Hot By Thirty

IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT

Oh man you guys. I am screwed. SCREWED!

Okay, first, I lost the baby weight! Yay! Go me! I was a half pound UNDER my goal weight Friday morning. I gloated about it all day, fretted about how to properly congratulate myself, should I do THIS or should I do THAT?

And then we left Jack with my parents that night because today is VALENTINE'S DAY and we don't need much of an excuse to cut our parenting duties 50% for a day. We planned to go to brunch in the morning and, when my folks dropped Jack off, maybe they'd stick around and we'd go out again. To do what, we didn't know, but it's not like we ever turn down the chance to LEAVE THE HOUSE.

So we packed up the Bumbo seat and our Dining Out cash and headed to brunch. Where I was confronted with every mouth watering pastry known to man and REFUSED THEM ALL. Homemade cinnamon rolls! Homemade coffee cakes! A mimosa in every flavor! Poached pears in maple syrup? NUTELLA CREPES, people. I went out to breakfast and had the opportunity to order NUTELLA CREPES and I DID NOT ORDER THEM.

That was rough.

I made it through, we came home, we putzed around, and, for the most part, I stayed out of the kitchen. I put in a little time on the treadmill. Was very responsible.

Of course, Phillip bought me a box o' chocolate and even though it was a SMALL box it was a QUALITY box and I do not have the kind of willpower necessary to toss a quality box of GIFT chocolate into the garbage. So I ate a few.

We honestly and truly did not have plans tonight, but my parents were here and planned to stay for a bit and WHY NOT. Phillip was dying for sushi, and because I have turned him down every time he's wanted to eat sushi for the past five months, I decided not to be a Sushi Ogre on Valentine's Day. Besides, at the conveyor belt sushi place they have plenty of things that aren't attached to giant globs of rice. Off we went for sushi, where I ate my weight in tempura vegetables, but come on, those are VEGETABLES.

But next door? NEXT DOOR? Was an amazing cake shop that I had heard many things about. Oh so many glorious and tasty things. It's Valentine's Day, I told myself. We should at least SHARE a slice of cake, don't you think?

AND WE DID. And OH MAN YOU GUYS.

There were several different kinds of Death By Chocolate types of cakes, but I let Phillip pick, knowing that even if he chose the vanillaest of vanilla cake I wouldn't be disappointed. He opted for the Chocolate Raspberry cake- layers of chocolate cake in between layers of sweetened cream and raspberries, the whole thing covered in a dark ganache. And it was? TO DIE FOR.

Phillip kept looking around to see if anyone was staring at me enjoying my cake, so enthusiastic were my MMMs. I knew I was gaining half a pound with every bite, but I was too caught up in my chocolate ecstasy to really care. I am serious, people. Quite possibly the most fantastic piece of cake I have ever put in my mouth. And I have put a LOT of cake in my mouth.

We bought a piece to bring to the pastry student sister. And it was rather difficult not to tear through the wrapping and eat it on the way home.

And so... that Monday weigh in is not looking so good. I've been feeling guilty and down and irritated with myself. I work hard and one teeny (all right, gargantuan) slice of cake can undo everything. But finally I decided: WHATEVER. I totally hit my goal weight, even if it didn't fall on Official Weigh In Monday. I can't help that it's VALENTINE'S DAY when you are practically REQUIRED TO EAT CHOCOLATE. And it's not like I can't take off my cake weight like I took off baby weight. And you know, I haven't done half bad for a day that was throwing tempting delciousness at me every five minutes. Right? RIGHT?

I have all these thoughts re: Jen's post about diet and Bob's advice to the Brown Team on Biggest Loser, but I'm tired and falling into a sugary cake coma. So I'll just use that as a note to self.

I'll see you Monday, where, even if have gained ten cake pounds, I will still be wearing my new jeans. And reliving my memory of the cake. OMG SO GOOD.

Patting myself on my back fat

You can't keep a weight loss blog and not write about New Year Resolutions, right? Plus I figure I've got about 10 minutes before the kids (OH YES, THAT IS PLURAL) wake up so...

I started doing Sundry's year end recap thing until my own eyes glazed over (seriously, I answered pretty much every question with "new baby") but filling it out (halfway, at least) made me realize one thing: I've started exercising. I think it was the "what accomplishment are you most proud of" question (there's one like that, right?) (how many parenthetical statements can I fit in here?) that made me realize it. I started exercising this year and that's not something I've ever done before.

I played volleyball and basketball in high school, not because I was athletic in the least, but because there just wasn't a whole lot to do where I lived and if you wanted a social life you joined a team. And when your school has only 50 some graduating seniors it's not too hard to make the team. An average-sized stateside school would have laughed me off the bench, but I played four years of basketball and two years of volleyball. I was co-captain of both teams my senior year. I loved everything about it, except my craptacular basketball coach (and even he didn't really bother me too much until the last year). Oh, and running.

I hated running. I hated conditioning drills. I hated sprints. I know I know, everyone hated them, but I swear I hated them more. I developed shin splits probably by the end of the first week of practice and I'm ashamed to say I used those shin splints to get out of many a suicide drill. When we practiced in the high school gym we ran endless loops around the perimeter and I just wanted to die. When we practiced in the base gym (we had to alternate with the boys' team) we had to run from the high school to the base gym. Not terribly far, as I remember, but as soon as it seemed okay to do so, I walked. If the weather was nice and our coach was in a bad mood we sometimes ran the perimeter of the base. TORTURE.

Even after four years of high school sports and five afternoons a week of conditioning runs, I was still fat. Not super fat. I wasn't embarrassed to wear my uniform and I was never The Fattest Girl In School, but I don't think I ever LOST weight. (I don't really know, though. I never weighed myself and honestly, except for the normal high school girl self-absorption, I wasn't that concerned about it.) And so I've spent the last ten years thinking exercise was too hard. It didn't matter. I lost weight the first time simply by changing the way I ate and going for walks around the lake with friends. (Which, technically is exercise, but I can't say I was too disciplined about it!)

The kicker is, I told myself I hated it. I remembered the pain of running lines over and over and over. The shin splints. The wanting to slow down and walk not two minutes after I started.

When we bought the treadmill downstairsI had no intention of jogging. It was going to bemy "lake" when the weather was bad or I was too lazy to pack up the kids. I was going to watch TV! I knew I could never be like my super thin friend who runs 3 miles on her treadmill while the kids are napping. AS IF.

But the first time I ever tried our treadmill, a month after Molly was born, I set it on the second to easiest program and was very dismayed to find out I would have to RUN to keep up. It must be kidding me, right? Even on the Low Intensity Setting? Low Intensity still meant RUNNING?

I barely got through that 20 minutes. I stopped four or five times. I was half proud when I finished, half mortified. I resolved to just go at my own pace next time, do my own thing. But the next time I got on the treadmill I tried the same program, and that time I only stopped three times.

This afternoon I finished the 30 minute middle-of-the-medium-intensity-programs program without stopping. And I? Am a badass.

No SERIOUSLY. I am fully aware that 30 minutes is no big thing. I know probably five minutes of that program is just walking. I know that running even one suicide of the kind I used to do in high school would probably kill me, even now. What's more important than all that, for me, is that I like doing it.

I never ever ever ever ever EVER thought I would like running. EVER! And I don't really. I'm pretty sure that running outside, on pavement, where people can see me, where I am not watching Arrested Development on Hulu would be a dreadful experience. But I am sort of bummed out when I miss a day (or four) on the treadmill. I feel stronger. It's helped me lose weight faster. It's "me" time. I really like Arrested Development. I'm pretty sure it's contributed to my relatively anxiety-free season- no small feat.

I haven't quite figured out what all the distance readings mean, but I'm pretty sure I could now run a mile without stopping, I know how lame that must sound to so many of you, but for me that IS a Christmas miracle. That's something other people can do, not me. Never me.

I am really proud of this, Internet. I'm really proud of the fact that I haven't given it up, that I LIKE doing this. I didn't achieve much this year (new baby notwithstanding, although she's pretty fabulous) but this is something I am really really proud of.

I don't have any new resolutions for 2009 (I've got my by-my-thirtieth-birthday resolutions!) but I fully intend to keep up the slow chubby girl jogging on the used treadmill in our two foot by four foot office space.

What are you proud of? What are you sticking to? Does anyone know what 1.34 means when my treadmill flashes the "distance" reading? BECAUSE I HAVE NO IDEA.

Maybe I ate a piece of chocolate too

I don't think I'm going to lose any weight this week, guys. I think I've been eating okay, but I haven't exercised at all. Aaaaaand I've been drinking a lot of that high carbish substance called Red Wine. People come over, you open a bottle, etc. etc. Between tonight, when my husband and I go out for a Real Live Date and Sunday, which is Molly's Post-Baptism Dim Sum Extravaganza, I will be lucky if I don't GAIN weight.

I'm not happy about it, but I'm not distraught either. I still have 20ish pounds to go, but I suspect I'm about 30 pounds lighter than the last day I was pregnant. My baby is only 2 months old. I went into my blog archives and hunted for posts that could tell me how much weight I'd lost with Jack. I am MUCH further along this road than at this point with Jack, so things are okay. I'm not going to lose it by Christmas, but that's okay because the evil merger warlords canceled the company Christmas party anyway.

But today I plan to get back on the treadmill. (Note: I haven't been willfully ignoring my treadmill. It's that I can't exactly hold a baby and jog on the treadmill at the same time. Yes, I am blaming Molly. BECAUSE IT'S HER FAULT.)

And I will still try to watch what I eat, even though we are going to a WINE BAR tonight. MORE WINE.

Monday I will step on the scale and scold myself for not losing weight gaining weight and then we will start over. You can always start over.