cindy's world

I’ve been pooped lately. I wish I’d noted whether I’m just pooped these few days (so I can blame it on PMS or mental stress), or whether I’ve been like this for a few weeks (which I’d have to blame on my recent weight gain and drop in the intensity of exercise).

At lunch today, I did 25 minutes on the treadmill — a 2-mile run plus a walking 1-lap cooldown — and 25 minutes on the elliptical trainer. Before you give me any kudos for this, lemme say that I had planned on doing 40 minutes straight on the treadmill, which would give me a 4-mile run. But I couldn’t do it. My conditioning has melted to crap, and being out of battery on my MP3 player didn’t help.

This is gonna be my new think-of-it-this-way: I will lose 15 pounds in a specific, preset number of days, and all I have to do is put in my 40 minutes at the gym daily. Any day I take off will be added to the number of calendar days until I reach my target weight. Simple formula. I’m gonna call it 90 gym days. The more gym days I put in, the quicker I can cross off calendar days in reaching my goal. There, I think I’ve now convinced myself that it’s easy.

What happened to the days when every other day, I’d do 40 minutes of weights at lunch, then 40 minutes of cardio after work, and run 3-5 miles on the days in-between, plus one long 6-12 mile run on one weekend day and a 2-hour weight-training workout on the other weekend day? Man, I had no life.

In the gym locker room earlier at lunch, as I was pulling my workout clothes out of my bag to change, I realized that I had not packed my sports bra. I couldn’t believe it. I went thru all my stuff, and sure enough, wasn’t there. I actually stood there for close to 2 minutes, unsure of what to do. I had planned to do a 3-4 mile run on the treadmill, so I need the jogbra. Can I go in the bra I’m wearing now? Not enough support for running, and I don’t want to wear a sweaty bra back to work and for the rest of the afternoon. Light workout, no run? Not worth my time if I don’t sweat. My MP3 player was about to die on low batteries anyway.

So I drove to McDonald’s and had a fajita wrap, small Fruit n’ Yogurt parfait, and their Fruit Walnut Salad, sat in my car and listened to the antics of Heidi, Frosty & Frank on 97.1FM.

My trainee, however, busted her butt at the other gym doing a long cardio session at an increased resistance level. Shhh, don’t tell her all I did was eat and sit.

I’m not gonna turn on the TV for a week. The TV is the kiss of death for me. Despite the fact that there are no shows I feel compelled to watch (since “Friends” is over), when the TV comes on, it inevitably moves from its intended purpose as background noise to foreground obsession.

I’m gonna replace the TV with organizing my financial statements, reading, working out, maybe even finally sending out Christmas cards!

Eh, who’m I kidding on the last one? I don’t know where anybody lives anymore. Unless all the cards are to be e-mailed.

Last nite in jujitsu we went over 14 ways to disarm and disable 14 types of knife attacks. (tanto no kata.)

I got stabbed so many times…

This Thanksgiving I’m going to be grateful for rubber-tipped knives.

The strangest thing happened to me on my lunchtime run today. I decided to give my MP3 player another chance, so I wore it around my neck, put the earphones in, but I held on to it with a hand (the small pen drive dangles to my belly button when it’s on the neck strap) so that it wouldn’t swing into something and shut off. It operated perfectly. That’s not the strange part.

The strange thing is that with the music blasting in my ears, the run was totally, completely effortless. The whole experience was unreal. My feet fell into pace with the music, as with my breathing. The music was providing so much energy that I felt like I was just bounding along. I could’ve been walking for all the effort exerted in the run. Because I couldn’t hear the pounding of my feet on the treadmill over the music (nor my breathing, for that matter), I felt like I was bouncing along on air. So much of exercise is mental. Four miles flew by, I never was out of breath, I felt like I could’ve increased the speed but I didn’t want to push it. Because the treadmill faces a mirrored wall, I watched myself glint with sweat and was fascinated at the feel of perspiration that seemed so out of place because my body wasn’t complaining at all about being hot, tired, or pushed. It was like, “Why’m I sweating? I’m just hanging out here.”

Maybe the music drowned out the little whiny voice that complains of being tired or bored. My energy did seem to wane in between songs when I was able to hear the impact of my feet on the treadmill and the hardness of my breath. Or maybe there was something in the pastries that my reporter brought in this morning which she made over the weekend. Hmm…

Mr. W’s suggestion on the diet portion of my weight loss attempt: eat all my meals, small amounts of calories per meal, and when I’m eating out with him, we’re splitting a meal. So yesterday was day 2 of the strictly limited caloric intake.

Breakfast: Mr. W made bacon (3 strips, which I wrapped and patted in paper towels first, and peeled off some of the fat), banana-nut french toast (I skipped both butter and syrup) and a grapefruit-grape-apple-garlic-onion-scallions-raw oyster-lawngrass smoothie. (Okay, it wasn’t that bad. But it was darn healthy and I chewed a lot of fiber in the beverage.)

Lunch: We split a BBQ pork po-boy sandwich from The Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney. It came with fries, which I ate probably 3 or 4 of, and a Diet Coke. This was, of course, before Erin informed me in her comment that Diet Cokes make you fat by increasing your appetite. Oh wait. I just remembered that he introduced me to Beignets, which is “A New Orleans classic. French donuts deep fried and topped with powdered sugar.” I had 2 little squares. That was my sin for the day.

Dinner: He made a buffalo chicken patty on a whole wheat bun with a ton of raw little baby carrots on the side. I ate so many baby carrots (I was STARVING by that time) that I woke up this morning expecting my skin to be orange. Baby carrots are amazingly delicious when they’re really cold straight out of the fridge.

Dieting sucks.

Okay. So. My trainee had a doctor’s appointment today, which allowed me to go to the closer gym. I got there early, ran 3 miles on the treadmill plus 1 lap cool-down. Then I hit the weights for 30 minutes, crammed 5 exercises in. I was sweating like a pig (do pigs sweat a lot? or are they referring to cops? like when a cop’s overweight from all the donut-munching that they’re sweaty and out of breath chasing a suspect for half a block? of course I’m just saying this to jab at all the sheriffs who work with me), I even got a blister one the side of a toe, just like I used to when I packed on the running mileage. The run was still terribly boring and seemed to last forever. I couldn’t wear my MP3 player until after the run cuz any contact with anything would cause it to reset, and as it was, it reset 3 times when I was doing weights. I need to get a better MP3 player. Any recommendations? The music was very helpful in hyping me up. Weights feel lighter with “I wanna fk you like an animal, I wanna feel you from the inside…” screaming in my ears.

Food count so far:
Breakfast – 1.5 cups Silk vanilla flavored soy milk (150 calories)
Snack – Chocolate Amond Biscotti ZonePerfect bar (210 calories)
Post-Workout Lunch – Chocolate Peanut Butter ZonePerfect bar (210 calories)

570 calories…that’s a lot, consider how little food that is! I expect to receive a phone call soon from Mr. W saying, “WHAT? That’s all you ate all day?! You need to eat more!”

In late 2002 or early 2003, I was at the gym and something my ex-roommie Brian, who was training a client near me, said to me caused me to respond, “Hell, I’m even scared to jog by the KFC cuz knowing my body, I’d smell the fried food and my body would take that scent molecule and turn it into a fat cell.”

I think my body also takes happiness and turns that into fat cells.

I have gained 15 pounds since the 2nd week of September. Actually, I think it’s the accumulation of lots of factors.
1.) Training someone at the gym means I’m not getting my usual 20 mins cardio plus 6-7 exercises every lunch. Because I have to go to a farther gym to train my coworker, that also cuts into the lunch hour. A typical session of ours is like 8 minutes of cardio warmup, 3 exercises with weights. (Which is why I don’t understand how she’s losing all this weight and gaining such great muscle tone.)
2.) Before the summer was over, in addition to my great noontime workouts, I used to do jujitsu 4 evenings a week, 2 hours per evening. I’m now down to 2.
3.) For 1.5 weeks straight before Cancun, I had to work thru every lunch and stay overtime till 7:30p and come in 2 Saturdays. That means no evening workouts and no noontime workouts. That must’ve greatly slowed my metabolism to cut out all exercise that suddenly.
4.) During Cancun, altho we worked out (HARD) twice a day, we were eating gourmet food probably cooked in lard, and I was pigging out cuz it was all-inclusive, so the working out did not offset the sluggish metabolism and the extra calories.
5.) I haven’t changed my eating habits to match my significantly less intensive exercise regimen.
6.) I’m happy, which means I have a great appetite. I’ve never dropped weight so fast as when I was going thru the crap the ex put me thru; I had no energy, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep at nite, and all I did at lunch was sleep in the jury room as my escape. My body dropped 20 lbs in a month.

Anyway, I am determined to lose the 15 pounds I’ve gained. Which means
* no junk food, period. I am applying the same stubbornness I had when I said, “Soda has 7 teaspoons of sugar per can?!” and stopped drinking soda for 9 years until I discovered Diet Coke.
* trying to get to the gym 10 mins earlier at lunch to get 20 mins of cardio in on M, W, F before I start training sessions w/my coworker
* running 3-4 miles T, R, and one weekend day (which is no problem because I’m sure Mr. W wouldn’t mind running with me)

Wish me luck! I’m sick of not fitting in my size twos.

I kicked some serious butt in jujitsu last nite. I’m itching to actually hurt someone. Went thru a round of backhand hits, front snap-kicks and punches this morning before getting ready for work.

Jimmy, I know how to handle a choke-hold from behind now. Let’s try it again in 3 weeks when I get up there.

Jujitsu was SO FUN yesterday. I’ve missed the camaraderie of the class. The problematic people of last semester aren’t there this semester for some reason, and the remaining returning students have great chemistry together. For the drills and training, we split the class up into 2 sides, the beginners and the returning students. Since we returning students already know each other, we were super comfortable and I’ve never laughed so hard while getting SO beat up. Even while I was made fun of for not being around more often. Oh, and I learned some great moves, too. The one I mastered almost intuitively, however, is one I probably won’t get to use much since it’s not something I could do on someone much taller than me, and let’s face it, most people are much taller than me.

Toward the end of the evening as we were packing up to leave, Josh asked me if I’d done gymnastics or been a gymnast in the past. I told him no. He said, “Oh, cuz you have that body type.” That’s not a compliment for me! Female gymnasts are built like men! Ew. But apparently he thought it was a compliment cuz he thought it was really cool how strong I am when I have him in a lock. Then again, he also said, “Do you wear contacts? Color contacts? [leaning in to look at my eyes] Just one?” HUH?
“What do you MEAN just one? Is the other one missing?!”
“No, well, you know how some people only wear one contact cuz only 1 eye needs to be corrected?”
“But my contacts are GRAY, if I were only wearing one, one eye would be gray and the other eye would be brown!”
…so who knows what Josh means by anything he says.