we're having a love affair.

....that green drop and i. a hot and sweaty and happy love affair with lots of quality time at the gym and a bunch of great food.

i feel like myself again.

and that is all.

my life is complete.

i finally found edamame in a local store. hooray!

bootcamp, day five.

dudes. i am feeling so much better. SO MUCH BETTER! i've been eating well and lots and yummily, and i've been working out, well and lots and yummily. yesterday, i did a nicely hard weights session, and today i did my third long cardio session, while watching an itunes u political philosophy session from harvard. mens sana in corpore sano. right?

(still whispering weirdly. also forgot my headband and had a bad hair day after getting rained on three times.)

just 17 hours on the bike to go! afterwards i took a 90 minute yvengar class, my second, and because i'd forgotten to bring a second t-shirt (the first one was sweat through), i took the class in my sports top, which no one ever does at my gym. well. bit uncomfy, that.

the yvengar, however, wasn't uncomfy. it was fab. you know, theoretically, i hate yvengar. it's stupid accessories driven yoga. for non-flexible losers. or whatever. too bad it works so well. it's freaking hard, and i love that it's so detail obsessed. will continue to go, in the absence of a bikram studio.

the rest of my bootcamp stuff is going well, struggling most with drinking 80 oz of water a day, but that's no biggie.

so yeah. i feel so much better. oh yes.

the past three months.

i've got a crush on that tiny little green drop at the very end there.

whine.

on 15 days out of the last 45, the guy and i have had houseguests. and the next batch is set to arrive tomorrow.

trying to find a frame of mind that will let me get through the next few days, calmly and happily and unfazed and unstressed by the mess and chaos and everything else.

arnica d6.

i don't believe in homeopathy. and yet i have to admit that that bruise on my leg, which was practically egg-size 23 hours ago, is a whole lot better.

weird.

cd154.

after six weeks of hormonal horror, i'm having a party for my hardworking uterus today. oh yes. thank you, uterus, for finally getting your act together. i am so very very proud of you! :)

bootcamp, day two.

one more boring hour on the bike down, yay! 't was a bit less boring then yesterday, actually. i listened to 'speaking of faith' and kept calculating how many % i'd already done.

what was not so yay though, was this: right after hopping off the bike, i smashed my shin into a crosstrainer, which resulted in some bleeding and a bruise so immediately massive, that i headed home sans vibra plate and sans stretching to ice it and to start chuckinh homeopathic arnica. that was painful and pretty embarrassing (not the first time i've run into stuff at the gym), and i'm a bit annoyed by the fact that my legs are always bruised in the summer.

duh.

right now, walking hurts, so i am officially cancelling tomorrow mornings' cardio workout and moving it to either tuesday or thursday, depending on how my leg feels.

inspiration. [#13]

the great fitness experiment: who would i be if i weren't broken?

[which is yet another reminder that i shoul finally, finally pick up geneen roth's "breaking free from emotional eating" that's been on my nightstand for a few weeks and that i keep putting down because it hits too close to home.]

bootcamp, day one.

this morning, i kicked off my jillian michaels inspired self-planned kickass-bootcamp and spend some quality time at the gym, including a rather boring hour on the stationary bike. because the knee is still wonky (and felt surprisingly crap today), i can't hang out on a crosstrainer for an hour.

in any way, here's proof:

(i'm whispering very weirdly. got to work on my filming-self with ipod-technique.)

't was good!

i've figured out how i will attempt to work out this week, and it's rather insane, totally not how i want to spend my life for the rest of my life, but i'll give it a go, for this week. just because.

sunday: vibraplate, one hour cardio, stretching
monday: am, one hour cardio, stretching; pm: 90 minutes ashtanga
tuesday: pm warm up, fat burning circle, weights, stretching
wednesday: am, one hour cardio, stretching; pm: 90 minutes yvengar
thursday: pm warm up, fat burning circle, weights, stretching
friday: am, one hour cardio, stretching
saturday: warm up, fat burning circle, vibraplate, weights, one hour cardio, stretching

this plan will quite likely (and rightfully so!) be derailed by the homebirth of a my friend e., whose second kid is set to arrive any day now, and while that will be happening, i will look after her firstborn. i will not let it be derailed by the soccer world cup and the impending visit of the boy kid and his boyfriend, who will be here starting tuesday.

and everything else? is going well. drinking water, eating self-prepared foods. all good.

kickstart.

my body's still not back to normal. i'm still bloated and crampy and just feeling off. and yet i'm feeling  better. it's all about the frame of mind, innit? i've been trying to listen to my body, eating when i'm hungry, and eating stuff that i am hungry for, and on wednesday evening, i made it to the gym and decided on a whim that i needed a yoga class, not my usual workout, and that felt good as well. i'm so glad i can be flexible about my workout habits, these days. i struggled with that big time in the past, one of the many reasons why i never managed to make my habits last.

i realised anyway, that i really need to give myself some credit. i've now managed to work out consistently for a whole year, and i am fitter than i've ever been. i've now been pretty consistently feeding myself well for more than two years. today, i ran into a friend of r. who hadn't seen me in a while and who said "good grace, girl, you've lost a ton of weight!". as i am writing this,  i am wearing a size 36 dress. what i am learning to do right now is maintenance. i've never been at this spot, ever before. i've got no idea how this works. it's not surprising that i'm not that great at doing it yet, and on top of that, my poor body is majorly confused, hormone wise. it'll all be good. i'll get there.


in any way, i want to kick my own ass back into gear, for a while. in a loving way, obviously. to make myself feel better. because if i'm really honest with myself: i'm just a wee bit too comfy with everything, right now. i'm doing barely enough.

and i got jillian michaels newsletter today. 

"you know what i like to call those last 10 or 15 pounds that won't come off no matter what you do? vanity pounds. the term describes our desire to lose weight that, as far as our bodies are concerned, actually feels healthy. today's society pressures us to want to look a certain way, so for aesthetic reasons we try to be thinner than our bodies want us to be. personally, i have gained and lost the same 8 vanity pounds more times than i care to admit.  losing your first 50 pounds might have been tough, but believe me, dropping those final few stubborn pounds is a whole different challenge. the body struggles to hold on to that last bit of fat for survival purposes."

 oh yes.

so i decided that i will be doing what jillian recommends to lose that weight anyway:

1. cut your sodium to 1,000 mg a day.
2. drink at least 80 ounces of water daily.
3. cut out processed foods.
4. abstain from alcohol.
5. train at 85 percent of your MHR (maximum heart rate) for 1 hour 5 times a week.

i'm properly starting tomorrow morning. and no, it's not a case of the tomorrows (you know those tomorrows, right? it's the ones that never ever happen.). i was telling myself i wasn't going to start this before july 1st, because starting asap will mean that i won't get to booze up on my birthday, at the big awards thing i'm going to at the end of the month and at the national gig i'm heading to in early july. but i am starting asap. and it will be worth it.

i made a lovely little motivational chart to put up on the fridge. i've got no idea yet how to get all that cardio done, but it's only 30 days and 20 workouts. i can totally do this.


kick, kick!

falalalalalaaaaaaa.

another pound up today. and as if everything that wasn't sucky enough, i've got a super creepy infection on my gums. seeing my dentist at 1:30 today. and getting that lymphatic drainage massage after work.

bit much, everything.

in pufferfish mode.

this morning, i weighed 68,3kg.

i am trying very very hard not to be freaked out by it, and i am totally and utterly failing.  i'm obviously in total pufferfish-mode. i am on day 147 of my cycle (hahahaha! cycle!). it's suddenly warmed up significantly (finally 30°c yesterday). i drank too little these past few days. i had a carb heavy and kinda salty dinner. and also, this is just weight, a freaking number on the scale.

and yet.

i can see the fluid in my face and my arms and legs and feet and hands and especially my achy boobs (i am wearing a freaking sports bra today, to tame them). AND I HATE IT ALL. and my feet hurt. and i am SO FREAKING SCARED that this weight gain will not stop, and that i will magically balloon back to 90kg, just like i've magically gained these 5 or 6 or whatever kg these past months. and my dear old sugar-craving little brain keeps telling me to reach for the banana bread for comfort. as if that'd make ANYTHING better.

i've been hormonal and horrible for a whole MONTH now, and i've had enough. really. i wish my body worked. i wish i didn't have pcos. i wish i had a cycle. i wish i knew whatever my body is doing (or trying to do) that's causing these weight fluctuations. i wish i wasn't struggling with these freaking girl department infections again (just like last winter). i wish i could eat whatever i wanted. i wish i was normal.

but i'm not. so i got to calm down. change things that i can change. and keep on keeping on.

stuff i am doing to deal:

• work out - i've worked out yesterday and this morning, and i went for two long walks with the dog yesterday as well. more gym on wednesday, friday and saturday;
• tracking - still not totally back in the groove. i can do it!;
• see my crappy old gyno (can't do anything 'bout the cycle without giving me hormones, which i will not do, but can at least treat my infections)
• drinking a shitload of water (almost 2 litres down already!);
• taking my supplements, including the good mineral one that i got to take between meals,
• talking to r. about it; and
• quitting all cake and baked goods until my birthday on june 23rd.

stuff that i am considering doing:

• go swimming (won't really have time before the weekend, though);
• get abhyanga (ayurvedic oil massage);
• get a manual lymphatic drainage massage (will call a therapist offering that today to inquire); and
• get myself to an homeopath (downside: don't really believe in it; also: cost).

any other ideas, friends?

indeed.

"in the morning i think how i should get things under control, at night i tell myself i’ll get back on track tomorrow. i start feeling bad about myself, which sends me right back to the source.

i want to stop, and at the same time the idea of stopping makes me sad and . . . scared, somehow. i’m overwhelmed by the idea of having to give up the instant gratification in favor of long term happiness."

[all & sundry: fix]

i should have known that going hungry to a work meeting at 7pm last night just wouldn't work. i ate some strawberries that i brought, but eventually i dug into some crappy, fatty food not because it tasted great, but because it was there. and because it made me feel good, ever so briefly.when i got home, i ate a good dinner, though. and my alloted piece of choc. and this morning, i tracked that crappy food.


i can do this.

like linda writes so eloquently "the good news is i know how to quit. after all, i’ve done it about a hundred times now."

size 44.

and then yesterday, as if to fire my resolve, i finally got a dress i ordered from h&m online weeks ago. and it's not the 36 (8) that i ordered, but a 44 (16), the size i used to wear, back in the day. the dress was labelled correctly as a 44, but put into a 36-marked plastic bag for mailing. i tried it on, anyway, just because, and it was supremely weird. i took up that much space? when i wore 44s, i would quite likely never have worn that dress, because of the giant boobs i had back then, and the chub rub i'd get when wearing skirts. returning it tomorrow.