Darkness

"It's always darkest before the dawn."

I have always been afraid of the dark. I honestly can't tell you why.

About a year ago I started walking home from work on regular occasion. I usually work afternoons and evenings and it is not uncommon to leave my office after 8 or 9pm to make the mile trek home. Of course, it's dark....

Sometime in that year I have gotten over my fear - for the most part. Even after the horrendous murder in our town in May I was not scared (call me crazy, but I refuse to live in fear in my own town).

Don't walk behind me up a dark staircase. Don't make spooky noises while I am walking through the dark house. It's not funny, I'm still scared. But, I am better...

This morning I got up around 5:15am and was out of the house and walking by 5:30. It was pitch black. So dark that even with the headlamp on my head I couldn't see the ground underneath my feet at some points in time. So dark that while I was running home I was terrified I was going to trip and fall because I couldn't see the sidewalk under my feet.

An hour later when I got home it was still dark and there was no sign of the sun even. The sky was starting to show a little blue and not so much black...but no sun. And the biggest fear I had was of falling.

Progress, not perfection.

And to top it all off, my great morning that started with a 5K, ended with dropping my children off at school was also met by an angel by the name of Bill.

Bill is an older gentleman who lives in town. I met him when he was doing some contracting work on our neighbor's home. I don't see him often but I was graced with his presence this morning as we left Dunkin Donuts (for Andrew's daily visit with his friends).

As we crossed paths Bill looked me up and down and said, "Have you lost weight?! You look great!"

I love that man.

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."

Feel the burn...

I love www.livestrong.com - have I told you that before?

I love that I can enter my activity for the day and it tells me how many calories I burned.

Sledding burns about 730 calories per hour (for me at my weight). Walking burns about 690 calories per hour.

But it doesn't tell me how much I burn while I am walking, pulling a sled with a 50lb kid in it...

Sigh.

Belly changes

I have been taking weekends off of my "diet" and exercise regimen. I don't track my calories, I don't push myself to work out and I don't, really, pay attention to what I am eating. I think it is a fair compromise. 'Cause telling myself "never" doesn't work (at least not today).

Both Saturday and Sunday I realized that I am not sure that is going to work. I didn't go overboard with food but I certainly ate like the calories didn't count. And, man oh man, I felt it!

Saturday we went for dinner at my mother's. It is not uncommon to eat at my mom's on Saturday for "beans" but we hadn't been there in a little while. This week we were sure to make it because the next day Mom, Monica, Steve and family were leaving for KOREA!!

I was SO full by the time we left there I thought I might have to undo the button on my pants...

From there we went to my father's where Kirby was going to play poker while I sat in a rocking chair in front of the fire reading a book watched the children. I couldn't eat a thing. I looked (oh BELIEVE ME, I looked - my aunt had even brought whoopie pies...YUMMY), but I couldn't do it.

Sunday, I flat out ate like crap. I can't even begin to tell you the junk that I ate (too embarrassing). It wasn't that I ate A LOT it was that there was absolutely no nutritional value to any of it (including the whoopie pie that we brought home from Dad's).

Worse than that, my mood was horribly effected. I found myself irritable and cranky. I felt yucky and full and bloated.

So I went for a walk. I went down to the local bookstore (The Country Bookseller - if you happen to be in the area I HIGHLY recommend it - wonderful place, wonderful people, so friendly). It isn't a very long walk - not even half of the way to work (which I walk to about 4 days a week) and I was winded coming home...

It could have been the air (very dry and colder than all hell), it could have been the pace I was walking (a bit faster than usual because of the temps)...but it could have been that I had absolutely ZERO nutrition in my body and very little water.

Two weeks into these daily changes and my belly is already feeling it.

No pain - no gain.

I don't like pain. Not at all, not in any sense. If it isn't easy, I don't want to do it. And, honestly, this is the story of my life...

I gain weight because it is easier than working out and watching what I eat (which accounts for me being at my highest weight since losing 100 lbs a few years ago). My relationship struggles because I don't want to deal with the pain of putting in the work. My house is (often) a disaster because I don't want to deal with the pain of cleaning it up...the list goes on and on.

Lazy, perhaps. Actually, probably most definitely. But the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one...right?!

So, I have decided that I hate Billy Blanks (oh and don't even get me started on his perky daughter Shellie who just makes me want to puke every time I see her) . You see, I have started doing a Tae Bo video every morning with Z. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone:

1) Z gets some energy out before he goes to school with the intention of helping his (undiagnosed) ADHD.

2) I burn some calories and (hopefully) don't look like a fat cow at my brother's wedding in June.

And along with Billy and his perky daughter Shellie (gosh, even the way she spells it makes me think PERKY) I have added Lance. Now, Lance I like. Lance makes things very easy for me with The Daily Plate. I track everything I eat, every calorie I burn and every pound of weight I lose. And by "calorie burning" you know that I mean everything from grocery shopping to putting on makeup to SEX (yes, you read that right, you can count sex to your calorie burning) to massage work (some of my recent fitness logs included Tae Bo, folding clothes, washing dishes and shoveling snow). Did you know that massage work (for me, at my weight) burns approximately 417 calories an hour (which is really nice because, on a good day, I have 4 clients which equals NEARLY the amount of calories I am allotted each day) and walking to and from work everyday burns 353 calories...see, Lance I like.

I have been tracking my food for about a week. Honestly, I have not been doing it as faithfully as I should (I skipped the weekend) but it has made everything so much easier and made me really aware of what I am consuming on a daily basis. Did you know that a Dunkin Donuts Boston Creme Donut is 270 calories? That is more than I burn doing 20 minutes of Tae Bo with STUPID Billy and Shellie.

The past two mornings Z and I have gotten up early and done some Tae Bo. Yesterday (day one) I lasted about 10 minutes and then I died. Right on the floor. My heart stopped until the DVD was off...then I came to. Z, of course, being the ball of energy that he is, said "we barely even started". I told him I thought it was enough for one day...

It hurts. Every inch of my body hurts. My hips hurt, my legs hurt, my ass hurts...it's a big reminder of the last time I joined a gym.

But that got me thinking about the "no pain- no gain" concept and my complete inability to put myself through any sort of pain.

Did I think this was going to be easy?
Did I think that I could just melt the pounds away by blogging at the computer? Blogging, BTW, burns about 156 calories per hour.
Doesn't pain = strength?
Don't we all have to go through pain to get stronger?

And then (of course cause I have the (undiagnosed) ADHD tendencies as well) I started thinking about my life in general and how I am apt to give up at anything that seems too hard...

So now, I am on a mission. I am going to do things that are hard. I am not giving myself a time limit or going to say "until" (because that makes things so much easier for me to give up on). I am going to do this today. Today I am going to do things that are hard (like the 20 minutes of Tae Bo I FORCED myself to do - but you can bet your ass that as soon as 20 minutes was up I was DONE). Today is much easier than this week or this month or until I lose 100 pounds...

So, wish me luck, TODAY. Things are going to get a whole lot harder as time goes on...