Live from the grocery store: BIG NEWS!!!

Reached a milestone today....a slightly embarrassing one, but in a good way. More about that in a moment. 

The big news? That I got while leaving the grocery store?....I have been offered a job! It's for a full-time French position. Surprisingly, I think this is probably the PERFECT job for me this year. I'll be teaching French 1. That's it. Not French 2, no IB or AP French, just...French 1. It's surprising to me to think this is perfect, because for a long time I was soooo convinced I really wanted only to teach upper level French. But, see, upper level French usually means you're teaching French 2, 3, 4, and maybe 5, plus AP and/or IB French.

If you're a teacher - you will understand when I say that upper level French means I could have 5, 6 or even 7 preps. If you're not a teacher, well, let me just say that each prep requires a lot of work, so the more preps you have, the more work you have. Three or four preps is kind of a lot. More than that is nearly insane.That's why it's a blessing to have only one prep. Some teachers work for years to get to the point where they only have one or two preps. And that's why teaching upper level French would be a daunting proposition, as there would be SO many preps.

So I'll be teaching French 1, on a campus with what appears to be a very supportive administration, as well as a foreign language section leader I think I will really enjoy working for. I will be assigned a mentor - probably a real mentor, someone who is actually helpful and willing to spend time with me - and I will also be collaborating with other electives teachers during our mutual conference periods. This is SO different from my previous experience! 

Now, for the other news, which happened while I was still at the grocery store:  my shorts almost fell off me! Right there by the cheese and sandwich meat! I could feel my shorts sliding down, then a little more down, and I had to stop to actually pull them up so they wouldn't fall all the way down. Woo-hoo!

Now, if only I could get my thighs to stop rubbing together...

Friend Vacation, and Weight Update!

When you go on vacation, do you worry about keeping up a healthy diet? 

What about if you don't leave to go on vacation, but the vacation comes to you? Let me explain: I had a dear friend in town this weekend, and I knew we would be busy sightseeing / hanging out / possibly doing tourist-y kinds of things. That's kind of like a vacation, isn't it?

I was worried about being able to work out - this turned out not to be much of an issue - and also, I was worried that I would be able to keep up with logging my nutrition. 

Well. I didn't need to worry about working out. We spent so much time walking (HOURS and HOURS, I'm not even kidding) around the museum and the aquarium, I still managed to burn calories. And food? We were so busy gabbing we didn't have a lot of time left over to stuff our faces. Although, we did go out for a rather expensive (calorie-wise) Mexican dinner with my family....but no biggie, it was just one meal. 

Here's a pic of us at the aquarium:

My friend left today. Which makes me sad, because I miss him, and I miss the freedom we had when we were younger to just hang out pretty much whenever we wanted to. Things are different now. I've discovered it's hard to hang out when you live half a nation apart. Also, it's hard to hang out when you have children, or grandchildren, or actual, grown-up-type jobs. (Between us we have all these things.)

So after a brief moment of staring out the window when he left, and after wallowing nostalgically in some '80's music, I went to the gym to work out. Because I'm not a teenager anymore. (And I have the waistline to prove it!) 

First, I figured it was time to actually weigh myself and take measurements. I haven't done this yet. I did weigh myself a couple months ago, but haven't bothered since then...I was too horrified by how much I weighed, and I was hoping that by avoiding the scale it would somehow magically make the weight start melting off of me. This doesn't work, just in case you were wondering. Anyway, the last time I weighed myself - and if I were to be honest, I might admit it was more than a "couple" months ago; it was probably around 6 months ago - I weighed (ahem) 171 lbs. I knew I'd gained weight since then so when I started on the Really Cool Website To Help Me Get Healthy Again and Get In Shape For The Spartan Race (Let's call it the RCW, or Really Cool Website, for short), I said I weighed 180 pounds. 

That may or may not have been the case. I don't know. I will never know, because I tried to pretend I didn't need to weigh myself (because guessing is so much better, right?), so I just assumed my top weight was about 180. (It was around that, though, for sure. But it could've been more. I'm positive it wasn't less, because my clothes were fitting even worse than they had at 170.) 

I took my measurements at home, and let's just say the results were not inspiring. Moving on.

My gym has this really nice scale. It's like the scale at the doctor's office, the one with the bar at the top with the little weights you move around until the arrow on the right floats upward.

Good news! I've lost at least 6 pounds, and I'm strong enough to actually move the pin on the free weights to 25 lbs!  Hooray! 

Also, my fat pants are fitting kinda loose now!!! Yay me!! That's not a direct result of weighing and measuring, either, in case you were wondering. No: I've noticed the pants were loose the past few days. This means, I've actually lost some weight. Hooray!

To celebrate, I had some chocolate wine tonight. 

Okay, I know what you're thinking. 

"Why would you celebrate your weight loss by consuming a calorie-laden alcoholic beverage? Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose?" And you may have a point. But I was feeling quite sorry for myself that my friend was gone, and that we're not teenagers anymore, and that there is not, in fact, music still on MTV. So I think you would agree with me that a judicious glass of wine was necessary to help me wallow in the feelings of being sad and old.  

And I will STILL lose weight!!! Because, guess what, I'm still tracking everything I eat or drink, and I'm still working out!! So there!!!

And now, for something completely different.

We will be using Time4Writing as a summer writing program for the next couple of months.  We are excited to get started with the interactive lessons.  Our online tutor will correct our work and give us writing tips on how to sharpen our writing skills.  Come visit in a few weeks to see how we like it.

Supplements

Supplements, in a day:

Breakfast

 

This is the morning routine. Before breakfast, B-12 with vitamin C, creatine mixed with sugar-free drink, and chromium picolinate. Then, with breakfast, multi-vitamin and evening primrose oil.

Oh yeah - also, a daily antihistamine. In the morning.

Lunchtime

 Creatine with a sugar-free drink, and Ibuprofen. 

Dinner

 Creatine in a drink, and iron.

Bedtime

Calcium and Benadryl - apparently they work well together to help you sleep. And Benadryl helps me stay asymptomatic when the allergen counts are high.

Worst 3 Musketeers ever

This is the WORST 3Musketeers Bar I've ever had. Simply terrible. Don't do it, don't eat this. 

Worst. 3 Musketeers. EVER.

If you really want a 3 Musketeers Bar, do yourself a favor and go get the real deal. Indulge in the 3 Musketeers Bar's traditional airy sweetness wrapped in mouthwatering milk chocolate goodness. Please. Please, in the name of All That Is Holy! Please enjoy the real thing. Do it for yourself. Do it for all the dieters in the world who try with all their might to pretend that food tastes just as good now is it ever did, but that's a lie, because compared to junk food - compared to the 3 Musketeers Bar - healthy food is about negative-100 on a 1 to 10 scale of yumminess. 

Most importantly, do it for me, the chubby lady who can no longer indulge in the chocolatey perfection of the 3 Musketeers Bar, and who devoutly wishes 3 Musketeers were in the business of making protein bars that taste like a 3 Musketeers.

Looks can be deceiving. This is not, in fact, a candy bar.

Chromium Picolinate = My New Best Friend

Holy moley, I cannot believe this stuff works!

Dear Hubby suggested I start taking chromium picolinate to support muscle growth. I kind of remembered taking this years ago...hoping to lose weight...but back then, it didn't seem to have a serious impact on either my appetite or my waistline, so I gave it up. But today? TOTALLY killed my appetite. Wow. I mean, I was not hungry, at all. In fact, food didn't sound appetizing to me at all. Not even chocolate. (!!!!) What manner of witchcraft is this? To not even want chocolate? How is that possible?


I had a normal breakfast, but by lunchtime my appetite was pretty much zero.  Since it was Father's Day today, the kids and I took my dear husband out to eat, but I only finished about half my meal. Hours later I was still not hungry. My food tracker indicates I only took in about 650 calories today, but still, no hunger pangs.  Finally, about 9:00 tonight, feeling sort of weak, I did manage to swallow some dinner.  Man. How bizarre is that? Normally if I'd only had 600 calories, I'd be starving by now, ready to sink my fork into the nearest flank of animal. But no. Not tonight. I'm not hungry, and food doesn't sound good to me either. 

Workouts this week / 336 days till the Spartan!

Chatty description coming up, after family obligations. Briefly: good news, I worked out! Bad news, I'm still fat.

...Okay, here's the wordiness.

The two pix below are snapshots I took of the screen on the treadmill stairclimber Nordictrack whatever that machine is at the gym, where you get on it and you do this sort of gliding motion with your feet, while at the same time you busily push on this lever-like thing with your hands. Whatever that thing is - it's okay for the knees, apparently, since my knee doesn't really complain on that machine. So, two workouts on that machine. (Not in one day.)

 

Now, what you can't see here are the classes I took at the gym this past week. One class has you throwing weights around. Shamefully, I could only deal with, like, zero weight to begin with. I mean, I did at least have the weight-less bar to push around like some sort of loony-bin escapee ("Why, yes, there are weights on this bar, don't you see them?....No, I haven't heard from Commander Zog today, but I'm sure the Martian invasion is still on.") Luckily, after a couple sessions of this class, my body started to catch on to the fact that, yes, we do even lift, bro! and so I added some weights to the bar. Hardly much of anything, but more than zero. I should've taken a picture: those tiny, bitty 2-kg weights on the bar looked super dumb! Mice could lift more. Dwarf mice. Dwarf mice with a debilitating muscle disease! Thankfully, God In His Infinite Mercy allowed my body to graduate to 5-kg weights. They look bigger on the bar, and yes, they're heavier. Most importantly those bigger weights make me look like less of a blubbery wimp.

The other class I took was some type of Core / Cross-Fit class. It's where you slave away to lift various parts of your body into various contorted positions for miserably long amounts of time, while the teacher cheerfully bellows at you to keep your "Elbows In!" or "Just TEN MORE!" or some other tyrannical nonsense, that all just means she is secretly trying to kill you through floor exercises. I think I'll try this class again. I didn't actually die, although I wanted to; and it does seem like a good way to maybe someday eventually get into halfway better shape than I'm currently in. Most importantly I suspect the teacher's verbal abuse is similar to the kind that gets dished out at the Spartan race. Might as well get used to that now.

Now, here is a picture of me, today, not at the gym. I just finished 1 mile:

Much to my continued chagrin, I was not, in fact, able to run even part of that mile. I could not even muster up a ridiculously slow jog. No, that was not possible today. Was it the knee? you may ask sympathetically. Yes, it was the knee, a little bit. More than that, there was some kind of leg/hip pain that didn't want to go away. I'm sure it was a hip flexor complaining about over-use, since it was so badly abused in that evil Core training class yesterday...but since that particular leg is the one attached to the wonky knee, I figured it best not to push it. I did keep trying, hopefully, to trot around just a bit; alas, every single attempt was met with a sharp shooting pain and a tiny little hip flexor sigh of exasperation. So I walked. Then about a third of the way into my walking mile, the knee did start to feel slightly uncomfortable. Which meant it would be good simply to finish a one-mile walk without destroying any currently functioning joint or muscle in my body. So, no jogging for me today. A couple of barking dogs, yes, but no jogging.

And finally, we have this:

 

 Dearest darling hubby, the light of my life, my best friend and soul mate, has recently brought it to my attention that I may not be as young as I used to be, once, a long time ago; and in fact, it might be a good idea to take anti-inflammatories after a workout. 

Oh, the humiliation. Not only am I fat and out of shape, I'm taking Motrin just to keep moving.

But it's all good, in the end. So what if I have to take NSAIDS after a workout? At this stage, it's good that my butt isn't velcroed in to the sofa. If it takes some Motrin after a workout to deal with the pain, at least I'm working out. And I don't think I'll do this every time. Mostly, just after an intense workout, or after working out some part of my body I never knew existed until then.

Just 336 Days until the race!