Chronicles of a Late Bloomer

When I found out my dad was in the ER, I took 6 pieces of chocolate, went into my office, and shut the door.

But hey.

I’m on the couch, crying. It’s a weeknight so we’re relegated to the phone and he hates it when I cry.

“How could I have responded better to this?” he asks. He’s sincere, but there is a hint of frustration. “What did you want me to say?”

I think for a long time before answering. “I guess I hoped you would say, Great. What’s your plan? I’ll figure out how to help you follow whatever plan you choose. Not, Unless you do it my way, I can’t accept it.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” he sighs.

I know. I know he can’t. It’s just the way he is. And, he has been placed into the worst position that a heterosexual American male can encounter — girlfriend trying to lose weight. Poor guy. How does he be supportive without being condemning? How does he encourage without judging?

It may be that he just can’t do it. Maybe I need to stop asking.

It’s not the solution to all of my problems. Not by a long shot. But, I finally heard from Potential New Job yesterday, and not a moment too soon. I was offered the position and, although it’s not a million-dollar salary, it is adequate. I am going to take it.

All jobs are stressful. I’m not an idiot — nor am I in denial. I know the new job will not be stress-free. What it may be, though, is a lot less pressure. I do not envision the same daily deadlines that have faced me every day for nearly 5 years at a government-funded agency. I didn’t know it was possible to feel like a factory worker as a therapist, but guess what? That line just kept moving and my work piled up over and over again.

This will also allow me to move to a cheaper neighborhood and (God-willing) take public transportation directly to my job. This means more walking or biking. And, for the past two days I have made an eating plan and stuck to it.

It’s no miracle cure, but things are beginning to look up. I feel relieved. I feel hope.

Starting weight: 335.8
This week’s average: 320.5
Change this month: +8.8
Overall change: -15.3
Next milestone: 20 pounds gone (again)

Here’s how the damage ended up. I can’t really write anything more than this today, except to acknowledge this: One of my daily weigh-ins at the end of March was 309. This weekend, I maxed out at 322. The “average weight” game is supposed to ease the blow of that kind of fluctuation somewhat (and, as you can see, it does — to the tune of 4-5 pounds, in this case) but still. These are realities and it is time for me to face them.

How good were these muffins on Saturday morning? Here, I’ll help you out with this one: THEY WERE SO GOOD. Also, according to my calculations, they whittled down to a measly 170 calories, 3 grams of fat, 3.5 grams fiber, and 5.6 grams of protein (3 Weight Watcher Points) each. Not bad for JUMBO muffins. No little puny cupcakes here. These muffins were big time.

Cranberry Orange Muffins

• 100 grams (about 1 cup) frozen cranberries
  
• 1 cup water (for the cranberries)
  
• 3 oranges, peeled and segmented¹
  
• 2 eggs beaten²
  
• 185 grams (about 1.5 cups) Trader Joe’s Multigrain Baking Mix
  

A few notes before I give you the instructions:

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Instructions here and here, if you don’t know how. Free yourselves from the syrup-y tyranny of canned mandarin oranges! [↩]
2. Next time, I think I’ll try it with one egg and see if it makes the recipe more light. [↩]

Although I love the way they taste, I don’t like the texture of certain vegetables (notably olives, raw onions, raw peppers, and mushrooms). They’re too loud, too fleshy, too overt. When I was little, I would tell my mom that raw onions “taste like they are screaming.” But, as I try to incorporate vegetables and nutrients into my diet, I have to get creative in order to get past my texture fetish.

According to the Weight Watchers’ Recipe Builder, this recipe makes 2 servings of 8 points each. It should also be packed with good carbs, fiber, and protein. I have it listed as a light meal.

Read on for the recipe. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s probably obvious, but every post before this point was uploaded from a previous journal where I chronicled my first weight-loss experience. In 2004, I joined Weight Watchers and quickly lost almost 40 pounds. Then, I freaked out and gave up. This post is a placeholder to divide then from now, but I wanted to include them because so many of the thoughts and feelings are the same.

Tonight, at Target, I bought a sports watch. Actually, to be specific, I bought an Ironman Triathlete Training Watch. Mraaawwwr!!! I had been wanting an easy way to do the kind of interval training suggested on coolrunning.com.

There are lots of different kinds of training, but that site has a cool beginners program called Couch to 5K (C25K) which is supposed to work for the average person starting out and which will train you to be able to run a 5K in something ridiculous like 9 weeks. Realistically, I weigh about 100 pounds more than the average person so I will be stretching that program out to around 9 months, but I still wanted to be able to track my progress and pat myself on the back from time to time in an empirically-based, number-crunching, tangible-proof kind of way. Flashing LCD screens seemed to be just the thing.

Sidenote: What I really want is the new Garmin 301 Forerunner — an insanely complex and expensive little piece of geekery which uses a GPS tracking navigator and a package of fancy software to create charts, graphs, averages, statistics and (get this) maps of your exercise routes. I am loving this idea so much it just makes me want to squeal, but I figured that I might want to prove a little more dedication than the ability to walk up and down my block a few hundred times before I make that kind of investment even if it means that I could create an entirely new kind of illustrated blog. I mean, who wouldn’t want to peruse a self-absorbed set of color-coded route maps. Seriously! It’d almost be like stalking!

I guess the bottom line is that the Garmin will have to be a far off reward once I’ve proven my commitment (and the price will surely have dropped by then).

So, tonight at ghetto Target, I tried on a small handful of the Timex Ironman watches. All I knew was that I wanted one step up from a stopwatch — the ability to mark my “laps.” That way, I reasoned, I could measure those half-block jogs in the middle of my walk and, as my ability increased and my endurance bulked up, feel proud of myself for being able to do more and more. What I hadn’t accounted for was that the watches would include so many other features! These features include, but are anything but limited to:

• Memory enough for hundreds of laps and splits at a time.
• Timers that count both forwards and backwards.
• A digitally captured workout log organized by date.
• Interval timers in a dozen variations.
• Alarms and notes and reminders galore. (Though, since there’s no way I’m wearing this geeky, velcroed, army-knife of a watch, I can’t imagine that there’ll be anything I need to be reminded of other than “Look both ways” and “Carry ID” — neither of which tend to correspond with any predictable time.)

I ended up with a nice, bulky model that includes memory for 100 laps, 9 intervals, and 3 alarms. I was almost seduced into a model which, for $15 more, provided 200 laps, 10 intervals, 10 alarms, and notes! Notes. Yes, okay, so I was seduced. Once I realized, though, that there was nothing at all more important to remember during my exercising than, “Did you remember your sunglasses?” and “Don’t let the big dog eat Milo!” I passed on the notes capability.

Actually, what truly sold me on the cheaper model (and, okay, this is a little embarrassing) is that it has a cheesy, canvas-and-velcro wristband. I knew I wouldn’t want anything leather or metal (respectively stinky and painful on my gorilla-esque arm hairs), and the new, space-age, neoprene-plastic, sexy wristbands were nice enough, but they just didn’t feel like they fit quite right. Besides, the velcro one slips on and off brainlessly, quickly, and effortlessly and, let’s face it:

It makes me feel like an athlete.

John Bingham, champion of the exercise underdog, says:

Can people who are fighting to lose thirty or forty pounds be athletes? Of course they can! Can people who have waited until their forties to become physically active be athletes? You bet. Can people who finish last in a race be athletes? Yes, they can. And yes, they are… By continuing to view yourself as a non-athlete or non-runner, you miss the opportunities to find joy in association wiht your activity. When you hear people talk about athletes or runners, it’s important that you permit yourself to be included. Athletes can’t be them. Athletes must be us. (From The Courage to Start)

Okay. So, I got brave and had day two of walking the block mile, but this time had to pick up Milo three times for big, stray, roaming dogs around the neighborhood. I’ve seriously got to find a new place to walk because I can’t handle the panic. The last dog was a huge black rottweiler that was friendly (as it turned out) but I was shaking so hard from fear that I almost couldn’t walk. The dog trotted along beside us for nearly three blocks and all I could think of was how he might lunge at me or at Milo and take a big chunk out of some combination of the two of us.

I did take some time to drive around and scope out neighborhoods later this afternoon, and may try walking down around Hoover and Adams where a series of churches at least keep the sidewalks a little cleaner. It’s a higher auto-traffic area so hopefully that should also cut down on the number of crazy attack dogs and, while driving, I did see several people out running.

Walked by a stand full of those free apartment and real estate magazines and noticed a magazine called Los Angeles Sports and Fitness. Normally, I wouldn’t have even looked twice at it, but with shoes on my mind lately and all of this business about running, I figured “what the heck?” Normally, I would have felt all self conscious, picking up a magazine with racers on the front cover but not this time. Normally, I would have chalked it up to a temporary insanity which strikes from time to time in which I actually think that I can lose weight and get fit.

Not this time.

I’m glad I picked the magazine up. It has great information about races (not for entering, maybe, but certainly for inspiration at this point), running shoe stores, and other stuff. I’m even thinking it might be cool to attend the LA Marathon this year to get inspiration. I’d like to see the different kinds of people who go and run in the thing. I’d like to see people of varying body types and ages and abilities. I never knew there would be such a thing, but everything I’ve read so far has me curious.