Adjusted Reality

Inspired by my husband who’s along for the ride as well – I figured since I’ve been glossing over it lately, I should post an update.

Still taking ridiculous selfies so you know not much has changed…

I have been doing this #projectraceweight thing for 6 weeks and 3 days (but who’s counting, right?).  Until this very week, it’s felt like an exercise in frustration, to be quite honest with all y’all.  It may be my fault for not weighing in regularly before that, and not wanting to face the scale right away, but I felt like I was eating so very little and my body was just saying, “Fuck you – you want to deprive me of calories?  I’ll fight you.  Let’s do it.”

I’m used to this for a few weeks.  But then I hit the month mark.  And then 5 weeks.  That’s a long time to eat -1000 calories or so per day without any effect.  I may have bitched and moaned and been a little surly, but I’m nothing if not persistent, so I kept at it.  I couldn’t eat much LESS than I was, so my M.O. was and is onward and through.

Finally this week I hit a few milestones:

• I have weighed at 189 or under for a full week.  In fact, today I had my lowest weight since August: 184.4.
• Fitbit says I’ve lost 7.1 lbs in the last month.
• Most of my t-shirts I abandoned because I felt huge are back into play.  They all magically got longer again!

Let’s concentrate on that 7.1 lbs.  If  I can do that for the next 3 months, I might be able to reach the 160-something promiseland.  It may not be the 150 I was dreaming of, but I knew that was a long shot and would probably take two offseasons to get there.

Looking back, I think I’ve found a few reasons why I’m starting to see some momentum now.

• Water is life.  I was REALLY bad about that for a while.  This week I’ve been focusing on drinking enough water and I feel better and I think it may be having some effect on the scale.
• I’m getting a little more actual trackable activity in terms of bike rides, paddling, running, and lifting heavy things on top of the 10k steps per day.  Only a few hours a week, and nothing with much intensity, but it’s still affording me a few more calories.  I’ve not hit the threshold where it’s stimulating a lot more hunger, so I can eat closer to 1500 calories instead of 1200, still be 1000 under my burn for the day, and my sanity is a lot more in tact with a few more calories to play with.
• Usually, I’m not a huge fan of vitamin supplements, I think that with a healthy balanced diet, you typically get what you need, and my bloodwork tends to confirm it.  However, when eating -1000-ish calories, there are a lot fewer opportunities to get that good nutrition in.  I’ve felt tangibly better this week taking a multi, a B, and a D.

I’ll be quite honest – I’ve gone from feeling despair last week to happiness this week.  I know I don’t lose easily, my body really likes stasis, but I’ve never fought it for SIX weeks like this before.  It’s a good thing that my mind is more persistent.

I’ve considered doing this during long rides too…

And because you made it through 500 words about my weight, here’s a picture of my Iguana sleeping on my aero bars.  Happy Friday!

Since we’ve been offseasoning, we’ve had some pretty epic weekends.  This was the first one that we really and truly had kind of a “normal person” Saturday and Sunday.  Sort of.  It was totally the weather’s fault.

Friday night, we went with friends to see Emo Phillips at Cap City Comedy Club.  I’m pretty easy to please with comedy, but this guy was hilarious (as was his opening act).  If you get the chance to see him live, do it!

Saturday, we took our bikes out to Lake Pflugerville and rode for 40 mins in the rain.  I reinforced the fact that a) we do not melt, b) I am out of shape but probably not as bad as I think, c) now that I know how to properly unclip, I kind of can’t wait to keep riding my bike more.

We also ran a mile because a) that’s what you do after you get off a bike at the Pflug, and b) I wanted to get some new header pix for my blog in my new kit at one of the places I typically train.  Feel free to refresh the page until you see it. 🙂  That mile was just under 11 minutes and that is the one pace I have right now.  We’ll fix that later, in a few months.

Kayaking was on the plan but due to the rain and wind we decided to skip it.  We came home and made lunch, and then I was off to a baby shower!  Now, these are not normally my bag, but it was for a very awesome friend and other great people were going to be there who I haven’t seen in a while, so it was a lot of fun.  I mean, look at this creative spread… right?  How could this not signal an awesome afternoon?

We had planned to go dancing that evening, but between the grey rainy day and being on my feet for hours, we decided on a movie night instead.  How have I not seen the Great Gatsby?  That sent us down a Baz Lurman hole and all of a sudden it was very late and I had vodka for dinner.  Oops.

Sunday, we woke up and I made actual breakfast.  With pancakes and hashed browns and everything!  And… then realized that was about half my calories for the day.   Second oops.  We watched a little of the second season of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and then it was vanity clean out time.  We got part of the way through the process, and Zliten pleaded severe hunger, so we headed out to do that (protein style burgers at In-n-Out are actually pretty great) and do some errands.

Four hours later, having been through Ikea, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, and finally Homegoods, I had the thought… this is what normal people do on weekends.  And it sucks.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy to finally get this done, and over the next week or so, clean off all the other surfaces and cupboards in the bedroom.  It causes me stress to see crap everywhere and be like “ugh, I’m a slob I should do something about that” before I go to sleep.  However, I hate errands and I’m not really a cleaner, so it also causes me stress that one whole precious weekend day was dedicated to this type of normal-assery.  It was only made possible by the shitty weather.

The week preceding it was kind of a blur except:

• We killed lots of stuff in our Dungeons and Dragons game.  This is a small sample.
• Finished up a few things at work that have taken some pressure off.  While we’ve still got about 3 things on the docket simultaneously, it’s not the 6 it was before.
• I feel like I made some pretty good goal progress, so let’s talk a bit more about that, shall we?

#projectraceweight is going IMPOSSIBLY slow.  However, this is the first week I’ve had an average weight in the 180s, so it’s something.  Keep plugging along, I will.  I’m finding it hard to believe I’ll reach my goals (even my more conservative ones) right now, but there’s nothing to do but keep at it.  I can’t actually eat much LESS. 🙂

House projects are off to a good start on two fronts – the aforementioned great bedroom clean out and organization, and also, we spent some time looking at Ikea kitchens and it’s time to do some research.  I wouldn’t buy Ikea furniture anymore now that I’m a real adult with a real paycheck, but I have heard their kitchen offerings are pretty decent.  It’s tempting because the price seems right for what we’re looking to do and really EASY, but… what’s the catch?  Where’s the other shoe?

I also got the name of a contractor that a friend recommended, so we’ll pursue that avenue as well.

Biker chick transformation is certainly not complete, but I felt SO much more confident this last week and think that if the rain could just fucking quit it for a moment, I’m a) ready to start bike commuting and b) probably ready to start group riding in a week or two.  I think I’d like to start with the brick session because triathletes give each other more space, it will probably be a gentler experience than heading to another giant group ride.

I’m calling the site done.  I may upload pics into the header as they happen, and I may set up the mail subscription service at some point if I get motivated, but I can certainly live without it.  It makes me happy right now.  Is it wrong that I just spent some time reading random posts because it’s pretty and I like looking at it?

I did weights once last week (Thurs).  I’m still sore (Mon), so obviously I need to be doing them.

I think my scope of “doin’ random thangs” is going to have to reduce a bit.  With friend and family commitments, and house projects we want to get done, it’s probably the one thing that’s going to slide, sorta.  I love the idea of attending stuff like Chicken Shit Bingo or going to random festivals downtown or going salsa dancing, but it’s like… there is only so much effort I have in a given day, and work, friends, family, and frankly outdoorsy type stuff is going to come first.  I guess I’m a little different than I was when I started triathleting and that’s ok.

This week is another rainy mess which means my hair will probably continue to look like the mess above, but it looks like it will be clearing up for the weekend.

By the days:

• Monday – weights, costco trip, pick up the house that somehow got demolished over the weekend, do laundry (yeah, super fun day… be really jealous of me…)
• Tuesday – birthday dinner and games with the family
• Wednesday – Friday – getting outside as much as humanly via bike, run, walk, or hopefully LAKE possible if the rain decides to quit it + one more weights session
• Saturday – biking and/or running somewhere pretty, potentially dance lessons that afternoon, and some relax time belting out tunes on Rock Band while my husband is at a diaper party (male baby shower – I’m pretty sure the diapers will be all baby sized)
• Sunday – spending time outside because it’s supposed to be nice and sunny, and hopefully being able to call project bedroom DONE

Nowhere on this list is: eat and drink like an asshole, so I’m going to try to stay away from a lot of that this week and see if I can’t just will myself to be a little bit smaller than I was last week.

What’s your favorite thing to do on the weekends?  Do you like to be outside as much as possible or does nature creep you out?