Help Heather help girls with eating disorders

Heather at MamaVision is encouraging people to give to the National Eating Disorders Association via a link on her site. The funds will be matched by an anonymous donor. You can also leave a comment about why you donated which she’ll send to the NEDA.

Be Barb’s weigh-in partner

Friend of the blog, Barb, is looking for a weigh-in buddy. Here’s how she put it, “Do you know somebody from blogland who would be willing to let me report my weight daily — starting now and going to through January, and perhaps to be extended beyond that if it proves to be an effective self-monitoring system?…Unless I have an external commitment to tell somebody else, I don’t do it. I dread the scale. So I’m looking for a system of accountability. The person I report to doesn’t have to respond or say anything or even actually read my email. I just need to know that I have to do it.”

Any takers? Leave a comment and I’ll send your info to Barb.

Those are my feet, as funky as ever. Those are my toes, still gnarly from the half-marathon two months ago. And there is the issue of Women’s Health my book was reviewed in this month, proving the photo is recent.

It’s July 2, 2008 and I weigh 179 pounds. That’s exactly what I weighed on July 2, 2007. And that’s good enough for me!

When I started this journey back in…the stone ages? The bronze age? Okay, maybe it was just 2005. I set 160 as my goal weight because I wanted a number to aim for, 160 fell in the “normal” BMI range and it ended in a 0. Since June of 2007, I’ve been hovering below or above 180. Sometimes I’ve been really psyched to get to 160, charting out how many months it will take if I lose a pound every week. Sometimes I’ve looked at 175 on the scale in the morning and thought, “I’ll have a chocolate éclair for breakfast!”

So, let’s scratch out that “160″ next to my goal weight because I. AM. DONE. 180 is my happy weight. I can run 3 miles without stopping. I can buy normal clothes. My health is pretty damn good, most things considered. My weight is not the first thing people notice about me…unless I’m walking into a book signing. Life is good and I haven’t given a shit about getting to 160 for months. I predicted this state of mind back in April of 2006:

“I might just get to 180 or something and say ‘Well, this is good enough.’ Kind of like old time settlers who were headed for California but decided to just quit in Nevada. I might easily be distracted by the shiny lights of Las Vegas.”

Vegas looks pretty good to me. The lights are indeed shiny. I think I’ll stay here for awhile. 160 is not a goal of mine anymore. My new goal is to maintain a weight of 180 or below for the rest of my life. If I happen to lose those 20 pounds, I won’t complain, but I don’t really care if it happens or not.

This means I’m done with the monthly weigh-ins too. They’ve been a helpful tool to keep me on track. They helped me lose a lot of weight. But lately they’ve been driving me to the crazy farm. I’m ready to keep my weight private again. I’ll still track it for myself, but I don’t want to have to justify every gain or loss to the masses. I post enough pictures of myself on this blog that you’ll notice if I start to pork out. If there’s suddenly a 6-month gap without any self-portraits, you’ll know something’s up. I promise to stay accountable in my own ways, just not in exact poundage statistics. If I beat any of my personal records, you’ll be sure to hear about it.

I’m still going to blog. You couldn’t get me to stop if you stole my computer. I’d wait in line at the library. I’d use my mom’s dial-up. I’d steal some kid’s iPhone. I’m a blogging addict and you can’t make me quit! If you’ve been reading for awhile, this announcement should be as shocking as a puddle of water. I first saw the number 180 on the scale on June 1, 2007, so I’ve been maintaining my weight loss for over a year now. It’s about time I made maintenance official. Maintenance and I have been dating for so long, it’s about time we got engaged already and set a date!

Today’s the day. July 2, 2008. Not quite Independence Day, but close enough.

I did hold out for a week and a half. I was really tempted to hop on the scale after I had food poisoning because I’m sure the dehydration sucked off several pounds, even if they weren’t “real.” But I kept my ass on the couch. And when I saw my little kitty looking so slender in the kitchen, I was tempted to weigh myself and then weigh myself while I was holding him to determine his weight in the difference. But I resisted that urge to and got my mother to do it when we went out to lunch that weekend. Every time I opened the front closet door to throw out some trash, I stared down the scaled and thought, “Nope, not going to weigh myself. No, siree.”

Then one day I just hopped on the scale for no real reason. I was curious. Then I did at again several days later. I’d guess I’ve weighed myself 6 or 7 times this month. And every time I did, I looked at the number, thought about what I’d been eating and how much I’d been exercising and said, “Yeah, that seems about right.” There was only one day I was surprised, and it was because I weighed less than I thought I should. I’m at a point now where I know whether I’ve been treating my body well or not. I know when I’ve come home, felt tired, and eaten half my kitchen. And I know when I’ve come home, changed into my gym clothes and gone to a Boot Camp class. That’s really what I want to concentrate on, not the number on the scale, but how good I feel and how well I’ve been treating myself. That’s my main motivation for taking time off from the scale. Because there are some days when I’ve treated my body well and the number goes up, and other days when the numbers go down even though I’ve neglected proper care and feeding. It’s been nice to get away from checking in with the numbers every day. It feels like a mental weight has been lifted, if not a physical one.

My weight this month is 180, which is up two pounds from the weigh-in at the end of December, but actually down a couple pounds from my highest post-holiday weight. So, I’m heading in the right direction. More importantly, my life has settled down a bit and I’m getting back into a daily routine, though I’m still spicing things up by going to classes at the Y. I’ve decided I’m going to weigh myself at least once a week, more if I feel like it, but I’m only going to report on it once a month. Because I do feel a little psycho having to justify one or two pound gains every week, but I also don’t want to totally lose accountability and gain back 20 pounds. I’ll write again at the beginning of March to let you know how it’s going.

I see it as a reflection of what this blog is about these days. When I started out it was all about losing weight. These days, I don’t care so much about the weight loss as long as I’m taking care of myself and leading a healthy, fit lifestyle. My weight still matters, but it’s not the most important thing. I want to keep my weight within normal operating parameters, but I’m more concerned with being able to finish my half-marathon in May. Speaking of which, I have to go change now and run in 26 degree weather with my training group. Twenty-six degrees! That’s damn near tropical compared to last time.

There are many different philosophies on how frequently you should weigh yourself: monthly, weekly, daily, or not at all. Now that I’m switching to monthly, I’ll have tried them all. My philosophy? Choose what is best for you at the time. Different approaches work for different people depending on your situation and your state of mind.

Not weighing myself at all led me to gain 200 pounds. I do not recommend this method.

When I started losing weight three years ago, I weighed myself weekly. This worked well for about a year and a half. My body was so huge that it burned a lot of calories. I could easily lose 3 or 4 pounds a week and do a happy dance every Saturday as I stepped off the scale. The numbers almost always went down, I was positively reinforced, and my fresh and vulnerable little psyche didn’t have to freak out every day over small weight changes.

But as I got smaller, my weight loss slowed down. I reached a point where the number every Saturday was not a reliable indicator of weight loss. Weight fluctuates over the week and during the course of the day due to silly little things like how much water you’re retaining or what part of the menstrual cycle you’re at. It was possible that I’d lost fat, but my weight was the same. At that point I started to weigh myself daily and looked at the average over the past 7-10 days. My weight would bob up and down by a couple pounds day to day, but I understood why. I was confident in my abilities to lose weight so I wasn’t freaking out over the daily fluctuations and gauging the process on a daily basis gave me a better sense of where I was than the weekly weighing had.

Right now I’ve reached a point where my biggest barrier is mental. As long as I know I weigh under 180, I find it more permissible to eat an extra cookie or have another cup of yogurt in the evenings. Once I go over 180, my warning bells start ringing and I go back into weight-loss mode. I become more careful about what I eat and I’m more diligent about exercise. But once I start seeing 176 or 175 show up on the scale, I start slacking again. Some people in the comments theorized that I’d hit my body’s most comfortable weight, but I believe I’ve really hit my mind’s most comfortable weight. So, I have to mess with my mind if I’m going to make any more progress. I was talking to my brother about this problem and we tried coming up with solutions.

“I could try screwing with the scale so it weighs me 10 pounds heavier than I am. But even if I could figure out how to do that without breaking a $60.00 piece of electronic equipment, I’d still know the reading was fake and just mentally deduct it in my head.” I told him.

“Why don’t you get a bag of something that you don’t know the weight of and hold that when you weigh in?” He suggested.

“Hmmm, that might work. But after awhile I’ll be able to compare day to day and know that I’ve lost x amount of pounds and then I’ll just subtract that from my last known weight.” Damn my math skills!

Then it occurred to me that the answer was completely obvious and I was too stupid to see it. I could just stop weighing myself. It’s a somewhat dangerous idea because it could completely backfire. If I start gaining weight, I won’t have that feedback from the scale to know I need to adjust. However, I will have other feedback, like the fit of my clothes. I can take my measurements too. And best yet, I won’t be able to tell myself I can have another fudge pop because I weigh under 180 since I’ll have no idea how much I actually weigh.

So, January shall now be known as the month without weigh-ins. I’ve known other bloggers who have done this and none of them exploded into the Stay Puft Marshmallow man in just a month. On February 1st we’ll see how it goes. Until then, the sidebar shall remain as silent and no beeps shall emit from my scale.

During the time I was excreting half my bodily fluids out my nose, I went four days without exercising, the longest period of non-activity I’ve experienced since the days when I had to rock back and forth to heave myself off the couch. When I was stressed, I ate about three pints of ice cream, the most dairy I’ve eaten in a week since I was breastfeeding. I didn’t eat much for Thanksgiving dinner, but made up for it during dessert by devouring several helpings of Dirt Cake, a delicious trifle with alternating layers of crumbled Oreos and cream cheese mixed with powdered sugar.

That’s not an apology. That’s life. I was fully aware of what I was doing and I’d probably do it again, though I may limit it to two pints of ice cream the next time. I don’t really care because through it all I stayed below or only slightly above 180 pounds. That’s the weight where I string up the yellow police tape that says “Danger! Danger! Do not cross!”

My biggest obstacle to getting to goal is that some days I don’t care about it that much. As long as I am under 180, I’m satisfied with my size. That is the magic weight where I no longer shop in the plus-size department and I can buy bras in brick and mortar stores instead of on the Internet. As long as I’m also exercising and eating well 90% of the time, I feel healthy and energized and life is good.

Some days I care a lot about getting to goal. I’d like to have a buffer of twenty pounds between my maximum weight limit and my current weight. I set a goal and I’d like to experience the pride of achieving it. I know knocking off another ten or twenty pounds would allow me to run faster and beat my personal record for the 5K and run a faster half-marathon.

Some days I see Dirt Cake and I don’t care how fast I can run.

I know some of you will suggest that I just let it go and name 180 as my maintenance weight and be done with it. I understand that point of view and maybe a year from now I’ll agree with you. But for now I’m going to keep working towards 160. I like having that goal. I like working towards it. If I were to reset my goal at 180, I might suddenly think 190 was okay and then 200 and then even my “fat” pants wouldn’t fit. Maybe it’s better to keep striving towards that asymptote line even it’s unreachable? Maybe it’s nice to have a dream?

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want out of life. For most of my existence, the first wish I would have asked of a genie in a lamp was to please, please, please make me thin. I got my wish. Now I have to figure out what to do with those other two wishes in my queue. My weight used to define me, but it’s become so much less important in my life that it’s time to issue a revised version of the dictionary. I’ll always have to watch my weight. I’ll always have to kick myself in the ass when I start skipping weight sessions like I have this month. The struggle will always be there. But it’s silent work that only the Internet and I know about.

So, I’m not giving up. I’m not pitching out my goal. But I’m admitting it’s not as important as it was when I started this trip. I’ve seen so much beautiful scenery on the way that I don’t quite remember where I thought I was headed when I started walking on that treadmill in the green exercise room of our old house three years ago. I doubt it really matters anymore. There are so many crossroads ahead, detours to take, and scenic routes to explore. As long as I’m happy, healthy and traveling with friends and family, I’ll go where life takes me. Some day it might even take me to my planned destination.

Weight

I thought my scale might be stuck this month because I kept weighing in at exactly 176.6 for seven days. Usually the scale messes with me by modulating up and down erratically. Obviously it knows I’m on to it and has decided to mess with me by being eerily consistent. I was at around 177 this morning, which is down about three pounds since last month. Geez, this calorie counting thing seems to be working. Who’d have thought? Besides anyone who’s ever dieted. Ever. Except for me.

Exercise

I took it easy on my Achilles tendon for three weeks after I injured it by running five miles on Sundays like a crazy person. I used the elliptical machine in my apartment’s hot, sweaty, fitness room instead and felt really weird spending 22 minutes operating a machine that essentially does nothing. They should at least hook it up to a turbine so I can power the air conditioner while I ellipticize. I suppose I should get used to it though since winter is coming and even if I wanted to exercise outdoors in the cold it will be too dark before and after work to do that. I am back to running now, doing easy two-mile runs every other day. Heh! I just used the words “easy” and “two-mile runs” in a sentence together. When did I become the kind of person who could do that and actually mean it?

I tried a yoga class in my office building during lunch. It was…interesting. I didn’t hate it, but I don’t think it’s my thing. It did make me much more aware of how I carry my body. For the rest of the day I was like a puppet master yanking my own strings, reminding myself to sit up straight. The human body has a lot of muscles and I think 90% of my are set to slouch.

I also bought a new weight-training DVD (Cathe’s Muscle Max). I’ve been doing the same upper body weight routine (Cathe’s Pyramid Upper & Pyramid Lower Body) for seven months now. That’s bad of me. Your muscles get used to the routine and are not challenged like they are when you switch your routine frequently. I may exercise six days a week, but I am still a lazy person at heart and I didn’t want to learn a new routine. However, I discovered I can do half-assed push-ups now! Sure, I’m using my knees and I only go halfway down, but it beats my old technique of reenacting that bridge collapse in Minnesota. I also learned that if you haven’t been doing any lower body workouts DO NOT immediately attempt 24 lunges and squats. Or you can if you own a walking cane and don’t live on the second floor. I’ve been shuffling around like an 80-year-old woman because I can barely walk up and down the stairs. My quadriceps are shredded like mozzarella cheese.

Food

I’ve also been experimenting with cheat meals this month. I decided my Hallmark visit was one big cheat day full of cookies and lemon squares and M&Ms. Strangely, I was so distracted by everything I did that day that I hardly thought about food at all even though my eating was on a different schedule. It was nice not thinking about meal planning since I think about it so much the rest of the time.

Then I followed it up with a Dairy Queen Oreo Blizzard cake on my birthday last Saturday.

I ate half this cake. In less than 24 hours. And I don’t regret it. But it was strange falling asleep at 10:00 after the sugar crash.

The odd thing about being at a weight in between my goal (160) and a weight where I feel comfortable (180) is that when I’m given the choice between losing a pound this week or eating half a Dairy Queen Oreo Blizzard cake, some times I’m going to go with the Dairy Queen Oreo Blizzard cake. I have absolutely no guilt about it at all, which in many ways is far more fabulous than how unbelievably delicious that blend of soft serve vanilla ice cream, crisp chocolate wafers, and creamy white filling tasted. Oh, who am I kidding? Nothing is more fabulous than an Oreo Blizzard cake. I recently wrote that even if ice cream didn’t make you fat I’d still eat healthy most of the time. I now think that’s total bullshit because if I could get away with eating this all the time, I totally would. OhMyGodItWasSoGoodAndI’dTotallyDoItAgain!

Looking at that birthday photo and at the photos from my Hallmark trip, I am still amazed at how thin I look. And eating half an ice cream cake did not make 196 pounds instantly reappear. 196 ice cream cakes would though, so now I’m going to figure out how to cook this pumpkin I bought. If I get to use my scary, big, slasher knife it should be more fun than trick-or-treating.

However, I also have to admit I don’t want to weigh more than 180 ever again. At the most I never want to pop back over 186, which was the point where I officially lost half my weight. If I get bigger than I am now it’s back to plus-sized jeans and ordering bras online. I’d like to have at least a 10 pound buffer area so I have time to correct course if I ever do start gaining back weight. Right now I don’t have any margin of error.

I decided to reevaluate my goals, like an annual job evaluation. It’s good to check-in with your goals at least once a year, be they weight, financial, or career. It’s hard to get where you want to go if you don’t know where you’re going or how you’re going to get there. I decided I’m going to try to get to 170 pounds by January 15, 2008, my three year anniversary. That’s three and a half months to lose 10 pounds, which seems reasonable. And now I’ve told you all, so I had better stick to it, right?

But I needed to decide how I was going to get there. After some debate, I started tracking what I was eating in the SparkPeople nutrition tracker a couple weeks ago. I’m not a big fan of tracking every last detail of my meals because it makes me feel like I’m stopping at the last gas station outside of Crazy Town. You’re not in Crazy Town yet, but it’s a short drive to the city limits. Do I really want to start obsessing about every gram of fat I’ve ingested in the day? So, I decided I’d just do it for two weeks so I could analyze what my diet had been like lately.

I’ve never paid much attention to the ratio of macronutrients I eat in the day (carbs/fats/proteins). It always seemed pretty damn complicated, plus when I first started out I didn’t know what half the foods I ate were made out of. Learning what were sources of fats and proteins was like learning the gender of all the nouns when I was learning Spanish. The table is feminine. Why? It just is! And cottage cheese has protein, okay? Why? It just does! There are no shortcuts. You just have to memorize it all. I prefer just to make sensible decisions and let the whole thing sort itself out naturally.

But holy cow, I’ve been eating a lot of carbs! Funny how I just kept slipping in more and more fruits and yogurts and oatmeal servings into my day. There is not anything inherently bad about carbs. They are an essential macronutrient. Yay, carbs and fat and protein! However I know when I eat a lot of carbs I start craving a lot of them, which might be part of the reason I had been eating so much in the evenings lately.

I’ve adjusted my diet somewhat, like I was restarting my computer. I’ve settled into something less carb-o-licious but still satisfying, but there were four days there when I was going pretty low-carb. I started to feel weak on the second day and I got a headache on the third day which did not go away no matter how much water I drank. When I woke up to the same throbbing in my skull on the morning of the fifth day I decided, “I’m going to have some oatmeal!” I don’t mind eating low-carb foods for a week or two, but I do mind having a freakin’ headache for more than two days. I do not want to be the girl who chooses weight-loss over good health, so oatmeal it was! Life is so much better with carbs.*

However, I did lose several pounds during those four days as my glycogen stores drained away and I have to admit it was really fun. I always tell people that slow and steady is the way to go, and I truly believe that, but there is no denying that it’s hella’ fun to see the numbers on the scale go down every day, even when you know it’s not really fat disappearing. That experience made me understand crash dieters a little bit better. It’s easy to see how extreme that kind of speedy weight loss is when you’re outside looking in, but when you’re the one actually dropping a pound a day, it’s easy to get sucked into a twisted way of thinking. No one who does something crazy thinks they’re doing something crazy, right?** You can always make up rationalizations for why it’s okay for you to be doing something that would otherwise seem questionable to an objective mind.

Anyway, I’m back to eating fruits and whole grains now and a lot of my cravings have gone away. It was pretty interesting to see how quickly my body reacted to a dietary change like that. I sometimes take it for granted that what I eat directly affects how I feel, but there’s no denying it’s true when you feel like sticking an ice pick in your brain to relieve the pressure.

There’s also no denying you need to lay off the running when you diagnose yourself with the beginnings of Achilles tendonitis. I first noticed a slight pain at the back of my left foot when I was stretching before my first 5K this month. Later in the week I noticed a slight pain when walking down the stairs. After some Googling I learned that it was probably Achilles tendonitis which “tends to occur in middle-age recreational athletes.” Middle-aged?! I’m only 26, which is only middle-aged if I die when I’m 52 and I’m hoping to keep breathing for longer than that. Then I read on and saw that “long distance runners will have symptoms of Achilles tendonitis after increasing their mileage.” Oops, yeah, that’s me. I probably should have waited longer before tackling those five mile runs. It’s hard to hold myself back when I exercise because I’ve been holding myself back all my life. I want to take it to the limit and see what my body can do! However, this tends to lead to injuries and “microtears,” so I need to figure out a balance between pushing myself and harming myself. Until I figure that out, it’s the low-impact elliptical machine in my apartment’s exercise room for me. I had never used the elliptical machine before in my life, and holy quadriceps, Batman, it’s tough! I could only do a mile the first time before I needed to stop and walk my jelly legs back upstairs to my apartment.

We’ll see how all this goes, and hopefully by the end of October I’ll be down a couple pounds. The funny thing is, now that I’m a “normal” weight I take weight loss far less personally. If my adjusted diet and exercise routine doesn’t lead to weight loss, oh well! It didn’t work. It’s not a personal failure. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. It just means my body did not react to that regime by burning fat. That’s all. When I was morbidly obese I was scared to try any kind of diet because I was so scared I’d fail. I wanted to be thin so badly that I didn’t know if I could handle it if I really tried to do something and it didn’t work out. Now, if it doesn’t work out, I’m still pretty darn thin. Life will be okay. There’s less at risk, so I’m not as scared of a huge disappointment. And I can still eat oatmeal.

* This is not meant to be judgmental of anyone on a low-carb diet. I know the headaches etc. are supposed to go away after a while, but I was not interested in doing low-carb for life so I didn’t see any point in continuing. It’s just not something I can do, but if it works for you, kudos! Everyone needs to find what works for them.

** I am not saying low-carb dieters are crazy, I’m saying crash dieters are crazy. Doing low-carb and losing a pound a day was as close to crash dieting as I have ever come.

From the optimistic, “What’s that hanging around my cloud? Oh, it’s a silver lining” perspective, it’s cool to know that I can maintain my weight by doing what I’m doing right now. I know there is a lot of debate in the fatosphere and the scientific community about whether people are genetically doomed to be fat or if you can do anything about it by manipulating your environment. I’ve only lived in my own body, so I can’t speak about anyone else with 100% certainty, but I know that when I show up and do the work, I get paid. Fifty percent of success comes just from showing up.

For example, I recently read an article in Newsweek about the social networking site Facebook by Kurt Soller. The lead sentence was “I have three fond memories from my senior year of high school: the day I got my college acceptance letter, the day I graduated and the day I joined Facebook.” My first thought was, “Wait up, how old is this guy? We didn’t even have Napster yet when I was a senior in high school. Facebook is only a couple years old.” For a second, I was jealous that there was someone much younger than me writing articles for Newsweek. But then I thought, “Well, PastaQueen did you ever apply for a job at Newsweek? Did you ever try to get a journalism internship? Did you even study journalism?” The answer to all these questions is NO. In fact, I rarely ever read Newsweek. Upon deeper reflection I doubt an oddball like me would find any satisfaction working at a weekly news magazine for any other reason than to brag about it to other people. The reason I don’t work at Newsweek is because I never showed up. I never tried to get a job there. I didn’t do the work. If I did try, I may or may not get a job there, but we’ll never know because I have no intention of ever doing that. However, when it comes to weight loss I have done the work. I do show up. I haven’t lost much weight in the past couple months, but I haven’t gained any either. I know that for me personally, if I show up and do the work then I can maintain my loss.

My biggest problem lately is that I have been overeating in the evenings. I have been hitting the yogurt really hard. Live bacteria cultures beware, PastaQueen’s coming to get you! And then she’s coming back for your children! I’m not sure why I’ve been doing this, but my best guess is that exercising in the mornings makes me hungrier in the afternoon. I’ve thinking about eating a bigger breakfast and lunch to compensate. For the past week my strategy for stopping the evening pig-outs has been, “Well, just stop doing that,” but that strategy has been as effective as the troop surge in Iraq. Last night I cooked two pork chops, one for dinner and one for tomorrow. I got my Tupperware container out to put the other one away, but I took a bite out of it before I put it in the tub. Then I took another bite and another and hey, I’m almost done so why don’t I just finish the whole thing? I’m very good at rationalizing, but it’s very hard to justify a two pork chop dinner as a boon for weight-loss.

My best excuse is that I exercised a lot yesterday. I lifted weights in the morning and did Pilates when I came home. Then I decided to run 3-miles because it was so nice out, like Disney movie beautiful with the sun smiling at me. I half expected to run into an animated dragon at the second mile marker who would offer to be my friend. This means I exercised for at least 90 minutes, which is pretty much the limit for what I’m willing to put into fitness on a daily basis. I’ve read that some people exercise 3-4 hours a day to maintain their weight loss, but honestly, I’d rather be a bit chubby than to move that much. I’m willing to try a lot of things to lose weight, but if there’s a line, that’s it.

I will admit though, I have not been pushing myself as hard as I did back in the early days. When I moved here last year I would walk for an entire hour. Granted, I probably burn as many calories running for 35 minutes as I did walking for 60, but I could definitely push myself harder. I’ve gotten comfortable and I need to break out of that comfort zone. I’m reading about running plans and I’m going to make an effort to start training harder, especially since I’m running a 5K in two weeks.

Since my weigh-in numbers in my sidebar haven’t budged much lately, I decided to try for a quicker mile time. The fastest mile I’ve ever run is 9:30. My leg has been feeling much better this month and I’d prepared my body by running 3-4 times a week for two weeks before attempting my high-speed dash. Last weekend I gave it my all and sped down the trail from stone mile-marker to stone mile-marker, dodging dogs on leashes and couples holding hands without breaking through them Red Rover style. When I finished, I looked down at my stopwatch and it said:

Aaaarggh! Exactly the same number as my last best time. Nine minutes and thirty seconds. Well, at least I didn’t lose any speed when I took July off to heal. But damn, I would have loved to at least gotten 9:29. Next time I’m going to run the other direction down the trail because it’s slightly downhill. Time was not on my side, but next time gravity will be.

In other exercise news, my final tennis lesson was last Monday, and honestly I was relieved. I really suck at tennis, y’all. Which is probably funny for other people to watch, and humbling for me since I’m naturally good at other things, but I could not even serve the ball into the service box. Everyone else was getting much better than me and when we played games against each other I could tell I was dragging everyone else down. My hand-eye coordination SUCKS. It sucks so hard you can probably feel your face being pulled into the monitor right now by its intense vacuum force. You’re most likely reading these words with your right eye because your left cheek is stuck to the screen. There were times balls would pass right by me and there was no excuse for missing them. All those years I avoided team sports and athletics I also avoided creating the synapses and neural pathways in my brain that taught people how to hit moving balls. I’m sure if I practiced a lot (if I showed up), these pathways would be formed, but I’m not crazy enough about tennis to bother. I’m glad I stepped out onto the court, but in the future I’m going to avoid team sports because I prefer to just compete against myself. One of the reasons I like running is because it’s idiot proof and I only have to beat myself, not some ultra-marathoner.

And if all else fails, there’s always aerobic wedding dancing.

This weight loss business never ceases to confuse me. Sure, I did go on a 7-mile bicycle trip. And I walked a mile from the hostel to Union Station dragging my 40 pound suitcase behind me because I couldn’t find the right bus stop. And I walked another mile or two when circling in on the W hotel (which is not the Westin, as the desk clerk was happy to tell us). But really, I should have gained weight and it feels rather ridiculous that I didn’t. I’ve heard theories that if you’ve been losing weight by slightly lowering your calorie intake and then you go pig out it signals your body that food is plentiful and that it’s okay to let go of some of your fat. Highly adaptable, the body is. Maybe I’ll gain it back later in the week, but as of today the scale read 174.8.

So that means I’m down another 3 pounds for July. This month was spent mostly just doing weights, Pilates, and some biking since I was laying off my injured leg. I didn’t have any problems in my many treks around the Windy City though, so I’m going to start easing back into my running program. Hopefully I’ll be in good enough shape to run my first 5K in the fall! Woo-hoo, free t-shirt!

I went to my second tennis lesson Monday night, even though I was completely exhausted from traveling. But there was no way I was going to waste my registration fee. I came back feeling unexpectedly refreshed. I am by far the worst tennis player in our class. It is somewhat comical. Everyone else is trying to adjust the angle of their rackets to hit the ball where they want to whereas I do a little victory dance every time I just hit the ball and don’t swat at carbon dioxide molecules. Evidently, like piano lessons, I’m supposed to be practicing in between my professional lessons. No one told me that when I signed up. I might have to actually buy a racket and some tennis balls so I do not fall so far behind my classmates that no one wants to rally with me. I don’t have to be the best, but it’d be nice if no one sighs exasperatingly when they’re paired with me. It’s funny, but I don’t even care that I suck at tennis. I’m just happy to be bouncing around the court without collapsing. I don’t think it’s something I’m going to pick up after my lessons are over though. I’m eyeballing martial arts next, or maybe salsa dancing. I’ll let you know.

My love affair with my arm muscles continues. I can do ten reps of the bicep curl with 10 pound weights without dropping them on my pinkie toe. Grrrr! I strong. Just don’t ask me to help you move. My new muscle mass has also changed my shopping strategies. Last year when I had to buy a dress for a wedding, I was wondering where all the sleeves were. This month I started searching thrift stores for a gown for my brother’s August wedding and I automatically rejected any dress that had even a cap sleeve. Spaghetti straps all the way for me! I’ve got collarbones and arm muscles now and everyone is going to get a good look, underarm flab be damned. And yes, I promise to post pictures. I’ve been watching the first season of Alias this week and I have much more appreciation for the awesomeness of Jennifer Garner’s arms and all the work she must have put into them. No wonder the wardrobe department puts her in sleeveless tops so often. If I had arms like that I’d take scissors to all my sleeves.

I’m still taking it easy on my leg that had been hurting. I know some of you will say I should go to a doctor, but it only starts to hurt after I’ve run about two miles and only slightly. And I have crap insurance. Unless I start limping, I’m just going to give it time to heal on its own. So I haven’t been running, just walking and, wow, I forgot how incredibly boring walking can be. I used to do this for 50 minutes a day? How did I ever manage that? I listen to music and podcasts, but I still miss the thrill of running, my heart-beating fast, getting all sweaty and red in the face. I will think happy thoughts and hopefully my leg will be all better by July. Next month: tennis lessons! I’ve been keeping up with my exercises, but lately there have been a lot more days where I forcibly make my ass get off the couch than usual. It will be good to mix things up.

I’ve also been going on baking sprees this month. One evening I made a batch of egg muffins and then roasted a head of cauliflower and followed it up by roasting a head of broccoli. I now have Tupperware containers of veggies in the fridge to snack on when the mood hits me. I know I’m supposed to eat fruits and veggies, but lately it had been more like fruits and, oh yeah, a veggie. It’s so easy to grab a peach or banana and eat it right away, whereas I prefer most of my veggies chopped and cooked, carrots and celery excluded. Having everything ready to go helps get more of them into my diet. Also, cooking is a good excuse not to do other things. “Oh, I can’t do ____, I have to cook some broccoli!”

Here’s hoping I’m in the mid-170′s by the end of July!