Category Archives: Fitness and/or Fatness

I went a little overboard on the exercise this week and maybe now I need a life preserver thrown to me.

I ate a lot on Thanksgiving. A painfully lot.

There were a couple of social outings with friends and there was more eating.  And drinking.

And even though I did run a 10K (for the first time ever) on Thanksgiving morning, I only worked out one other time over the 4 day weekend.

So my weight was only down 0.2 pounds as my last weigh-in.  Which is fine.  I was glad not to have gone up a little bit, really.

But I got all motivated to make sure that the next week would be better, and ended up doing 8 workouts in the past 5 days.  Boot camp at 6 am every morning before work, two running workouts and 1 Body Pump class after work.

The plan also included a spinning class today and a long run, probably 5 or 6 miles, tomorrow.

I am exhausted.  My knee feels like a balloon full of jell-o.  I’ve been getting home in the evenings in a state of collapse.  Being a horrible crank pot because I’m just so tired.

And now I am fighting with myself.  I really should not work out today.  I could use a rest.  But I could just go to spin class.  It wouldn’t kill me.  I could just do it and it’d be done.

The fact that I’m having this fight in my head is proof that I have gotten crazy.  Or is it just proof that I’m making excuses to not go to spin class?

I have this grand master plan that I must fit in to my snow pants again in time to go up to Tahoe a time or two this winter.  Which means that I’ve got until New Year’s, roughly, to lose some uncertain amount of weight.  Because I’ve got no idea how much I weighed when I fit into those pants.  It was just less.

So “grand master plan” meant that I was going to try to lose about 5 pounds per month for a total of 20 by the end of 2010.  Totally reasonable, right?

The first few months of September were not being entirely amenable to the plan, so I decided to up my game and joined up with a local boot camp.

I had been pondering joining up for ages.  I walk by these women every day on the way to work.  Back when I did Couch to 5k, some of that motivation was to try and get myself boot camp ready.  And then I started doing some Jillian Michaels DVDs in the mornings.  And then I filled out the paperwork and I went.

And lo.

That first day was heinous.  It was non stop do this do that, get up, get down, push up, jump, run, skip rope, bicycles, burpies, mountain climbers, lunges, gasping for breath and wiping the sweat out of my eyes.

Almost all of the other girls are very, very fit.  I expect that I probably do about 2/3 of the workout that many of them do, because I’m so much slower.  I gnash my teeth at them and envision catching up to them.  And then I can’t even really see them any more ’cause they’ve run around the next corner already and then I think about maybe just walking a little bit for the rest of the way.

There are usually one or two other “fatties” there.  Without them, I think I may have bailed on boot  camp for all the shame.  It is so secretly good to have someone with whom you can meet eyes and you know that you’re both just thinking “shit god damn mother fucker.”

This morning was my 15th consecutive day, excluding the weekend times when I just concentrate on asking my knees to please hold it together.
Only 4 more days to go, and then a whole month will be behind me.  There’s a week off, and then it starts up again for another month, which I’m thinking I will go for.

It’s still heinous.  Each and every day.  I do feel pretty good when it’s all over, but Maggie being Maggie, I think the dread beforehand is a lower low than the post workout high is high.

It also gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, those snow pants can be squeezed into.  I will not be trying them on any time soon.  But I am hopeful.

Scowl am I today.

I got on the scale and the number it decided to tell me was the exactly same one as the number a week ago.  And I am bitter, as I was certain that it would be something ever so slightly nicer and that I would be pleased and encouraged and that it would be a secret good feeling that I’d get to carry around.

And yet.

It wasn’t a perfect week, but it seemed like it coulda been a pretty good one.  I did four of my Couch to 5K runs.  My work day eating was pretty darned close to perfect.  There were some transgressions over the weekend time, but still… I was convinced that it would balance out in my favor.

Granted, I don’t actually count calories properly, so some of what I’m doing is just guessing.  I know that I’ve been eating 200 calories worth of cereal and milk in the morning, but I also put a few walnuts and blueberries on that.  A serving of walnuts could have another 200 calories, but I’m definitely have a lot less than that.  But is it a quarter of a serving?  A tenth?  Shrug.  I dunno.  And I guess I’m just not at a point of caring that much.

So this week I’m still going to eat my walnuts and not worry about them, but how about I don’t eat 2 hamburgers in one go while tailgating?  How bout that Margaret?  Scoff.