Life, the Universe, and Everything

I haven't written in a while, which is a bad habit that tends to happen with journal type things that I start. I've never been able to keep one. I get wrapped up in life and just let it fall to the back of the to do pile, and before I know it, I've forgotten about it!

In some ways there's been a lot going on, and in others, nothing much at all.

I still haven't managed to find a job, even a cruddy retail job. So I'm still sitting around at home on my duff not accomplishing much. Lots of daytime TV watching and video game playing. Oh yeah, and cooking and cleaning. *YAWN* I know.

I've fallen away from FitDay a bit. FitDay is a website that I was using to keep track of calories and exercise to help me faciliate my weight loss. I was doing ok with. My favorite part of it was balancing my daily nutritional needs and seeing solely with food that it is possible to feed your body everything it needs and not have to have vitamins or supplements. I've really discovered a passion for doing things naturally. I've never been much of a pill taker, I just didn't think about it. But it makes me happy to know that I HAVE to have them. I've been thinking a lot about going back to school, maybe getting a new degree, and being a nutritionist is definitely something I've started looking into.

I deviate. I kind of fell out of the habit of FitDay when I was having so many problems finding exercise I could do at home that didn't piss off the gimpy ankle, espcecially in February when there was constantly snow on the ground. So I completely lost my momentum. I stopped posting on the forums and tracking my foods. Needless to say I not only gained back the four or five pounds that I had managed to lose, but I'd also hit an all time high in my weight. I'll discuss that in a few. I feel kind of guilty about just abandoning the whole thing, and I really need to get back into it so I can make sure that I'm covering my needs and not going hog wild on the calories.

My biggest thing is that I want to have a healthy relationship with food. I don't want to spend my entire life obsessing about what goes in my mouth. I think that's part of why I've taken a hiatus from FitDay. I felt like I was getting fanatical about it. I don't want to micromanage myself to the extent that I was getting. Its one thing to be conscience about what you're putting into yourself, its entirely another to plan my day down to the last little calorie and not have any flexibility. Life is about give and take. Balance. And I felt the OCD meter going way over into the deep end.

I think my most exciting devolpment is my mom's gift to me of spotting me the monthly fee for a gym until I'm working again. This happened two weeks ago. There's a very small chain (as in two locations) called Victory Lady Fitness here in Richmond. Its nice because its women only, and I'm totally not the fattest person there, so its very unintimidating to be there. And its quickly becomming my home away from home. I spend anywhere from one to two hours a day there. One of the other completely awesome things about this gym is they have trainers there that you can utilize at any time free of cost. In fact, your first couple of weeks you meet with your trainer about three times. And I love the girl they put me with. Her name is Caitlin and she's a few years younger than I am, but we hit it off right off the bat. I could totally be friends with her in the "real world". And she's never made me feel akward about my size and just exudes complete confidence that I can do anything in there. Even when I had to get on the scale- *EEK!!!* Which brings me to the point of my being at an all time high in weight. 348!!! Holy shit, how did that happen???? I don't feel that big. I don't feel like I look that big. I watch this show called Ruby sometimes, and she weighs 318 now, and she looks much much bigger than me. Its a strange feeling. Knowing I weight a number that huge. But I've really been giving it my all at the gym. And I LOVE it!! I guess I just had to get to the right place in my life. My parents couldn't force me to work out, no matter how many articles they shoved down my throat about the years I was shaving off my life being fat. I couldn't make myself eat right and work out, no matter how sick of being the fat girl I was. I had to be ready.

Now, I don't know how off my scale is from the one at the gym, but I got on mine this morning when I got back from exercising, and its down eight pounds- it says 340! That's so exciting. Once a month Caitlin will weigh me, and their scale does body fat, too, and measure me. I'm more exicted to see the body fat and inches numbers come down. I do a weight routine every other day, so I know my weight number will be a little funky for a bit because I'll be building muscle, but the measurements and my clothes will not lie!!

A cardio only day for me starts with a five minute walk on the treadmill to warm up, then stretching. Then I tackle the elipitical, which is good for me, because right now the gimpy foot can't take the impact of running on a treadmill right now. My secret goal is to one day be a runner. I think one of the biggest accomplishments I can have for myself is to one day get on that treadmill and run a mile without slowing down or stopping. Anyway. That elipitical is my nemesis. I could do about two minutes on it last week. I've been slowly increasing that number every three or four days, and today I hit five minutes!! And the thing told me that I went a half mile in that five minutes. That means I can run a half mile in five minutes- sweet! I know it would be harder on a treadmill, but I'll take that victory! Once I do my time on the elipitical I move over to the exercise bike for 25 minutes, giving me a full half hour of intense cardio. And I kick my own ass on that bike. It is the most under estimated piece of equipment in that place. I get an awesome workout on that thing! And on my weight days I have a weight circuit that I do in between stretching and cardio. Once I finish up I go back and do a second round of stretching.

I am just adoring every bit of my time at the gym. I get competetive with myself and try and up the ante, and I really feel like I'm accomplishing something everyday. Something I haven't felt in a while. I haven't been buckling down on my eating quite yet, but at the same time, the biggest thing I would really need to change is portion size at dinner. I'm hungry all the time now, I guess my body is adjusting to the new influx of exercise, so I kind of just eat when I'm hungry at this point. But never fear! Most of my daytime eating revolves around fruit, veg, yogurt and very healthy cereal.

I feel like until I have a job, my job is to take care of myself, and I want to do that job to the best of my ability!