Nov 4 219 - faint at the gym and moodiness

Sucks to weigh more today than yesterday.

Yesterday was a crummy day. I was most of the way through the day before I realized it was gray and rainy and therefore a low barometric pressure day. So yes, a few circumstances in my life are weighing very very heavily on me - namely that I'm not getting any workcalls this week and I need money, and romantic hopes raised followed by complete shutdown... again... added to the typical I-have-no-friends-and-my-life-is-going-nowhere-and-someone's-gonna-die-and-that's-gonna-suck-and-I-can't-afford-a-house-health-insurance-or-a-trip-to-Europe-and-if-my-car-breaks-down-I'm-screwed-and-I'm-useless-and-uunwanted stuff. It was the sort of day it took all my energy to get out of bed. I shuffled a bag of trash up to the dumpster. I shuffled over to the grocery store.

I realized I have all this free time and I'm wasting it with this depression. So, even though it's still rainy and mopey I pushed myself out the door this morning and went to the gym. I wanted to put in more effort than a piddling recumbent bike, so I hopped onto the elliptical trainer for a standing workout, but decided that - since this was my first time in a few weeks - to start low and did the "Weight Loss Interval Workout." And suffered. It was only 28 minutes but I felt like my heart rate was too high so I held back even though I wanted to push harder - have to take it easy. By the end of the workout I felt horrible - I was faint, no color (I should have been red as a beet!), cold, weak, I had a lot of abdominal pain like menstrual cramps or the need to go to the bathroom. I lay down, then I went weakly to the bathroom, where I sat for a while and then wanted to lie down but not in this bathroom, so I weakly sought out a space where I could get on the floor and put my feet up and wait to feel better.

There was no one else in this workout area and I just felt awful and found myself thinking I didn't feel like getting up or sitting up and actually thought about calling someone with my cellphone to have them call the Y to come find me and make sure my heart was still beating. But I didn't want to cause undue worry or annoyance to my roommate or my brother so I waited, curled over onto my side (which felt good to my pelvis), waited some more, then stood and faintly made my way literally only a few steps around the corner, where two fitness employees shared an office, and I stood in the doorway and said I wasn't feeling well.

They jumped to attention, had me sit down. Unfortunately the nurse wasn't in yet, but one of them took my blood pressure and said it was 90 over 50 while the other went and got me some candy. And let me tell you - I ate that chocolate before I remembered I wasn't supposed to. That's twice in 4 weeks I've broken my vow, and I consider both cases legit.

Whether because I was already improving physically, or because human interaction was good for my soul and they were friendly and easy to get along with and not at all abrasive to interact with, or because of the chocolate, or whatever, I started to feel better.

It's not the first time it's happened to me - it's relatively common after jogging and I can remember lying on the floor with my feet up at least once after a workout at the gym before, years ago. But this was such a light workout. I do have low enough blood pressure usually - my BP has never been an issue - but I was rejected from donating blood earlier this year due to low pulse - 1 point below the limit. No doctor's visit has ever expressed any concern about my arterior activity, though it can be very hard to find a vein on me and I can never feel my own pulse unless it's up around 140, though nurses can.

It's just that it was such a lightweight workout! And it's not like I'm starving myself, though hadn't had breakfast yet (something they jumped on as a possible cause - I often prefer to get my exercise in before breakfast because if I wait until after, I'm afraid I might not ever get around to exercising - but I guess I'll have to work in some kind of protein+carb snack before workouts even if it's not in my meal plan to make sure this doesn't happen again.) I drank a glass of water before going.

They asked more than once if I was a diabetic and I answered "Not to my knowledge."

One of the fitness employees talked about how arteries constrict sometimes during exercise to keep blood going where it needs to go, and maybe that's why I get pelvic pain. Personally, I think all the blood sank into my pelvis, because it certainly wasn't in my head or my arms. I tend to want to blame my (as I imagine them) loose abdominals and chastise myself for always postponing ab work.

We had a dash of sunshine while I wrote this but it's gone now. Still, maybe the barometric pressure has gone up. I'm feeling a little better, I have the house to myself and want to do all the things that I always want to do with my free time - namely learn French and Welsh and read and write and paint, these days.

I also want to write or call them, let them know I got home okay. I want to get into writing more letters, being more engaged. I wrote to Jon Stewart and the Daily Show, just to thank them for the rally. I want to write to my community's leaders and my government representatives too. Not sure what I'd say but my Mom does it, her Dad used to do it, and I have a young friend who does it too.

Nov 3, 218.5

I weigh 218.5 and I'm too depressed to move. Definitely no comments necessary on this post. I will try to update my finances, pay my bills, and read.

post-weekend, Nov 2, still under 220!

219 pounds this morning. I had gained over the weekend. Food accessibility was difficult. We were staying at my uncle's place in/near Annapolis, MD, but our hosts were not there, so we were not keen on eating their food, yet we didn't know where to get our own because we were in the middle of a dark wilderness of mansions with no mercantile establishments in sight and no idea how to get to one. I had a little stale raisin bran and a pack of Lance crackers or something. And candy corn out of the dish on the counter.

Then in the morning we drove to the subway and got on it and landed in the middle of DC, hungry. We ate McDonald's burgers at a sidewalk cart. Dad skipped on the fries, so I did too, but I got a Quarter Pounder with cheese. There weren't many options. Had we got there 10 minutes earlier I could have had an egg mcmuffin.

We eventually ate dinner at around 7 or 8 that night in an expensive Mexican restaurant where you get several small courses. The food was excellent quality cuisine with good ingredients, and the prices kept me from overindulging.

Once back in Annapolis we went on a hunt for a convenience store for drinks and nibbles, and I got a peanut/caramel protein bar and an orange.

Sunday we drove back, stopping for lunch at a cafe where I got roast beef with mashed potatoes with a ton of gravy that I scraped off, and delicious salad bar. I ate as much as I could knowing it would be the last I'd eat for a while. Though I did buy gumdrops later in the trip at a convenience store that didn't offer many healthy satisfying options.

So, still avoiding the chocolate, I still had plenty of refined sugars. Once back in town that night, on the way back to my house, I stopped at a convenience store to get something (wasn't sure what, just something to help satiate my growing hunger, thinking of caramels) and wound up getting a cherry & cream cheese danish, a lance oatmeal cream cookie, and some caramels. All of which I ate by the end of the night. Yesterday morning I weighed something like 224.

Over the course of yesterday I hardly did anything. I did eventually make breakfast, eventually make lunch, a little housework, and then realized I was too tired to deal with dinner and hoped that would save me a little on today's weigh-in. Maybe it did!

Oct 27, 219.5

Wow, I have waited all morning to get under 220, but it happened. Yay. 219.5, I guess. I am impatient for more results.

Oct 226, 220: Art and Creativity

Ok, well, I am almost back to that new decade. ***sigh*** All part of the weight loss roller coaster? Not gonna analyze it. I want to get back below 220! I was happy to be there, I felt successful!

I've had a couple days off now. It's been great fitting more in between my Kingdoms of Camelot playing. Sleeping. Lounging. Plenty of time to get around to exercise. Housecleaning. Northern Exposure. Attending to my food preparation. Mindfulness. And kind of most exciting of all for me right now - I'm doing art work. I bought a package of acrylic paints on a whim, because I am loaded with cash. I can be a really good drawer, but I want to do something with splashes of color, I'm a big fan of color. But I'm not skilled with paint. So I'm just practicing. Playing. And this morning I drew a template and cut it out to create the pattern for my next painting, and it took me back to childhood. I know all kids have little art classes when they are growing up where they do crafts, but for me it's kind of Times 2 because my Mom was the art teacher, my Mom is an artist, and she would come up with crafts and art projects for us sometimes when we were kids, not to mention we were always in her art classes. I have to credit her with teaching me how to see things artistically when I was young. Flashback to an earlier time of greater mindfulness, a time before internet, frankly. It's really special to be alone with my own mind working creatively. I tend to be really good at seeing something that someone else created and knowing how it needs to be improved - I'm not sure if that's a skill I should be at all proud of. In fact, one way of looking at it is that it's annoying. I come from a background in which creativity as well as intellectualism are valued. Yet my job, while being somewhat artistic, is not fully creative. I take something that's already partially made and then I draw it together with my lighting. It's typical of me and my skills - to see what's already been done, and make it better in just the right way. When I was young, I could write stories. I created them out of nothing and without self-consciousness. There was like a spark. But now, as an internet junkie, true creativity has fallen by the wayside.

Oct 25, 221.5

I was on plan yesterday and though I wasn't active during the day (pretty much stayed on the sofa) I did go for a good walk and included a bit of a jog so that was something. However the scale is giving me a disappointing reading. So I'll wait for better satisfaction tomorrow. Right now I'm going to get rubbed down for 50 minutes. I've never done this before and I'm getting kinda nervous.

Chocolate ban interrupted

Ok, well, what did it take to have my personal ban on chocolate interrupted after 2 weeks? Could have been a menstrual thing, or could have been that I had to go in to work at 3:00 a.m. this morning after only 2 hours of sleep - but I think mostly it was because the cookies were delivered to me out of the blue by someone I very much want to have doing sweet little thoughtful things for me. They were 4 little gourmet cookies, they had chocolate in them. The first one tasted good but hit me like a rock. An hour later, the next three were much easier to stomach all at once. And 2 to 3 hours after that, I decided to have a KK doughnut and two iced sugar cookies, and let me tell you, I worked really hard to force that last frosted sugar cookie into my now-normalized blood-sugar level. My tummy was saying "No! No!" and my will was saying "Yes, Yes!!!" Go figure. Getting your body clock out of whack on the day you start your period especially after an excellent scale reading can very likely cause a backslide. I won't even call it a backslide, more like a blip. Today I weighed 221, back up from my wonderful 219.5. In fact, I didn't stand on the scale very much because I didn't want to see the number go higher. Whatever I weigh today is just a blip on the road. I have predicted all along that there would be blips (hello holiday season!)

As an aside, I'll have you know that (before I broke my chocolate ban) I went to a play yesterday where they distributed little bites of brownie during the performance. A platter of my favorite concoction of edible ingredients was placed under my nose. Would it have killed me to take one? No, except that it would have broken the ban on the chocolate, and just been more of an open door to cheating. So, at that time, I resisted - annoyed by the Satanic temptation placed before me.

Twelve hours later circumstances were different.

4 more weeks on the no chocolate thing.

Also, this weekend, I'm going on a road trip to D.C. with my Dad - the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity. Should be fun to hang out with thousands of like-minded people, plus a trip to D.C. in the bargain. But as for what to eat - clearly I have no idea - what food will be available - where I'll be and when I'll eat. I can try to be a good girl. That always works out well - ha.