I’ve gotten a lot of emails asking me how I started running, and my response leaves a lot to be desired. I kinda did it the idiot’s way without any training, proper shoes, or injury prevention techniques.

If you want to become a runner (and not a running fool), you might be interested in the new Up and Running online running course that is the brain child of Shauna “DietGirl” Reid and “Mistress” Julia Jones, runner extraordinaire. If you listen to the Two Fit Chicks podcast you’ve probably heard Julia on a few episodes. Their first program is a 5K Beginner’s Course that runs for 8-weeks and only costs £35 GBP per person (approx. $56 USD). You can read the FAQ and then register here.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been helping them set up their web site and Shauna is my friend, so I am not completely unbiased. But I think the class is a great idea even if I hadn’t coded a line of HTML!

I have been hating runners lately. As I’ve mentioned, the weather is lovely and idyllic around here, so I see them bouncing up and down the sidewalks all they time. They’re wearing their fancy running shoes and their cute running shorts and DAMMIT! I want to be one of them, but my stupid right foot has been hurting, so I’ve had to forgo any aerobic exercise for the time being.

My neurologist and I have found a magical mix of medications and behavioral habits that have been keeping my headache locked in a closet lately with only some occasional mumbles and door rattling. I’m at a 1 out of 5 on the pain scale most days, so I’ve had more energy and I want to get back into the running game. Yet, once again, my body is not on board with me. So I have to wait for my foot to heal, and I have to read people tweeting about their marathon training and how many miles they’ve run that day and it is turning me into a green-faced envy monster.

But I shall be patient, and I’ll wait for the stupid foot to get better. And then, THEN, finally I hope I can become a runner once again.

This is the final Commit to Fit giveaway sponsored by Subway, and the one I kept putting off because it meant I’d have to make an actual commitment to fitness. Here’s the official blurb-age:

Have you decided what fitness commitment you’re going to make? Think about what your Commit to Fit Challenge is. It can be anything from running your first 5K to trying out a new class like tai chi or zumba. Let us know what it is and we’ll provide you with the funds (up to $100) to help you meet your challenge!

After reading all your suggestions on this post, I decided to just go with the obvious and try zumba. I enjoyed the TurboKick class I took a few years ago, so hopefully zumba will have the same fun atmosphere. I searched for a class on the official zumba page and found one locally. So, I’ll commit to doing that for 8 weeks and see how it goes. At the least, it’s an opportunity for me to get out of my apartment and be around other human beings, and not hibernate in front of my computer doing freelance work. Particularly now that it’s getting cooler, signing up for an indoor exercise class will hopefully keep me exercising through the winter.

If you’d like to enter for a chance to win up to $100 to put toward your own fitness goal, leave a comment on this entry with your favorite word that contains the letter “z.” (I already made you state your fitness challenges on this post, so I didn’t want to repeat.) You must be a US resident to enter. The contest ends at 11:59pm on Sunday, November 28, 2010. Winner will be drawn randomly.

BTW, the winner of the Laila Ali giveaway was Madeline from Rancho Santa Margarita, CA. Congrats, Madeline! Please don’t punch me with your prize.

Disclosure: All prizes listed in this post were provided for free.

I got to chat with Jared last Thursday on a conference call with four other bloggers: Courtney from My Dallas Mommy, Julie from Wii Mommies, Mindi from Moms Need to Know, and Jessica from Fringies…Knitting with One Needle. I also want to apologize to them because I was the moron who kept accidentally hitting buttons with her cheek for the first 10 minutes. As I said, I’m thirty now and can no longer operate technology.

The roundtable nature of the interview created a nice conversational atmosphere, and we got to learn a lot about Jared, his foundation, and his training as he prepares to run the New York City Marathon on November 7. (Good luck, dude!) Jared seems like a nice, down-to-earth guy, who’s still grateful for all the opportunities Subway has given him. Here’s what he had to say on a variety of topics, based on my notes and questions he answered from all the bloggers. (And I admit, I stole most of my questions from your comments on my last Jared entry.):

How do you maintain your healthy eating and training schedule while traveling for Subway gigs?
“It is by far the hardest challenge,” Jared said. When you travel, especially for business, you have to remember you’re not on vacation. You have to make healthy eating a priority. Jared tries to ask about what restaurants he’ll be eating at so he can prepare in advance. He orders sauces and dressings on the side, but the key is to stay “mentally strong.”

You’re very recognizable as the Subway spokesman, but do you ever eat at competitor’s restaurants like McDonalds or Pizza Hut?
Jared laughed and said he doesn’t go to any quick service restaurants because they don’t serve food he wants to be eating. He also said that he’s aware that the Subway spokesman probably shouldn’t be seen at those places. “You don’t want to see me under the golden arches.” However, he wanted us to know he doesn’t eat Subway for every meal. When he eats out, it’s at sit-down restaurants.

How did you become the Subway guy?
Believe it or not, Jared didn’t have a 5-year-plan or 10-year-plan to become the Subway spokesman. He was a business major at Indiana University when a friend wrote an article about his weight loss for the paper. That led to more articles and television interviews until the Subway spokesperson opportunity came up. When he graduated, he had to decide if he wanted to keep pursuing the Subway gig or get “a real job.” He decided to stick with Subway as long as it was still fun and he wanted to do it.

When I trained for a half-marathon, I had to take some days off for injuries. Have you faced any obstacles like that in your training?
Yes, running is completely new to Jared, but he knows you have good days and bad days. The important things is to have the mental will to push through the bad days. He’s fortunate that he hasn’t had any knee problems like I did from damage I did when I was overweight. He’s come to like running, and plans on continuing to run 5-8 mile distances after the marathon. He’s never gotten the runner’s high, but he loves the feeling of accomplishment he gets at the end of a long run.

What has training for the marathon been like?
“Twenty-six miles is a very, very, very long way to go.” Jared has been building up to the distance and has successfully completed several shorter races, including a half-marathon. He says he breaks it up mile by mile. He allows himself 20-30 seconds of walking at each mile. That’s time he uses to drink fluids and mentally recharge. He’s also got a watch with GPS, heart monitor, and pace intervals that he uses to monitor his progress. He’d like to finish the marathon in about 5 hours, but his real goal is to simply complete it no matter what his time.

What advice do you have for other who want to lose weight?
Phase 1 is losing weight. Phase 2 through infinity is keeping the weight off, which is much harder than Phase 1. “Until they create a carrot stick that tastes as good as a mozzarella stick, it will be difficult.” The key is to find exercise that is fun to do and not a chore.

Congrats on your recent marriage! Is your wife a runner? Does she go on training runs with you?
Jared’s wife is not a long-distance runner, but she leads an active life. Sometimes she’ll run a mile with him on a training run and then turn back home. She’s been very understanding of his training schedule. Jared admits, “I’ve seen my trainer this year a lot more than my wife.”

What are some of the best experiences you’ve had as a result of being the Subway guy?
Jared’s gotten to attend the Superbowl for several years, which he loves as a big sports fan. He also enjoys meeting with Little League teams. He got to meet President George W. Bush when he was in office, and Bush told him that at the Texas ranch he’d often ask the secret service guys to run out and get him Subway sandwiches. Jared also got to meet President Obama before he was president, but after the Democratic Convention speech that made him famous. Jared was walking down a hallway and recognized Obama, but wasn’t going to bother him. A few seconds after they’d passed he heard Obama say, “Jared?” They then had a conversation and Obama said he likes how Subway is toasting their subs now.

Can you talk about your foundation?
The Jared Foundation aims to stop childhood obesity. Jared particularly emphasized that he wants to find techniques that actually work, and not just ideas that sound good but have little impact. They’re starting a pilot program in Indianapolis (where Jared lives) in which they’re handing out pedometers to school children and challenging them to reach a certain number of steps.

You’ve been doing this for around 11 years now. What question do you get asked a lot that you’re absolutely sick of answering?
Jared laughed and said one common misperception people have is that he only eats Subway. He wants us to know he does eat other foods. He also feels lucky that people still care, and he hasn’t had to get a “real job” yet.

And where did you get those cool specs?
Jared laughed. “They’re Burberry.”

Thanks to Jared for taking the time to talk to us! As part of the Subway Commit to Fit program, I’m giving away a $25 Subway gift card. To enter, post a comment below listing what your favorite Subway sandwich/cookie/wrap/salad/whatever is. You must be a US resident to enter. The contest ends at 11:59pm on Thursday, November 4, 2010. Winner will be drawn randomly. For more information about the Commit to Fit program and for a chance to win up to $26,200, visit the Subway Facebook page.

My neurologist told me to lose weight and I thought, “So, it has come to this, has it?” The last time a doctor told me to lose weight, I weighed about 350 pounds and was preparing to have my gallbladder removed. To make the day even more perfect, the neurologist’s nurse had weighed me on one of those old scales with big metal counterweights that slide left to right. I thought the digital revolution had rid us of those scales and the drawn out torture of watching the nurse politely start at a lower number and then slide, slide, slide, slide you up to a much bigger number.

I know people have various reactions to a doctor telling them they’re fat, but my first thought was, “Yeah, of course I need to lose weight.” Let us not forget the pant-splitting incident in January precipitated by the 50-pounds of headache weight gain (which I actually had forgotten until I was searching the archives for something else and found that entry). And losing weight has been on my mind for at least two years, ever since the headache screwed up so many of my routines. I do find it bizarrely twisted that I gained so much weight because of the headache, and without it I would have no reason to be at a neurologist’s office nor on his ancient scale to begin with. My life is a real-world logic problem.

So, this August I have been making changes, which was another reason I decided to move to Chapel Hill. It is easier to be healthy here. People ride bikes, not just for fun, but to get places. There are walking trails. There are sidewalks. There are trees and creeks and butterflies flitting about all over the place. It is effing idyllic. I fully expect an animated deer to follow me to the grocery store any day now. And now that it’s not 100-freakin-degrees every afternoon, it’s quite lovely to walk around town.

I have been walking daily for almost two weeks now, and I swear to God I try to talk myself out of it every morning. After I roll out of bed and dispense cat food, I sit on the couch for about an hour watching TV and then sit at my laptop going through emails until I eventually put my head down on my desk. Why? Because my doctor also made me give up caffeine and I do not know how human beings remained conscious before noon without it. Actually, I do know—by walking. Going for a 40-minute walk is the only thing that wakes me up now that I can’t suck down coffee. Last Friday I was going to give myself a day off for recovery, but eventually pushed myself out the door because I knew I’d flop on my bed and go back to sleep if I didn’t. And since I haven’t mastered the art of doing work in my sleep, consciousness is required for my continuing financial solvency.

Along with the caffeine killing, my doctor has made me give up artificial sweeteners and preservatives. My neurologist is a whole lot of fun, isn’t he? At my next appointment I suspect he’ll ban dancing and I’ll have to form a secret underground dance club for migraineurs. The diet changes mean I have to eat real food, which means I’ve had to start cooking again. I’ve also had to use real sugar or real honey as sweeteners, which I’ll admit FREAKED ME OUT. I have a sweet tooth, and I was concerned about how I was going to make my food palatable without drizzling it in 50 billion calories. However, as much as I hate to admit this, and I really do hate to admit it because I don’t want it to be true, I think my cravings have decreased now that I’m eating more real food and less Lean Cuisines and Diet Dr. Pepper. (I still love you, Dr. P! Come back to me!) So Goddamn this diet for being good for me. I hate you healthy eating!!

Reflecting on the past month and comparing it to my big weight loss between 2005-2007, I notice one big difference. I am much more resentful about healthy living than I was five years ago. The first time was a happy, fun adventure of self-discovery and change. This time, it’s been a drag-me-by-my-pony-tail-down the trail, begrudging return to healthy habits. I’ve haven’t been doing it because I particularly want to, but because I know I NEED to. And I do know it’s good for me, and I honestly do feel better because of these changes, but Dear Lord I miss my coffee and my sodas and sitting on the couch all day. I suppose this is how people who give up smoking must feel. They know it’s for the best, but they’d still kill a hobo for one last cigarette.

All of which reminds me of the time I saw the film Prince Caspian a while back, and the lion Aslan is talking with Lucy, and according to the Internet she says “Aslan, why didn’t you come roaring in and save us like last time?” and he say “Things never happen the same way twice, dear one.” And when I watched that I paused for a moment and thought, Damn, that stupid fucking lion, but he’s right. Things don’t happen the same way twice. The way I lose weight today is not the same way I lost weight five years ago. I can’t just repeat the things I did before. I’m a different person now, who got a headache, traveled to Europe, and moved to another state. What worked for 25-year-old Jennette is not necessarily what will work for 58-days-until-she’s-30-years-old Jennette. I don’t feel the same way about it all as I did then.

That is the challenge of it all. What works now won’t work forever. You have to keep changing and adapting, because life keeps changing whether you like it or not. So I will take my morning walks and cook food on a stove instead of in the microwave. I don’t like it in the same way that I did five years ago, but I’m starting not to loathe it with the intensity of my back gas burner. I might even start to like it again. Who knows? And if I see that damn talking lion on one of my walks, I’ll tell him thanks.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book to review.

You remember Dara Torres, right? She’s the forty-something, mom who has six-pack abs. You know, the one who swam her way to three Olympic medals two years ago, beating kids who hadn’t been born yet when she attended her high school prom. Depending on your outlook, she might inspire you to be fit despite your age or just make you feel depressed that you’re not in as good of shape as her. If it’s the latter, you now have a better chance at trying to keep up. Dara’s revealed some of the secrets of her training regimen in a book titled Gold Medal Fitness: A Revolutionary 5-Week Program written in collaboration with writer Billie Fitzpatrick.

The book has a conversational tone that intermixes Dara’s personal experiences with the technical information of her routine, making it an easy read. The program is based on what Dara’s learned about training smarter as she ages, and thus is targeted at women. As a swimmer, Dara’s program is focused on creating a lean yet strong body that is capable of explosive bursts of strength. The first section, “You Can Do It!” serves as a mini-pep talk and covers the mental attitude you’ll need as well as reviewing some basic nutrition. The second section, “Your Body as a Power Source,” covers the meat of her plan divided into sections on strength, stretching, cardio, and recovery. If there is a “secret” to Dara’s plan, it seems to be the section about Ki-Hara stretching. This is a technique that stretches and strengthens your muscles at the same time. This is also the section that features lots of pictures of Dara demonstrating stretches, like this one, which made me wonder if the Torres table would be coming soon to IKEA:

And this one, where you could sprinkle salt on her and call her a pretzel:

Now, no one is promising that you’ll make the 2012 Olympic team by following this program, but it is filled with good advice. I really liked the positive tone that emphasized fitness over skinniness. Dara overcame an eating disorder in her twenties and as she says now, “I’m not a dieter. I don’t even like the word.” Dara also encourages you to find the part of yourself that enjoyed running around as a kid, when exercise wasn’t called exercise, it was just fun. Be aware that some of the exercises require gym equipment and a stability ball.

Dara was also kind enough to answer a few of my questions, which I emailed to her. You can also follow her on Twitter at @daratorresswims. That’s where Dara tweeted that she will sign your book if you mail it to her with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. The address is 12441 Royal Palm Blvd; Coral Springs, FL 33065.

Q: For people who aren’t naturally athletic, it can be hard to imagine themselves achieving a fitness goal like running a 5K. You’re naturally athletic, but is there something else that you started out naturally unskilled at which you’ve gotten better at by applying the same training philosophies you mention in the book?

Yes, I was naturally unskilled at volleyball when I first tried it but I have definitely gotten better at it.

I like that you stress the importance of taking recovery time in training. I’ve noticed that when some of my readers start a fitness plan, they are so excited that they’ll burn themselves out in the first few weeks and then abandon the plan. How do you occupy yourself on the days you aren’t working out? Can you recommend any ways to turn off feelings of guilt that some of my readers might feel on rest days?

I used to go for a run on my off days but eventually I realized that rest days are needed. You should not have feelings of guilt because rest and recovery enables your body to get stronger and leaner so you won’t break down.

I know you travel frequently to compete and to give motivational talks, like you tweeted about at HP this week. When I’m traveling for work or on vacation, I sometimes use it as an excuse to vacation from healthy choices. Do you have any advice on how to bring your inner athlete with you on the road so you continue to eat well and maintain a fitness routine?

It’s all about discipline. When you have been eating well and have maintained your fitness routine up to a point, it’s important to allow yourself to cave into your cravings, not over-indulge, but to give your body what it wants and needs. When you’re on vacation you should enjoy yourself, rest and recover. Just don’t allow yourself to fall out of a routine completely so you can remain motivated after vacation.

Many of my readers have said they developed body image problems when they were young which still stick with them today. As a mother of a young girl, do you worry about her forming a negative body image like so many women do? And if so, how to you hope to guide her towards a positive view of her body?

I think every parent probably worries about their children falling prey to low self esteem or forming a negative body image. You have to reiterate to them that what they see on TV and in magazines isn’t real life. I try to remind my daughter that it’s not what is on the outside but what is on the inside that counts. It important to help her create confidence in her inner beauty.

You’re an inspirational figure who has motivated many people to exercise and take care of their bodies no matter what their age. Who motivates and inspires you?

My daughter motivates and inspires me the most, but I also draw a lot of my motivation from within myself.

For those of you who do not know the love of my life, Radiolab is a science podcast that explores the mysteries of nature. The latest episode might be of particular interest to anyone who’s run a marathon or has felt like they’ve run a marathon when they only signed up for a 5K. It covered human limits, and the first segment in particular explored the limits of our bodies. First, it told the story of an Ironman competitor who was so determined to finish, even though her body was shutting down, that she literally crawled across the finish line. She also pooped her pants on national TV. (The way to fame can be messy.) The video is below.

They also covered The Race Across America, in which competitors bike across the country over the course of several days, only stopping for one or two hours of sleep a night. Unsurprisingly, they start to hallucinate after several days and lots of them are done in by the awful monotony of the Kansas skyline.

These stories explore the idea that your brain has an “energy governor,” a little switch in your brain that sends out pain signals to your body when you start to run low on energy. It does this so you’ll always have a reserve and never totally run out of energy a.k.a. DIE. Evidently, the energy governor is very conservative, and will tell you to stop long before you are actually out of energy.

However, there are ways to trick the governor. If you simply swish an energy drink in your mouth without swallowing it, your body notices that you’ve been given sugar. It then lets you use more energy because it can tell you’re about to get more energy. Also, if your body thinks you’re about to die, it will let you use energy to help you escape death. This was particularly helpful to one of the bicycle race participants who started hallucinating that terrorists were after him, which gave him a surge of energy during the last half of the race.

The show is fascinating and well-produced, so if you have a moment, or if you don’t have a moment but don’t want to do what you’re supposed to be doing (you slacker), you can listen to it here.

PastaQueen reads a book. And finishes it! And tells you about it!

I requested and received a complimentary copy of this book to review.

I don’t do as many book reviews as I’d like to because, well, they require you to read the book. I wish I left a trail of half-eaten meals in my wake instead of the trail of half-read books that’s there instead. However, I actually did read this book because I became interested in it after my trip to the Nutrilite Center for Optimal Health several weeks ago. During one of the sessions, Diane Paetz, a fitness consultant for Nutrilite, led us through a 10-minute workout from Sean Foy’s book, The 10-Minute Total Body Breakthrough. Diane mentioned the book during her presentation, but she didn’t beat us over the head with it, proving that the soft sell is much more effective than the hard sell. However, the thing that made me decide to request and review a copy of this book was:

The flip cards! The back of the book has four groups of cards that you can flip forward and backward to create customized workout routines. This reminded me of a beloved children’s book I used to have. It allowed you to flip three rows of cards that had animal heads, torsos, and legs printed on them to create hilarious combinations.

However, that was not the only reason I wanted to read the book. My enthusiasm for exercise has taken a nosedive ever since I got a chronic headache two years ago. And since I moved to a new apartment six months ago, I don’t have anywhere fun to run like I did when I lived near the nature trail. Running on the treadmill day after day is boooooring. So, lack of motivation and lack of opportunity have led me to be in the worst physical shape I’ve been in for awhile. I’ve also been fighting bouts of depression intermittently, so the idea of exercising for 30 minutes a day can often seem like an insurmountable task, even though I know it would have a beneficial effect on my mood.

So, the idea of a 10-minute workout was very appealing to me. It’s easy to talk myself out of running for half an hour, but I’d have to be a real slack-ass to say I can’t pull myself together for a 10-minute workout. There are more than 10 minutes of commercials in an hour long drama. Surely I can spare 10 minutes. As the books says, “What is the one thing people can do to destroy their health? The answer: Nothing.” Ten minutes beats nothing.

As with all diet/fitness/change-your-life books, it starts out by telling you how this book will change your life, including success stories from people who’ve done the plan. (Diane from Nutrilite is one of them.) Next there’s an overview of the plan which includes three levels of difficulty that you can work up through as you become more fit. The ten minutes of the workout are broken into four minutes of HEAT (High-energy aerobic training), three minutes of resistance exercise, two minutes of core strengthening exercises, and one minute of stretching and deep breathing. This is also referred to as 4321 Fitness.

There are also chapters on the science behind the 4321 strategy and recommendations for what foods to eat and why. Foy recommends the red light, yellow light, green light plan for eating, which divides foods into those three groups depending on how much caution to observe with each. Green light foods can be eaten in abundance, yellow lights should make you stop and think, and red lights should be eaten with extreme caution. Foy doesn’t believe in banning foods because that just makes them all the more appealing.

Psychological factors are also addressed. There is a chapter listing many good motivations for becoming fit. There is also a list of common excuses to avoid working out paired with a list of rebuttals to these excuses. Foy also reviews the six stages of change and the importance of things like setting goals, tracking your progress and getting support.

Overall, I really liked the attitude of the book. Foy shares many of the same health philosophies as I do, like the idea that you don’t have to be thin to be fit and that the diet mentality can sabotage even the best-laid plans. He stresses moderation over denial, and encourages people to eat real food instead of processed foods with artificial ingredients.

The workout aims to give you the most benefit in the shortest amount of time. The first four minutes take advantage of EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption). It’s been proven that interspersing periods of intense exercise with moderate exercise causes your body to need oxygen at a higher rate that is did before you started, causing an “afterburn.” The strength-training and core-strengthening components add muscle tissue which burns more calories and helps your body composition.

The bulk of the book is filled with pictures and instructions for the various exercises you can mix and match to make your workout. The book is spiral bound, making it easy to set it down on a table to refer to while you exercise. And as I said before, it’s got flip cards!

The book seems to be targeted at people who are just starting out and at people like me who want to ease back into a routine. If you’re already rather fit, you might not be as interested in this plan, but you can use it by choosing to do the more difficult routines and combining several 10-minute workouts into longer routines. I also don’t expect to get extremely buff doing only ten minutes a day. However, Foy’s plan aims to make you fitter, not necessarily a bodybuilder or extremely thin.

Really, the only problem I had with this book was it’s use of “10-minute” in the title, which really should be spelled out like “ten-minute” instead. I’m not usually a member of the grammar police, but this was an issue I had to look up recently for something else, so my brain can’t let it go unnoticed. I supposed they use the number instead of the word for marketing reasons.

I’m going to start following Foy’s plan and I’ll let you know how it goes!

I love running too, even though it sucks. I love the happy chemicals it releases in my body. I get a great feeling of accomplishment after I survive a race. Sometimes, I even feel like a graceful, yet powerful gazelle, jaunting across the Sahara, even though I probably look more like a chubby housecat sprinting for a bag of Friskies. Still, running is uncomfortable. It makes me breathe hard and leaves me very sweaty and sticky and stinky.

This is why I try to ignore the fact that I am running while I am running. I didn’t quite realize that I was doing, until I started reading one of the latest bestselling social science books, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children. I don’t have kids, but it’s fascinating to learn about why humans are the way they are, be they kids or not. Chapter Eight is about self-control, and it mentions a Russian study from the 1950′s where they asked kids to stand still as long as they could. The kids lasted two minutes. Then they asked another group of kids to pretend they were guards who had to stand still at their posts. These kids lasts eleven minutes.

When I run, sometimes I pretend that I am somewhere other than a boring gray fitness room. Sometimes I am in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, chasing down vampires. Other times I am trying to escape a building before a bomb explodes. I have even been known to pretend I am a spy trying to outrun pursuers after I have stolen secret data that is stored in the disk partition of my MP3 player. All of this is quite silly of course, but it keeps my mind off of the running and even makes running a kind of game. It’s not work, it’s play! If I’m exhausted, I can pretend it’s only 2:47 minutes to the border! I can’t stop now! Try it sometime and working out might be more like play.

Chutes and Ladders was one of the board games I played when my age was a single-digit number, along with Sorry! and Candyland. While Candyland was a sugary, sweet fantasy world with candy cane forests and gumdrop mountains, Chutes and Ladders was more like reality because just when you thought you were ahead, life would knock you on your ass and you’d fall behind. For those unfamiliar with the rules, you’d roll the dice and then move your figure that many spaces forward. If the space you landed on had a ladder, you got to move up to the space the ladder pointed to. If you landed on a chute, you fell down to a previous space.

Last year, I felt like I’d landed on square 87 and slid down the long, long chute to square 24, and not just because those squares show the doofus who’s trying to sneak cookies from the cookie jar. Life was going pretty well. I was exercising and eating right and I’d gotten a shiny, new job and all was well with the world. Then I rolled the dice, landed on the “demon headache from hell” spot, and slowly slid, down, down, down to the “gain 40 pounds” spot. Ouch!

I’ve finally decided to do something about it, for real, and not just in a half-assed manner (no pun intended). There hasn’t been any single a-ha moment. I know people love those, but life rarely works like that. I’ve experienced growing displeasure with the numbers on the scale and my image in photographs. I’ve disliked buying larger pants and refuse to go up another size. I’ve been unhappy with my race times and the 1/2 size increase in my running shoes. I was featured in a Runner’s World article, which made me think that I should get back to a place where I can run an entire 5K, so I’m worthy of that article. I’ve looked at the calendar and realized I’m a little over a year away from 30, which is the age at which your metabolism starts to slow down, so if I want to lose weight it will only get harder the longer I wait. I recently talked to a friend who has lost 40 pounds and was very happy for her, but also thought, “I should lose 40 pounds too.” I generally don’t mind being a weight most people consider “fat” because it’s thinner than I’ve been for most of my life, but I have been moving towards a weight where my size does bother me, and I do care enough to actually do something about it. And, most importantly, the headache has been playing nice lately, and I’ve felt like I finally have the energy to accomplish things again.

All of this has culminated to make me say, “Ok, I have to lose weight, for real now, with actual goals and accountability and stuff.” I have tried exercising only 3 days a week and eating basically healthy except for the 20% of the time when I don’t. I’ve tried saying, “Eh, it’s just a pound. Who cares?” It has not been working. I wish it would work, but it doesn’t. Insert sad violin sounds here.

I have set a reasonable, yet measurable goal. I want to lose 10 pounds by the end of the year and another 30 pounds by the end of June next year. This amounts to losing about a pound a week, which is realistic and won’t make me crazy for a cheeseburger by week three. I’ve been tracking my food in SparkPeople, which is annoying, but helpful. On the first few days I would look at the screen sadly and say, “I’ve already eaten 1800 calories? For real?” I have spent many a night resentfully munching on carrots. Oh, vegetables, how you taunt me. I am challenging myself to exercise for 30 minutes a day, six days a week. It can be something simple, like walking, or it can be weights or Pilates or running, but I have to spend at least 30 minutes off of my ass. Again, this is reasonable, but not so much work that I’ll burn out.

I never stopped tracking my weight, so I’ll keep doing that. I’ll let you all know how it goes, even though I have no plans to weigh in here every week. As for how I feel about all this? Eh, it is what it is. I lost weight. I got sick. I gained weight. I got sorta better. Now I’ll lose weight again. I’m not mad at myself or overly happy about the whole thing. Mostly I just see a lot of work up ahead and feel like it’s time to get down to business. There’s no use in whining if you fall down a chute. You just pick up the dice and roll again. Lead me to the treadmill! I suppose I feel that way because, as I said before, although I am fat, I’m still thinner than I’ve been for most of my adult life. Things have been a lot worse than this.

I’ve noticed a change in the past few weeks, not a physical one, but one inside my head. I feel like I’m in a different mindset now. Some of it comes from the fact that I’m exercising every day, and every time I run or lift weights I’m reminding myself that I have this goal I want to achieve. The exercise also gives me a bit of a buzz, which I think helps keep the headache down too. So even if I didn’t care about being fat, I’d have incentive to run so I wouldn’t be in as much pain. I might still be a slow runner and I might be lifting piddly-dinky lil’ weights, but I know if I keep at it I’ll move ahead on the game board. I’ll cross my fingers that I land on the ladders this time, and not the chutes.