catheroominations

(Mary Beth and Matte are not allowed to guess)

I have this problem with pants in that they never fit me right. I mean never. I’m not talking about the length of them either. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but if pants fit my hips, butt and thighs they are huge in the waist. They’re so huge I could probably carry my camera in the back of them (and I have a DSLR). A size that would fit my waist wouldn’t go over my butt because I am so out of proportion. I consistently buy pants that don’t fit because there is no such thing as a pair that will fit my body.

Yesterday I bit the bullet and took two pairs of new pants from Ann Taylor Loft (regular price $60, on sale for $20!) to have the waist taken in to fit me. This tailor has a great reputation and a friend who has a similar issue takes her pants there all the time. I was confident they could get these pants to fit my body and I was willing to pay whatever it cost.

I tried on the pants in the fitting room and came out, my arms folded low on the waist to keep the pants from gaping obnoxiously. I stepped on the carpeted nook in front of the mirror and lifted the hem of my sweater so the nice Russian lady could see my dilemma. There was so much of a gap, she could see straight down the gap to my purple chonies. She grabbed a handful of waistband and said in a thick accent, “Ah yes, classic body,” as she pinned the extra fabric. I smiled inside and wanted to hug her. Oh, and she might have said “classic booty,” her accent was that thick. I do know that having a small waist and a healthy dose of junk in the trunk is not very classic. Because if it is, Ann Taylor and her other designer friends would make pants that fit me. And they don’t. Some brands even make “classic fit” styles and ha! No way, no how are they going over this classic booty.

(I just realized that I got Ann Taylor pants tailored. Har de har.) The pants will be ready early next week and I can’t wait to see how they fit.

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile you know all about my quest to reach my driver’s license weight, and that I get up at o’dark thirty to go to boot camp every day. My buns of steel aren’t quite there yet, and I don’t have a six-pack but if you see me I will offer you my stomach to punch so you can feel my two-pack. I’ll never have Michelle Obama’s arms, but I’d like to have tighter Catheroo arms. The point is that I’m trying. And I have toned and firmed here and there and I love that. Psycho as it is, I really love getting up in the dark every morning. No! Really, I do! At the beginning of our workouts I get to look up at the moon and stars. I can see the Little (or is it the Big) Dipper while we warm up. The air is so crisp and clean and we’re all out there sweating like pigs while most of the world is just waking from a good night’s sleep.

The best part is when I drive home. Until we set the clocks back, I get to see the sun rise in front of me:

So beautiful.

Some of the list below is redundant, but I want to show that I’m still doing it. Losing weight and getting healthy isn’t a quick-fix. It’s a lifestyle change. I really don’t remember how I used to eat back when I weighed more than 150 pounds.

Aside from the exercise, here are some of the changes I’ve made and continue to keep in my routine:

• No more Starbucks (I’m more of a Peet’s girl anyway). No pumpkin spice lattes, not even a nice hot cup of plain old coffee. Jasmine green tea and water are all I drink on a daily basis. Too much caffeine makes me really jittery and a little wacko in the head.
• I must have 7 hours of sleep at a minimum. If not, I miss boot camp. If I miss boot camp I get very grumpy. You wouldn’t like me when I’m grumpy. Often my sleep requirements cut into my Glee or Biggest Loser time, but that’s why DVRs were invented – to allow ME to see my shows and sleep. Thank you, DVR inventor guy!
• Water, water, water. I fill my SIGG 1-liter bottle three times a day. I drink my water, I drink it up! And yes, I also pee all the damn time. This offers me the joy of seeing weird restroom habits at work which I will address in a future post.
• I limit carbohydrates like bread and cereal to pre- and post-workout meals only. I need carb energy for boot camp and I replenish lost nutrients after workouts but I really try to stick to early morning only. I get healthy carbs throughout the day from veggies and fruits and brown rice or other whole grains. Do you realize how hard this is when I just received some goodies from here?
• Eating whole/clean. Most of what I eat (aside from pre- and post-workout time) has no package. I focus on vegetables, fruits, eggs, and lean meats. OK so the meat comes in a package, but I ain’t killing and plucking my own chickens and wild Alaskan salmon doesn’t swim in the suburbs.
• No, no, no refined sugar. I don’t even eat the fake sweetener stuff. One hint of sugar or a substitute and I go off the deep end. When I do crave some sugar I allow myself two Trader Joe’s dark chocolate wedges at a tiny 70 calories. Dark chocolate has anti-oxidants you know, so this is a perfectly legal snack food. I have been known to not stop at two wedges, but continue until I have eaten an entire layer of eight. And then I am filled with guilt and self-loathing and that kind of blows. So yeah, I try to avoid the sweet stuff.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m not focusingtrying not to focus on weight as much as I am on sticking to my new lifestyle. The weight is coming off slowly but surely and I’m just 5 pounds shy of the next “decade” of weight on the scale. I want to see that second number on the scale change. I know it will…eventually.

I apologize for this post being all over the place. But it’s my bedtime and I didn’t have a chance to make it flow real well.

You all know how much I love competition and how winning an awesome prize motivated me to eat healthy and be more active during my 10-week boot camp challenge. Well, while reading Fit Bottomed Girls yesterday, I came across a review of this awesome book. Even though the title contains the word DIET, which I detest and don’t believe in anyway, everything else in the review made me want to immediately pick up a copy of The Game On! Diet and find some friends to play with me.

As the title says, the idea behind the book is to kick your friend’s ass while shrinking your own. You form two or more teams of at least two people and try to earn more points than the other team(s). You play for four weeks at a time, checking in weekly. You earn points each day by getting at least 7 hours of sleep, drinking lots of water, making healthy food choices and eating 5 meals, getting at least 20 minutes of exercise, practicing healthy habits, and keeping in touch with teammates and opponents. When you lose weight at the weekly weigh-in you earn bonus points too! But it’s not all good: you lose points when you snack on crappy food, try to sabotage someone else, or drink alcohol.

I know what you’re thinking – NO ALCOHOL?! I can’t do that! But every week you get one day to eat and drink whatever you want. Deprivation breeds failure, at least with me, so I like this free day stuff. I call it Baconday.

Authors Krista Vernoff, a producer for Grey’s Anatomy and Az Ferguson, Body-For-Life million dollar champion teach you how to rid your diet of junk and focus on whole foods (not to be confused with Whole Foods). They give you recipes, suggestions for healthy habits and yoga and workout instructions. I’ve only just thumbed through the book, but from what I have seen this is a great way for someone whittle into shape and I can’t wait to get started. I just need more people to play with!

If you’ve struggled with staying motivated or have just begun your journey into healthy eating and exercise, join me and my friends! It’ll be so fun kicking each other’s asses, we might forget we’re doing it for our own good! And we’ll have to think of a fabulous prize at the end. This is one competition where being a loser means you’re awesome.

This morning when I woke up I was not sore at all. After three days of the 30-Day Shred, I felt fine. And I feel fine now, after the fourth workout this morning. That does not mean it’s an easy workout. I still grunt and groan and sweat like a piece of cheddar cheese in a Bikram yoga class, but I AM NOT SORE.

I am so very much not sore that I even considered trying Jillian’s The Biggest Loser counterpart’s yoga video tonight. Trainer Bob has former contestants (a few of them winners) as his “class.” I popped the DVD in and watched it to see what it was like. And then I sat there, transfixed, just watching. I watched yoga. For one hour. I did not get up from the couch to join in because I was in heavy food coma like I have not experienced in months. I think my turkey burger on whole wheat and flax English muffin did me in. That, and I had a glass of milk with dinner. If you are a person (like I used to be and sometimes still am) who can’t keep from snacking after dinner, drink milk with your meal. It will stuff you. Or maybe it’s just me because I drink practically nothing but water all day. Still though, I get so full when I have milk, which is good. It keeps the munchies at bay, and me a happier person on weigh-in days.

Another trick I have is rather than watch TV at night, I read. I can’t really read and eat at the same time. For one thing, I lose my place in the book when I reach into the bag, or box, or bowl to get whatever it is I am eating. Plus, I don’t want to get food all over my book. If the book is really good, I can become so engrossed that I lose all track of time and all of a sudden, it’s time for bed. AND I MADE IT A WHOLE EVENING WITHOUT SNACKING. That’s the best, Jerry!

Here’s the deal. I had a food emergency. I was hungry starving. I didn’t have my usual veggies or fruits to nibble on, so I figured I’d just have a cookie. Only one. But it was this one:

Do you think it’ll do any damage at my weigh-in? I hope not!

*I didn’t take this photo, nor did I make the cookie. See more about it here.

Well, I have an update for you. As of today I have lost…drumroll please…SIXTEEN pounds. Yeah. You read that right. I have lost ONE measly pound since before Christmas. I have stumbled and fallen, I have gotten back up, only to fall again. I have gained and lost and gained again and lost again. There was Christmas, birthday parties, lunches out (read: beer) with friends, a potluck birthday breakfast, Jon Hamm(!) at Cobb’s Comedy Club last Friday (read: beer), and the Super Bowl (both beer and wine this time). If I could just avoid leaving the house and socializing with people altogether, I would be at my goal weight by now. But I’m not interested in becoming a hermit, and I like my friends, so I jump right into temptation and sabotage by some, with both feet and enjoy the food that comes with Getting Together. Sometimes there are healthy options. Usually there are not, but I try, I really do. Deprivation only leads to failure, so I do enjoy some of my favorites every now and then, in moderation. But when there is a buffet of Louisiana-inspired cuisine, whatsagirltodo? White Chocolate Bread Pudding with a sinful sauce made from sweet and condensed milk? Get OUT! Like I could say no to that! And when the woman who baked it asked if I wanted a second helping a couple of hours after she witnessed me orgasmically enjoying my first, well, I couldn’t insult her by saying no. How rude is that? I’m nothing if not polite. So yeah, I had a second helping. And it was GOOD.

That was last Sunday, and for the five days since, I have made a conscious effort to make healthier choices. I have eaten pounds of raw vegetables and fruits (which I have learned to love), focused on lean proteins (except for a small pile of tri tip on my salad Wednesday night at Pluto’s), opted for natural foods, and stayed away from processed crap that’s filled with sodium. Because of this, I lost a pound this week. That’s one more than last week. Last week, I stayed exactly the same to the tenth of a pound. Consistency I can do.

I’m proud of the one-pound loss this week, and I know the process is slow. It has to be in order to work. With the temporary bouts of falling off the wagon, I can’t expect to lose more and so I don’t beat myself up. I’m lucky I haven’t gained more than I have when a + shows up instead of a minus next to my progress.

So here I hover around 135 pounds. There. I said it. I weigh 135 pounds. I’m 5’1 and 135 is not even within my weight range. My BMI states that I’m overweight, and I still look like I am. My mii on the Wii Fit gets wider as the Fit board weighs me. But in real life, I know I look much better now than I do in this photo that a friend posted on Facebook this week.

Good gracious and holy shit! I am working the 1% lycra in those jeans to its maximum. I don’t think Lucky Brand Dungarees has QA testing equipment as fierce as my ass and thighs right there. Why did no one tell me I looked like that? Of course, what would they say? “Catheroo, you’ve let yourself go,” like one of my college friends once said to me? Or they could mask it by saying, “Yeah, my mom asked if you’ve gained weight,” like my college boyfriend told me once. How do you tell someone that they’re not taking good care of themselves? Besides, when that photo was taken I knew I wasn’t eating healthy. I was taking up more space than I wanted to. I felt rotund, and tired, and depressed. Don’t let the smile fool you. I was in severe self-hate mode then. But that was then. And today that is my BEFORE photo. It’s the only real “good” one I have electronically that conveys why I started this journey in the first place. I hate having my picture taken and this is a perfect example of why I’d rather be behind the camera than in front of it. Hopefully that will change and I won’t hate photos of myself.

In that photo, I weighed over 150 pounds. Again, I am 5’1″ tall. At my height I should weigh between 103 (Hahahaha! That’s hilarious!) and 127. I like myself somewhere in between, but now that I’m 40, I’m sure my body cannot get to where it once was. And that’s fine. I don’t know how much more I want to lose, but I’ll know when I get close. I don’t need to be a size zero, or resort to shopping in the kids department at Macy’s. I have realistic goals that do not include looking like a lollipop. But one thing is clear. I have come a long way since that photo on Easter, and don’t intend to go back to that place.

I’m confused. But with math, I frequently am. You see, Matte and I were recently in Costco looking for healthy alternatives, and we came upon these frozen Kirkland ground sirloin burgers that are only 15% fat. Awesome!

Of course we grabbed a bag, and I immediately turned it over to check the nutritional info. And am I glad I did!

(Insert cartoonized version of me shaking my head violently, with aoiy-aoiy-aoiy soundtrack) WHAT?!? I almost always got Ds in math, maybe a C here and there, but even I know that a 330-calorie item with twenty-three grams of fat does NOT equal 15% fat. It is 60% fat. And with 25% of its calories coming from saturated fat alone, that’s nearly half a person’s daily allowance!

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So when you see a food product boasting low-fattedness, double-check the nutritional info.

And WTF, Costco?