Adjusted Reality

I finally feel like I can post a small ounce of politics here now that the election is over.  Just to be contrary?  Well, I do love that, but for quite another reason, really.  I prefer that people make up their own minds, and I don’t really feel it is my right to sway anyone, being not terribly political or involved myself.  If you’re so inclined, read up on all the candidates’ views and vote for who you agree with the most.  At least read up on what the different parties stand for and vote accordingly.  If nothing else, watch the box set of the West Wing.  Aaron Sorkin’s writing is captivating and intelligent, and you’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know about how things work in the white house, even though I’m sure it is glammed up a notch or twenty.

Also placing me in the “I fail to be able to evangelize anything policital” category is how I became a democrat.  I was replacing my driver’s license for the 15th time (stupid things always ran away from me) and since I was just over 18, they asked me if I wanted to register to vote.  One of my best friends in high school was sitting there with me while I filled it out.  I was pretty much clueless on what each party stood for (being that my father is a democrat and my mom is a republican, we didn’t talk politics much around the house).  She asked me if I thought people should be able to do drugs.  I said, sure, why not, it’s their choice, and thus she said I was a democrat and I signed up as such.  I mean, I picked correctly, I definitely embrace democratic ideals after learning more, but I certainly didn’t go there at first for the right reason.  I also didn’t vote in 2000 because I was “too busy”, and look who we elected.  I voted in 2004, but it wasn’t really for anyone, it was against Bush.

This year, I finally started taking an interest.  After reading all the information out there, I fully support giving someone a little different a chance to change the country for the better.  While I think the last 8 years could have gone worse if I really stretch my imagination, it most definitely could have been better.  I’m pretty sure that if we did not at least pick the right person, a vast majority of the people in the country called out yesterday for something different, and those in charge will need to listen.

I am also hoping that we, as a country, can get beyond trying to pass laws limiting rights, freedoms, and choice.  California, while passing it with a much more narrow margin, still chose to ban gay marriage this election.  I’m straight as an arrow (although I do tend to like guys with long hair…I’m not sure what that says about me), but it’s my opinion that marriage is two people saying to each other, “I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you”.  It doesn’t matter if they have their naughty bits on the inside or the outside.  My two friends back in college got married for tax reasons, he was gay, she was just straight and single.  Over half of marriages end in divorce.  Sanctity, my ass.  I’m hopeful that next time it goes to vote, it won’t go down the same way, but it still saddens me that we could even fathom passing laws that make not a lick of difference to anyone but the people from which we take things away.  Nothing is safer or better.  Why do we want to take things away from people, and how does it better our own lives?  At least the other horrible proposals taking away abortion rights got shot down…

I’m hopeful for a new start.  It will be an interesting 4 years, and I look forward to seeing what unfolds.

This is going to be a crazy experiment, but only crazy if you actually know me, so let me explain.  I work well with a map and a plan.  I need goals, deadlines, and projections.  I just can’t get fired up with ambiguity in the air.  I need to know what to do, when to do it, and will optimize my plan for maximum success with minimal effort.  I get my rocks off on efficiency.  This is serious business for me.

I have been told I have a good intuition.  However, the fact that I didn’t really know if I did or not before that probably says something about how often I use it, though.  I form an opinion, I check my data, and generally, yeah, I’m right, but I fear moving forward until I am sure.  I make sure my footing is stable before I leap.  I am totally not this guy, though I share a lot of his ideals.  I just like my spontaneity a little more – planned, I guess?

Why am I driving this point home over and over?  Well, I’m doing something very out of character for me this month – intuitive eating and exercising.  Whereas pretty much everyone in the world besides us calorie counting diet-y freaks live this way, not writing down what I eat scares the crap outta me.  Not knowing exactly what I am going to do at the gym tomorrow is terrifying.  But, someday I am going to have to learn how because I don’t want to track every little thing I eat and do for the rest of my life, and I’m really curious to see what I pick to do if I let myself do whatever workouts I want.

Specifically?  The general plan is to:

• Foodwise – not track my calories for the entire 4 weeks.  Keep the same goal as always, to eat 6 servings of fruits and veggies per day, up the protien and lower the fat a bit, and put the least amount possible of anything chocolate, fried, or generally high in calories in my cakehole.  Just without putting it into the tracker.
• Exercisewise – the general plan is 2 days of DDR + yoga, 2 days of intervals + weights, and 1 long run.  But I have full permission to deviate and do whatever I want (as long as it’s a decent calorie burn).
• Mentalwise – to nurture my body and mind through what’s already shaping up to be a helluva month.  Give myself permission to maintain at the weight I’m at now if that’s what it needs to do, but also to shed unwanted weight if it’s ready to do so.
• Measurewise – I plan to get a tape measure and do a before pic this week and after pic on December 1st.  I want to see if I am making any progress beyond the scale.

Wish me luck on my new approach!  I fully expect to be running and crying back to my tracking and structured workouts come December, but it will be an interesting experiement.

Images from my new favorite webcomic, toothpaste for dinner.  I know they have nothing to do with workouts, but laughing is good for the abs, so that’s my story about why they’re up today and I’m sticking to it.

So, just to recap, this was my planned workout schedule for the month of October:

Day 1, 3, 5: 20 minutes running intervals, full body strength session

Day 2, 4: 40 minutes Dance Dance Revolution, 15-20 yoga session

How did I do?  Actually, pretty well.  The first and third weeks, I actually did the workouts just as planned, which is pretty much a huge accomplishment for me.  The second and fourth weeks I ended up doing 4 day workout weeks (skipping the last interval day), and I skipped one yoga session last week because, frankly, I was having a bad day and was throwing a little temper tantrum in my head the entire time I was doing the DDR, so I did 3 extra songs to make up for the calories I’d burn doing yoga and called it a day.

Overall, it was a great month in workout-land.  Things calmed down to a moderate chaos from the frantic chaos which was September, so I wasn’t getting 5 hours of sleep to fuel my 2 hour workouts planned and then entertaining family and then melting into a puddle on the ground because I was so physically and mentally exhausted.  Most workouts I went into with a good attitude and left with a better one.  I rekindled my love for interval running, which is great – because I’m warmed up, cooled down, and had my hiney worked off in 30 minutes or less.  I got to play with a bunch more weight machines, which was good too.  Wrist curls, you look so innocent and easy, but you are teh devil!  Also, I got to up my DDR/yoga days to 2 again, which was <3.

There were some things I didn’t like though.  I missed my long runs and am actually kind of frightened I’ll have to work my way back up to 4 miles since the furthest I went last month was 2.7 miles (though considering it was in 30 minutes, with 7 minutes walking…I’m going to be soooo fast!  wheeee!!!).  Every day at the gym was HARD.  Sure, I had 2 easy days at home, but the gym sort of got a stigma as the killer workout that I sometimes dreaded.  I don’t want to be dreading the gym. I also skipped my 5th day twice, which tells me that maybe 3 days of balls-to-the-wall interval running was a little too much in one week.

Body-impact-wise (yes, I love dashes), it was bittersweet.  While I thought I might be making progress when I hit 165.0 in the middle of the month, it’s the lowest I’ve gotten and I’ve been bouncing around 165-169 since.  However, all is not lost.  I’m not even measuring myself and I can tell I’ve lost inches.  My stomach, the most problematic and tragic part of my body, is actually starting to cooperate.  On a good day, I can walk around in a sports bra and think “hey, not so bad”.  This bodes well for bikini wearing on the cruise, however, not for high school prom dress.  I think my shoulder muscles got bigger instead of smaller, so I did have to bite the bullet and get a new dress or 2 this weekend (more about that, I’m sure, this week).  I’m starting to get the “what the hell do you need to lose any more weight for” comments from the peanut gallery so I guess I’m not doing too badly.

Specific, but probably boring to everyone but me, progress I’d like to track:

Intervals – went from running 5.0 rest – 7.0-8.0 intervals for 20 mins to running 5.0 rest – 7.2 – 8.1 intervals for 23 minutes (got slightly faster, and added an extra interval – which sounds like no big deal but believe me, it is huge).

Pushups – back to pushups, and I don’t think I will ever stop doing these bad boys again.  I went from 3×20 being so hard I wanted to die to considering upping to 3×22 this week because I got through them ok last week.  Considering this summer I was rocking week 5 of the pushup challenge – this sucks!

Pullups/dips – went from 4×5 on setting 17 to 3×12 on setting 15/4×10 on 17 to 3×15 on 15 (the lower the setting the less assistance), I also did one pullup on setting 5.  My goal is by the end of the year to do one without help…

So what’s on tap for this month?  Stay tuned for the next post for details!

I’m anticipating this to be a helluva day before I leave work, so I wanted to wish all 2 of you who read my blog a spooky holiday from me and Zliten, who for today will be refered to as wraith queen and Todd.

Serious props to you if you get it.  I work at a gaming company and I’ve had ONE person recognize the costume.  I do actually have a real post planned, but it might just have to wait until later…

I am in love with cruises.  You see, to me, it is the PERFECT vacation.  You travel to the harbor, you get on the boat, and then you are automatically transported to vacationland where you have ZERO responsibility until the you leave the boat.  The most pressing decision is whether to hit the dining room or the buffet.  The pina colada or the margarita?  The pool bar or the piano bar?  No one has to drive, no directions to navigate, no worrying about what you’re going to do that day – it’s all there, on a little floating city for you.  All pictures are from our last cruise on Celebrity to the Pacific side of Mexico.

The only forseeable problem this time is last time I was on a cruise, I was about 100 lbs heavier, and wasn’t really concerned if I was getting off the boat at 105 lbs heavier.  I brought my elasticy pants for a reason thankyouverymuch.  However this time, I have a goal – to eat like a normal person in the real world, and I’d prefer if I came back without an extra 5 lb dumpling attached to my stomach.

For those of you who have never been on a cruise, you cannot understand the way these boats fatten you up.  You’ve already paid ahead of time for all food (minus some of the fancy schmancy extras they offer, but ignoring that), so there’s no cost factor.  It might sound insane, but you have so many opportunities to eat.  You can wake up with coffee, danishes, toast, and other continental type breakfast foods delivered to your door.  You can then hit the breakfast buffet for a midmorning feast of every type of breakfast food you want.  Lunch, you can hit the dining room and get a specially prepared meal, and later, hit the lunch buffet to see if there’s anything good you missed.  While you’re at the pool, you can order a drink and partake of the hamburgers, hotdogs, and french fries on deck.  Feeling a little tired from all that eating?  Just grab some afternoon ice cream to perk you up.  Hungry still?  Look it’s dinner time, and there’s a 4 course meal just waiting to be served to you, and the buffet is waiting just in case you have a hollow leg.  After that, go grab some drinks at the bar, and there will be late night appetizers passed around.  Now, it’s midnight, and time for the late night buffet, a different theme each night.  Three am and you feel a rumbling in your gut?  It must be your HUNGER (that’s right).  Go grab a plate and hit the all night pizza, pasta, and salad kitchen before waddling down the hall to your cabin.

See, eating like a normal person in the real world on a cruise is actually a very lofty goal.

I’m hoping that having been on this healthy lifestyle kick, I’ll be less likely to eat like I haven’t had food for days at every opportunity.  I’m envisioning this for our first “At Sea” day…

I wake up around 9 am (or whenever I wake up without an alarm clock), and change into my workout clothes.  After hitting the buffet for a piece of fruit and a slice of toast, I go for a nice, relaxing, long run on the sun deck of the ship.  Seriously, one of the things I am most looking forward to is running with a view of nothing but the ocean.  Is that sad?  Then, I head down to the pool to cool off and then to the hot tub to relax my muscles.  After a nice morning soaking up the sun (with sunblock, of course), we head to the lunch fare and grab a plate of good, healthy, yummy food and either find some fun activities to do, or back to the poolside.  Then, get all dolled up in my high school prom dress and heels (please let it fit, I was soooo close the last time I tried it on) and go to dinner and order what sounds good, but mindfully eat and not finish my plate unless it’s worth it or I’m genuinely still hungry.  Then, head down to the show, sip some wine at the bar and maybe dance a bit, and drift off to bed.

Last year, I dragged my ass outta bed probably closer 10:30, which at the time was way earlier than I’d normally wake up on a weekend.  If I could be bothered, I did a workout (walking at like 3.0 for 20-30 mins or maybe the eliptical) but I think most days I just went to the breakfast buffet and scarfed everything in sight.  Then, I got sunburnt by the pool because I was a dumbass and forgot my sunscreen, and just felt all around tubby in my fat girl bathing suit.  Then, since breakfast wasn’t filling enough, I shoved plates and plates of food down my throat.  Then either a nap in the cabin and games with the parents, which invariably had breaks for french fries and ice cream, or drinking at the pool bar.  Then dinner, then drinking, then munchies later, and some nights even room service because, well, we could and it was free.

I’m sure it will be something in between the two.  I doubt there will not be at least one day period we have a few drinks poolside or on shore instead of waiting until after dinner.  I’ll have to have one day where I grab something not-so-healthy for breakfast.  I might not be able to stay away from every midnight buffet.  But the biggest thing I want to do is eat mindfully, and if I’m full, stop eating (duh).  I think I’ve been able to train myself away from the “I see food so it must be time to eat” mentality, but this is definitely a test.

Even though I’m a little freaked out about the eating part, I am so excited to get a vacation.  People at work have actually gotten called back from theirs lately – and it’s not possible for me, since I will be incommunicado for the entire time (well, technically, they can dial the ship and have me paged for 9 bucks a minute, but whatever, I’m not telling them that).  I haven’t had a vacation that’s just me and the gnome for at least 5 years, it’s always been with people tagging along, or visiting friends or family or tradeshows or events… not this time.  It’s just quality us time doing whatever the hell we feel like.  I also haven’t had a vacation or left Austin since we moved here, and I’ve definitely been feeling the need lately.

All I know is it’s not getting here soon enough.  Ten more workdays until I’m free from the evil clutches of the gaming salt mines (yeah, yeah, I know, I just like to be overly dramatic) and heading away from shore.  I wish it was tomorrow, and not 2 weeks away.   Argh!