Then I looked again and thought, oh wait, no, her hair's too long.
Last fall after I ran Palo Duro my tibia was clearly damaged. AND I was unemployed, for the first time in my life. Well, partially employed. In any case, I sat around for a month or two feeling sorry for myself and doing NOTHING except maybe a couple spin classes here an there. And eating. Oh, yes. Eating eating eating eating. Then I started my new job with work clothes that were too tight. The kind of tight where you say, Okay, I can wear this, but I can't eat.
Or drink....... Or take in too much of a breath.
Still, I ignored the obvious and started my job, which involves mostly, well, sitting on my butt. Then I joined the world of the people who say CAN'T a lot with respect to training and exercising and then oh, how the butt did spread.
My come-to-Jeebus moment was this past Saturday, when I was weighed and measured for the "before" statistics for The Challenge New Mexico, 2009. I will post these when all is said and done - that's my vow, but for now I'll tell some of the ugly truth:
- Size: 14. ish.
- Weight: 175.
- Body Fat: 36% or 41%,
(depends on which impedance scale you follow)
I feel pretty ungainly, especially when--shudder--the day I reached for the pantyhose on the bottom rack. You might know the ones: They have a big Q on them. Like being Queenly is supposed to make me feel good in that respect.
No wonder my IT Band is pissed off. I'd be pissed off, too, if I was trained to carry a 155 pound load and suddenly was forced to carry 20 extra pounds!
I suspect that somewhere underneath all the, uh, fat that there are some muscles. Maybe I can just uncover them, and all will be forgiven. The purpose of the Challenge is to lose fat and build lean muscle. In order to build lean muscle I'm supposed to get something in the ballpark of 130 grams of protein a day, which I have never done, as well as resistance training, which I've generally, well, resisted. This is only a 10-week program, so I'm going to treat it like a jump start to having a leaner year.
Changes I have made so far this week:
- Switched from putting crumbled blue cheese on my salad and switched to fat-free blue cheese dressing. Savings: 55 calories and 8 grams of fat.
- eating 1 serving of oatmeal instead of 2. Savings: 170 calories.
- I power-walked 5K for lunch instead of sitting. My meals I eat at my desk. Burned: about 300 calories.
- No more mayonnaise, or fried potato chips. :-( b ye bye, my one true love...
- Switched from candy bars to a protein bar. Savings: 100 calories, and added 20 grams of protein to my diet.
- Eating 6 small meals instead of 3 big ones. First meal is a protein shake with sugar-free flavorings and espresso. Yummm.
- No carbs allowed after 5 pm. So, most of my workouts will be before noon on weekends, and during my lunch hour at work.
- Lots of fat-free dairy. Like, fat-free cottage cheese, fat-free yogurt, fat-free cheddar, fat-free dressings.
- Egg beaters instead of eggs. Savings: per serving, 28 grams of fat (I think) and 250 calories.
Caution. This is a 10-week program. I don't think I could do this for much longer than that. It's pretty restrictive, and especially for endurance sports you generally need more carbs than this.
So far, I'm really full from all the water and peeing constantly. You're welcome for that visual. We'll see how that goes. I'm using SparkPeople to track my eating, along with LifeForm. Spark people is easy to reach anywhere that you have an internet connection. LifeForm can be used without the internet connection on my laptop, plus it makes cool graphs. Which I'll post weekly.
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