Posts from — January 2008

Yesterday I met my friend Amanda so we could go work out before dinner. I hadn’t seen her since December and occasionally we work out together, so I felt like it would be fun to catch up while working out. We planned on going to the fitness center at our apartment complex, but that didn’t happen. When we got there it was boiling hot and after a few seconds a manager came in.

“The fitness center is closed. This equipment isn’t safe and we only keep this door open for access to the sauna. We will have new equipment soon, sometime in spring.”

LIAR!  When I moved into my apartment in September they told me the fitness center was closed for remodeling. I accepted this and worked out at my school even though it was more of a hassle. I thought surely the complex would fix their fitness center soon, especially after I have been away for a month and a half on break. 

I was wrong. Everything is still in the fitness center and nothing has been done to change it. After 5 months it is a bit ridiculous to keep saying it is going to be remodeled soon. I am not falling for it. I know now that the fitness center seen on the apartment complex website is just make-believe. It does not exist in the real world.

Thanks for all the resp0nses about workout time. I will most likely end up working out in the afternoon/early evening because that is when I can get other people to go. I enjoy working out with friends, even if we are doing different things. It is just nice to go with someone. And now that I know the apartment fitness center is CRAP, I will just make the journey over to the campus fitness center. A small price to pay for safe, working fitness equipment.

Right now it is 12:45 and I am considering whether or not a workout it worth it. I have a class at 2, so I am going to say no. Definitely not enough time for changing, getting sweaty, and then trying to get ready for class again.

I enjoyed my winter break because I was able to workout whenever I wanted to. Morning or afternoon, it didn’t matter. Whenever I felt like going for a workout I had the time and flexibility. Being in college I definitely have a lot of flexibility with my workout schedule - I have worked out at 10 in the morning between classes and I have worked out at midnight. In the past it all depended on what I felt like doing. Often that ended up in not going at all. Now I know I must work out, so I need to pick a time that works with my schedule and stick with it.

Britney Spears does her workout from 1 - 3. This might work for Britney, but I don’t think I would enjoy that time of day for working out. I usually reserve that period for sleep.

I have always heard that working out in the morning is best for you, but my morning starts right before class, so that won’t work either. Here is an article with opposing advice: a late afternoon workout is best for your body.

Dr. Phyllis Zee of Northwestern University has a different opinion about when is the ideal time to exercise.

“The best time to work out is in the late afternoon,” Zee said. “The reason for that is your muscle strength is at its peak, its highest. You’re going to be less likely to injure yourself. It’s also a time when people are most awake and alert.”

The science behind Zee’s assertion resides with delicate rhythms of the brain called circadian rhythms. According to Zee, circadian rhythms explain why working out later in the day might be more productive and beneficial.

“One of the things that circadian rhythms does is that it determines when your best performance time is,” Zee said. “Your ability to perform changes throughout 24 hours.”

“There is some evidence that morning exercise promotes more fat burning than other times of the day, but the difference is so small that it really wouldn’t matter,” said Richard Cotton, an exercise physiologist. “And if you’re going to exercise inconsistently in the morning, then it’s not worth it at all.”

What do you think? When is the best time to workout for you?

It is check in day… and I am not going anywhere near a scale.

I actually am moving today, going back to school, so my stuff is either packed or will soon be. I don’t feel like looking for the scale. And I know it will probably be a zero or gain, so I would rather look at this week by a different measurement.

Let’s just look at the challenge by this fact alone: I am so EXCITED. I am excited for these reasons:

• This week wasn’t too bad. I did my workouts and ate well most of the time. I had a few bad meals, but it is because I went out so many times.
• I kept track of everything I ate. I am sooo bad about journaling food, but I did a good job of keeping track of it all (the good, the bad) this week.
• I am going back to school where I will most certainly be more active than I am at home with mom and the bro. Being at home is like a return to my old life when I constantly ate and never moved. A month and a half of being home and I am 20 pounds heavier. I am so excited to be leaving!
• I have new tennis shoes that make me want to run and will make me run better and faster.

Overall I feel like it was a good week and there are only better ones to come! I hope everyone else has had great weeks. Time to go visit some blogs…

Today I went to buy new running shoes at the urging of my trainer. She said the minor problems I was having when running would be eliminated with the proper shoes.I trust her advice and decided I should invest in a pair of good running shoes.

I hopped on google to find stores geared toward runners in the Memphis area. There are several throughout Memphis but I decided on Fleet Feet Sports in East Memphis. I chose the store because I knew how to get to it and because they had a website. I adore any place with a website (and a blog too).

On the drive to the store I almost talked myself out of going. I worried about what to say, whether or not they would laugh me out of the store, even whether my feet smelled. By the time I got there I had conquered most of the concerns and told myself since I drove there I should go in and see what happened.

After a few awkward seconds of standing around waiting for someone to notice me a sales guy approached me and asked what I was looking for.

I had no idea.

I told him I just started running and needed new shoes. He went through the process of measuring my feet and asking questions about my training. I tried on 5 different pairs of shoes and jogged down the sidewalk in front of the store in each one. The sales guy watched me run and told me which looked like it was giving me the correct support. It was a little intimidating running in front of a “running specialist” but I am glad I did it because I ended up with the correct pair of shoes… something completely different from what I thought I needed.

My last pair of running shoes was a size 8 women’s pair of new balance running shoes. My new shoes: Size 7 Wide MENS Brooks running shoes. Does anyone notice a difference here?

Even though they are men’s running shoes, I still think they look pretty good:

Nice, right? Back to the original point… I was buying shoes two sizes too big for my feet to compensate for the extra width of my feet. Wrong, wrong, WRONG! It it important to get shoes that fit the width and length of your feet, because that will completely affect your running. The wrong size shoes were causing me a ton of problems when I was trying to run.

Without going to see a professional I never would have gotten the right shoes. I highly reccoment next time you need new shoes get the proper help. Someone trained to watch runners run will know exactly what kind of shoe will be right for you. It will save you from a ton of problems later on.

I am ‘the fat girl.’ Always have been. Most statistics say I always will be.

But I am so tired of this being my one defining characteristic. When people meet me their first impression always includes a notice of the fat. Rarely do they voice it, although some do, but it is obvious. How can it not be when my weight is the most noticeable thing about me?

In high school, I never tried to lose weight but I did try to divert attention from my size. For some reason I thought that if something else stood out about me no one would notice how fat I was.

So I dyed my hair purple.

Being the purple-haired girl instead of the fat girl comforted me for a while. When people met me I knew they noticed the purple hair first. I wanted people to look at my hair and think I was a bit crazy instead of looking at my waist and thinking I had one donut too many.

After a while I grew tired of being the girl with purple hair. My hair is now back to a natural color and even the style is moderately normal, and I am back to being the fat girl.  I hate it.

Now when people meet me they know that I have trouble making food decisions. Usually they also assume I don’t workout. Unless I see them at the gym and watch the surprised expression fade away, I am just judged as another fat person with all the negative connotations (i.e. lazy) associated with it. I am judged unfairly because of the way I look.

Reason #3 I want to lose weight: First Impressions. I want to be at a healthy weight so people can meet me and notice me instead of my weight.

Memphis now has its own Biggest Loser Competition. The radio station Q 107.5 is teaming up with WMC-TV 5, Forever Fit Personal Training, Smoothie King, and Vitamin Water to present Memphis with a fitness challenge of its own.

The contest will feature 20 contestants serious about losing weight. Anyone over the age of 18 needing to lose a significant amount of weight can enter.

Winner of the Biggest Loser Memphis contest will win 5,000 dollars, a trip for two to Cancun, and a year of training with Forever Fit. Sounds like an amazing set of prizes if you ask me.

I was soooo excited when I heard the commercial for this contest. Almost shaking with excitement, I immediately went to the website. It was the perfect contest for me!

However, you have to be available to workout for one hour in the morning at 5 a.m. and again in the evening at 6 p.m. I can’t do that with my school schedule, so maybe it is not the perfect contest for me. It is a great idea though and I am excited for all the chosen contestants. Lets all get healthy Memphis!

Ah, its Saturday and its cold. And I am not running today. Thank goodness. I should be swimming, but have no access to a pool. Next little workout will be on Monday. Hurray!

Continuing my list of reasons to lose weight/be healthy:

Reason to I want to lose weight #2: Graduation.

Since I was overweight in high school, every memory from those four years is marred by the pain of that extra weight. The two worst events were prom and graduation.

When I graduated high school I was at my highest weight ever, 255. I didn’t feel pretty, I didn’t feel happy. The administration wanted girls to wear dresses and black heels, so I was forced to find something to wear. I didn’t mind the dress I bought, but it wasn’t the best looking dress. Plus size clothing generally never is.

Good thing I got to throw a huge black robe over everything. I loved and hated that robe all at the same time. It covered me up, which I was eternally thankful for, but it also made me look HUGE. When I look back at the pictures from graduation, posing with all my super skinny size 0-2 friends, I looked enormous.

Graduation should have been one of those great bittersweet moments. Instead it was plagued by insecurity and other uncomfortable feelings. I destroyed most of the pictures from that day, but here is one that a friend kept.

I have another graduation coming up in May. I will be graduating from university with a bachelor degree. It is a second chance! I get to do graduation the right way this time. I want to walk across the stage, celebrating my accomplishment, at a healthy weight. I don’t want to worry about what I look like. I want to feel the best I have ever felt.

Yesterday was a terrible day. The Swiss Roll breakfast was followed by lunch with salad and a honey bun. Yikes. Today is going much, much better.

Mmmmm, weight watchers approved breakfast this morning however. Turkey bacon and cheese on a wheat english muffin. I have never had an english muffin before a few weeks ago when I stayed at my uncle’s house. He eats them almost every morning because they are only 1 pt for WW (they are light version). My uncle has lost about 30 pounds on WW, and he is definitely an inspiration for me.

Speaking of inspiration…

Inspired by Cammy’s last post and the 101 Reasons I Hate Being Fat blog, I have decided to start making a list of reasons why I want to lose weight. Collecting all these thoughts that pop in and out of my head throughout the day will give me a great source of motivation and encouragement when I am faltering, reaching for sugary treats.

Reason I Want to Lose Weight #1: I want to be a runner.

More specifically, I want to be a triathlete. A long time ago when I first started working out this was a pipe dream. I chose it mostly because it was something I new I could do for a long time. There are lots of 60 year old (and older!) people who still compete in triathlons. That thought encouraged me that I could compete in a sport for such a long period of time.

So I had a dream of one day being fit and completing runs and triathlons, but in my mind it was a long way away. Today I realize it is much closer. I am not officially a runner yet. I still walk more than I run in my workouts, but I am on schedule (according to my trainer) to be running non-stop for long periods soon (as in months).

I really want to run. I love to run, well, I love the idea of running. I want to feel the joy of crossing the finish line of my first race and later the major accomplishment of completing my ultimate running goal: the St. Jude Marathon. I don’t know when I will do it, but one day I want to run through the streets of Memphis, with thousands of other runners from across the country, supporting St. Jude Children’s Hospital while knowing I am healthy myself.

I know to do this I will have to lose a lot of the weight I still carry around. I know I can do that because I can see this dream in my head and I know one day… I will be a runner.

I don’t understand what I am doing.

Honestly I don’t.

I work out hard. I am following my training plan for the 5k run. I drink water all the time. I plan my meals for Weight Watchers so I can stay on track with my points. I do all the right things, or at least know all the things I should be doing to lose weight and be healthy.

And then I completely do the opposite when I actually start eating.

There are apples on the counter, but I go straight to the cabinet where my little brother’s food is. Do I need swiss rolls for breakfast? No. Do I really even like swiss rolls? Not particularly. Am I going to eat them anyway? Yeah. Two packages of them. Oh the processed sugary calories.

As I eat them my workout for later today is in my mind. I am about to cancel out all that hard work, but I eat them anyway. I don’t understand what I am doing. I really don’t.

I want to lose weight. I do. Maybe I should start making a list of reasons why or all the other tips to help stay on track. All I know is there is a mental battle of weight loss that right now I am losing.

Am I sabatoging myself when I really want something?

I am so annoyed with myself.

I am not a big fan of Jenny Craig or most weight loss programs and their spokesmodels, but I love JC’s new one: Queen Latifah. At first I was a little upset that she was doing it because she has always been such a great role model as a heavier person. Who else has been a Cover Girl that wasn’t stick thin?

After reading a few interviews about the reasoning behind her choice think it is a great decision. Here are some quotes from the interviews:

“I saw a blip that said if you lose 5 to 10 percent of your body weight, you can cut your diabetes in half,” said Latifah, who wants to drop 15 to 20 pounds. “I enlisted everybody. As soon as they heard I might be doing Jenny Craig, they all called and said I want to do it with you. My sister is doing it. Two aunts are doing it. My partner Shakim is doing it. My dad is going to do it. My mom wants to lose 15 pounds.”

Latifah said she believes doing this publicly will keep her motivated and said her biggest problem isn’t eating incorrectly.

“It’s probably portion size. I eat a really varied diet. I don’t each a bunch of fried foods. I eat too much of everything I really love, and occasionally I like to have a nice cocktail,” quipped the Grammy and Tony winner.

The Hairspray star is the latest celebrity to sign up as the face of Jenny Craig’s diet programme. “I felt just like I can set an example for confidence,” she told US entertainment show The Insider.

But although she wants to shed a few pounds, Latifah said she was still proud of her curves. “I’m one of those people that believes beauty starts on the inside,” she told The Insider. “I’m a person who loves her body and loves her curves.”

“Being a big woman I can also set an example for confidence being healthier - having healthier curves.”

Speaking about the Jenny Craig program, she added: “It’s about helping people to become healthy, about losing five to 10 per cent of their body weight.

I am not sure if I agree with her last statement about Jenny Craig. I am pretty sure all previous ads and spokesmodels (oh Kirstie Alley) have been about losing massive amounts of weight. Not that losing 75 pounds is a bad thing, but it seems that focus is more on looking good and appearing thin and sexy than being healthy. I am really happy to see Queen Latifah, who knows she already looks good, focusing on her health and the benefits losing weight - like lowering the risk of diabetes