I've started to disengage

from the internet that is, I've quit visiting some of the sites I used to check out once a day.  I'm refocusing on real life.  However, I still intend to do my IOWL homework here, but other venues are my last year not my tomorrow or even my today.

So onward.  Upward.

And slightly downward.  

196.8  Thats not bad.  Since I'm coming up on that time of the month.  A tad swollen.  I'm doing it with low carb and good fats.  

The down side to weight loss

197.8  I'm losing my boobs.  There I said it.  I shouldn't be that shallow to care.  And I care much less than I used to, however, I'm nearly 200 pounds of a woman and I wear a 36 B cup.  I'm currently headed towards a 34 A cup.  I may be a AA by the time that I'm done.  Or how about an A-.  Oh well, in for a penny in for a pound.  Its too late now to worry about it.  But, I do admit I did notice it this morning.  Frankly, I look more and more like a guy everyday.  Its a tad sobering.  

IOWL 2 homework

Dreaming the perfect body:  Cathe Friedrich.  I know I tend to go on about her but I like how she looks and I would like to look like that.    

Life time, life style changes.  I'm used to working out.  I'm even used to not eating the starch side at a restaurant.  

What works?

What do I want to create?

Athletic body, flexibility, and stamina.

10 minute mile.  That would be heaven. . . . I know I put this in the other blog but whatever. . 

I would like to be able to do the splits like when I was a teenager.

Strong sleek slender thighs.

What I want to do instead?

Eat like a normal person who eats clean.

The Future me who has the upgrade.

Thats easy.  Ease with food choices in the supermarket and when I'm eating out.  Ease with cooking and planning the next week's food.  Ease with planning, performing and being flexible with my workout rotations.  Consistently seeing a level 7 or 8 for 60 min 6 or 7 days of the week.  Ease with how I feel about my body in the world.  Ease with being attractive.  Ease with directing my attention where I need it to be and ease with being in the now.  Ease with self promotion and advertising.  Ease with the technical aspect of my job.  

A successful, effective business that I enjoy, am fully competent in, and look forward to everyday.  A plethera of happy well paying clients.  The financial independence that would result from that.  An apt!  To live on my own!  A place with a pool so I could swim!  (we are dreaming here, I'm small enough to be seen in one lol!) A place with a small gym or my own elliptical.  Two bedrooms and a kitchen all my own.  A fridge all my own that I could fill only with carb smart foods that support my health.

A living room that I would keep just for my workout space.  (Do you see my devious plan?)  I would use one room as my home office and the other for my bedroom.  With a little sitting area to read and enjoy my meals next to a window.  A car that has a driver's side window that works! 

Hmm. . . what do I want in my gym space?  A mirror.  My step.  Step friendly flooring.  enough space to do my circuit drills to my heart's content.   A place for my barbell and weights.  Both my high step and original step.  My wish list off the Cathe.com site.  Don't worry its not too extensive.  Mostly cardio and a little resistance training with 4DS.  

My dream life is a simple one.  M-F Workout.  Go to work.  Eat healthy food all day long to keep blood sugar even and PCO at bay.  Come home.  Eat some more.  Play violin/piano/paint.  Do yoga.  Pass out.  lol!  With a big grin on my face!

Sa/Sun Shoot for my own calendars, video podcast, and see my friends from my meetups.  

Sa is long training btw.  

Sun is rest day for workouts.  Just pure bliss.  Sigh.  

2 or 3 days

He says.  My chiropractor that is.  After he applies sadistic pressure points to my most tender spots and I breathe in and out like a woman in labor to get through the pain.  So what can I do right now?  I can't lift my camera and go take pictures.  I can't practice with my video camera.  I don't have the stamina or brain power for the cold calls every business needs.  I guess I can go through my IOWL homework.  Thats a good diversion.  

I can't even exercise.  I can watch Cathe Friedrich on the internet in clips or on FitTV off the Tivo.  I can read my The Real Woman's Personal Trainer book.  I can order something on the internet.  It feels like Saturday already and its only Wed.  I'm not even making any money this week or participating in my normal chores.  Maybe it was lifting the boxes last week or flinging trash at the dump.  Either way, I won't be in it to win it until Sat.  That will be nearly a week off from any kind of workout.  OMG.  I bet I lose two pounds.  

So my normal mantra about not being on the internet or posting too many blogs has gone out the window for now.  Later I may study for a while to alleviate the boredom with the internet lol!

Responses, necks and holding my own.

198.0  My neck.  My aching neck.  I can't do a damn thing until it heals.  I over stretched and I can't move my right arm well.  I can type, but thats it.

I'm including my response to a post in the IOWL message board.  

I feel much the same way as she does.  I have fear associated with being sexually attractive.

I was just 9 years old when my sister brought home her first baby.  She was 20 when she gave birth to Nicky.  The marine that knocked her up would not marry her because only trash would have sex out of wedlock.  I decided at that time that I would not be her.  She had walked away from a promising career in the TV industry and did not even finish college.  Now, she is divorced from another Marine who beat her up (put her in the hospital) and left her for another woman that he knocked up while he and my sister were still married.  He is certified crazy by over 8 psychiatric doctors.  She is a wonderful sweet and intelligent person.  Can you figure that out?  Cause I can't.

My father is a lovely person.  But, a little bit old fashioned.  There is clearly a hierarchy in my parents home and he was always at the top and never truly acknowledge's my mother's superior intellect because obviously if she had been that smart she would not have picked him.  (his words.)  I foolishly bought it as a child and believed him when he made it clear that women were less than men. my mother was less than he was, and that being a girl was less than being a boy.  That being smart was more important than anything.  Its not true btw.  Character and being able to function is much more important than any intellectual capacity.  

I decided at a very young age after having the delightful experience of babysitting my nephew (7 years old at the time) for 14 days without having any babysitting experience or supervision at all.  I barely knew him.  He was a good kid but I was out of my depth.

Not only did I not want to be treated like the women I saw growing up, but I could not be the kind of woman who (like I saw on Oprah) asks her husband to open the pickle jar.  I'm not going to sublimate my abilities and strengths to build a man's ego.  

As a teenager I developed earlier than other girls.  I was menstruating at 11.  I was also on the receiving end of vicious sexual harassment from 7th grade through 8th grade.  I cut class.  My grades plumited.  I never told anyone because I knew that girls were less than boys.  Remember?  

My weight did creep up.  I believe it was due to the stress.  I was 168 at the age of 13 and I was very active.  I took dance, had pe, and hiked one mile everyday from the bus stop up a very steep hill to our home.  

By the time I was 16 I was 230.  I was in college and liked boys!  But was too young not to mention chubby.  I had male friends though.  At the age of 19, I was happy.  I was doing much better.  I was taking step aerobics, speed walking, and circuit weight training.  I was on my way into a size 12.  I was just 170 pounds.  Then a mentally ill stalker came into my life and I began to once again receive unwanted sexual interest.  

I perceived it as a grave threat.  As it turned out he was harmless.  But, due to my fear level, associated with that I turned my behavior around.  I remember the day I looked myself in the eye in the mirror and told myself that this has got to stop.  I began eating double portions with the intent that I would gain weight.  And guess what, it worked.  It also opened the door for PCOS which is very dangerous and once it has started very hard to stop.  I still have those fears sometimes but I am learning to turn down the volume on that.  For one, I am stronger and more capable now.  But now that I think back on it, I did have a backbone then.  I did report him and the police put a stop to it.  I was still afraid, just the same.  Now what I have left is residual fear.  Not new mind blinding cotton mouthed fear.  Just old memories that may wake me at 3 am.

Now, I'm back down to a size 14 or 16.  And I'm encountering boughts of fear and stagnant weight loss.  I think it is that fear popping up.  Even though I'm doing everything by the text book.  I believe the body knows when we do and do not want to lose weight and we tell it so through the stress hormones that we produce when we are afraid.  We tell it yes or no.  We tell it if we are safe or not.  Safe?  That means we are not embarking on a famine.  Not?  We might encounter long term hunger and we will need those calories.

When we comfort a child as it goes to sleep we rock it and sing softly.  In a way, when we practice our yoga and tell ourselves our daily affirmations, we are soothing ourselves and taking care of ourselves.  For if we don't who ill?  The promise of an uncertain future often takes on that sense of urgency because we no longer have our mother to soothe us.  We know deep down that, at least in the past, we have not always soothed ourselves with gentleness but rather have confused nourishment of soul with calories because we associated food with our mother's because they were the one's who fed us.  But they fed us not only with food but with touch, sound and humanized us.  I believe that all of us are on this quest for comfort and made this particular detour into weight gain and struggle because performing that function for ourselves is a technique that is learned and we are not born knowing it.  

A little up

200.4  But, I think thats water retention.

Inside Out Weight Loss podcast episode one homework.  I'm starting from episode one again.  This is something we can do over and over until we have reached our goals.  And even then revisiting it is not a bad idea.

My away from motivation:

PCOS.  Hair on my face.  My ovaries (a follicle) are not always happy.  Endometriosis.  Fat around my middle.  I put on muscle like a man does.  It is very frustrating to be mistaken for a transsexual when I was born as a female.  

My second away from motivation: its still thighs that rub together.  I get skin rubbed run every summer.  I have scars between my legs from that.  

I can't perform all of my yoga poses to my flexibility level because my tummy gets in the way.  

I think that last one is half away and half towards.

My newest away from motivation:  I tried on a bathing suit in a department store.  And caught a view of myself in the mirror.  I was horrified and in tears.  Somehow I was never aware of how bad I looked.  Luckily, I was alone.

My towards motivation:  Be able to run a mile without stopping in 10 minutes.  I'm a new runner and for me that is a goal I would like to achieve.  

Wear a dress in a single digit.  I would like to see 160 on the scale.  I don't ever remember being 160.  I was 168 at the age of 13.

I would like to go on one of those Cathe Friedrich Pilgrimage trips to New Jersey.  She is a step aerobics instructor.  And just incredible.  I would like to look like her someday.

I know I want to change because:

The prospect of allowing another decade to pass in this state is more than I can think about without tearing up.  Wow.  The tears are even there now.

My unwanted behaviours include:  Eating sweets that I know cause my PCOS.  Chips ain't it peeps!

My unwanted symptoms:

Unable to run a mile.  I can only manage 6 or 7 minutes out of 20.  High cholesterol.  Not as fit as I would like in terms of cardiovascular out put.  I never wear sleeveless shirts in public because of my wings.  You know, wings.  Upper arms that sway with the breeze.

The consequences of these symptoms:

No confidence.  I always feel that when someone compliments me that htey are just doing it to make me feel good not because its actually true.  I'm a bit shy.  I don't go out as much because I have low energy.  

The people who are effected:

My immediate family.  The friends I don't have.  

Its been a long time since I posted.

But, here I am.  Sigh.  When I began this blog I thought I would be much farther along the road to healthfulness.  I encountered an 8 month plateau.  It was intense.  Filled with much exercise and when I finally just accepted being 210 thats when it bumped.  I decided to try calorie cycling and got a heart rate monitor.  I increased my cardio from 30 minutes up to 60 minutes most days.  I also have started using intervals style training to improve my performance.  I had gotten away from daily yoga.  I am sure that was an element in my prolonged plateau.  

Now I'm an avid listener to IOWL.  Thats "Inside out weight loss."  Its a great free podcast, you should check it out if weight loss has ever been a struggle for you.  Or, if you are like I was, stuck in a plateau.  

Btw, I intend to post my home work associated with that podcast on this blog.  I hope that you enjoy it.  I also intend to maintain control over my blogging/writing habit too.  I've been known to spend too much time on the computer.  I will be limiting myself to just one hour per week.  Otherwise it could be two hours a day and well I need to make a living and workout.  So. . something has got to give and my favorite distractors from real life- fantasy and analyzing myself are the things that must go.  I am more interested in action now.  I had a nightmare not too long ago in which I could not move my arms even though I was awake.  I kept trying to move and nothing happened.  I think that was my self conscious telling me that I don't want to be asleep anymore.  Even if what I have to do might be unpleasant.

You know unpleasant, like cold calls?  Like, a yoga workout that opens up fountains of emotion and leaves salty tear stains on your workout clothes?  You know.  Unpleasant.  Like cleaning the bathroom.  Or changing the kitty litter.