This has truly been an incredible week in so many ways. My hometown team, the St. Louis Cardinals, is going to the World Series. Congress got its act together an funded the government and avoided a debt default, the New Orleans Saints pulled out their 6th straight w......oh, wait, the Saints lost....that sucked. But otherwise, it was an amazing week in the world of this blogger.
I thought it couldn't get any better. Until.....
ZOMG-the-130s!!!!!!!
Seeing a new "decade" on the scale is so exhilarating. I am realistic in thinking that I'll most likely see the 140s again another couple times due to natural fluctuations, but I truly hope that once I am solidly in the 130s that I never, ever, ever, ever see the 140s again.
I'm now only 3.6 pounds away from the elusive "normal weight" according to the government.
I definitely am starting to feel thinner. I think I've lost a lot of fullness from my face, and I know I've lost 2 pants sizes.
I had to get new jeans because the old ones looked comically baggy. I kept it cheap and scored some on sale at Old Navy because if all goes according to plan, the ones I just purchased will also be too big before long. =)
This week, I am going to honor the fall season with a bonfire. During which, I will burn my size 14 and size 12 pants and shorts and vow to never again need to purchase those sizes again.
I also got myself a treat to celebrate reaching the 20 pounds lost benchmark/halfway point to the NYC trip goal....I figured a little taste of what's in store in NYC is in order to keep me motivated.
Enter the national tour of The Book of Mormon:
That's right. Next Wednesday, I will be among the lucky people to watch this hilarious musical romp through the world of African war lords and Mormon missionaries. It shall be hilarious. I believe!
I was 142.8 for three days in a row. I was 19 pounds down and just 1 measly pound away from reaching the big 2-0.
I had big plans for that "20 Pounder" post.
I was gonna take pictures 20 things that weigh 20 pounds, post them to the blog, and bask in how many bags of cat litter, car tires, legos, etc. I've lost.
It was going to be gloriously self-indulgent and obnoxious.
Was.
I don't even know what happened.
Oh, wait. Yes I do.
It's called......Oktoberfest.
Oktoberfest. That time once a year when everyone pretends to be German by partaking in sausage, pretzels, schnitzel, strudel, sour kraut, yodeling, the Chicken dance (which I didn't realize was a German thing until yesterday), and of course large steins of bier.
Now I know what you're thinking. "Poor Chunky Bride. She just couldn't handle the temptation........she was completely overcome by the bevy of bavarian bites and beverages to be had and overdid it."
Nope.
This blogger actually planned ahead. I hit the gym before the fest. And I hit it hard. I burned over 800 calories according to the counter on the treadmill.
I ate lunch beforehand--plain grilled chicken with a tablespoon of dipping sauce. I purposely kept it light to allow for wiggle room at the festival.
I drank wine instead of beer at Oktoberfest and for dinner I ordered the leanest thing they offered which was a simple roasted pork loin. White meat! And sour kraut! Which is, like, basically pickled cabbage. I split a single pretzel with, like, three other people.
I thought I was golden.
I kept track of my calories meticulously throughout the day and by all accounts still consumed a net total of 1200 after exercise was factored in.
I thought this morning was my 20 Pounder day.
So imagine my surpriseshock when I stepped on the scale this morning to be greeted with a 145.0 staring back up at me from the scale. What. The. F?!?! I mean, seriously, even if I had gone completely nuts and consumed 2000+ calories at the festival, that should not translate to an OVER TWO POUND GAIN. Something has got to be off here. And to make matters worse, at the gym yesterday I spent 90 minutes on the treadmill at a fairly steep incline and felt completely fine. But then the second that I got off of it, I realized that something is definitely out of whack in my left knee. It hurts to walk down stairs or downhill. Well, actually, it hurts to walk at all, but it really hurts to go down stairs or downhill.
So now I'm dealing with some inexplicable upward fluctuation and a sports injury at the same time and it royally, royally sucks.
I just would like to take a moment to mention that this has been an incredible couple months for female pop soloists. It seems like everyone from the relatively new-on-the-scene Miley Cyrus to the long reigning Queen of Pop herself Ms. Britney Spears has put out a new single lately.
I relate to each and every one of them.
So I present to you: a week in the life of this blogger as told by pop divas:
First, comes Lady Gaga's Applause.
The H was actually the person who pointed out why this song was positively written for me. You see, one of my all-time favorite foods in the whole wide world is a disgustingly stinky, but oh-so-delicious French cheese called epoisses. Of course, epoisses completely rhymes with "applause" so it sounds like Gaga is saying "I live for the epoisses, epoisses, epoisses."
And before my lifestyle change, I, too, lived for the epoisses (and the alfredo.....and truffle mac n' cheese......and pizza.........well, you get the idea). And that's what got me here in the first place.
Every single time her song comes on I think about living for the epoisses. Similarly, every single day is a struggle to avoid just stuffing my face with the danger foods I love. There are times that I almost succumb to the temptation.
But then, thankfully, Britney Spears shows up to save the day.
Ah, yes. Work Bitch! Kind of a weird song. On the one hand it's annoyingly repetitive. On the other hand, it's so catchy!
"You wanna hot body?" she asks.
"Well, yeah." I think to myself.
"You better work, bitch" she replies.
True point, Ms. Spears. So instead of stuffing my face with the epoisses, off I go to the gym.
Monday through Friday, that's the story: the battle of the epoisses v. gym. The gym wins, hands down. On Friday, I get up and do my weekly weigh-in and it's usually a nice, low weight.
But then the weekend comes.....and Katy Perry and the LSU Tigers crash the diet-party.
"I got the eye of the tiger" says Katy Perry.
"Yeah, well, I got the appetite of a beluga whale and there's a fucking pile of chicken wings in front of me right now" I think to myself.
"And you're gonna hear me roar" says Katy.
"My stomach's growling, bitch."
But the Tigers are Baton Rouge's team and I'm decidedly a NOLA girl. So I am usually able to lock it up on Saturday and I get through Tiger games without doing too much diet-damage.
But then comes Sunday......
Saints Sunday.
My Saints.
The 5-0 Saints......
And the Saints tailgating and game-watching parties......
It comes in like a fucking Wrecking Ball. And I am usually really bad. Beers and buffalo chicken are had. Regret happens. And I wake up Monday and I weigh myself and I am all like, "I really do just live for the epoisses....."
Before I begin rambling on about this post's topic, I would just like to share one thing:
Well look at that: 142.8. Better late than never I guess. 19 pounds down; 16.8 away from the Big Carrot.
But enough of that, today's not a weigh-in day so no more harping on the numbers. Today I'd like to reflect about my new home away from home: the gym.
It's been about three weeks now since joining the gym, and I am proud of myself for going as often as I do (typically for at least 90 minutes on Saturday/Sunday and an hour every day after work except for Wednesdays which I take as an off-day).
Making the shift from primarily walking outdoors to using a treadmill has been an interesting one. For starters, the biggest difference is that walking on a treadmill is mind-numbingly boring. Seriously. There are ways to cope (which I will get to in a minute), but the mere act of treadmilling--without more--might be the most boring activity in the world.
In contrast, the mere act of walking outdoors through nature and neighborhoods and an urban jungle is anything but boring. It can be beautiful, transcendental, and at times downright scary.
Not so much with treadmilling. But treadmilling has a ton of benefits (which I will get to in a minute), so in the interest of getting healthy and staying healthy, I have to learn ways to cope with the boringness that is treadmilling.
So I am sure that people are judging me, but I've been coping with treadmilling by bringing an entire arsenal of "stuff to do." It's actually kind of ridiculous.
My typical set-up is something like this:
....except without the cords and with a water bottle.
Seriously. The first line of entertainment is the TV screen that each treadmill already has built in. Normal people simply bring a set of earbuds, plug them into these built-in units, and watch TV happy to not be simply staring at the wall.
Not this blogger.
First of all, TV has commercials. If you want to make 3 minutes of cardio seem like 30, spend it watching commercials. Nope, not happening.
So I bring my iPad and rest it on the center console just below the built-in TV. On the iPad, I will either watch movies/tv from Netflix or Hulu, or--more often--I will listen to music on Spotify.
But that's not where it stops.
If I am listening to music and not watching Netflix, I still need something for my eyes to do or else I inadvertently begin staring at other WOPs. So I leave on the built-in TVs and tune it to a station that doesn't require volume to understand what's going on--like CNN.
But it doesn't stop there either.
Listening to music and watching the news without sound is still pretty boring. It's all "Government Shut Down-This" and "Congress-That" and "Something About the Economy." A girl can't live like that.
Enter Tetris.
So if you're following along, at this point we've got a TV on silent with captions, showtunes as background noise, and Tetris on the iPad.
And you'd think that would be enough.
But you'd be wrong.
You see, even though at this point of the process I am completely entertained, I still have the need to be connected to the world outside the gym.
Enter the iPhone. I keep it tucked in one of the cup holders in case someone texts, or work calls, or I get a a work email.
Shame moment: I actually had to upgrade my Verizon data plan due to this over-gym-ulation.
I've been observing the other people who go to the gym at the same time as me and I am quite confident that there is only one other person with as ridiculous a set-up as mine, and that's this old bat who has got to be 90 years old who brings her own personal fan that she mounts to the front of her exercise bike after snaking an extension cord from the wall to her exercise unit.
And she's on to something. It can get stuffy in the gym.
So why do it? If it's so boring, why do it?
Because it's AWESOME.
I can add an incline to my walk and literally burn twice the calories in a fraction of the time.
It's air conditioned.
Its calorie tracker is decidedly more reliable than Runkeeper's.
It's safer than walking around NOLA alone at night.
And it comes with FREE COFFEE.
What more could a girl ask for?
So I'll take the weird looks and the judgment that I get for basically turning my unit into a home-office-entertainment-plex. It's working and the pounds keep melting off.
