One 1/4 mile at a time

Um ... hello.

I was an original Cincy Loser. Now, when it comes to weight loss, I'm really just a loser. I completely gave up.

In 2007, I put on tons of weight due to several deaths in the family. So in 2008, I got myself a trainer, worked out with her diligently for 6 mos, all in an attempt to lose the funeral weight. I even ate better.

NOTHING HAPPENED. Seriously, getting a trainer was not the best use of my time or money. She never taught me the things I wanted to know (like how to correctly use the machines instead of how to modify the machines in ways she thought were better) and I neither lost weight nor gained muscle. She was a great person though, and currently the head trainer at my old gym.

I was ballroom dancing once a week too, but that (which I'm still doing) is an incredible amount of fun but not necessarily always challenging to my muscles. Ballroom dancing is now more of a stress reliever for me than a way to exercise.

I started traveling again in late 2008 and truthfully, I haven't really stopped. Staying healthy and traveling is a really hard thing to do, and I'm a big sucker when it comes to being lazy.

Where does that leave me? Way too overweight and not happy about it.

Me now. Even the groundhog
thinks I should get in shape.

I've had this weird flirtation going on with my bicycle for a year. Last year, I was amazingly inspired by my friend Jen, who has become a cycling goddess in less than 2 years. I got my poor dusty bike out of storage. I have a nice bike, a fancy Cannondale purchased for me about 15 years ago. 15 years ago I rode it twice before I decided that I was afraid of cars.

So, I stared at my bike for the last year. In June, before a 3-week round of travel, I dropped off my bike at the shop for a tune-up, cobwebs, rotted tires, and all. The cycle guys just stared at me then made fun of the cobwebs.

I picked the thing up - tuned up, new wheels, and shiny - on July 2, the day after I returned home from my trip, and proceeded to stare at it for two weeks. I made up all sorts of excuses, which included buying a bike lock and a helmet, amongst other things I don't need.

Monday I got on the bike. I have such a huge fear of cars and I'm terribly out of shape, so this was a pretty big deal. I rode around 2 blocks in my neighborhood, coming in at .94 mi. When I came back on Monday, I walked into my kitchen and fell down. My legs were - without exaggeration - jelly. I downed several bottles of water and dragged myself to the couch. By the end of Monday, my abs were hurting, my back muscles, and my shoulders and arms (from clutching the handles for dear life).

Tuesday I made myself get back on the bike and do it again - same route. I was still a little jelly when I came back, but I didn't collapse. My abs hurt less and I think I actually relaxed a little in my upper body.

Yesterday I was downtown all day, so there was no way I could have ridden the bike. But today I made myself get back on the damned thing and I rode 1.30 mi. (I added a block.) I know it's not much. I have friends who regularly ride 70-100 miles every weekend and here I am cheering about a mile and a quarter. But I'm so terribly out of shape ... Tomorrow I'm adding another block, I think. Or I might keep the same distance and change up the route. It's not all flat either. I hadn't realized how many gently sloping hills we had around here. (Hell going up, but fun coming down.)

I have it in my head that I can do this. I want to be able to ride to the grocery store - and back - which is 4 miles roundtrip and I want to do it by the end of summer. It's a physical challenge for me - and a mental one. There are a helluva lot of cars between me and the grocery store.

I also desperately need to find a gym. Near me, there is an LA Fitness, a Better Bodies, and an Urban Active. I want to do a free week at each and make up my mind. I hate gyms with a passion because I prefer to be alone when I work out. If I had a spot in my house for an elliptical machine, you would never ever find me at a gym. Picking out a gym is hard; making me go to one is about like pulling teeth.

My ultimate goal? Well, I'm not really looking at this in pounds or inches any more. I want my clothes to fit better and I want to feel better about myself. I also have promised myself a reward.

I love Seattle and our own Cincy Loser Laura has moved out there and is an avid cyclist. There's a town near Seattle called Skagit Valley that each spring erupts in tulips. If I can keep cycling, and stay in shape over the winter, I want to fly out to see Laura next spring and take a ride through the tulips. That's my reward.

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Photo by kashyap_hc, used under a CC license

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Tap…tap…tap…is this thing on? Ew, I haven’t seen this must dust since I pulled that treadmill out from under the bed. You still there? It’s been a while, eh? That’s enough snickering from the skinny bitch on the left and you over there, PUT.DOWN.THE.TWINKIE – just cause I’ve gone off the rails doesn’t mean you gotta go with me!

Yeah, it’s Amy – ten pounds heavier than when we last met – back for another crack at this crazy little think called please God make my ass smaller, er, I mean weight loss. Success shall be mine! And before you roll your eyes and mumble (as my husband did) “yeah, sure, we’ve heard this before”, let me tell you that I’m just coming off my first week back in the saddle and I’m down TWO POUNDS thank you very much.

(bows and waits patiently for applause to die down)

Ok, so what’s different this time? I’m not going to Weight Watchers right now. While I think the WW program is one of the best things out there, I needed to shake it up. When I was working the program, it was half-hearted and I knew more drastic measures were needed.

What drastic measures you ask (with that trademark look of horror on your face)? Don’t worry - no surgery, no crazy pills, no clinically diagnosed bulimia, anorexia, etc. No folks, by drastic I mean EATING LESS and MOVING MORE. Gasp – sometimes you gotta kick it old-school simple.

Our family joined Silverlake last month and I’ve been working with a trainer for the last couple weeks. I’m doing strength training with him twice a week and cardio on my own 3-4 times a week. He is also guiding me on my eating (more on that next week if you're lucky) – challenging me to staying under 1467 calories a day and upping my protein intake drastically.

So far, so good. I haven’t been starving, and saying NO to certain things is easier than usual. I’m trying to take it one day at a time. I have a reminder on my phone every day, it dings and a message pops up asking: WHEN ARE YOU EXERCISING TODAY? Then I carve out some time in a given day – even if it is just a walk, something everyday.

Two things I’m working on this week:

1) Putting work-out clothes (6 days worth) in my car w/shoes & socks. Then there is no rushing around in the morning tracking things down which could easily lead to an excuse NOT to work out. I washed and packed everything on Sunday night - I’m set for the week.

2) My trainer said that 25% of my intake should come from protein-rich sources. So I’m looking for more sources of protein. Let’s face it, I can’t just walk around with a sirloin in my purse and gnaw on it every time I get the urge. Well, I could but people would likely stare. So I’m on the hunt for portable, convenient ways to protein-a-fy my daily snacks. Easy additions so far have been hardboiled eggs and these terrific POWER CRUNCH bars! Check them out they are terrific. A little pricey if you get them at the gym, but I found them on Amazon for ½ the price Silverlake charges, so I ordered a box. Cookies & Cream is my favorite flavor, but they are all good! If you have any protein ideas that don’t involved meat products in my purse –leave ‘em here in the comments, would ya?

To me, this time around has to be manageable – nothing complicated, nothing crazy.

Becoming One of the Beautiful People

Following is a guest post from Chris Cole. Chris posted here on Cincinnati Losers a few months ago and is STILL going strong.  I think you'll agree his journey is inspiring!





Hello again, Cincinnati Losers! The last time you heard from me was in February when Shannan asked me to submit something. At that point, I had lost 63 pounds and was feeling pretty good.

Today, I’m down 101 pounds and feeling great! My last submission was titled “The Tipping Point,” and as each day passes it becomes clearer to me that what separates successful weight-loss efforts from the countless unsuccessful ones is just that – a tipping point. A moment when you decide, once and for all, that you’ve had enough. Enough of the aches and pains of everyday life. Enough of the dread of going to certain restaurants or sporting events or getting on an airplane because the seats are too small. Enough of losing your breath walking from the car to the office. Enough of growing out of expensive clothes you purchased just months earlier. Enough.

So you change. It starts slow with little things. Frankly, early on you have no idea what you’re doing. You start counting calories. Maybe you get a gym membership. You go and you look around at the machines and it’s all overwhelming and intimidating. You see beautiful people. Everywhere. They’re lifting the big weights; they’re sprinting on the treadmills faster than you could run if a bear was chasing you – and they’re not even sweating; they’re living beautiful people lives, and that in and of itself intimates you. You pick out a machine that doesn’t look too complicated – maybe a recumbent bike – and you hop on. You start pedaling. You ride until your butt is just too sore to continue. You burned 250 calories. Is that good? You have no clue. You’re too sore to go the next day, but the day after there you are again. With the same damn beautiful people. (They go every day.) You hop back on that same bike and you go again. You crank up your iPod with some up-tempo music you love now but will soon come to detest because of its Pavlovian effect on you. This time you’re able to burn a few more calories, but you still have no clue if its even worth the effort. Two-hundred and seventy calories sure doesn’t sound like that much. And how can the human butt get so sore so quickly?

As you pedal on, the miles turn into weeks and the weeks turn into muscle. You’re amazed. You never noticed your quads before, but hmm…there they are. And you don’t get as sore as you used to. Oh, and you’re burning closer to 500 calories each visit now. And you’re not as sore the next day, which is good because that means you can think clearly enough to do some Googling and you find out that burning nearly 500 calories isn’t that bad. And you realize how important it is to keep an eye on fiber and sodium and fat too. You see references to net calorie burn and other scientific-sounding stuff, but that’s all a bit much for now. It’s enough of a challenge for you to just track the calories, pedal the bike and not kill the beautiful people.

After a few months, you’re bored with the bike. So you hop on the elliptical machine and holy hell. How can something that looks so simple cause such misery? It’s everything you can do to last three minutes. But you notice that in those three minutes you burned more calories than five minutes on the bike. So the next day (you’re able to go to the gym back-to-back days now) you do the bike awhile and then hop back on the elliptical. Eight minutes this time – SCORE! The trick, you figure out, is to bend your knees a little and get into a rhythm. In no time at all, you’re master of the elliptical. You can go 40, 50 minutes. Granted, you sweat so much you literally slip from time to time on the puddle gathering below you. You begin to think, “If I can do this, surely I can go join the beautiful people on the treadmill.” You do. At first you walk. Slowly. And flat. Over time, you speed up and begin to work at an incline. Soon you’re running. Damn – you haven’t run since…the 1980s. Literally. Your day-to-day aches have been replaced by sore hips and joints from running and ellipticaling, but it’s such a good feeling.

You’ve lost some serious weight at this point and you start to think about things you’ve never thought about before. You’re sitting in your office, daydreaming about the run you’ll get in tonight. It’s sick, but you love it. Your body is feeling great and you realize there is nothing you cannot do. You do some more Googling and decide that you’re going to start training for a 5K. You think back to before you started this madness when you didn’t even know what 5K meant – it’s 5,000 something, but it might as well have been miles. Now you’re planning. Next year, you’ll do some version of the Flying Pig Marathon. Probably not a 5K – you could do that now if you really worked hard. Nah, half marathon at least. Maybe the full 26+ miles. Why not? You’re getting stronger – much stronger. The comments and compliments are coming pretty regularly now. It’s all a bit embarrassing, but at the same time it fuels you. And you finally feel comfortable venturing into the weight training area of the gym. You realize the beautiful people are actually quite welcoming. They show you how to use the crazy-looking machines. You start small. On some of the machines, you don’t even use the weights – you can only manage the weight of the machine itself. But you do it. Then the real muscles come. You begin to notice things like biceps, triceps and collar bones. You have collar bones – who knew?

As frustrating as it was to grow out of expensive clothes in no time at all, you’re now thrilled to shrink right back down through those same clothes. The shirts you wore at your previous job 10 years ago…now too big. The T-shirts you wore in college begin to hang off of you. You keep the belt you wore before your tipping point as a reminder. You’ve been poking holes in it for awhile now and it’s getting ridiculous. There are 15 new holes in the thing and it wraps halfway around you when you put it on. You bought a new belt last month, but you’ve already started to poke new holes in that one too. It’s a nice problem to have, but it’s a problem nonetheless. You need new clothes, and the realization hits you that for the first time since you were a teenager you don’t have to shop at some specialty store. You secretly cry in the dressing room the first time you get an XL to fit you – the same way you did the first time you realized a 5XL fit you.

Just when you start to think you have this thing beat, you hit your first real, stubborn plateau. It’s like quicksand. You work hard – real hard; you eat healthy – real healthy. But nothing. You lose one pound this week but gain two the next. You start to get frustrated and so you work even harder. You up your weekly gym visits to eight (one each day and twice on Saturday). Still nothing. As quickly as things got started, things have stalled. What do you do? You ask the beautiful people. Their advice is all over the board – lift more, lift less, take supplements, mix it up, stop working out completely for a week. Hmm…given the exhaustion, this last option seems like a good one! So you do it. And it takes everything you’ve got not to go to the gym for a week. Your body heals and the rest does wonders for those sore hips. A week later, there you are back at the gym. You’re shocked how much you actually missed the beautiful people. You hop on the scale, full of fear and dread for the first time in months. And to your utter amazement, you’ve lost 7 more pounds. Seven. How in the hell did that happen? You get your workout in (four miles on the treadmill, 30 minutes on the elliptical and 15 minutes on the rowing machine) and then head home to once again work the Google. You begin to realize just how complicated the human body can be. Ahhh…that must be what makes weight loss such a challenge, you conclude. It’s half art, half science.

Back on track, you decide that it probably is time for you to mix things up. You’ve been using the same three or four cardio machines for months now and while you’re not completely bored, you’re ready for something new. A coworker tells you about a class he’s thinking of taking – something called Muay Thai (back to the Google). Wow. It looks serious. It’s like kickboxing on steroids. Something the beautiful people would do, but probably not for you. After a few days of heavy persuading, you agree to give it one shot and so you go. Great…more beautiful people. But these are even nicer than the ones at the gym. Once they realize you’re taking it seriously and actually want to improve yourself, they welcome you with open arms. Soon, you’re kicking the bag so hard your shin will look like a medium-rare ribeye steak the next day. Your left big toe is blistered from pivoting on the mat, your right big toe is bruised and swollen from kicking the bag wrong and your ankles aren’t thrilled with you either. But you love it. The next week, you’re the first to arrive.

You’re down 101 pounds and your life is literally changing every day. What once seemed completely impossible (running, taking mixed martial arts classes, shopping for clothes at the mall) is now your day-to-day life. And you know to an absolute certainty that you’ll reach your ultimate weight loss goal. You’ve really known it since your tipping point, but now others look at you and they know it too.

Yep, as I said in February, life is good.

Chris Cole

Starting Weight – 370
Current Weight - 269

My "War on Weight" Tools - Part One

The fact that this post is ten days late is a good indication of how crazy the last few weeks have been for me. My winter school term ended on Monday and yesterday was spent dealing with all those little errands that piled up while I was busy grading. So, today, I'm finally going to share with you some of the tools I'm using in my "War on Weight" the 2010 edition. I'm going to have to break into two parts because one of my tools isn't fully implemented yet on my Diminishing Returns blog. (I need to add a widget to this WordPress blog but the CSS isn't loading properly on the admin page and nothing can be done there. Tom's tried to fix it with no luck. Hoperatives was doing this too, but has stopped. We're running out of ideas on what to try! Any suggestions?)

1. SparkPeople - To be honest, this isn't my first time using SparkPeople. I've re-started more times than I can count. But I'm back and I'm working to get back in the habit of tracking my food and exercise again. I'm CarlaGS on SparkPeople if you would like to connect me there.

2. The Spark book - I actually won this book from my fellow Cincinnati Loser Shannan's blog. It's been sitting on a table in our condo for about a month. I recently purchased an iPad and I realized this morning that, if I'm going to read it, I need an electronic version. Now that I've done that, I'm going to pass my hard cover copy along to a friend.

3. R.C. Durr YMCA - We love our local Y. We love it so much that, when we were searching to buy our first home, the "must" was that it had to be close to the Y. We really slacked off the first three months of this year, but we're in our third week back and it's been great. Everyone there welcomed us back and has encouraged us to keep coming back. We jog in the pool some days and alternate with a 50 minute water aerobics routine on other days.

4. The Biggest Loser - I'll admit it. I love this show. And I've been one of those people who sat on the couch watching it while I was eating. But, today and many times in the past, it has been my inspiration. It's the reason I got this post finally written. :)

5. MapMyWalk.com - In addition to the water workouts, I'm adding walking back into my life. I started training for walking the Flying Pig Half Marathon last year (unsuccessfully) and I found this great web site for charting your walking maps. It's a nice supplement to SparkPeople's training tracking. Maybe next year I can try for the Half Pig again...

So those are the first five of my "War on Weight" tools. And, as soon as I get the WordPress problem fixed, I'll be back with more!