Monday the 18th - 133lbs
I managed to get back on a carb-watching
track, mostly because I was horribly frustrated by my lapse of a couple of
weeks ago. I didn't go the hard-core, ketosis inducing route, as that's not
going to have much impact on me at this point, but keeping an eye on my carbs
is still the best way for me to rein in my snacking - thus speaketh the potato
chip, pretzel and bread junkie. And it worked. I managed to avoid the
Triscuits, or the lure of scarfing half a bag of Baked Lays for the duration.
Not that it wasn't tempting at times, but I kept mentally walloping
myself with the thought that those 'little lapses' can add up very quickly and
I would have no-one to blame by myself.
I tell you, there's nothing like watching the
Academy Awards to make one feel lumpy! Oh, I know all those women are
unrealistic - the products of personal trainers, plastic surgeons and very,
very expensive designers - but still, the sight of Julia Roberts poured into
that fabulous gown (Gucci?) does make one want to work a little harder towards
the final goal. Although Uma Thurman was an exception to the parade of
skinny-women - yowza! But I digress...
So the food is generally low-fat
at this point, with an attempt at doing a balanced protein and carb approach
at each meal. After a wild moment's indulgence at the grocery store last week,
my recent lunches have consisted of whole wheat pita, 2 - 3 tablespoons of
hummus and a half a cup of low fat cottage cheese. Thank god for spicy-pepper
hummus, otherwise I would have been overwhelmed by blandness. Dinner is
usually a chicken breast with some sort of veggie - string beans, or some
salad greens. Alex also bought some huge steaks at CostCo - they didn't
cut them any thinner than 2" thick - so sometimes I'll have half of one
for dinner, and save the other half for lunch, the next day. I'm still eating
carb-bars every morning, just because they're tasty and convenient - and much,
much cheaper at CostCo!
I tried another venture into protein-shake
land, this time with the Atkins. I'll admit that it was more tolerable
than the Pure Protein brand, but it was still rather nasty. It's the
artificial sweeteners. The shakes taste alright at first, but the aftertaste
leaves me wanting to pull my tongue out. And I'm not too keen on the
composition of those things - the third ingredient, right after water and whey
is soybean oil. Yowza! Talk about your fat bombs! Actually, that worked
out to about the same as a Carb Solutions bar, but it's not quite as
obvious when one reads the ingredient listing on the back of the wrapper. The
fat content - and other nutritional issues, is why I stick to only one of
those things a day...
I do allow myself one refined-sugar treat.
I've got a box of mini caramel eggs (I love those things) and one of
them is something like five grams of carb and three grams of fat. Each little
egg makes for two nice bites of chocolaty goodness, which I usually have after
dinner as a 'dessert'. That isn't going to kill me. Well, not
immediately...
What is going to kill me is the
exercise. I finally caved in and picked up my weights a week ago. I've got a
little workout book that's designed for people in a small space -
actually it's for college students fighting the Freshman Fifteen - and while
my college years were a while ago, a workout is a workout, right? And, oy vey,
did life suck for the first couple of days. It's an aerobic weight routine,
working on the upper body or lower body on alternate days, so each set of
muscles gets a full 48 hours of rest. I enjoy it, but I had forgotten that I have
to break into the lower body routine very gently - so I spent the middle of
the week incredibly sore from the crunches, squats and lunges.
But the upper body workout doesn't screw me
up nearly as much, so I was able to keep up with that as planned - starting
with 2/3 of the reps, and moving up to full throttle next week. I'll continue
breaking in the tired ol' belly and butt very slowly - which is a shame, as
those are the areas I really want to work! Still, Rome wasn't built in a
day... I've just got to keep with it. At least I enjoy the upper-body routine.
I'm determined to get rid of that flab around my upper arms and get some sort
of muscle built in my pectoral area. It's ironic: I've always had a large
bust, but almost no muscle underneath it, so doing pec-squeezing type
exercises kill me...
Following a madcap impulse at the checkout
line - which is why marketing guys get paid the money they do - I picked up a
copy of Fitness magazine. To my surprise, it was only slightly
patronizing. The constant, ongoing subtext in all these women's health
magazines is that you can't possibly be happy/accomplished/secure unless you
have a flat stomach, and I can't stand that. However, Fitness was a cut
above such 'zines like Women's World, a rag which I particularly hate -
if they changed their name to Strive To Be a Dis-empowered Domestic Slave
I might forgive them, but I'm digressing again.
Anyways, the magazine. It actually had some
useful articles - which workouts are particularly efficacious for shifting
those "last ten pounds", some tasty recipes and an intriguing
stretching warm-up/cool-down routine that I might try - particularly with my
lower body routine, as it might reduce my ouchies. I'm even contemplating
buying a subscription to the thing, which would be a hell of a divergence for
me. I've been doing my best to grit my teeth and rely only on myself for the
past three months, but now I'm thinking a bit of vicarious support might do me
some good. Because I'm not really getting it from my husband.
I shouldn't be too hard on Alex. He
told me right from the get-go that he's got all the willpower of an
unrepentant heroin addict and he does love his food. But he's weighing 185lbs
(at 5' 6") and has a Buddha tummy that he certainly didn't have when we
were dating. None of this bodes well for his cardiac future. Atkins appeals to
him, because it's practically how he eats, anyways, but he won't quit soda, so
ketosis never kicked in for him, so all he's really doing is slowing down the
rate at which he's been gaining weight. I tell a lie, I think he lost five or
six pounds back in February when I climbed onto the Atkins bandwagon, but
that's it.
Right now, his waist is bigger than my hips,
which is a hell of a thing, given my child-bearing proportions - even when I
weighed 120, I was built more like Marilyn Monroe, rather than Gwyneth Paltrow,
y'see. I don't know of any gentle way to get him onto a diet without becoming
a nagging shrew, and I know I've gotten awfully close, already, with no
result. I've got one last, horrible card up my sleeve, but it's so unfair and
nasty that I don't think I'll ever play it. So I'm certainly going to tell
y'all what it is, sorry.
Easter Sunday - holding my breath and
without a stitch on: 130lbs! Yay!
Of course, now I'm thinking that maybe I could
make 125.... Seriously though, my plan now is to work on turning flab into
muscle, rather than inching the scale downwards. I might remain the same
weight - or even gain a little - but it'll look a lot better!