What I'm Not Doing Right Now

It's quarter to midnight, and my husband and I are sitting on the couch watching the first season of Lost. Turns out it's an interesting show! I never knew that. I'm not sure I could take watching it in real time though. Slow exposition kills me.

But anyway, I ate really well today. Wrote everything down, accounted for everything, stayed within my limits. I like sentence fragments. And it's really late, and my husband just got up and went to the kitchen.

What I'm not doing right now is eating cookies.

Honk Honk

That's me, tooting my own horn.

(I guess this could be subtitled, "I Can't Think of Anything to Blog About, So I'm Going to Tell You How Great I Am Instead.")

Today marks 6 weeks of tracking my food. Everything I ate. Every day. 6 weeks. For me, that is huge. I think to this point my record is 3 weeks, maaaaaybe 3 1/2. But probably not. Today is also 3 weeks of drinking 100+ ounces of water everyday. And in 2 days, my 12-week chart will be 3/4ths of the way full. So yeah, I'm pretty awesome.

I will pause whilst you go hurl.

But that's really not my big deal this week. I am so grateful that the tracking and the water and the exercise feels commonplace and that, while I'm pretty pleased with myself about my consistency (usually me and consistency, well, we are not friends), it's almost so normal that it's almost no biggie. (I say "almost" because I'm trying to be better at giving myself credit for the good stuff I do.) No, my big deal this week is that I didn't quit.

I really wanted to. The combination of the scale jump and the abysmal running experience--along with a bunch of other junk going on--really did a number on my head. I would not have been surprised if my period had shown up this week, even though it's a week too soon, that's how bad my brain was. In fact, I was almost hoping for it because then I'd have some explanation other than "Crazy." But alas, it was just me.

Yesterday in particular was really hard. All day long I just wanted to stuff myself with whatever I could find. Yesterday just happened to also be the day I did my weekly grocery shopping. It's truly a miracle I didn't leave the store with nothing but a cart full of Oreos and Pop Tarts. I am so not kidding. But I didn't. Stuff on my list only, thank you (though I did buy a bag of really giant ziploc bags, because you never know when you might need a really giant ziploc bag, and around here if you don't buy something when you see it, you're not likely to ever get the chance again, so that was an impulse buy, though thankfully an inedible one). I spent the evening talking myself out of making cookies, a task made harder when a friend updated her Facebook status to read "is making cookies." Even Facebook was against me!

I didn't quit though. I even exercised 3 times yesterday. And after spending all week higher than last week's weigh-in, the scale was down 1 pound this morning. Still not caught up with last week's gain, but it's in the right direction, and I'm pleased.

Putting Cal Ripken to Shame

Yes, that's right--two days in a row of doing a DVD.

I wonder when Guinness is going to call?

Open mouth, insert money

Oh, wait...that's not how that saying goes...

Anyway, in the spirit of the video I posted yesterday, I worked out today in spite of the obstacles.

Here is the background (and it's really long and I'm really wordy and oh well, just deal): I usually exercise in the morning after the kids go to school or in the evening after they go to bed. My dh is home virtually all the time these days, as we're getting ready to move, and I homeschool my almost 13-y/o, so I really have no excuse whatsoever to not get my hiney moving. The last couple of weeks I've been trying to ramp up my strength training, as I have a multitude of what a friend once called "squishues." I am getting near to my goal weight (p.s. Holly, I would have readily admitted that; no need to rat me out! ;), but I am still so doughy and, well, squishy, that I really need to be more consistent about working out with weights in order to get the body I want. So, like I've said, I've been working harder at getting that done lately. Mostly I work out at home, and I have a pretty good collection of weights, bands, etc. that I use. However, three weeks ago, movers came to my house and took away all my weights and bands and even my etc. So then I had to start dragging myself to the gym at our neighborhood's community center. I hate that gym, especially the weight room, as it is nigh unto useless. But that's what I've been doing in order to get my workouts done.

This week has been harder, as we had another set of movers come and take even more stuff (since we're moving overseas, we're sending our stuff in waves, in the hopes that it will all arrive roughly the same time we do), and I haven't gotten all of the weight workouts in that I wanted. I knew that this morning was basically my last chance to get it done in order to get the 48-hour requisite rest period before my Monday morning workout. But my dh is out of town! And my handy dandy built-in-babysitter-eldest-child (a.k.a., the reason you don't kill them when they're little? so they can grow up and babysit for you!) had an early-morning (as in, out the door at 5:45am) church youth activity to go to! And my older son is camping. So what to do what to do. Hello, body-weight circuit training! Last night before I went bed, I came up with a full-body workout using just my body weight. I laid out my clothes, water, and ipod last night and then when I got up to help get my dd out the door at way-too-early o'clock, I worked out! Go me!

Here's what I did:
5 minute warm up on the old and crappy yet free treadmill (the movers didn't take it, because the electrical system of the apartment building we'll be living in can't handle it)
10 push-ups
20 squats (technically, I guess I did "prisoner squats" as I raised my arms overhead whilst I was performing aforementioned squats)
20 tricep dips
25 crunches (I like to do these with my feet on the wall and my legs at a 90-degree angle. Then when I crunch up, I push my feet against the wall, thereby increasing the contraction in my lower abs.)
15 lunges, each side (also, I hate lunges!)
20 calf-raises on the bottom step of the staircase
30-second plank position (I had to fudge that a little as I am still pretty weak, so I did 10 seconds doing it right, 10 seconds holding it halfway, and then 10 more seconds doing it fully) (also, ow)
30 mountain climbers

Then I started over back at the beginning and did it again. I had intended to get on the treadmill after that and go for as long as I could, but just as I was starting my second trip through the circuit, my youngest woke up and vehemently demanded my attention. I got him settled with some food and a show long enough to finish the circuit, but there's no way to contain him well enough to allow me to get on the 'mill, and the other 2 kids weren't awake yet (gratefully! it wasn't even 7!). He's 22-months and fully into the stage that a friend of my mom's describes as "Maximum Mobility, Minimum Judgment." So the extended treadmill session will have to wait for tonight after bedtime, but I'm very happy to have the strength workout done. I don't expect to be able to lift many things today, and tomorrow may involve a lot of sitting and saying, "ow," but for now I'm happy.

The other thing that makes me happy about coming up with this workout is that in 10 days or so, I'm going to be homeless for 6 weeks or more (depending on when we can get into our new place) and gym availability is going to be sketchy at best, so now I know that I'm going to be able to put together effective workouts regardless. I figure if I add in a jump rope, marching in place (sometime soon, Holly needs to tell y'all about LRR), and/or jumping jacks, and I'll be good for the cardio portions of the circuit.