Adjusted Reality

So when I started this journey at 265 lbs I really doubted I would get very far, but damned if I wasn’t gonna try.  I had, basically, a few levels of “final goals”.  The first was under 200, because I hadn’t been there since college.  The second was 170, which was around what I weighed when Zliten and I started dating, and I felt like a supah fly honey.  150 was the weight where the scale said “hey, you’re normal”, though I’m pretty sure if I got the body fat test, I’d have been normal for a while.  125 was gymnast weight, and as low as I said I’d possibly want to go.

I passed 200 around my 29th birthday (March 2008), I passed 170 around August 2008, and now, I’m hanging out here around 150…and have been for a few months.  I set another arbitrary goal of 135 for myself – not quite gymnast weight, somewhere in the middle of normal BMI-land, and a perfectly reasonable thing to weight for a 5’5″ gal of the muscular persuasion.

However, it’s occured to me that maybe I’m done.  What’s the difference in weighing 150 and 135?  A pants size?  Is it going to magically flatten my belly?  Is it worth the hassle?  The guilt in the back of my head saying, “I know you’re eating to sustain yourself with all this training, but this would be the PERFECT time to just cut calories and lose lose lose super quick.  You can deal with the exhaustion and grumpies!   It’s temporary!   Just do it!”?  What is losing another 10/15/25 lbs going to do for me?  Am I going to only be able to run the distance I want if I shed more weight?  Otherwise, what does it matter besides the image in the mirror?

I’m still deciding, I haven’t completely abandoned the idea of trying to lose 15 more lbs once this half is over, but I’m considering it.  It’s still a very healthy weight for me, and in theory would take about a 3 month commitment to do.  However, I spent a lot of time looking around me at other people on vacation and realized how really not bad I am in the grand scheme of fitness.  It took being in a different setting and not seeing the same people in the same town.  I’ve just come back home with this confidence and good feeling about the way I look.  Physical fitness will be something I work to improve for the rest of my life, but there needed to be a point where I looked in the mirror most days and thought – “hawt”.  I might possibly just be there.

Now “hawt” does not equal perfect.  I can only rock a bikini top and swimsuit skirt bottom on the skinniest of days.  I still have this protrusion of flesh that sticks out above my belly button, and a pooch beneath it.  I can pick out my flaws, just like everyone can.  I’m sure even the size 00s complain about the lack of symnetry in their emaciated ribs or something.

“Hawt” does equal self confidence.  Maybe it’s just me being a superficial and horrible person, though I doubt it, but when I walk into a room, I want the consensus to be – “hawt”.  Now, being engaged to be married, I do not want to leverage that power in any real and physical way.  I simply want someone that first meets me to have a favorable opinion of my appearance.  Actually, I don’t even really care if they really do or not – I just need the confidence to THINK they do.  I’m starting to believe I’m there.

I guess the kicker is that when I had a great physique, I was too young and ackward to even consider that maybe someone thought I was attractive.  Also, I’m sure the coke bottle glasses and braces for a while didn’t help.  In my life, I have been lauded for my talents in many areas, my athleticism, my smarts, my career-saviness, my work ethic, my drive, and many other things.  I’m not just a bimbo looking for attention.  I have other things going for me besides a pretty face, a skinny waist, and some healthy knockers.  It just feels like full confidence in my physical appearance I’ve never had is the final piece of the puzzle on the way to world domination, ya know.

I’m not sure if this makes any sense to anyone but me, but I had to ramble.  The only thing I’m sure of is once I say I’m DONE – I’m actually done.  I really want to clear my head of the idea of losing weight.  I don’t want to say that I’m happy at 150 and then really secretly hope that the scale keeps going down.  They say an all or nothing attitude is bad, and I try to stay away from it in most areas, but this is one thing I cannot bend on.

How is your self-image today?  Do you remember a time (or are living it) where you walked in a room and felt powerful simply because of your physical attributes?  Is this a horrible thing to want?

If you haven’t seen this, go watch (SFW).

It got me thinking – I try to keep my status updates on facebook and twitter to a reasonable amount because, well, I don’t want to seem narcissistic and I really don’t think people care that I just took a crap or that I went to the kitchen and grabbed a plum to munch on.  However, I thought it would be a fun experiment to see what I’d write if I did.  Since I’m not going to subject my facebook or twitter friends to this, and I figure if you’re reading this, you’re more interested in my witty banter than the average bear, so it’s your own fault!

Quix:

is up too early.  Who gets up before 7:50 besides farmers?  (Yeah, I know but I can still bitch about it.) Argh. (7:50)

is dressed, geared up, mapping out her run route, and eating her pre-running otter pop. (8:00)

is finally out the door!  8 miles, ho! (8:15)

is back and soaked through and through with sweat.  That was rough!  How am I going to do 9 next week?  Felt good though. (9:40)

is dashing out the door, only a few minutes late.  Sans lipstick though, which will throw off my day. (9:53)

got to work a few minutes late, caught up on emails, got coffee and water.  Even threw in a little caf in my decaf to stave off an energy crash. (10:15)

is now mowing down a fiber one bar catching up on the internets while waiting for stuff to be done so she can get to work! (10:45)

now feels about 3 lbs lighter.  Don’t think about this one too hard.  Had to hand a lady back a button under the stall divider that fell off. (11:15)

is eating a plum and about to go harass the Soundland office and see how progress is progressing. (11:30)

is back.  Stuff for me to work on ready after lunch, audition still on at 2pm and now have a phone recording session at 2:30. (11:45)

is sooooo ready for pho!  And I even had it on Wednesday for dinner, but not at the usual spot! (noon)

is off to get some PHOOOOO!  I so love pho-ridays! (12:15)

is back from lunch.  I always feel so bad running my space heater in the office when it’s 90+ degrees outside, but it’s like a meat locker in here. (1:45)

is off to do an audition – that is, receive an audition, not give one.  Much nicer evaluating than being evaluated! (2:00)

is back.  Dude was pretty good!  I really liked his take on one of our characters.  It’s cool when actors are the ones with the good ideas. (2:20)

wonders if the male brain is just not wired to be good at packing… (2:40)

has just had her recording session cancelled (boo).  Bladder empty, water full, think imma head out for a smoke and then hunker down. (2:50)

is back.  I am so happy that running and smoking still just a little is not causing problems.  I would be so freaking grumpy… (3:10)

just found out that it was touch and go on the 4 day weekend (not mine since I’m out of town, but for everyone else) but stuff was deemed too minor to mess with.  Yay! (3:20)

is now in hunker-down, headphones on, implementer monkey mode.  The world needs to be ignored for a while! (3:30)

just had a thought.  If I could give one piece of advice to a young me or someone similar, it would be to take whatever they’re passionate about and pursue it.  Wholly.  Completely.  In a life consuming way.  Before they are too attached to standards of living and salaries and money.  Don’t wait.  Longer than a twitter I know.  Back to work. (3:45)

is not being ignored well today.  *Hides better* (4:00)

just realized after an hour or so of work that she was working out of the wrong branch of code.  Thx u awesome programmers for 1.  not yelling at me and 2. fixing it for me. (4:30)

is now alone in the office (my producer officemate just left).  I miss coming in and leaving early, but I also love running in the mornings. (4:45)

is done being a monkey!  Now, to Soundland to chat, get statuses of peopleses, and clear my head. (5:45)

is back.  Now, to listen to some offsite auditions and then duck out a lil earlyish. (6:15)

can take no more of this.  Shutting down shop and heading out to target to for trip shopping rq and then home to finish packing. (6:35)

is at Target, and has a shopping problem.  I go in for a few things and try on the whole store. (7:00)

doesn’t have as much of a problem as I thought.  Clothes-wise, came out with a pair of shorts (on list), red hoodie (not on list but 8 bucks), two pairs of sunglasses (one on list) and lipstick (on list). (7:30)

got everyone’s opinion and is keeping pair one of the sunglasses.  Brown, with studs on the side.  I will probably return the other black pair.  Maybe.  Ok, possibly I still have problems. (7:45)

is playing pool at the neighbors!  Won my first two games. (8:30)

has had a bit to drink, and lost game 3.  Yay for pizza!  I would feel guilty eating two slices of thin crust pepperoni and a meat lovers, but it’s less than what I burned today on the run and I haven’t eaten much (10:00)

…and, since I’m lazy, that concludes my day.  Up for the rest of the night is more hangin’ out, playing pool, cocktails (weak, since I am getting up tomorrow to run, yoga, and then finish packing and get thee to the airport on time), and sleeeeep.  In retrospect, it’s probably best that I have a twitter filter, and only tweet the notable and interesting stuff.  This is Quix, signing off, until next Wednesday.  Vegas, baby.  Yeaaaaaaah.

What are you up to this weekend?  Anything legendary?  Wanna convince me to tweet more (yeah, right).

Unlike this guy,  this week I just haven’t been into it.  It, meaning everything besides already being on vacation, relaxing, or just basically doing whatever the hell I want, whenever I want.  Considering I’m on week 6 of half marathon training, have a full week of work to do, and other obligations to attend to at home, it just hasn’t worked out.

Usually, my runs energize me.  I feel GREAT after working out.  I feel EMPOWERED after a great weights session.  If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be so into it, I’m not a masochist.  This week – not so much.  It’s been a chore to drag my ass out of bed in the morning (even more so than normal) and it’s taken a lot longer to feel good during a workout.  I didn’t feel like I could give it my all until TWENTY minutes into my tempo run.  My cross training day yesterday came just in time, I don’t think I could have physically run without risking injuring myself, I was so tired and sore.  Then, when my alarm went off this morning, I groaned, got out of bed, and felt so thoroughly NOT pleased with the idea of going running that I just climed back under the covers and snoozed.

I keep thinking I should feel bad, but I don’t.  I used to feel horrible when I’d skip a workout.  I’d think, “If I skip this workout, then I’ll think it’s ok to skip more workouts and all of a sudden I’ll stop working out completely and I’ll immediately be 265 lbs again and miserable!”  Sounds crazy, but somehow in my head, missing one workout was going to cause the great Quix fat-ocolypse or something.  Now, I’ve got 21 months of regular workouts under my belt.  Exercise is now part of my life.  I cannot imagine a week without it unless I was on my deathbed.   I don’t even dream about being lazy like I used to when I was just over the workouts and had the mentality that I just wanted to hurry up and be skinny already.  Now I realize to be a healthy, strong athlete, I have to be both consistent with my workouts on a grand scale, and listen to my body day to day for the minutae.

Now, I realize that one missed workout because my body genuinely needed the rest is not a catastrophy.  I do have a twinge of guilt when I miss a workout in lieu of something like happy hour or whatnot, but that’s different.  I guess the secret is distinguishing the “don’t wannas” from “exercise today would be really and truly damaging for me”.  And I’m afraid the only insight I have on this is that you get to know yourself after doing something regularly for a long time.  I know when I start feeling like I do this week, I need to take care to listen to myself, or I could get hurt.  I have a pre-planned exercise rest via Vegas vacation from Saturday – Tuesday (though I am bringing some workout clothes just in case, because running on the strip might be a fun experience) otherwise I might have knocked off a few workouts on the schedule and given myself a long weekend to rest anyway.  We will see how I feel when I get back.  I bet after 4 days I’ll be ready to get back into it.

Now, I do love pushing myself.  If I didn’t workout every time I just didn’t necessarily feel like bothering to do it, I’d probably skip about 1-2 sessions a week.  For me, the hardest part is getting changed and the first 5 minutes.  I will workout through a hangover, because I know what caused the crappy feeling and it usually makes me feel better by the end of it, or at least not any worse.  I’ll do moderate exercise through a mild cold on the same vein – I know it’s not going to hurt me, and it’s probably going to make me feel better.  When I start feeling unusually “not into it” and sore, I’ve learned that pushing through THAT is what gets me injured.  Some tough weeks I’ll feel like it the last day and do my norm anyway, but only because I know I have only.one.to.go and I’m done.  Getting the feeling when I still have a 4 mile run, a weights session, an 8 mile run, and yoga – now that’s a sign.

And…I’m also not apologizing because I bet I make up what I missed.  I’m already feeling better having slept a bunch (over 9 hours) and rested this morning.  I’ve got my gym bag with me to do weights tonight – and I have visions of hopping on the treaddy first and seeing where it takes me.  I might not do the full 4 miles I was supposed to this morning, but I can see a quick 2 mile jaunt or something.  I also have scheduled Saturday as an offday, but have the morning before the airport so I might do a quick run then.  I just have to make sure I’m rested enough for my 8 miler tomorrow morning (ner-vous! this is by far the longest run!).

Internets, how do you cope with finding the balance between “don’t wanna” and “gonna get injured”?  What level of discomfort or disinterest makes you skip a workout?  Will you ignore the running shoes if you just don’t feel like it, or are you lifting weights until your arms fall off?

This, which is a very fine read on it’s own got me thinking, but on a slightly different subject.  It’s something that I’ve discussed with friends on some levels, but I’d like to put it out to the internet as well.  As we’ve become more technologically inclined, levels of communication have definitely changed and evolved from 15 years ago.

Case in point: when I was 15 years old, the options available to me to communicate with someone was to either see them in person, call them, stick a note in their locker, or write them a letter and mail it.  Considering most of my friends and I went to the same school, it wasn’t much trouble to see someone in person if I wanted to speak with them.  Most of the people I took time to communicate or share with were at least close acquaintances that knew me pretty well.  It was pretty typical to spend a good amount of time that I was not hanging out with one or a group of people either on the phone with a local friend, on the phone with a friend from Chi-town, where I used to live, or writing a personal letter to them.

Fast forward to college, around 10 years ago (Did I really say that?  I am getting so old).  My time was a bit more in demand then trying to do school, work, and theatre, and the internets had become a presence in my life, so the breakdown was a little different.  The most important people got alone time – usually meals or coffee or whatnot.  This was pretty much only for my best friends and boyfriend at the time.  Then, there was group interaction – going out to a party or hanging out with a group at coffee or whatnot.  There were still phone calls and texts, but usually dedicated to the same people that were on the “alone time” level unless they were super short utilitarian ones (making plans to go out, asking a quick question, etc).   I had pretty much stopped writing letters in favor of emails.  At that time, they were still usually personal ones, I didn’t graduate to the bulk “here’s how I’m doing” letters for another few years.  This is also about the time in my life where my friends weren’t only back in Chicago or near me – people had scattered to many different towns and places.

Now, I’ve got friends even more scattered.  I’ve got people I could consider good friends in Chicago, San Diego, Reno, New York, Denver, LA, Portland, Phoenix, Lexington, and I’m sure quite a few other places I’m forgetting.  Seeing them face to face is right out.  I wish I could take that many vacations per year, but yeah, totally not happening.  I wish I could be better about calling these people on the phone to chat and catch up, but the only people I ever call are my parents.  I used to send out nice long personal emails, but I don’t even have time for that anymore.

Beyond the group of local friends I see on a weekly/monthly basis and my parents, my answer to anyone that wants to stay in touch is not my phone number and address, but first my facebook and twitter info, and second my IM and email address.  I have been lucky to have met a seriously large amount of cool people in my life and I’ve always wanted to keep in touch with as many of them as I can.  The disconnect is between my want and my level of effort – I just don’t have the time and energy to spend on the phone catching up or out to dinner with a different old friend each night.  I guess it would be different if I lived in the same area all my life, but I’ve been a midwesterner, a desert gambler gal, an attitude-clad so-cal-ian, and now a southern hippie.  I’ve not traveled like some of the army brat folks I know, but I’ve been around.

I am in love with sites like Facebook/Twitter/Live Journal/etc – as well as the ability to have my own blog.  I think it’s super keen to be able to tell everyone at once today that “Leah is feeling rebellious.  Eff you, I won’t do what you tell me.  Ok, I probably will but I’ll grumble about it.”  And past coworkers, friends from middle school, former gymnastics teammates, and current friends of friends can comment about how dorky I truly am.  It helps to feel close to people who there is no way you could keep in touch with otherwise.  Some folks I’ve actually become close to *because* of the sites, people who were acquaintences but feel more like friends now.  It’s like back when I played MMOs, but with less 2am corpse runs and 6 hour raids.  Bonus!

I’m sure you can argue the downsides, but I’m not really feeling that right now.  I’m just happy that I can know what everyone’s doing and what’s one everyone’s mind whenever they feel like sharing.

What do you think about communication nowadays?  Hate that a personal message for some people is a text?  Love that you can meet and keep in touch with people over the intertubes?

So I was having one of those days today.  Nothing going right at work, had a lot of wasted time getting through problems that ended up being beyond my control, and just all around lack of inspiration.  Besides my run this morning, and the fact that Zliten even joined me (yay!!!), today has been kinda – meh.

So what do you write when you’re feeling sorta grey-ish?  I have a post about willpower started but… um… when you’re practically chaining yourself to your desk not to get up and raid the snack machine… yeah that feels a bit hypocritcal.  Then, I remembered my trusty friend google, and lo and behold, the Imagination Prompt.  I am going to answer the first ten questions it gives me here and maybe it will be interesting.  If not, well, I tried.

1.  Can you watch a movie already in progress, or do you need to see it from the beginning?

Well, I prefer to watch a movie from the beginning, but I’ve seen many, many movies from the middle.  If it’s interesting, I’ll seek out the whole thing, but I have definitely seen my share of half-movies.  Especially the ones on comedy central that play over and over.  I’ll watch 20 minute here, 10 minutes there, and eventually I’ve seen most of it!

2.  Describe a childhood birthday.

When I was 13, my friends threw me a surprise party and kicked it off in an odd way.  I rollerbladed home with one of my friends and the rest were inside my basement at the ready.  They wrapped my up in saran wrap and proceeded to dump the contents of the fridge on me – chocolate syrup, butter, the works.  They really appreciated the thank you hugs after getting doused.  It sounds mean when I type it out now, but that’s just how we were, I guess.

3.  Loved and lost, or never loved at all? Which might you prefer?

Loved and lost, of course!  First of all, anguish makes for great writing fodder.  Second, one can only truly learn by experiencing, and how are you to know what you want, what is right for you, what love truly is, except by a heaping, steaming pile of Mr. Wrongs in your wake, if that’s what is necessary.  Luckily, I found my Mr. Awesome early in life, so it’s mostly a rhetorical exercise here.

4.  I can’t believe that I…

Am still waiting for all this crap to download at work.  Next!

5.  You can only keep five things you have. What will they be?

By things, I’m going to assume that I’ve already got my Zliten and my lizards.   I’ll say, off the top of my head – a substantial amount of my wardrobe (ie, enough to get me through a month or so), my engagement ring, my laptop, all my old photos/yearbooks/crap, and…uh…my phone?  The thing here is while it said I only got to keep five things, it didn’t say I couldn’t just take an infinite amount of money and go buy replacements for the other things!  I’m sure if I gave it some real thought I might remember some more keepsake-y things but I could definitely get by with the 5 listed above.

6.  Weird is…

My daily bread.  Normal is a dryer setting.  Weird is a compliment – if you’re weird, at least you’re doing something different.  And you know what…everyone is weird.  It’s just about how public you are with your weirdness.  Let your freak flag fly, everyone!

7.  If I could be any age, what would it be — list 10 reasons why.

You know, I really quite like 30.  It’s old enough to know better but young enough to do it once in a while anyway.  It’s young with out all the stupid.  It’s a great time to remember things you put along the wayside to try and be a successful 20-something and dust them off and try them again.  And it’s still ok to get upset when getting ma’am-ed by snotnose punks at the salad place.  That’s not 10, but you get the point.

8.  7 things I’ve done or said that I’m proud of:

Ok, let’s do DONE:

– I am proud of my gymnastics career.  It wasn’t much, but I loved it and will carry the experience through all my life.

– I am proud that I graduated college, with honors, and a 3.7 GPA with a BA of Psychology.  Not that I did anything with it, but I’m glad I have the paper.

– I am proud that I uprooted myself not once but twice chasing rainbows – once to San Diego in 2002, and most recently to Austin in 2007.   Given my comfort zone, I could have probably lived in one town all my life, and I’m glad I’ve spent some time in at least a few different places.

– I am proud that I slowly and sanely lost 115 ish lbs.  I did it on my own terms, I did it listening to my body, and I did it without giving up being me.

– I am proud of my current surge of altheticism, mainly the 10k awesome time and the fact that we are going on lots of biking adventures to faraway double digit mile places.

– I am proud that I spent 2 years as producer running an online world.  While a lot of things came out of it I didn’t like, I am happy to remember a job that I enjoyed doing with every fiber of my being and was so into that very few other things mattered.

– I am proud that I’ve spent almost 10 years with my Zliten, going from one adventure to the next.  I’m also proud that I have not found a way to hate him yet, so I guess that must mean I love him.

I think that’s it for today, that was sorta fun.  Might have to pull this out when the next fit of un-inspired-ness hits.  Answer your favorite question below in the comments, or feel free to steal it as a blog topic if you are also in my boat!