another one bites the dust

lucydog ate my pedometer.

the village people had it all wrong

this is the mission of the YMCA in the united states, according to its website:

"To put Christian principles in to practice through programs that build healthy spirit, mind and body for all"

i'm here to tell you that mission is not alive and well.

i've been searching for a place to work out in knoxville while i'm stuck here. i'm not buying any memberships so long as i have one to the williamson county recreation center in nashville. but, i figured there would be places around town, say the ymca, that might allow me in on a single-time pass.

i sought out a city-owned rec center first, recalling the time i lived in chattanooga and the city owned a weight training room that you could patronize for just 50 cents. the one i decided to try is just a hop and a half away from the boyfriend's house, and the city's website advertised it as having a weight room. false advertising. i found the gym and the bridge center, but no weight room.

so i drove over to a nearby ymca. i also recalled a few times while in chattanooga (and too poor for a gym membership) paid $5 to get into the ymca's weight room. a little over priced, but not to expensive to keep me away.

gal at the desk of the knoxville y: can i help you?
me: yes, i don't have a membership. i'm visiting from out of town and was wondering if you do single-day passes?
other gal at the desk: ha!
first gal: weeeeeeeeeell, we do, but they're $15.
me: $15? that's a lot of money. um, nevermind.
first gal: ok, see ya.

ok, when i think of Christian principles, i do not think of exclusive, overpriced and unfriendly. but those words pretty much summed up the principles at this ymca (and presumably all the ymcas within the east tennessee region). come to think of it, this is also the case in middle tennessee where the ymcas are COUNTRY CLUBS. seriously. i visited one when i was thinking about getting a membership there and it crossed my mind that i had been in country clubs not nearly as fancy as the y i was in.

from the Book of Matthew, Chapter 19: Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

something to think about, ymca.

off the gravy train

i have officially fallen off the dieting bandwagon yet again. i did so well, for about a week and a half. but then i got sent yet again across the state and all bets were off. the three pounds i had lost have mysteriously and ever so quickly returned. my energy has returned to nil and i don't believe i've made an entry into my food diary in about five days.

so tomorrow again starts the diet. my sandwich is already made. a salad is in the works. i'm exploring options for cold-weather fruits and veggies.

but first, i'm going to bed really, really early and sleeping for a long time.

goals, goals, goals

i've decided i need rewards for when i hit benchmarks in my weight loss. my health magazine says you should have rewards for every five pounds that you lose ... otherwise, if you set your goals to be like 10 or 20 lbs, you'll get frustrated before you ever reach a goal.

i've done pretty well this week in sticking to my plan. i've eaten almost all healthy food, have exercised several times and have reached beyond my goal number of steps each day on the pedometer. the benefits have been great: i've had a lot more energy, i've lost about two pounds (which is within my margin of daily fluctation, but i'm still happy) and feel like i look a little slimmer when i look in the mirror.

so, my goody bag of rewards that i can choose from when i lose a solid three more pounds is as follows:
- something from jcrew because i love their stuff but am usually too cheap to buy it. you have to have a good excuse to spend the money on jcrew, and this seems as good as any
- a new pair of shoes. i'm about to need some new new balances, but i'm also interested in some sporty outdoorsy shoes, boat shoes and a pair of nice brown flats that i could wear to work but still walk in on my break
- a facial. i've never had one of these (again, too cheap), but i know i could seriously use one. the skin on my face could rival a 15 year old's.
- a few sessions with a personal trainer. this sounds more like a step to losing weight than a reward, but the thing is, i want someone who knows what they're doing to set up a plan that will help me tone my body. i can exercise to lose weight, but i still struggle with getting my muscles to look hot.
- pilates class or two. see previous explanation.

most of these items, ok all of these items are basically stuff i've avoided buying or paying for because i'm otherwise too cheap. i don't want to replace one problem with another by starting to spend a lot of money, but i know i won't be hitting my goals weekly, so i think it will be ok. plus, i can't reward myself with a big fancy dinner out, cause that would just defeat the purpose.

whole grains/fresh fruit/soup/workout plan

i stepped on the scale last night after i got home from knoxville and discovered that i've gained three pounds in my month of travels, which is contrary to the nature of my get-un-overweight plan. gah.

naturally i haven't been as good at keeping up with my food journal as i should have been, so that's changing right now. (it's sitting right next to me right now so that i can finish filling it out as soon as i'm done bloggeraging.

my new plan for the week is to moderate: bring simple sandwiches and fruit cups and whole grain wheat thins and kashi cookies to work for lunch. veggie soups at night possibly with a salad. i'm also taking advantage of the fact that i'm at home this week and have roommates who work completely different hours than me and can therefore let the lucydog out before i could ever be home from work by going to workout directly after workin.' i may also have to take up jogging again, even though it's still pretty damn hot for late september.

i'm going to stick to my whole grains/fresh fruit/soup/workout plan for a week and then evaluate. i am allowing myself two splurges in the weekly wednesday night dinner outing with my friends (though whereever we go, i'm ordering as healthy as possible) and sushi with kg (but we're walking from the house to sushi o sushi, kg).

i expect you, my loyal readers, to hold me accountable here. i'll report back on sunday.

diary .... uhhhhh

i'm about to head to knoxville for the third time in a week, and i can feel the calories and fat content of my past few meals going straight for my waist. sigh. i'm trying to motivate myself to go workout before i leave, but i'm so tired (and have such a big headache) that it's not going well.

this is how my fall will be. trip after trip after trip to knoxville + exhaustion - physical activity = pounds adding up. i've been through this before in the spring and last fall with my long-term out-of-town assignments. i know i have to do something now or risk yet again gaining the unwanted pounds.

so here goes. i've got a food diary. i hoped to not have to resort to obsessing over every single thing that i eat, but i have few options. and, when i have to start weight watchers in a few months (i know it's coming), it won't be such a challenge to track my points.

lets see, first entry

weight: more than anyone would guess

food eaten today: (so far) some milk and cereal, a handful of honey-wheat pretzels, a ham sandwich and an apple

physical activity: walked dogs, sat on couch, about to sit in a car for three hours.

i've got some work to do.

5K death race

i don't know what part of me thought running a 5K in 94 degree weather would be a good idea. it probably had something to do with the fact that the race didn't start until 8 p.m. and therefore without the sun. plus jogging is an integral part of my lose-weight campaign.

1.5 miles into my race, those reasons didn't seem nearly as good as they had a week ago. i thought i was going to die.

i can say this. i ran for some of the route. and i didn't finish last, though i was close. but ... i did finish.

in 41 minutes.

oh well, i can only get better. and i got this awesome long-sleeved t-shirt for doing the race.

to-do list

because i'm still freakin' tired, i'm forgoing a lengthy post for a nice short one that aptly sums up how i feel right now.

to do:

1. replace pedometer that mysteriously went missing this weekend

2. stop eating things that are bad for me

3. exercise, exercise, exercise

4. lose lots o' weight

reinvention

realization #1 of the day:
it's f'ing hot

realization #2 of the day:
everyone is especially testy

correlation #1 of the day:
it's f'ing hot, therefore everyone is especially testy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

after spending the day of listening to my boss snap at the slightest disturbance and getting an earful out by the secretary of a mayor of one of the more pretentious towns in the state for merely suggesting that an elderly woman died from heat-related causes while gardening NEAR (not in) NEAR her precious town, i've spent the evening languishing on the couch in avoidance of the heat and reading a book about a girl who bitches all day about the idiots around her.

and, i've thought of these additional things:
3. i've been working out and running religiously for the past couple of weeks and i have not lost weight, but rather gained weight. and before you point out that muscle weighs more than fat, i shall point out that i don't feel any skinnier either.

4. my dog is crazy and needs her ears cleaned out

5. corn puffs probably aren't the best thing to have dinner. i should have tried to actually cook dinner, but it's too f'ing hot.

6. it's too f'ing hot to go out and exercise. this above-100-degrees thing has got to go.

7. i need to do something different with my blog.

don't ask me how i got from No. 3 to No. 7, but the point is i'm there and i'm (slightly) reinventing my blog. i think it first popped into my head as a tool for helping me to once and for all lose the 20 pounds i've been struggling to lose for the past year and a half. if i vent and/or brag on my blog i have a stronger method of accountability by including anyone who reads it in my weight loss efforts. sweet. but don't worry, this is not a weight loss-focused blog.

plus, lets face it, my blog in its former state was fairly boring. i got better feedback on my myspace rants likely because they were more intimate and more like me.

so, the result of my lame evening is hopefully a more interesting blog with more intimate ramblings about the insignificant-to-the-world (yet fucking important to me) struggles of a 20-something working gal living in the kinda big city. i'm sure there's not a single blog out there like it. ha. i'll still post some of the things i would have posted before, but i'll try to use more discretion in doing so.

i'd love to make you laugh a little bit, but i certainly won't gurantee it because i'm not so vain to believe i'm actually funny. but even more important to that, i hope to give you something to relate to.

feedback and suggestions much appreciated

oh, and P.S. i'm trying to find a blog design that reflects my blog's new personality, so forgive its current state of ugliness. it's going to have to do until i have some time to sit down and relearn me some html code. by the way, the template system on blogger is wieldy, annoying and f'ing sucks.