The Workout Worked Out

Wow.  That was a long "24 hour"s.  🙄

Let me start where I left off.

I went to the workout.  I was soooooo nervous and totally freaked out and completely anxiety- ridden.  All I kept thinking about was how out of shape I was going to be compared to everyone else.  And, really, it did me no good.

Everyone starts somewhere.  Nobody is born looking like an Olympic athlete.  You never hear about babies bursting out of the womb and bench pressing the changing table.   "Drop and give me 50" said no pediatrician ever.

Except for maybe this baby's doctor

Anyway, my therapist, Steve, always says to "identify the fear" when I get like this.   And then determine "if it's a rational fear or not".

Just the word FEAR kind of straightened me out.  It's a freakin' workout class.....with friends.....taught by someone I trust more than most family members.  What is there to be AFRAID of?   

Nothing.  And as I pulled into the parking lot, I became blessedly fearless and totally psyched.  I was a tad nervous, but I think that's a rational reaction.

I was definitely a new kid on the block in the workout world, but it all felt very normal to not be able to lift a lot of weight, or do reverse lunges with my knee far from touching the floor.  I giggled with Lynn when we lost our balance using our resistance bands for curls.  And Rose and I shot each other desperate looks when Trish called out, "Okay....let's do it all again" after a grueling set of side planks and crunches.  

Again, everyone starts somewhere.  I looked at that class as being my baseline by which I would measure every workout to come.  Cuz I was gonna go back.  I knew it when I packed up my equipment.  I accomplished stuff and I felt completely awesome afterward!  

Don't we look happy post-workout?  I love them ever so.  Me and my girls......

Flash forward to yesterday and, while I still can't do some things well, I know that my knee was waaaaaay closer to the floor than it was two months ago while doing my reverse lunges.  And I have increased weight and amount of resistance to my workout.  My biceps jiggle a lot less when I shake my arms and I can do some killer squats.  

Here is the biggest shocker of them all.....

I'm having hand surgery in a few days and I'M GOING TO MISS GOING TO MY CLASS!  

I can't believe I just typed those words in reference to working out, and yet I mean them with every fiber of my being.  In June, if you told me that I would be longing for the exact thing that I was totally freaked out to even start, I would've told you that you were completely bonkers.   

But it's true.  Totally true story.

xoxo

Vicki

Making A Life Changing Decision..... fun! fun! fun!

Hello, everyone!  This is my first post of 2014 because it took me this long to find the courage to write it.  Actually, the writing part is easy.  It's that some of the photos that are a bit traumatizing.  They're not so flattering.

Last July I downloaded a bunch of photos from my camera and I saw THIS little bit o' hideousness:

I looked at it and thought, "What in the hell have I become?"  There were multiple photos of me with my mom and Allie and each one was worse than the next!  I have a truly hellacious one that I'll save for later.

I started looking through other photos and NOTHING was appealing.  It all was bad, bad, bad.  At 2am, I found myself feeling like I was going to explode.

I had tried every diet, program, regimen, support group out there, with the exception of Phen-Phen.  I was too scared to do that.  However, I wasn't too scared to be a part of research!  I participated in a "clinical trial" testing a new diet medication that was supposedly holistic.  I hope for their sake that I was part of the control group! On a business trip I tried Xenadrine and nearly had a heart attack in my hotel room.  Anyway, if you want to throw a "program" name at me, go ahead..... chances are really good that I tried it.

So, back to 2am.

On the side of a webpage was an ad for Take Shape For Life.  What was that?  It was something new.  New to ME that is.  It's been around for eons.  I clicked on the ad and read everything I could find on it.  This was literally my last chance.  There was nothing else.

As I told Justin about this in the morning, I started to cry.  I didn't want to be a fat person anymore.  I didn't want my daughter to be embarrassed by me.  I wanted to be able to keep up with her and not feel exhausted.  I didn't want to be out of control anymore.  I didn't want to be so disgusted by myself that I didn't look in the mirror when I got out of the shower  anymore.  I didn't want to be so ashamed that I didn't even want my husband to hug me anymore.

So, I enrolled in Take Shape For Life and BAM!  A miracle occurred.

I lost weight.  For the first time ever I lost more than 8 pounds and it felt easy.  At first it was a little challenging, but let me just say that when you get on your scale and the numbers keep going down, you don't want to quit.  I was skeptical that this was going to be a permanent change, but the numbers kept getting smaller!  When I saw that I was 25 pounds lighter, I was doing the forbidden dance of joy all over my living room.

As most people know (because I didn't shut up about it), I got sick at the end of September.  I had to make a number of changes in my medication and what I was eating.  By the end of December I was so eager to get back to Take Shape For Life that I couldn't wait for January to start so I could jump back into the lifestyle.

And from September to January, I gained 4 pounds.  That's it.  Keep in mind that there were those two holidays that provide an endless supply of baked goods during that time.  And I did actually eat some.  But I had learned so much beforehand that I had actually changed my eating habits, which is one of the main goals, and I didn't spiral out of control.

On January 1st, I went back on the program and lost the 4 pounds plus another 3.  Seven pounds and the month isn't even over yet.  It took me EIGHT MONTHS to lose that on Jenny Craig.

I know you're thinking that this is all one big sales pitch, but it's not.  I'm actually training to be a TSFL Health Coach because #1) My coach (an awesome, inspiring guy named Justin in California) played an enormous part in my success and he thought I had the ability to do the same for other people  #2) I truly believe in this.  It works!  I'm proof and I want other people to know about it.

You can take it or leave it.  That's up to you.  But I'm only half way to my goal and if you would like to join me in losing weight and becoming healthier, I'd love the company and I'd love for us all to support each other.  I have an incredible group in California who opened their arms to me and they are always willing to welcome new people for encouragement (or if you just want to bug out about something).  I love them.

Next week, I'll be doing a Grand Opening of sorts.  If you know anyone who may be interested in joining me, or if you are interested, please let me know.  Call, email, text, Facebook me.  Smoke signal, pigeon carrier, and snail mail are also welcome.  :-)  You'll see more information next week.  Wish me luck!!

(Note: I will be continuing with my pet sitting business, for those of you who wondered!   How could I ever leave???)

In the meantime, here are some more photos of my big "Expedition To Health/Departure From FattyBoomALattyVille"

Me and Allie June 2013.  I felt like my face was almost a perfectly round circle!

This is me with Allie in September 2013, exactly 2 months after I started

This is the truly disgusting one I mentioned.  My thighs were so big that they started touching each other half way up my legs.  I realized at this point that my arms were not made for polo shirt sleeves either.

I can  no longer wear these pants without them falling off when I walk.  I have a huge collection of "vintage" Tommy Hilfiger jeans in size 14 if anyone is interested.  I used to have to do squats in these to "loosen them up" so I could sit down without making myself sick from the tight waistband

This tank top was usually too short to tuck in from my "fat rolls" around my waist.  On the second half of my journey, I plan on getting rid of the final roll and getting everything else a bit more toned.

If you clickity click on the banner below, it will seem like nothing happened, but it did!  You can close the window as soon as it opens if you like.  T'anks peeps!

The Babies = Weight Loss Theory

Where did this past week go?  It's like a big blur to me.  I know stuff happened, but I can't remember much beyond talking to furry beings for a good part of my day.  Oh, wait!  I do recall some nice weather.  Thank you Mother Nature for showing some mercy.

Operation Fattypants is still in effect.  Eight pounds gone.  I'd say "lost" but I'm not planning on looking for them.  This isn't a cat.  8lbs have vacated the premises and no one is in hot pursuit.  No one is going to be putting a photo of those 8lbs on the side of a milk carton with MISSING and REWARD IF FOUND printed near them.  (Do they even do that "missing persons on a milk carton" thing anymore?)

For the first time since I was pregnant, I got on the scale and the second number has changed to a rarely seen digit.  Prior to that, I hadn't seen that number since 1997.  A whole other century ago!  Way way back in the olden days.

Now, some of you might be scratching your heads.  That last paragraph was confusing in regards to the timeline.  I can explain.

26 years ago I weighed ABC.  After that, I "blossomed" up to ADC.  There was this whole Every Diet Known To Man experiment that I had going on for about 23 years where.... um... nothing happened.  Stationary/static fatness.

Then I got pregnant.  

I was determined that I was not going to be a woman who had a baby, gained 80lbs, and then spent the next 10 years blaming pregnancy and birth for being a chubster.  The doctor gave me one speech about weight.  ONE.  He said, "This is not an excuse to eat everything under the sun.  You're eating for one pregnant woman.  NOT two people.  One. pregnant. woman.  I'm not going to mention your weight to you again unless there's a problem.  If I don't say anything, consider yourself within healthy limits."  That was all I needed to hear.

This is where my occupation began working with me physically.  (It took long enough!)  I was walking all day while carrying this little package I couldn't put down.  To boot, this additional human being was sucking up 500 of my calories by just existing.

I gained twenty-one pounds.  For the first time in my life, my doctor was telling me that I was the poster child for healthy weight.  With a BMI of seven trillion for the past two decades, I sucked up every one of those pats on the back and beamed like a beacon.  I was so damn proud of myself.

Allie was born and a month later I got on that scale and saw a number I hadn't seen since I was twenty-five!  What followed was what any other woman in disbelief would do after weighing herself. 

I got off of the scale, shook it, put it back on the floor and got on it again.  Same number.

I took the scale into another room, stood on it and stared at the number.  Then I stepped off, flipped the scale over, took the batteries out to reset it, and tried weighing myself again.  Hot damn!  Could it be?

It was a joyous moment!  

It didn't last.  

Why?  I have no idea!  If I knew why it didn't last, you would be reading my New York Times Best Seller book on weight loss right now instead of my One-in-a-sea-of-a-kajillion-blogs ramblings.  

I can confirm that eating was involved.  That definitely contributed to the weight gain.  (Imagine that.)  I just don't know what happened between the joyous scale moment and me stuffing my face with reckless abandon.  Whatever occurred was a trigger to make me go from happy to porky ASAP.  That trigger is my enemy.  It does not want me to be healthy.

But my Little Peanut does.

Considering that one of the driving forces behind creating and implementing Operation Fattypants has been Allie, as well as the fact that she also helped me achieve this weight three years ago, I have come to the conclusion that babies contribute to weight loss.  Yup.... babies equal weight loss.

Can you imagine trying to prove that crazy theory?  REAL scientific conclusions get destroyed all of the time, and those ones actually have diagnostic information and endless experiments to back them up.  I'm just taking a shot in the dark with this one.  It's my own personal theory.  I'm nuts, so it's only fitting that my theory is as bonkers as I am.

Before I wrap this up, I wanted to share two photos.  After wondering what in the hell I actually did last week, I picked up my phone and tried to find some evidence.  Here's what I came up with....

Apparently my love of shoes has been passed down to the next generation.  I wasn't paying attention to what was going on behind me while getting ready one morning.  Suddenly, I hear "Mummm! Rook!" (that's what Mom, look! sounds like with that stupid binky in her mouth) I turned around and there was Allie wearing a pair of my strappy cork-wedge sandals.  She took two beautifully graceful steps..... and then face planted into the wall.  But those two steps were clearly indicative of someone with a natural love for cute, yet uncomfortable foot apparel!  I AM PROUD.

Last but not least, I found this (above) hanging on the wall at a customer's house this weekend.  It stopped me in my tracks.  I took a moment to read it and think about it.  As I walked down the stairs, I thought, 'What a great world it would be if things like that were hung in random places all over the place.'  We would walk around corners and find words of wisdom about all sorts of things.  

The question is, would we stop to read them?  Probably not here in New York.  Someone would steal 'em.

Fatty Boom-a-Latty

Well, there's nothing that says, "Time to diet, fat ass!" like your two-year old pointing to your stomach while you are in the tub and saying, "Daddy has a big one of those.  But yours is big too!"

There was a moment of confusion there at the beginning.  When she pointed and said "Daddy has a big one of those" I started freaking, thinking 'What in the hell is she looking at down in that area that looks like something her father has????'

I kinda panicked.  "What are you talking about, Al?"

She pointing again toward my lower mid-section.  "Dat!"

"My stomach?"  For once I was hoping someone was talking about my big gut.

"Yep!" she answered, as she giggled.  "Daddy's is bigger but you has a big one too!"

I realized at that moment that she was the only person in this entire world that could say this to me where I wouldn't want to haul off and beat them firmly about the cranial region with a shampoo bottle.

Instead, I was disappointed in myself.  And a bit grateful for her honesty.

Honest Allie from Toddler Tubby Time

There's something about honesty from children that is excusable.  No matter who you are, if a child says something to you that's blatantly true, you can't get angry with them.  You just kind of have to suck it up and say, "You might have something there, kid."  And chances are, their observation is right on the money.

It's when we get older that there is a problem with honesty.  Sometimes, you REALLY need to use that inner filter that you (hopefully) developed when you (hopefully) learned about social sense.  I'm always shocked by people who don't use the filter, but that is usually accompanied by zero social sense..... and the fact is that they don't have a filter.  These tend to be the same people who blame everyone else for why they don't have friends.  They just don't know any better.

Soon the teenage years will kick in, and while the filter is still under construction, Allie will say oodles of Stupid Honest stuff.  You know, the things that kids are going to learn real fast that aren't at all appropriate and may cost you an ass whoopin later if you don't figure out how to stifle it.  I'm sure a lot of it will be directed at me.  She's just warming up right now.

As I watched Allie playing in the tub with her toys, I started to think about my mom and how amazing it is that I'm still alive with some of the Stupid Honest things that I've said to her.  There was one particular moment that I may have inadvertently tested her ability to not murder a human being.

Right now, she's reading this and knowing exactly where I'm going with this and what moment I'm referring to.  

I was a teenager and she was giving me hell for something that I had done.  I probably hadn't cleaned my room despite her seven million requests to do so, hadn't done my homework again, or I had gone somewhere with someone that I was forbidden to be with.  Whatever it was, I'm sure that she was freaking out with good reason.

However, Stupid Honest kicked in and what happened next was driven entirely by a teenage hormonal inability to sense right from wrong.  I looked at her as she took a moment to catch her breath mid-freak-out, and said something to the effect of: 

"You have no idea how ridiculous you look right now."  

And, as I'm sure you've guessed, I wasn't saying this in a proactive, concerned fashion.  It was full of arrogance and obnoxiousness.

Let me pause here a moment to say that my mother is one of the most loving, sensitive, non-violent, caring people I know.  Everything good about me came from her.

She is ALSO a warrior.  She was selling a home, going through an ugly divorce, teaching fifth grade full time, going to college at night to get her Masters Degree, had a son on a ship in the Persian Gulf during a war, and had a daughter graduating high school all at the same time. SIMULTANEOUSLY, people.  No consecutive crap.  All at once.  This was not a woman to get sassy with.

I can't say exactly how things went down after that because I remember being reeeeeeeally scared because I knew I screwed up.  Inside, my synapses were firing like mad and my brain cells were yelling, "Retreat!  Retreat!"  From her words alone, the fear of God was instilled and social sense was developed so that I may never make such a horrific, verbal error again.  I was no longer Stupid Honest.

(Dear Mom, thank you for letting me live past that day.  Love you, Vic)

Right now, Allie is full of innocent honesty and I feel like I should take it to heart.  She says I have a big belly with no malicious intent.  She couldn't care less about my weight.  It's just an observation.

But I don't want to be a mother who can't keep up with her kid.  I don't want Allie to be embarassed because her mom is overweight.  I don't want to set a bad example of what is or is not acceptable health.  

Fortunately, she has two grandmothers who are naturally thin and she appears to have inherited those genes so hopefully she wont spend 25+ years of her life obsessing over her weight like I did.  Hopefully we can keep each other active and fit.  God knows she is well on her way to that, since every day she runs around our yard, all willy-nilly, yelling, "Mommy, run with me!  Chase me!"  And true to my chubbiness, I groan and go, "How about if I just watch?"

At forty I promised myself that I would no longer let the battle of the bulge rule my life.  At forty-one, I feel like I've got a good start with that as I'm not nearly as obsessed as I used to be. And, to be perfectly honest, I have no excuses because there's really no more "diet knowledge" to be found that I haven't already acquired.  So, I'm turning a new corner with a new plan.... and it may or may not work out.  

I'm not putting any specific name to it like Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem.  I'm calling it Operation Fattypants.  It starts Thursday.  No pressure.  No expectations.  Just trying to be a good example for Allie.  I want to be Queen Skinnypants, but I'll settle for Mom Who Keeps Up.

Game on, flab..... cuz I don't ever want to hear that I've got something bigger than my husband ever again unless she's talking about my boobs!