitty Nike running shoes.

You probably think I’m being melodramatic for humor, but I’m so not.  As soon as I realized I’d lost it, I packed up the kids and headed to the store to buy a new one because I planned to run this evening and can’t run without it.  We got sidetracked and bought a new pair of running shoes on the way (not Nike, but these have a little pocket on the tongue that could securely hold my precious Nike sensor).  And, then we got to Target and THERE WERE NO NIKE+ KITS.  I almost died.

We ran across the street to Walmart, NONE.

We then spent 45 minutes retracing our steps.  Couldn’t find it.

Please note:  the kids missed their naps for this.

I am now sitting here, frantically ordering a new sensor online, and dreading the wait for it to arrive.

I’m thoroughly addicted to this thing.  If that weren’t clear before, it definitely is now.  I have no idea how I will get my runs in between now and the days it takes for my new sensor to show up in my mailbox.

If I tell you I’ve been fighting back tears, are you gonna judge me for it?  Because. . . I’ve been fighting back tears.

I miss my Nike + iPod.

P90X Challenge

So, I need something to keep me busy through the winter or I’ll just sit around getting fat over the next few months.  So, I’ve got half a dozen friends who want to try P90X now that I’ve proven it works.  So, I’m pretty good at organizing groups.  So, I’m also pretty good at telling people to do stuff.  SO, we’re starting an official P90X challenge among friends to see who kicks ass and who sucks.

We’re going to start December 1.  Yes, that sucks.  That means you have to stay on track through Christmas & New Year’s.  BUT!  It also means you get to be crazy awesome hot by Spring Break.  See how that works?

We’ve got a fancy, schmancy Facebook group all set up to gather and bitch about Plyo motivate each other to keep pushin’. 

If you’re up for the challenge, let me know.  Also, hurry up and order the program so you have time to look at it before we get started.  It’s the kind of thing you want to brace yourself for. 

We’ll have some discussion about incentive within the group. . . but I can tell you right now, I’m voting vacation.  I’m due for a good vacation and if I make it through winter sticking with P90X, I think that’s a pretty good case for a lavish vacation!

P90X Results

Ok. I was never really going to post my fat pictures online anywhere ever. Because, dudes, I was a cow. Mooooo. And, I’ll be honest with you, I completely flipped my lid when I actually saw the before photos (for some reason the image in the mirror didn’t look nearly as horrifying as the photos). Like. . . I cried. A lot. And, that’s probably what got me to finally actually commit to something with undying certainty.

I took Day 1 photos, Day 60 photos. . . and then never took actual Day 90 photos because I got all preoccupied with that damned boy. So, I decided to start the program over again and took another set of photos last week, which reflect one month of no weight training but intense cardio, then one month of nothing at all (September was awesome!), then the past 5 weeks or so of running A LOT. I imagine it all evens out and we can say that the recent photos are pretty representative of where I was at Day 90.

So, funny thing, the image in the mirror now also doesn’t resemble the photos at all. These photos are incredibly magical and fantastic and I most definitely do not see myself as that thin or toned when I look in the mirror. Image issues much? Geez!

Anyway, because I’ve talked and talked and talked and talked and talked about P90X, and because it HAS worked wonders for me and I love it and I want other people to know that something works! Really!, I am shamelessly posting my fat before photos on the internet for all the world to see. Only because I get to also post the skinny photos for all the world to see.

Before that happens, though, let’s all agree to not discuss how lazy it was of me to not throw on a bikini or something less hideous than a non-matching bra & panties and socks in the before photos. Let’s also agree not to make fun of the fact that my head is missing from the before photos. I was not a happy camper in those photos, and also, I don’t ever want anyone to actually be able to prove that that is my fat ass. And, finally, let’s agree that we will pretend that you haven’t now seen me almost naked.

I have after pictures of my backside, but apparently not befores. . . interesting.  So, anyway. . . TA DA!

Exactly

more music charts

Politics & Religion

Two things I try to avoid discussing with people I like because typically, I fall outside the standard opinion on both matters among people I like,  Which is weird.

I’m trying really hard not to be annoyed by politics today, but just want to strangle some people.  Some people should NOT BE ALLOWED TO VOTE.  There should be some sort of measure of ignorance with which we can weed out the idiots who will vote based on incredibly stupid shit like who Paris Hilton supports or who their husband told them to vote for or, *gasp*, skin color.

Fucking seriously, people.  If you haven’t been paying attention to the past 8 years, you should do a quick inventory.  We need to take this shit more seriously.  If we’re in this much trouble now, don’t you think you should work a little harder at making an INFORMED decision so we don’t look back 4 (or dear God, 8!) years from NOW and go, “Shit, my bad”?!

I’m not saying I’m excited about either of our options at present, because I most assuredly am not.  I’m not even saying I think you should vote one way or another.  I’m just saying you shouldn’t be a fucking moron about it.  If you’re going to vote, you need to have some general knowledge about the candidates and where they stand. . . from some source other than SNL or forwarded email chains or whichever celebrity is on the cover of People this week.

I love this country, but sometimes I really, really, really wonder about the people I’m sharing it with.

Freaking awesome.

Since the day I got married almost 8.5 years ago (holy SHIT!), I’ve been in a constant battle to get back to my pre-married weight, which seemed particularly elusive for no real reason that I could figure out except that God wants married and/or divorced people to be fat. 

I was 138 lbs. when I walked down the aisle, and even then, I felt like a fat cow.  That ended up being HILARIOUS about a year later when I was weighing in at 165 (which probably was actually more like 170, but I stopped stepping on the scale after 165 because I almost died the day I realized I weighed more than my husband did in high school).  138 sounded like pure, skinny bliss, and it became my goal.

I can’t even begin to count the number of ways I have desperately attempted to acheive that seemingly impossible goal.  Even in the few years that I’ve maintained this blog, you’ve seen me through a personal trainer, several attempts at diet & exercise programs (Body for Life, TurboJam, P90X), and more running than I ever really thought I’d do in my lifetime.  I’m honestly a little surprised that I didn’t just give up after the personal trainer didn’t work because. . . really.

I’ve lost weight, gained weight, lost weight again, and gained it again.  I’ve been lighter, but fatter and heavier but leaner.  I’ve tried to convince myself that the number doesn’t matter, but on some level, it just always did.  I can’t help it.  I’m a girl.  The number on the scale matters.

Over the summer, I finally did P90X, after watching a ridiculous amount of infomercials about it and trying to tell myself that it’s just another fluke.  It KICKED ASS.  I doubt I’ll ever use another program again.  I can’t tell you how happy I am with the results of the program.  I am stronger than I have ever been, but probably equally important, I just feel badass having gotten through the program and seeing the progress I made from Day 1 to Day 90 (Day 1 = couldn’t do 1 push up on my toes, Day 90 = did over 200 push ups on my toes).

Still, at the end of the 90 days, I was stuck at 144 lbs.  I felt awesome, so I wasn’t too upset about the number, but it still irritated me that I couldn’t seem to break 140 for anything.  Ever.  To save my life.

I wound up distracted for a couple of months after finishing P90X, and was afraid I’d creeped back up.  I was dancing A LOT during those couple of months, and whether you believe it or not, that’s very good cardio, so I wasn’t sitting on my ass doing nothing, but I wasn’t training as hard as I was used to, either.  Once I stopped being distracted, I got depressed and spent all of September in a haze, feeling pretty good on the days that I managed to get myself out of bed.  I was SURE I was packing on the pounds then.

On October 1, I stopped allowing myself to be pathetic, and I hit the ground running.  Literally.  Which, in case you’re unfamiliar with me at all, is not something that comes particularly easily to me.  It takes me a bit to get motivated to run, and then it takes me a bit to condition myself to run more than a mile at a time, and then it takes me a bit to convince myself that it’s fun to run more than 3 miles at a time. 

As I so proudly proclaimed, I invested in the whole Nike + iPod thing and it changed my entire life.  Dare I say, it saved my life (I love melodrama!).  It got me off my ass and on the dirt every day, which was something that was probably more important for my mental state than my physical state.  I joined a challenge (which I failed to effectively complete) and ran and ran and ran.

Conveniently, my scale broke and I was unable to weigh myself day to day.  Probably a good thing.  But, I was getting tons of excellent feedback from friends who insisted I looked a lot thinner.  Then my jeans stopped fitting, and I finally believed it.  I sincerely own not a single pair of jeans that fits. 

Dying to know where I was with weight, I tore into a scale at Target, right there in the store, and weighed myself.  137. 

137!!!

If you had been with me at that store, you would probably have been very, very embarrassed to have been with me.  I was wildly ecstatic.  Visibly.  Audibly. 

I am in the best shape of my adult life.  Not only that, but I am finally running 3.5 miles at a time, OUTSIDE, without stopping to catch my breath.  That’s kind of a big deal.

I’m still wildly addicted to the Nike + iPod thing, and I’ve already joined my November challenge, which I hope I’ll actually be able to accomplish this time.  I don’t need to drop any more weight, and I can’t imagine buying jeans smaller than 28″. . . but I also can’t imagine stopping now.  I feel freaking awesome!