Biggest Loser Loser

I am in class right now.

I got disqualified this week from Biggest Loser, but only because she didn't get my e-mail reporting my weight. But I sent it.
My tummy hurts. Maybe I didn't really want a slurpee after all. I just saw some thing on cnn about Obama's slurpee summit and thought--I want that!! Now I want some aspirin. Hopefully, I will be back re-qualified, though since this is the last week, I think I would have to lose a leg to win. And I don't want to.

They switched up Weight Watchers this week. It's basically inflation. I now have 30 daily points and 49 weekly points--I used to have 25 daily points and 35 weekly points. They no longer count calories (I mean, they technically do, because they have carbos and fat), but they calculate based on carbos, fat, fiber and protein.

Tragically, carbos comprise about 99% of my diet (not really, but I do like them best) and this new formulation really sticks it to you when you have a carbo. On the better side, fruits and vegetables now have zero points!! We'll see how it goes, but as you can probably tell (by virtue of the slurpee), it's been a rough week so far.

I totally forgot both my cell phone and computer chargers on Monday. I was so upset. I'm still pretty much done with school. I just feel like I've been wrung out. Fortunately, school is almost finished--I technically have 2 days left after today. By technically I also mean practically. I didn't realize this, but I only have school next monday (tuesday is a constructive thursday, and I don't have class on Thursday). Then come exams. Hopefully between them comes a little bit of studying.

I did exercise yesterday. It was awesome. I got little weights from my mother-in-law, and I did some weighted-squats and even did really high reps of regular bicep curls, etc. It was fun. I want a nap now. I just participated in class! I'm supposed to be "on call" today, which means that I'm supposed to answer any textbook questions that the teacher asks me. I just answered one, even though she's just been doing most of them herself.

the rundown

1. christmas is coming: i have purchased/planned many gifts and i am super excited

2. i had a zero sum game this week, thankfully, it was super hard but I did not gain (even though I did not lose).

3. i thought nothing on earth could be worse than a 2 hour lecture followed by a 1 hour simulated-negotiation on a Monday night, but I was proved wrong tonight when we skipped the sim and had a 3 hour lecture instead. I saw people literally pulling out their eyelashes to stay awake. *that statement may not have been true.

4. Whole Foods makes the best potato soup ever (outside of homemade).

5. my roommate's husband is home for a while from the army--either I'm missing something or military personnel go to bed REALLY early.

6. I still cannot find an explanation for "quantitative easement" that doesn't make me feel lightheaded and angry

7. 9 days of school left! (by which I mean out of the Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays that I go to school, there are 9 days left--and I'm not counting next Wednesday because I don't think that's going to happen.

8. putting a damper on the fact that next Wednesday's classes aren't going to happen for me is the fact that I have a makeup class scheduled for the night before--as in, my commute night. Last time this happened, I just sat in class and wiggled for 50 minutes. My brain is shot after my natural last class--trying to squeeze an extra one in just doesn't work for me.

9. my husband is wicked sick. I feel really bad for him. This morning I said I should stay home and take care of him. It started out as a joke, but as he worsened, I worried that maybe I really should be there to make sure he doesn't die. He seems to be doing better though, so I'm staying.

10. If you're ever looking for a really aggravating alternative to reality, try the Nancy Drew computer games. They sound all innocent and light-hearted, but they're super scary and super hard. I made the mistake of thinking I was a "Master Detective" (the only alternative to "Junior" so can you blame me?). I have a number of things I'm supposed to do at any given point, and a couple of days have elapsed since I last played, and I can't remember what I'm supposed to do. The game won't progress until I do it--none of the characters will talk to me, and when I clicked on my checklist to see what it was I was forgetting, all it said was "I'm a Master Detective, and I don't need a checklist to remind me of the things I need to do." So...let me get this straight: the older you are, the LESS you need to write things down to remember them... I keep muddling through, getting super frustrated, and looking up the game "walkthroughs" online--essentially cheating. But you know what? I feel the same sense of accomplishment when I complete one of the mind-numbingly physically impossible challenges by cheating as I do when I figure it out on my own. Even if you have to cheat to win it still means you're outsmarting the computer. Right...?

11. I wouldn't recommend the salmon pasta salad at Whole Foods. It kind of reminded me of when you're a little kid playing at the beach for the first time, and your mouth is open wide because you are laughing hysterically while you are buffeted by the waves, and then a big gob of sea foam froths into your mouth and you realize how much like being in hell it is to be in the filthy waves churning with the poop of people, land animals and all of the sea creatures who are probably just waiting to slurp you up and recycle you back into the ocean that only moments ago you thought was so lovely. I still ate my whole little container of it, though...

Have a pleasant evening!

Sweaty and Piggy

I just took what may have been the hottest shower ever survived by a human. At the time it felt good. Now it feels...hot. and sleepy. good thing it's bed time!

this week has been kind of weird, diet-wise (again, not diet as in restricting what I eat, but diet as in the total mix of things that I consume). Yesterday and today, I've gotten extremely hungry early in the evening, but had to delay gratification. Apparently, my body is able to accept eating a smaller amount of food throughout the day, but it draws the line at going without food for a terribly long time (yesterday and today the cutoff point for terribly long has been around an hour and a half).

Long story short, I am front-loading while I'm away from home--allowing myself to consume my flexible points early in the week--so I can get serious when I'm back around more fresh produce and ways to preserve it--also home-cooked meals (not like the kind grandma used to make--more like the kind richard simmons daydreams about).

Speaking of which, those little containers--I'd say they're about half a pint if that--of raspberries are 10/$10 at our grocery store this week. Most of my snacks down here are complex carbohydrates--but today, I got a little thing of raspberries and snarfed it down like my dog when a cookie falls on the floor and I chase after her to get it and despite the fact that it is roughly the size of her head, she sucks it up in the amount of time it takes for her to run around the room and hide under the couch. Okay, maybe I savored the raspberries a LITTLE more than that...

Anyway, it's kind of hard not to feel guilty about eating a lot, even if it's within the plan and you've given yourself permission to do it.

Ah, shucks...please pass the raspberries...

2 Steps Forward and 1 Step Back

The MOST frustrating thing about weight loss is that it moves so slowly, and that a set back can set you back soo far.

Two weeks ago: down 3.1lbs
Last week: up 1.3lbs

Net loss: 1.8lbs--not bad, but less than 1lb per week.

This week: down 2.4lbs, for a total of 4.4lbs in the past 3 weeks, which is almost 1.5lbs a week on average for the past 3 weeks.

I don't know what next week will bring, but I do feel discouraged. I sometimes feel like the work of one day should constitute a sufficient atonement for all of my past bingeing, and that I should be able to then be back to a healthy weight, having learned my lesson and exercising more self-control next time. Compound that feeling over weeks and months, and even though it's .6lbs away from a loss of 30lbs overall, I feel like it's been so painstaking that even that amount seems weeny.

I need to lose another 30lbs before I get to a "healthy" BMI and another 45 before I reach my goal. How can I keep motivated? It is soo easy to gain weight. I could probably gain five pounds this week without any real discomfort, and without having to really work at it. If I had to LOSE 5 pounds though, it would probably kill me (or at least involve a number of eating-disorder techniques).

I wonder sometimes if my goal is possible. Or if, by the time I'm down to a small number of points (18 is as low as WW goes, I'm at 25 now), I'll feel so deprived that I'll break down and get even fatter than before. I had a friend in college who probably lost 70lbs over the course of a year. She's popped back up again. Out of everybody I know, many, many have really gained a significant amount of weight over the past 5 years, while I can think of less than a handful who have significantly lost.

Before I got married, some crazy woman took me aside and told me to throw away all the cookie sheets I received because "you never lose weight after you get married--you just put it on...you'll see!" That felt good. It has now proven inaccurate to some degree--you can lose weight while you're married. The real test is: can you keep it off? From 189lbs to 180lbs, I've lost probably 20lbs, because I have good weeks and bad weeks.

Should I just plan that the 75lbs I want to lose will actually be more like 150 when I get right down to losing it? Do I need to lose every pound twice before it's really gone?

Happy to be Me

just more chin and forehead to love...on the other hand, I think my button nose, or whatever it is, is really funny (in a good way) and I know it's not in vogue, but I love my freckles!

I hate it when celebrities are being interviewed by magazines and are asked, "What part of your body do you HATE?" or some question like that. On the one hand, this question reveals that *gasp* celebrities are human and despite having perfect bodies, they still feel insecure--so the part of your body you're worried about is probably less noticeable than you think it is. On the other hand, it establishes a norm--even if you are super healthy, in really good shape, etc., you should always be ashamed or vexed by some part of your body.

I wonder why we all can't get along with our body parts. Why can't we have a norm of being happy in the body that we're in? Before I lost some weight, I felt like there was no part of my body that I could really be proud of. Having lost some, I think all of it looks better. I want to lose weight so it looks better still--but I'm not losing sleep over some part of my body. My body is a machine, and I'm working to get it into more efficient working order. There is so much more to life than worrying about my butt having cellulite on it or whatever.

But maybe that's because up to now, the biggest imperfection has been evenly spread around--and it's been totally changeable. I can lose weight and be much happier with how I look--it's not something I could never change except through radical, gratuitous, plastic surgery.

Now that I've lost some weight though, especially around my face, I found myself freaking out over my natural face shape--long and narrow. My face looks to me like a super-elongated oval and it's freaking me out. I had hoped that once I lost weight, I would stop cringing at photos of myself, but now I've turned into the very thing I despise!!--someone who freaks out about things they can't change rather than embracing themselves for who they are.

So, this post represents my last freak-out about what I perceive to be my freakishly-shaped face. Looking online for hairdos and stuff to minimize it's long appearance, I was informed that my face shape is pretty versatile, and that a lot of models have this face shape. I was also thinking about an older woman we visited last night. She has had MS since she was 24, and requires a wheelchair to get around. When we visited last night, she slowly lifted herself out of the chair and lowered herself to the couch. I offered to help--but she said, "I've been doing this for 43 years and I can just keep doing it!" We talked for a minute about how your body can adapt. She has the grace to be appreciative of what her body can do, not an obsession over it's imperfections. Her attitude was that you take what life gives you and you just keep going. And she's much the better for it.

So, to all the celebrities out there, and to me too, let this be a reminder that we'd rather have too-skinny legs than no legs, a long round face than no face, and most of all, the opportunity to impact the things that have much more meaning in life than any of our petty external insecurities.

The Best Toy Ever

Editor's note: This toy is a lot more awesome if you realize that it only opens its mouth and makes a noise when you squeeze its belly.

I got this toy because I am sick. It made me very happy. Greta HATES it. She wants to make it die. In the video, you can hear her whining.

So, I ate within my points today, but I didn't eat good food (like a large frosty instead of breakfast, no lunch, and then some noodles and stuff and popcorn). Then I got super sick. Super, super, super sick.

Then we got locked out of our house. I had to break in. With a crowbar in the mail box. I was awesome. It was hard and I got cut. But you should see the other guy.

Then we got new (old) couches. From a family in our ward that's moving. Tomorrow morning. It was awesome--it was raining a bit while we moved them, but it started raining harder after we got them inside. I was glad we dodged that bullet.

Anyway, I hope you all are having a good day. I am super respiratory sick. I thought if you lost weight and exercised more you would never get sick again. THAT IS A MEDICAL MYTH. I'm going to put all that weight back on again, because I am so jaded.

Just kidding. It's time for bed (obviously).