Shirt-Soaking NSV

One month ago today, I wrote this in my exercise journal:

April 22
Sweat and Shout Also Called Sweatin' to the Oldies
4

This KICKED my butt, way too hard for me at this point!

I remembered I had only attempted this video once because I thought I would die. I dropped my arms and marched in place through quite a bit of it.

Today I challenged myself and put Sweatin' to the Oldies 4 in.

I sweat a lot. In fact, my shirt is soaked! I love that part! By golly, I did it. The whole thing. No dropping of the arms, no marching in place, I did the whole thing.

Now I might not have been that graceful, but I am just so psyched! It is amazing to me how fast my fitness is building!

The whole time I was working out, I never once had the thoughts, "When is this going to be over? How many songs left? I'm going to die! I can't do this! $&*(%!!!!" (expletives deleted.)

I am proud!

I also stink. Time to hit the shower!

Experimenting

Yesterday I experimented with a few things.

Firstly, I googled natural diuretics. With all that extra water, I wanted to eat something that would promote water loss. Fortunately for me, carrots were on the list. So I had an entire cup of shredded carrots.

I also got all my water in.

I had no diet pop. (I don't call it soda, I call it pop which drives my son crazy because where we live people call it soda, where I grew up people called it pop. lol)

I also drank extra coffee on purpose.

The result: Let's just say it would have been a good day to buy stock in toilet paper. lol It worked. This morning, the scale was back to Monday's weight plus the swelling is back to normal. Normal is slightly swollen. Yesterday morning was a I-will-struggle-putting-my-shoe-on-kind of day.

The other experiment I did was to get out my Food Mover. I could only find the cards for a 1400 calorie diet, but that was easy to solve. I went online at RS's site and looked at the info. According to him, I should be on an 1800 calorie diet. So I used his online Food Mover, opened the correct windows and actually used the thing.

The result was eye opening. I was short on protein all day. So for dinner, I deviated from my plan and had an omelet. I'm not quite certain how to count fats, as I had sunflower seeds on my salads. They're high in healthy fat and you sure don't get many for the points. I don't know if I should have counted fat for those or not. If not, I was short on my fat.

I got no fruit in yesterday.

So surprisingly, protein, fruit and fat are the things I need to work on. I did get all the protein in, after adjusting. That won't work so well when hubby is home as we plan our dinners.

I don't plan on using the Food Mover every day. I think it's a good idea for me to study the lists of what counts for what and watch my journals better. I think using the Food Mover once a week would be good for keeping me on target.

I'm very good at planning my points for the day. Now I just need to get used planning the food categories. I need to become very aware.

I'm getting there. When I started this journey, I didn't give a hoot about eating from all the food groups. While I was aware and chose mostly healthy fats, the rest was not good.

Small changes. This is not a race, and everything I do builds. You can't take a person who got up to 282.5 and drastically change their diet overnight and expect it to stick or work. It won't. At least for me it won't, because I'm too stubborn. I have to do things on my time schedule, when I'm ready. This has to be completely customized to me.

Logically I know what has to be done. Mentally I have to prepare for it, build myself up, convince myself it's the right thing to do and that I can do it. When I'm there, I need to just do it. Gentle, gentle, gentle. I still say this journey is mostly mental. Before this began, I would have confessed I needed to play mind games to get going. Now I don't look at it as mind games at all, I look at it as timed reasoning, proper mental preparation, and self-confidence.

Veggies...

I am proud to announce that today, I got 6 servings of veggies.

I had two huge salads, one for lunch and one as an after-dinner snack. Both were romaine lettuce salads with a minute amount of cabbage, and I added shredded carrots to each.

Yes, I know it isn't varied, but by golly, I did it! And I actually enjoyed it.

Shhh, I didn't say that.

It's a start. In February I wouldn't eat romaine lettuce, so maybe in the next three months of my journey, I'll add another vegetable. lol

Excuses

My son goes to an art class every week. His teacher is lovely. Her studio is cluttered, she seems unorganized, but she is brilliantly creative and talented. We enjoy chatting and I often stay 20 minutes or more after class is done visiting.

About six months ago, she was diagnosed with diabetes. She's probably 10 years older than me and 70 pounds thinner. She was diagnosed from 2 glucose tests. She told me that 110 is now the official diabetes number, down from 126. Interestingly, the internet gives 126 as the magic number, and 2 separate tests must show 126 or above. My number was 125 right on the dot when I was in the hospital last year and then when I returned home. Three different doctors saw my numbers and none gave me a diabetic diagnosis.

The third doctor I saw was the one who told me I was pre-diabetic. I had never heard of that term, and so I did my research. Pre-diabetis, Syndrome X, insulin resistance: I have it. And that is probably the biggest reason why I started this journey although the thing that motivated me to start was seeing my photo at 282.5.

So his teacher and I visit about health, exercise, nutrition, etc. She has a membership to Curves but never goes. She and her buddy who like to go together can never get together at the same time. If they can, it's once a week. Not realizing it was the wrong question, I asked her why she didn't go alone. Her eyes got as large as saucers and I heard every excuse in the book.

While on the subject of Curves, she stated it was her favorite form of exercise because she doesn't sweat there. She told me she can go there, work out, come home and teach a class with no need for a shower in between.

She told me when summer gets here, she'll be able to exercise more because she'll have more time.

She told me it was impossible for her to exercise during the school year because she teaches part time at a church school, then has three classes a week in her studio.

She started in with a very long list of all the reasons she couldn't.

I'm not meaning to be mean or pick on her. I'm just sharing my observations. The reality is this: She doesn't want to exercise, knows she should, so makes excuses.

I never wanted to exercise, either, even though I enjoyed it once I started.

I had a membership to Curves once. It's not for me. While I liked the machines, I never got out of breath, I never raised my heart rate. I did maintain my weight loss while I went, but I know my cardiovascular system did not improve like it has from doing my exercise videos. My muscles did not tone as much as they have while exercising at home. I didn't sweat.

If someone would have asked me a few months ago why I didn't exercise, I would have been brutally honest and said: Because I don't want to. That's the simple truth. I may have thrown in an excuse that it's hard to do while homeschooling and I'm usually too tired at night. Both are true statements, but if you want something bad enough, you'll figure out a way to do it.

Exercising every day has been difficult on our schedule. I homeschool my son who has ADD with no hyperactivity, and other medical issues. One of the main reasons we started homeschooling was because he could not learn in a classroom because he couldn't pay attention due to sensory overload. He's finally able to do things without me sitting next to him keeping him on task. So I can slip away for an hour while he's doing an assignment.

The flow of the day is off. I don't want to shower first thing as I know I will sweat like a pig when I exercise. So that's still sort of off for me. Yet with all the weirdness it has added to our schedule, we're adjusting. We're getting done what needs to get done.

So no more excuses for me. It's something I have to do every day for the rest of my life. Yes, I will miss a day here and there. I still haven't fallen into the every day routine, but I'm close. The benefits are wonderful, as I can feel muscles in my body now, I exercised away a panic attack, and I know my blood work will be better, I can't wait to see the results. I know it is of great benefit to my body. Hopefully I can keep diabetes at bay, or if I have it now, I can keep it under control.

Now, to work on my excuses for why I don't get my veggies in. That's a post for another day.

Duh

Sometimes my brain just doesn't function right. It took me the whole day to figure out the swelling. Actually both legs were swollen, but my right leg always gets bigger so it's more noticeable.

The cause: heat. Tuesday it was 94 degrees here and I had to be out in the heat. Heat always makes me swell up. And it's usually a delayed reaction type thing, it builds. The swelling usually lasts a couple days. So I'm still swollen, drinking my water and propping my legs.

I do have a doctor appointment scheduled the first of June and I'm hitting her hard with questions and concerns. This swelling issue, which I have had for years, is on the agenda.

I did work out today, as I figured it would help with the circulation. I wanted to do a shorter tape, so I pulled Richard Simmons' Broadway Blast Off. I hardly broke a sweat and kind of regretted doing it for that reason. I think that will be a good one when I have a cold or am not feeling well, it's enough to get the body moving and touch my breathing a bit, but it didn't make me sweat. I loved the music, though, and I kept singing The Telephone Song in my head after.

It's late, I need to get to bed.

Throb

I woke up this morning to a throbbing leg. My right leg is very swollen, to the point it's throbbing. I looked over the food journal from yesterday, and aside from 3 thin slices of deli ham (1 pt worth) I didn't have high sodium, and nothing that I can figure that would trigger the water. I did have Taco Bell Monday night, but that shouldn't take this long to show up.

My hip on that side is kind of sore as well.

Oh joy. Will be drinking lots of water today, will work out as usual for circulation as that always helps.

My leg has held more water the past week or so than normal. I have been eating 1 pt worth of deli ham every day for lunch, because I was sick to death of tuna. I need to revamp my noon sandwich and see if that helps overall. I love ham so much, which is a shame. I wouldn't even dream of walking into a Subway right now.

I have also noticed something weird about the scale. IF I get a full 8 hours sleep, the scale reports the previous morning's weight or less. If I do not get a full 8 hours, it's up. I know this because I will hop on the scale a few times in the morning on an up day, and it eventually creeps back down.

The past week I noticed a lot of up and down, but not going below 258.5 so Monday morning's weigh-in was a huge and welcome surprise. I'm wondering now if the morning is perhaps not the best time for me to weigh in. I'm going to monitor my weight at the same time every day at a couple of different time intervals.

I'm just funny that way. Jumping on the scale a lot does nothing to me psychologically, I find the science of it fascinating. I don't freak about the scale. I do freak when I have been working my butt off, eating my points, and have small losses...that's different. But it doesn't bother me to hop on now and again.

I know a lot of people can't do that because they obsess. Perhaps it seems like I'm obsessing, but seriously, I'm just curious about how weight fluctuates. Maybe that's the homeschool mom in me, I want to figure that out, study it, analyze it.

I think I'll take two Motrin for the inflammation, lie down on the couch with my leg propped up, and have DS do some reading for an hour. Hopefully that will help the leg a bit.

To Lisa Kay at Dumb Belle

Lisa Kay, I tried to comment on your blog today but no comment box will appear. I clicked on two of your entries to try to no avail. Just wanted you to know, as I was trying to say and respond to something you said!