Something frustrating, something two, something exciting, something shoe!

Something frustrating:

This morning, I was determined to go to zumba today. I grabbed my shorts/tshirt when I left the house, as well as a pair of socks and my tennis shoes, to make sure I had them with me. When I got to the office, I happened to look at the schedule I had written on my wall of when/where zumba is. Dagnabit, I had done it again! I thought zumba was Thursday rather than Tuesday, when it really is. I also had a list of when volleyball was, and there was a volleyball time on Thursdays. So, I decided to go to volleyball instead. That meant that I had to get my kneepads from home, but I was ok with that.

Something two:
Apparently, I had written the time wrong on my list and got there an hour before volleyball was supposedly starting. (I'll explain that later.) So, I did the stationary bike for about 35 minutes and read the newspaper for a few minutes until 7 when it was supposed to start. I went into the gym and there were some middle school kids in there stretching. I talked to their coach and found out that people hadn't been showing up to the volleyball time, so the gym had said that they could use the time for their practice. She said that she could use an extra hand with their practice, so I stayed and helped her out. I also did something the drills she was having the kids do, which kicked my butt. At the end of the practice, one of the staff came in and was talking to the coach. She asked the coach about me and then told me that they really didn't have volleyball on their gym schedule. I said that I had seen it on their schedule from the website. She was positive that it wasn't on the schedule, so I went out to the car and found the printed schedule I had and showed her what it said. She told me the thing I had seen was for a league that was starting at the end of June. Whatever. All in all, I exercised two hours today. So, that's the two.

Something exciting:

I weighed myself today and I am 1.5 lb less than I have been recently. I know weight fluctuates, but I'll take it!

Something shoe:

This is really funny. The last time I was at the gym I went to today was the 7th of this month when I went swimming. I got there today still wearing my work clothes and had to change into my shorts/shirt. I opened locker #12 (which I always try to use, because it's my favorite number) and someone's shoes were in there. I started to close the door and then realized they were MY shoes!! They had been there since the last time I was there, which was THREE WEEKS AGO!!! Three weeks my shoes have been there, and no one took them! :D

motivation

I AM going to go to zumba tomorrow. I AM!!

portion control update

So, I think that I've been doing pretty well with my portion control attempt. There are times when I have trouble, but I guess that's to be expected.

Some successes:

1. I have twice gotten Chipotle since starting the portion control, and put half away in the fridge at work for the next day. I only eat half for lunch and am not hungry afterward. Yay!

2. Ben and I went to a buffet last week and I thought about a tip I had read about using smaller plates. I searched all over the place for a smaller plate and while I know they had some, because they had pieces of pie out on the smaller plates, they were not out for general use. Rather than shrugging my shoulders and giving up, I decided if I couldn't use a smaller plate, I would use half of a regular plate. I had three half-plates and was satisfied. Usually I have three full-plates, so I cut what I ate by 50%.

3. I have been using ziploc baggies and counting my cherries/chips/crackers into 1-2 servings worth for snacking rather than eating out of the bag. I think it has helped with how much I snack upon. I know the bag of "Hint of Lime" chips usually doesn't last very long, and it's still got a lot of chips left in it after almost 2 weeks.

4. I only had two bowls of pasta last night. I know that sounds like a lot, and maybe it is, but I had made too much pasta. I had enough for three bowls and usually if I overcook by that much, I suck it up and eat the last of it because I don't want food to go to waste. However, I did not eat the last bowl of pasta. While I'm disappointed that food was wasted, I am more proud of the fact that I did not eat food that I was not hungry for or did not need.

5. I have been trying to wait at least 15 minutes before getting seconds. Sometimes I am more successful than others, but I think that it's good to try to get into the habit of waiting in between.

6. I have been trying to chew my food better as well. I have been counting how many times I'm chewing on food and trying to extend that by 5-10 chews.

I have not seen a change in weight yet, but I feel better about myself and my ability to control myself and my portion sizes.

I usually don't freak out about health stuff

But I almost fainted three times when I was at zumba today. I had forgotten water, so in between songs I snuck out to get a drink from the water fountain. I was doing ok, not too hot, not too tired. I hopped back in since they had started a new song. At some point during that song, I realized I was feeling lightheaded. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw that I was a little pale. I finished the song and went to get another drink.

As I was walking down the hall, I started seeing spots in front of my face and had muffled sound and still felt lightheaded. I got my drink and went to the front desk. I told the lady there: "I'm very close to passing out. I'm going to sit over there (right in front of the desk) and if you could keep an eye on me, that would be great." I sat down, took some deep breaths to try to cool down and started feeling a bit better. Not a whole lot, but I didn't feel like I was going to fall over any second. I started running through lifeguarding stuff in my head and decided to ask the front desk lady for an icepack. I put the icepack on all my pressure points: at the back of my neck, under my armpits and in my groin. It did help, but I still wasn't feeling 100%.

I decided the icepack wasn't cooling me off enough fast enough, so I went to the locker room to take a cold shower. Mind you, I hadn't planned on taking a shower, so I had no towel and only one set of clothes. As I was going to the locker room, I saw spots, had muffled sound and lightheadedness again. I stopped and got another drink. When I went into the locker room, I felt like I was going to vomit. I scooted into a stall, but nothing happened. I finally got into a shower and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get the shower to have cold water. It seemed no matter which way I turned it, it was always warm. I eventually got it to be cold and stood under it.

At that point, I saw spots again and started having labored breathing. I had to lean against the wall, whereas each other time I was able to walk and support myself upright. That was the closest I actually came to passing out. I was none too happy about it, either. Here I am naked in the shower at the gym. I could just imagine some unlucky person finding me/reviving me. Luckily my lifeguarding was still running through my head and I had one more thing to try. I balanced myself on the foot and a half wide bench in the shower and elevated my legs. Literally within seconds I felt better. I stayed that way for about five minutes to make sure it had passed and tried to get up. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall, watching me try to get off the very narrow, very wet bench without falling over. I did it, somehow, and put my clothes back on without being able to dry off. Have I mentioned that I HATE WET CLOTHES????

Anyway, I saw my friends that had been at zumba with me when I left the locker room. I hadn't told them what was going on when I left because I didn't want them to worry. They told me they would have helped me if they had known. Maybe I should have told them. It may have eased the potential naked shower revival.

I am going to go to the doctor to hopefully find out what is going on. This has only happened four times before: once when I missed a step going to class in high school and landed sideways on my ankle, once in high school again when I gave blood, once when I was teaching and hadn't had a well-balanced breakfast (I don't need commentary about this, Ben), and once when I was actually at the house of the friends who were at zumba when I hadn't eaten breakfast and had some honey to relieve a cough from the night before. I did have breakfast today, though. I think I was just dehydrated. I still feel a little out of it. Don't worry, like I said, I'm going to go to the doctor. I had them do a blood sugar fast test back in January and keep forgetting to reschedule a follow-up. I am going to go, I promise.

Needless to say, I didn't do the extra exercising I was going to do today and really only got through about forty minutes of zumba. :(

scale and zumba

So, I weighed myself yesterday. I was right. Nothing has changed.

I was planning on going to zumba yesterday, but in the middle of writing an email the internet kaputed and I spent four hours trying to figure out how to get it back. About a half hour in, I forgot that I hadn't been watching the time and when I looked, it was already after when zumba was supposed to start. Darn. :( I could have gone to the gym anyway and done something else, but I didn't. I'm bad. I decided to exercise extra today. Zumba at 11:30-12:30 at another gym (the Saturday zumba at the gyms I usually go to is the beginner Zumba and that would just frustrate me) and then maybe some handbikes or stationary bikes.

Goals Update

From Feb. 17:

Goal: swim a mile in at most an hour at the gym.
Deadline? Hmmm. How about by June.

I have done this twice! I don't plan to stop. In fact, I think I need to start swimming more, possibly 2000 yards, which is a mile and a quarter, give or take.

From Feb. 19:

Anyway, here is what I decided will happen:

1. Replacing the pasta I eat with rice. I can have pasta on occasion, but for the most part, I'm making the switch to rice. Essentially the same amount of prep/cook time and can be eaten with most of the same things as the pasta can.

I think I have done fairly well with this. I used to buy 2-4 lbs of pasta every two weeks. Now I have 2-4 lbs of pasta sitting on my counter because I didn't eat it all from the last time I went grocery shopping and bought more thinking I was out. That will probably last me a month or two, at least. Rice is also more cost-effective, I think. You get more servings of rice for the same amount of money.

2. Look into getting a GF grill. When I cook chicken now, it has to be done in a skillet, so I end up using butter. Now, the butter I use is pretty much the best butter you could possibly get in terms of healthiness. It's a diet butter with omega 3 and made with olive oil. But, still, if I get the GF grill, I can cook it with no butter and no butter is better than even the best, healthiest butter.

Technically, I didn't buy the GF, I used my credit card rewards points to get it. I have it, nonetheless, and have used it! Yay!

3. Try out some new recipes that Ben and I talked about. He wants to eat more veggies, so we talked about which ones he likes. I like vegetables for the most part, with a few exceptions. We came up with tomatoes, corn, potatoes, green beans and edamame. I decided I could take some of the ingredients of my sauce (the tomatoes and tomato sauce), dilute it and add the above mentioned foods to make sort of a vegetable soup. We even discussed putting in some rice with it, rather than noodles. Talking about the rice got me thinking about another way we could prepare almost the same ingredients. We both love the Mongolian Barbecues and I thought if we cook the foods we talked about and put it over rice, it could be like a vegetarian entree.

I did this. It came out pretty well, though I did need to add some chili meat. It was too bland and wasn't very well put together without it. I think if I ever make a vegetarian version of it, I'll use beans instead to help give it the same consistency.

4. Start a food journal. I am really not looking forward to it, because I know it will take a lot of work to remember to write down what I eat, but I think it will be important. A couple that we are close friends with are participating in a saving contest through their bank and one of the things the savings coaches had them do at the beginning was make a spending log. That way, they could track the money they were spending and identify areas where they were spending money frivolously and where they could cut their spending without making huge sacrifices. I think of this as something similar. I think that if I write down what I eat each day, I will be able to identify where I can change what I eat, how much I eat or cut out certain types of food without making huge sacrifices.

I guess, technically, I did do this, but then I stopped. That's why I didn't cross it out, because I'm not sticking to it. Maybe once things have settled with the other strategies I'm trying, I'll pick it up again if necessary.

From March 1:

Considering I've lost about a pound in three weeks, let's say ten pounds by the end of the summer. That gives me until September 1, my brother's birthday. (I'm not going by school calendars or by seasonal calendars. I consider the summer over at the end of August.) That is exactly six months. Twenty four weeks. Hopefully it is a reasonable goal.

Since I haven't weighed myself, I don't know how well this is going, but I'd be willing to bet not very well. It is possible, though. However, I am now down to thirteen or fourteen weeks to have it done by Sep. 1. Like I said, it is possible.

Portion Control Update

I have been doing pretty well with my portion control attempts. There have been a couple times that I didn't wait the 15 minutes between servings, but I have been watching how much I am eating in each serving, packing up half at the beginning and also choosing healthy foods to snack upon.

The ziploc bags are working pretty well, I think. I have used them to control the portions of chips and cherries and I haven't been raiding the chip bag or cherry bag when I'm done with my ziploc portion, so that's good.

I haven't weighed myself. To be honest, I didn't weigh myself before I decided to watch my portions, either. My scale was a victim to the move and while I know exactly where it is, I haven't recalibrated it since it was jostled around. Thus, I haven't weighed myself since I moved. I shall do that today.

I also haven't exercised since I last posted. :( It's been a weird week. Monday and Wednesday were both late days at work, Thursday was a birthday party for a friend and Tuesday...well, Tuesday is my fault for not going. I have started trying to make a wart fall off with those medicated bandages, so I'm wary of swimming with it or even without it right now. I don't want to mess up the progress that has been made through the bandage if I get into a pool. So, no swimming until the wart is gone, it looks like. That doesn't mean no exercising, but it does reduce my options.

Dancing Queen!

I went out dancing with some friends on a spur-of-the-moment thing last night. Lord, I love dancing. When I was in my late-teen/early twenty years, I loved the bump-and-grind kind of dancing. Not that I don't like it now, but last night when I was out at the club, bumping and grinding, I longed for dance classes. I need to get back into salsa classes, into tango or swing or foxtrot or SOMETHING.

My participation in the dance team in college is a point of pride for me. I had seen fliers for it my freshman and sophomore year, but I guess I was tainted with the memory of musical auditions in high school, where only those who had dance training were cast as the "dancers" (no matter how uncoordinated they may be, as long as they had received the formal training). Seeing as I had none, I didn't try out. My junior year of college, I saw another flier. Nothing was different, nothing changed...until I saw another flier a week later that stated, very plainly, "IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO TRY OUT FOR DANCE TEAM!!" I felt it was an omen for me.

So, I contacted a friend of mine that I knew was on the dance team and told her I was interested. I showed up to the try-out practice four days before the audition. Everyone else had been practicing the audition routines for ten days at this point (two weeks of practice total, including the four days that I joined them). I did what I had to do, illustrating the moves, writing the descriptions and notating them with the counts much like I did with color guard when I created a routine. I practiced so very hard for those four days, and when auditions came, I wasn't perfect, but I think I impressed the judges. Regardless, I made the team.

I was never very close to anyone on the team, which I had a hard time with. I didn't have many friends to begin with in college and while I joined the dance team because I liked to dance, I had hoped to come out of it with a friendship or two. But, I tried out for the dance team my senior year of college and again made it. You have no idea how good I felt about the fact that two years in a row, I made the dance team with no formal dance training and very little dance experience. My dance experience was summed up in the chorus dances from the musicals in high school and the limited dancing we did in color guard. But, I had a knack for it, knew I had rhythm (even for a white girl) and picked up on things quickly.

Senior year wasn't much different from junior year in terms of making friends, but one girl was more friendly to me than the others. She's the only one that I have as a Facebook friend from the dance team and one of only two friends on Facebook from college. But, nothing of substance by any stretch of the imagination. On the flip side, when bad stuff happened with student teaching and I talked to the captain/coach, they were unwavering in their efforts to make certain things happen. (I'm sorry I can't be more specific. This is a public blog and I don't know what could happen if I talk openly about it. If you want to know, email me at princessj900@yahoo.com and I will fill you in.)

Fast forward a year and a half to when I was going through my separation/divorce. I started taking salsa dancing classes through the parks and rec department and LOVED it. Sadly, the instructor could not go at the pace I would have preferred, because others did not catch on to things as quickly as I did (geez, I sound arrogant...), but I still liked it. I haven't taken classes since then and want to so badly. Ben has said that 1. he will take dance classes with me because he wants to and 2. he will take dance classes with me so that he can, and I quote, "spin me around the dance floor like a princess" when we get married. I would love nothing more, to be perfectly honest. That would make me so incredibly happy, on top of being so incredibly happy to be marrying him. :)

Anyway, that's my dancing story. The whole point was to say that I danced for a good two and a half hours off and on, so it probably ended up being an hour fifteen with the sitting/resting/drinking that occurred.

Another mile!

Gah! I was mixed up and thought that there was no Zumba on Thursdays, rather than Tuesdays. Oh, well. I had a really icky day at work and was a little frustrated heading home. I had planned on going to the gym, but was going to go home first and take care of the dog. But, then I changed my mind so that I could work off some of my frustration and I had my stuff with me.

I'm glad I did. I feel much better now and I fear that if I had gone home first, I may have excuse-ed myself out of going. I didn't have my shower stuff, but decided I would swim and take a shower at home. I wasn't sure what time I got into the pool, but when I decided I needed to know, I had swum 325 yards already. So, I looked at the clock and kept time from then until 650 yards. 10 minutes had gone by. So, I backtracked and figured out I had started swimming at 6:15. It was 6:40 when I got to a half mile. If I had kept up that pace, I would have done a mile in 50 minutes. I decided I would try to shave five minutes off and hopefully get a mile done in 45 minutes.

I started doing 50 hard, 50 easy. I did this until 1300 when I decided I would try 75 hard, 75 easy for the last 300 yards. I did it and was able to finish within 45 minutes! Yay!

portion control

Oooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh portion contro-ol, oooohhhhh-hhhhhhh!

Anyway, now that that's out of my system, I looked up some tips on portion control and I'm going to try very hard to stick to them. I listed them below:

When eating out, you can...
*Put half of your order in a "to go" container RIGHT AWAY.
-I hope to try this. It is going to be difficult not to eat it anyway.

*Order an appetizer rather than an entree.
-That's not too bad. I think I can do that.


When eating at home, you can...
*Snack on healthy foods if you are hungry between meals.
-I already do this, but I need to watch my snack portions, too. Thirty cherries or fifty tortilla chips probably isn't much better than a chocolate chip cookie.

*Put your snacks into small (serving-size) containers rather than eating from the bag/box.
-What do you know: a snack portion tip! lol. Anyway, I made sure I got some ziplock bags today so that I can do this. I also needed some for my sandwiches I take for work. I've been wrapping them in paper towels and it just isn't as effective. I am hoping this will help reduce the amount of stuff I snack upon.

*Wait 10-15 minutes before going back for seconds.
-I am doing this right now. I had finished off the chili mac from a couple days ago (one bowl's worth). It's been a half hour and it's not working. I'm still hungry. I'm going to fix myself a bowl of spaghetti o's and no more after that.

I finally got my butt to the gym...

Did you hear that, Dad?? You can stop siccing your lackeys on me.

I did the elliptical/stair stepper for 30 minutes and the hand bike for 20 minutes. I wanted to swim instead, and had my suit with me, but I forgot my goggles, so I will be doing it another day. I also didn't have stuff to take a shower. I really didn't plan very well it seems.

I found a schedule online for the classes and volleyball times for the two close gyms (I figured I could alternate, at least for right now, because they each have different scheduled days of what I am interested in). One of them has Zumba Monday, Wednesday, Friday evenings and the other has Zumba Thursday evening and Saturday morning. Yay Zumba six days a week! Mondays won't work, though, at least until House is over. Wednesdays may be a problem also with my trainings. We'll see. Worst comes to worst, I'll Zumba Thursday and Friday at least and swim and do the machines other days. Saturdays are beginner Zumba, so I might be able to get Ben to go.

One has open net on Thursdays and the other has it on Fridays. So, some options. :)

a gym closeby...

I checked today to see what the closest gym was. There were two. Now that I look again at the map, I will probably go to the one I hadn't planned to go to before. I have been to one of them for my job, so I'm somewhat familiar with it, and that's the one I had decided to go to. However, I forgot about the fact that I'm going to be moving soon. So, I check to see if there was one that was kind of centrally located between here and where I'll be moving to. The other gym that was pretty much the same distance away is centrally located, about ten minutes from each location. I'm going to see if they have zumba (PLEASE, PLEASE SAY THEY HAVE ZUMBA!!) and what their pool hours are. Keep your fingers crossed. I am going to check it out tomorrow and hopefully do some working out.

Also, I have been thinking a lot about why I couldn't lose weight when I was exercising regularly before. I have come to terms with a fact that I was already aware of: I need to work on my portion control. I am going to try very, very hard to do so. I don't really know how to start, but I'm going to do some research on the internet to see how I can manage how much I'm eating. I'm just worried about still being hungry if I don't eat as much. I have pretty much eliminated the frozen lunches from my diet because of the sodium and preservatives. I think I'm also going to start eating breakfast. I've heard eating breakfast can help. Sigh. Hopefully something will help.

Moving and Triumph

Thursday and Friday I moved. Lots of lifting and carrying and junk. I heard on the radio the other day that chores such as doing laundry (I'm assuming that includes folding and putting away), vacuuming and doing dishes are the exercise equivalent of going for a walk. So, with that in mind, what would be the exercise equivalent of moving? Food for thought.

Triumph was Saturday and Sunday. My feet were hurting me from the get-go on Saturday. I felt badly that it was keeping me from combat, but I did a lot of RP at the Tavern and had a semi-large role as the cleric of Fryja in the wedding, anyway, so it worked out. I did a dungeon that night and got to actually hit people. Yay! Then, I went out on a thread Sunday that ended up being longer/farther than was expected. So, instead of being able to do a couple short threads like I had hoped, that one thread wiped me because my feet were screaming afterward. Sometimes I feel like people think I am making up my foot problem or blowing it out of proportion. I wish they could feel what it feels like. It is not your normal, run-of-the-mill foot pain as if you were on your feet too long. Yes, I get that, too, but the pain that takes me out is the shooting, burning and stabbing pain on the top of my feet. As a result, I did a lot of RP Sunday as well. I know they have been asking for more non-com RP at the Tavern, but I still feel like I didn't contribute as much because I couldn't help beef up the numbers in the fights. Sigh.

I am sore today, and was very sore yesterday. I suppose that is a good sign. :) I have to find out where the closest gym is to my new house and start going again. Now that April is over and my life is slowing down a bit, that should be easier to do.