The Physical Challenge!

I used to love the gameshow Double Dare on TV.  The show was part trivia questions, part obstacle course.  If you could not answer a question or thought the other team couldn't you dare them to do it, and then they could dare you back until you got to the point where you had no choice but to compete by taking on something physical rather than mental.  The obstacles came in the form of physical challenges which usually involved someone running around or squatting awkwardly, while someone else spent their time filing a cup with a line that was attached to the squatter with some kind of liquid.  I hated the physical challenges, they made me cringe.  I was always the person yelling at my tv screen, telling the contestants to answer the question so they wouldn't be as tortured as I imagined I would be with that stupid challenge.  I knew that if it were me and we had a physical challenge we would lose but, if it was all flexing my brain muscles I could probably beat the other team.  The physical challenges required way too much movement and hand-eye coordination to appeal to me.

This is how it has always been with moving.  Unless I was dancing, the less I moved the better.  To me, sweating was nasty and people who sweat, stank...ironic really considering that I loved to work up a sweat from dancing, in this situation sweating meant I was doing it well.  Regardless all of my former reasons meant I avoided physical activity to some extent.  Of course that didn't stop me from being on the basketball team in the eighth grade (I had really cute coaches) or the band in high school (I joined as a favor to friend), it's just that aside from that crazy basketball thing which I was terrible at (theres just no getting away from the whole hand-eye thing), the marching band was a lot of slow walking and taking really deep breaths to I could play my fife.  Unless it was really hot, there was no sweating involved in that and I was so terrible at the basketball I was barely called on to play anyway.  No, sweating, grunting, panting, all of these things were the enemy to my state.

So here I am decades later and getting up is still my biggest challenge and so Weight Watchers wants to kill me by setting up their 6 Week Active Living challenge.  I say they want to kill me of course because it's like the people there psychically know this is going to be the hardest thing for me and so they set this up just to torture me.  For 6 weeks you can track your activities online and maybe win some prizes.  Of course I joined it.  I need to start getting up and maybe this is a good way to challenge myself.  I'm getting over my sweat issue.  No really, despite what I said earlier about sweating being my own personal terrorism threat, I'm growing quite fond of working one up.  At the gym if I don't sweat after my elliptical workout I get kinda bummed.  I purchased a heart rate monitor that will tell you how many calories you've burned.  I push myself to see that heart rate number go up, to know my heart is pumping.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to blow a heart valve or anything but I am slowly beginning to see how the whole working out thing can be appealing.  It does alter your mood, your self-esteem, its benefits feel almost instant.  (Of course so does the pain, but lets not focus on the negative, right?)

So now I consider myself physically challenged.  I'm going to start wearing my pedometer again, start working out consistently, keep tracking my points and start tracking my activity.  I might win one of their prizes and even if I don't the weight loss all that exercising will turn into makes me a winner in the end.  Its a win/win the more I lose! Here's to winning by losing for the next 6 weeks:)

Falling off the Wagon

Ok so I had two weeks of great, followed by a week of not so hot and you know what?  I'm ok, so this is either growth or the first step in giving up.  I'm thinking I like the sound of growth better.  My total weight loss went to 37.2 lbs (woo hoo) but then that loss was followed by Mother's Day, where I did really well and then really terribly! My friends were all super cool and I had a wonderful breakfast that consisted of a Parfait and then 1 pancake w/ suger free syrup.  Mmm mmm mmm.  But then we had dinner and although I did great at the end I started mindlessly picking at the food around me.  Chips, guacamole, more chips...it just did not go well. Since then I have not been back to a meeting and I have the feeling today will be categorized by a weight gain. However, I choose to use that number, whatever it might be, as feedback not failure and as the impetus to begin again. I may have fallen off the wagon but luckily it's going slow enough for me to get up, dust myself off and jump back on!

Motivation! Keep it coming.

Today's Weight Watchers meeting was about what got you motivated and keeps you motivated. I'd have to say for me they are definitely not the same thing. I began attending weight watchers because I had been asked to be a bridesmaid in my friend's wedding. She's opted out of the wedding in favor of buying a house with her fiancé (smart cookie that girl is) but I'm still going to meetings. I'm not sure what's motivating me right now. I think it's a combination of things...I'm still holding out for her wedding, I think this blog, my cousins, my friends, my clothes, meetings. Motivation is coming at me from a bunch of little places and I think that's the way is has to be for me.

When my cousin's mom emailed me, that kept me going another week, when I reached my first milestone that kept me going a week. My life is now going week to week. I don't think too far ahead. I can't picture myself at goal, hell I don't even know what goal is. All I know is that every week I have that weigh in and every week the attempt to lose one more pound begins again and that for the rest of my life I have another week to go either to finally reach my goal (when i decide what that is) or to stay there. So here's to motivation:)

The Chef next Door is The AntiChrist!!

I posted my last entry during my lunch period today.  At 11:23, I clicked publish; at 11:24, the bell rang; at 11:25 the chef next door comes up to me with a piping hot chocolate souffle that just came out of the oven and which he insisted I eat right away while it was still warm!! So after I grumble to him that he is ruining my diet, I take a taste, it melts in my mouth and 20 minutes later half of a VERY generous portion is gone!! Lord deliver me!! Did I actually say that work was a good place to keep to my diet?  I take it all back!! You know I went on wikipedia and looked up Antichrist (I know, not the end all, be all of reference material but it can often get the job done) and it said "The antichrist will seemingly provide for the needs of the people but deny them ultimate salvation."  The chef next door is this person, if I did not love this man so much for his wit and generosity I would hate him!! And isn't that what the Antichrist is trying to get us all to do?...why am I being punished?  And the thing is, I'm not obligated to eat any of it and I know, but it genuinely is really good food, and the chef and the kids do such a great job it is really hard to say no.  Now the trick is to give away the other half of the this souffle, please Lord (the real one this time) let my service student come today so she can eat all of this!!  I just can't take it:(

Update: It has been over a year since this post! lol.  Today is the 16th of May of 2013.  I'm much closer to my goal than I was then but still not there. And, after a year, I still can't say no, the food is still delicious, and I think I just have to deal with it.  I'm willfully falling into sin! Chef 1 - Me 0 (but what a delicious way to go down! lol).

What's that saying about God and work?

I'm actually grateful to have a job.  Not because of altruistic reasons like educating the future minds of America, or being grateful to be able to pay my bills and live my life or feed my family, or the seemingly esoteric reason of having health insurance but because it keeps my eating in line.  I find that while I'm at work small manageable meals are doable and not so daunting.  At home for reasons mentioned before, I can't seem to get a hold of my eating but at work it's usually no problem.  Of course there is the ever dangerous cooking class which is right next door, but for the most part it's all good and gravy (if you'll pardon the pun).  So last week when I was given the opportunity to teach summer school again I jumped on it.  I figured it was going to be the only way to survive this summer!

Of course with all things there comes a price and that price is generosity.  It is nothing but generosity that keeps the chef next door feeding us whenever he can.  But generosity pops out at you when you least expect it (and sometimes when its unwelcome, a frustratingly frustrating oxymoron in and of itself...unwelcome generosity) Yesterday was my friend Erin's birthday.  I decided to get her a cake to share with her 1st period Honor's class, because she loves them and because she (and they) have been doing a totally awesome job of tackling one of my favorite plays which I suggested we do together this summer and that she had to do on her own because my classes were switched.  Anyway, she generously gave cake to her kids, brought me a thankfully small piece and gave some to our other work BFF next door and her internee.  So yesterday he thanks me and tells me the cake was delicious, I tell him he is most welcome and I'm glad he enjoyed it  and today he (figuratively) kicks me in the shins and gifts me for the cake by bringing me a glazed doughnut!! I mean, What-The-Hell?  Dude? Really?  A thank you was MORE than enough.  Here I am trying to eat sensibly and you come cutely bearing a doughnut!! And GLAZED!! One of my F-A-V-O-R-I-T-E-S!! It couldn't be a chocolate?  Or that plain kind that tastes like sweetened cardboard?  I want to give it away so badly, but feel so badly at the thought of giving it away.  I recognize that this is going to be a part of my learning to reject food but it has pitfalls, the plan to give it away.  This will become a mission in and of itself.  Students love announcing when you have given something to them that you didn't give to anyone else.  I cannot run the risk of a kid walking through the hallway talking about how delicious the doughnut Ms. Martinez gave him/her was.  It's like I can't win for losing!! Pitfalls, pitfalls everywhere pitfalls!  I must now figure out a way to get rid of this doughnut which is sitting in its DD bag teasing and taunting me with its yummy goodness.  Wish me luck.  Work is going to be my life change and salvation or destruction.

Still I'm grateful for my job...I guess:-/